I Won’t Give Up

So where to start? How about with the crazy anxiety that has been taking over my life for the last few years? It’s been a while, I know, and I’m sorry. It hasn’t been exactly easy on me. I ended up taking a month or so off of work using FMLA. I had an awful lot of my past wash up and greet me at my doorstep, but I was determined not to be swept away with the flood, so I held on, I got help, and the first thing my therapist did was have me take time off to focus on recovery. Very interesting Counselor. Her name is Shelli, and you can click here for more information about her and what she does.  She has mainly focused on two things with me: EMDR and Enneagram Personality System. In case you’re wondering, my highest marks were in 2, with 3 and 8 close behind.

I’ll leave the reading of these methods to you. We focused primarily on the EMDR stuff though, just getting my brain to sync up and remove some of these harmful negative thoughts to replace them with much more positive and helpful responses. I gotta tell you though, it was some real work, and I had to confront a lot of things that I’ve kept bottled for years. Past relationships, the emotional abuse from my father, and his decline in health and stability.  It was exhausting to unpack it all, but it was far more exhausting for the negative thoughts to swarm and fuel my anxiety night after night, deteriorating my relationships with others and my performance at work.

I was planning on doing a lot of things and improving other aspects of my life a lot more during this time off, but ended up spending most of my time staying at home and gaming with a few friends who had a lot of time (Hi Pipkiin, Bunny and crew).  I had a few very supportive friends in real life that would drag me out of the house too (very special thank you to Keola and Cat for taking care of me). I still got out a bit, and did some important things, but wasn’t as quite what I had hoped, but then again, I didn’t know what I was up against.

I can’t fully articulate the hopelessness and crushing defeat I had felt. I really didn’t want to move forward anymore. Didn’t see a point, didn’t think I was worth it. Had to learn to love myself really. I mean, that was sort of the turning point. If I wasn’t going to worry and take care of myself, how in the hell could I ever expect or deserve anyone else to?

It’s still been a little tough coming down. I still have some thoughts I’m trying to conquer about my current situation. What does my management think about me leaving work for a month over mental health issues? What do the people I care about think reading this? I know it’s silly to worry about it, but it’s still there and something I have to overcome.  I always try to act so tough. Haha. I just worry my employers will see it as a flaw, and the people I care about will feel like they aided in my pain. Neither is true, so if you’re thinking that right now, please stop.

Luckily today I’m back in my home in PPRAE, which is a collective of misfits and music junkies sharing music with each other through Spotify. I missed them all dearly and it’s good to be back around. I haven’t really been able to do much of my own music lately, and it’s been hard on me. Still is, to be honest, but all I can do is my best, right?

I want to talk about two more things, first the picture I used for this post, then about my game dev. First, the picture. I don’t like pictures of me most of the time. Like ever. But my friend Cat caught this for me right after I got my hair cut. I felt good. And it made me think of someone important for a brief moment, a light I had once in the darkness. I have no idea how she captured that, but she did. I really hope they are reading this at some point though. But anyway, it was a genuine moment where I felt good, and I’m trying to get back there on my own on a more regular basis.

.Finally game dev! We have the model ready, just waiting for my animator to finish up our first animations so I can bring it into the game and start mapping actions to controls and all that fun stuff. In the meantime, I’ve been working on fleshing out the stat system of both the player characters and NPCs. It’s going well. Starting with the one to one method. For example, one point of strength is one point of damage, and so forth. But in an earlier post, I mentioned how I was looking and doing a soft cap for the game’s stats… Which means there won’t be any hard limit (like 255) but once you pass a certain range, stacking the same stat will be less effective. For example, after 500 strength, you’d need two strength for every one damage, and then at 1000, it would be three strength per one damage.

Anyway, that’s all for this week. I hope you enjoyed it. Sorry for being gone for a while. I’m back now though, and it’s good to be getting shit done.