Finally back to work. Today was a good day, by all accounts. I’ve decided to ease back into the project by revisiting the plan for the demo, and building off of that. Much has happened, although little has changed. No matter. I just have to get through the rest of it from here on out. No use thinking about what comes after.
My leave of absence was officially approved as of yesterday. All that’s left now is to write the update for this month. I’ll finally be able to rest for a while after that.
I’m still feeling pretty good about things. The euphoria has largely passed, but I’m surprised by the realisation that I still feel remarkably clear. I actually feel very consistently optimistic and secure in my feelings about things for once. Not just one or two things either, but… everything, basically.
Of course, some part of me – a very foundationally-located part of me, to be sure – remains deeply suspect of all of it: of the intentions of others, of the sheer apparent improbability of things to come. But lately I feel like my trust in others has been strengthened to a degree that I don’t think I’ve ever possessed before in my life. To be honest, I actually feel like I’m running out of excuses to convince myself why I should suspect anyone around me at all.
How strange it feels to be typing out a new year. So much has happened in these few brief days, and how volatile they’ve been. I can’t say for certain yet – although I hope that in the days and weeks and months to come, I will grow only more confident in this – but I want desperately to believe that I have emerged in the midst of a newfound, unprecedented sense of clarity and, at least in this immediate moment, what feels like some kind of peace. It’s undoubtedly been bittersweet as well, but right now, I don’t feel scared, or insecure, or despairing, or alone anymore.
I know now that there are people out there who care about me deeply, many more than I could imagine. I know now that there is someone out there who has held the fullness of my spirit in its totality, and chosen to return to me their own in kind. I don’t speak casually when I confess that I believe I have, for just a moment, brushed up against the very grace of God itself. I don’t know if the moment is over, or if it will ever happen again. I have no choice but to keep on living.
I felt really happy today, and at peace with things. I likely won’t be back again until the new year but I’m glad that I was able to wrap this year up here like this. Happy New Year. Peace, love, and grace be with you, now and forever. I’ll see you soon.
I’m too exhausted to recount everything that’s happened. I can’t promise much, but I think I’m getting better, though. I’ll try to write at least one more entry for this year before it ends. Good night.
Feeling fucked up.
Nothing done today either. I don’t know what’s going on. I just feel too tired to do anything most of the time, and of the few remaining handful of moments I actually feel awake, I feel too distracted to think straight. Maybe seeing the doctor tomorrow will help.
I felt a lot better today. After service, I helped to set up some Christmas decorations. I feel at peace again. I didn’t work today after all, but not because I felt bad. I wanted to preserve that sense of peace. I do have to write the monthly update though tomorrow. It’s already several days overdue.
The past few days have been a trial, to put it lightly. There were a few stretches there I thought I was gonna die. I’ve been able to mostly recover from it though. I can’t yet tell if the peace I feel right now is the genuine peace of reconciliation, or simply the lull of exhaustion. Maybe the distinction isn’t all that important. Either way, I have to get back to work soon.
I spent most of today gripped by anger and an intense desire to shoot myself in the face in such a manner that would render my corpse undisplayable. I worked slowly and unsteadily throughout the afternoon, and I plan on working through the night as well.
I felt calmer today. I woke up rather late, so that the first task of my day was to see the doctor. It was a very pleasant way to start the day, though, all other considerations notwithstanding. I felt better, and was, by nightfall, able to recover the ability to work.
I’ve finished all of the intertitles for each day. It was a nice change of pace from working on the build itself. I spent the night going through a bunch of books and selecting passages to use for the titles and captions. I have to return to working on the build tomorrow, though. I’ve decided not to worry about the appearance of anything, and just get all the functionality in place. I think that once I’m able to get the skeleton set up, I’ll be able to feel a bit more at ease with it.
I fear that I have let the past few days overwhelm my senses too thoroughly. I must remember that a person cannot live animated by electrical fervour for long. Perhaps I was mistaken in my happiness. No, that’s not it… I wasn’t mistaken, but more likely, misguided. I think that I have, in certain ways, made a farce of my feelings.
Moreover, every day, I grow to resent my work more and more. I find myself frequently astounded by how insipid and uninspired it all feels. The only part of this project to which I’m looking forward is its end. I keep telling myself that it’s only a handful of months left, that once it’s over, I’ll finally be free.
But even in this sense, I’m being dishonest with myself. It’s not my work I hate, or even this particular game; but the pathetic, arrogant cowardice with which I live my life. I hate the speed and easiness with which, despite having felt so flush with such certain and intimate joy, I have allowed myself to slip back into this familiar, repulsive worthlessness. I hate the listlessness that descends like a heaving miasma over my days, suffocating out any sense of responsibility or will towards something greater than the assuaging of my immediate psychic pains. And I hate most of all the jealousy that percolates within my chest and rises on occasion with the nausea in my throat. What right do I of all people have to it?
How disgusting, the lot of it.
I’m not sure how to even begin talking about the past few days. I feel like my life has palpably changed. I feel like I have changed. I’m no longer alone. Even with all the surrounding complications and agonies, I think I’m happy. I think I’m really happy.
I have grown tired of living the way I have lived. I have grown terribly, bitterly tired.
Another largely wasted day. I woke this morning nauseous from dreaming, far too early. I spent the rest of the morning battling the fugue of a feverish fatigue before deciding that it was not worth it to remain awake any longer. It was already dark by the time I awoke again. I had intended to submit my revised documents but I failed to even start working on them. I feel that I have fallen far from Christ. I feel so bitterly alone and empty all the time now. At least before, there was the semblance of something like sadness occupying that space. But now, it feels like I have nothing anymore, and that I am nothing.
Terribly tired today. I woke early this morning from a crushing dream about Alexandra that haunted me for the rest of the day. I’m sick of thinking about her. It’s been years already. I can’t stand this emptiness. I wasn’t able to get any work done today. After I returned from service I wandered around aimlessly for a bit and then fell asleep again when I returned home. When I awoke, it was already dark.
The start of December has come and passed in an unseemly fit of exhaustion, spurned in equal parts by procrastination and insomnia alike. First it was the UI build, which I still haven’t finished in its entirety; and then some business about creating promotional holidays cards, which I did finish, although possibly not on time. I was awake for nearly three days straight. By the end of this weekend, I will have to have written and submitted a fully realised proposal for an apparently upcoming demo, as well as a comprehensive update to the plot document describing the revisions I’ve made over the past several months.
For once, it feels like things are picking up. To some degree, I actually welcome it. I’ve been having terrible dreams nearly every night for an entire month now, nearly all of them unified in (and equally so, by) their subject. I’ve barely gone out or seen anyone since I left the station that evening, and the thought of being anywhere near the city fills me with nauseating dread. But the past several days have been so thoroughly exhausting that I’ve found that the sheer pressure of each moment is almost nearly enough, in rhythm, to eclipse the otherwise-unignorable pangs of loneliness and embittered grief that tear and crash through me like waves every other moment.
It’s a diabolical trade-off, to be certain; but at this point, it’s not like things were going to really get better as they were, and just as certainly, I’ve discovered now all too well, I should no longer be so trusting of the kinds of happiness which come from others. At least at the end of this period of trials, I’ll have a game to sell and, more importantly, a contract satisfied.
Wasn’t able to finish the build on time for submission, but I wrote up a document instead going over the changes I’ve made to the computer interface, which I’ve submitted for now in lieu of a proper build. I spent the day drafting out the functionality and appearance of the ACV app. I feel pretty good about the design. Tomorrow, I’ll start implementing it after I get off the check-in call.
Although I still feel pretty terrible overall and am still very much struggling, I’m glad that I was able to recover a little bit – if only just in this one area – and finish the month in, at least in this one particular regards, a better state than that in which I started it. I think that December will be particularly hard, but I am certain that, for better or worse, I will make it through the end of the year regardless.
Finally some real work, for once. I’ve committed to a complete overhaul of the outpost computer UI. The overall appearance is a lot more unified and accessible now, and, at least in my opinion, aesthetically interesting. I’ve merged all of the system apps into a single object that loads directly from the launch screen, and I’ve dramatically decluttered the backend so it’s extremely stable now, and easy to troubleshoot in case QA picks up anything. Right now, only Log is fully implemented functionality-wise – the other two are still basically just visual mockups, as it stands – but it’s a very solid foundation and honestly, I’m just glad I was able to finally get something done.
My lack of progress – both in getting work done, and getting over myself when it comes to my feelings – has progressed from frustrating to maddening. Despite my efforts otherwise, I’ve gotten basically nothing done since Thursday. Now the weekend is over and I’m once again left with nothing to show for it. I don’t know why it’s so difficult to just get the work done on time, especially when I know what exactly needs to be get done, but today in particular felt impossible to overcome. Every hour I made some excuse for myself to start at the end of that hour, yet I barely got more than ten minutes of real work done at the end of all those hours. What a waste of a life. I hate working on this fucking game. At this rate, it feels like it’ll never end.
Thanksgiving was pretty nice. For a moment, I felt a bit better. It didn’t last very long, but while it did, it was pretty nice.
I don’t remember not writing an entry yesterday, but I guess I don’t remember much of anything these days. I worked for about twenty minutes this afternoon – just UI stuff – before succumbing to a dark restlessness that continued to disturb me for the rest of the day. I went for a walk. The night air felt clean and thin, and there were few sounds but the spilling of the wind through the streets and branches of trees.
Published the monthly update this afternoon. Spent the rest of the day in a disconsolate fugue. I thought cleaning my desk might help, but instead it just left me feeling terribly deflated and unfulfilled.
I woke this morning from a dream that left me deeply sad. It was difficult to get out of bed but eventually I somehow did. I was able to get a little bit of work done, mostly just on the Kickstarter update. But after only an hour, I began to feel an immense tearing sensation deep in my chest.
I’ve begun feeling vaguely feverish these past few days whenever I think about certain things too much. My body starts to overheat, and I find myself quickly becoming overwhelmed by a dizzying confusion that rather rapidly and uncontrollably develops into full-blown nausea after several minutes.
Shortly afterwards, I started feeling suicidal again. It persisted for hours.
Once again fallen behind tasks. Still haven’t written either the spec doc for the soundscapes, or this month’s update. It’s not that I’ve not been trying, I’ve just been too distracted lately. Everybody’s always telling me that I’m too hard on myself, but if I had the capacity to be kinder to myself, or even just being able to recognise what that might actually entail, I probably wouldn’t find myself in these situations to begin with, I think. The realisation that so little time has actually elapsed in practice just exacerbates it. I don’t mean to be dramatic when I confess that each night has been getting harder and harder to get through. At least the desire to kill oneself is still an active desire, however destructive it may be. Now, it’s as if I have no desires left at all. I can’t find it within me to want to do anything; and everything that I do just feels like a waste of time. I just feel like a waste of time.
In any case, I should probably commit to finishing the audio write-up and the monthly update tomorrow.
Thoroughly drained. Still no progress. I completely forgot to write the soundscape design sheet for the composer last week. I opened up a document, wrote the title, and then felt so overwhelmed with physical fatigue that I found myself hardly able to look at the screen much longer, let alone conjure any useful thoughts. I’ll have to get it done tomorrow before my meeting.
This week I’m supposed to deliver a build with additional content in it. Seeing that both tomorrow and Tuesday will be more or less completely occupied, that leaves me approximately eight hours or so on Wednesday – and that’s if I’m lucky enough to be debilitated by psychosomatic ailment – to come up with and implement any such content in full. I don’t know why I place such burdens upon myself. I feel useless in the face of it all.
Nothing to update, other than to confirm that I’ve continued to not get any work done. I met with Tawanda across the river instead. We ate pizza, and then sat and watched the lights of the city for a while. The night was bright and streaked with thin, pale clouds that seemed to tumble endlessly across the entire sky. I’ve become sick with longing. I am certain now that, against any efforts to humiliate myself into believing otherwise, what I felt was starkly, unabashedly real. In the wake of that realisation, my former loneliness, in/to which I had so surely resigned myself prior, has become unbearable. The past has suddenly become inhospitable, yet there is no refuge in the present, either. I have little other apparent choice but to wait and suffer the death of this experience in real-time, at the level of my spirit and body alike, all the while mourning its passing, actively unable to effect any other course. The death of something that could’ve been. Maybe. An inchoate, pluperfect future. You know, I still haven’t changed the sheets. I’m afraid to do so. Of what it could mean, of what it might suggest. Instead I pass my evenings lying there on the floor, hours on end, door locked, until it goes completely dark, breathing in and out the ever-diminishing scents of that afternoon until I become nauseous from the heaving in my chest. The nascence of tears that never seem to arrive when they should. I fear the moment has passed for us, irreparably. On what grounds? I don’t know. What is faith? Holy fool. Fucking idiot.
More marginal fixes. Someone told me once that as long as you do a single thing every day, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant it is, you’re making progress. I guess they’re right in a logistical sense. But in the moment, it just ends up feeling even more frustrating than doing nothing.
I’m discovering, day by day, that the oblivion of my previous despair was, in retrospect, a far more comfortable burden to hold than that of my present grief. I will be the first to admit how annoyingly melodramatic that likely comes off; but right now, I can no longer stomach the desire to care otherwise. I can’t believe so little time has actually passed. At this rate, it’s hard to believe that I’ll be able to make it through this winter intact.
Optimised the generic forest rooms, and changed the primary typeface to Arial. I feel physically exhausted, and I can’t concentrate on anything. I worked for about an hour, maybe two at maximum, in the afternoon before I succumbed completely to a total fatigue of both my body and spirit. I can’t even properly recall what I actually accomplished, if anything at all. I feel like I’ve made such marginal improvements to the game’s performance that they could just as very well be negligible altogether. I didn’t see the doctor today. I wish I could talk to someone, but the thought of being near another person right now, with the exception of the doctor, deeply unsettles me. I don’t even know what I would or could say. All of this is so pathetic. It makes me sick.
Didn’t work at all this weekend. I probably should have, but… I don’t know. I don’t really have any excuses. I’m tired of coming up with them for myself. I just feel empty. That’s all.