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Weekly Update - Mostly Just Frustratingly Exhausted

3 years ago1,403 words

I've been largely distracted, frustrated, and exhausted this week, ugh! So I only did some little bits of things on Atonal Dreams...

I saw a video earlier in the week which included clips of the YouTuber MrBeast - whose content I’ve never seen and have no interest in seeing, but who’s successful enough for me to have heard of him despite that - talking about how he reached the lofty heights that he did thanks to some experiences spending day after day laser focused on researching how to make the perfect (from a marketing/gaining fans perspective) video, together with some equally madly-focused like-minded friends with whom he was in constant contact, fuelling each other’s momentum. That kind of mad focus really is crucial for wild success.

Me, though… My parents have been away for the past few days - because I’m a 34-year-old man who still lives with his parents - and having the overwhelming responsibility!! of un/locking the door of the adjacent community hall and making sure the dog doesn’t die (or crap in the house) has thrown me off so much that my creative output this week has been even more pitiful than it was during previous unproductive weeks in what feels like a prolonged chain of slumps.

Which is frustrating, because I feel so tantalisingly close to the next alpha, the next stage where I'll start looking into a Kickstarter, promotion, etc... Maybe I could get to that point with just a week of actual focused days! But I've been so bad at focusing recently. I wanted to at least write this update post yesterday, but couldn't manage it because I was so consumed by a kind of fatigue or exhaustion worse than I've experienced in ages. I don't know why; maybe just the result of prolonged stress about the loud, busy hall that's literally connected to this house's garden (which was full of tween girls doing some kind of musical or something for a couple of days), and the dog being on constant alert, or getting up to sniff around my computer's wiring or asking to be let out whenever I sat down to try to work for more than ten minutes, or maybe the dog spent so long bored during the day that it was fitful while lying next to me on my bed at night and that disturbed my own sleep... I don't know.

The dog seems to have settled down now that it's aware of the changed routine and that its actual owners won't come back any moment, and the hall's been empty the past couple of days, but I still feel exhausted today. I'd really love to move out so then I could just have my own routine and properly focus, but then I'd probably be distracted and stressed by isolation, and hypochondria - worrying about every little physical sensation - so... bleh. I'll just talk about what I did manage to do this week!!



I fixed some bugs! Including one that's been bothering me for ages involving the precision of input for the 'Dynamusic' system. Important, but not exactly exciting.

I (mostly) finished writing the tutorial dialogue scenes! That's something! I still need to write an ending scene for the first dungeon, which I might revise from how it was before to better fit the wider story.



Another thing I did was add - or rather fix - 'glitter', a thing I had in the game a while back, removed, and have now added back (the counter's in the upper left). It's essentially a currency you can use to add XP to your skills. Previously, when you used a character's skill, it gained XP, but when you used a tamed figmon's skills - which was a common part of combat - they didn't gain XP, you didn't get anything. It made sense to instead give you the XP they would have earned as glitter, which you could spend on your other skills from the menu later. You could also get glitter from defeating figmon (or having them fade at the end of battle if they're tamed allies), like you'd get gold and experience in a standard (J)RPG. It's something that could fill treasure chests, too.

I would have absolutely loved to have done more, if I'd been able to focus. Ugh.



Oh, one other thing I did while I absolutely couldn't focus on Atonal Dreams was some experimentation on customisable character models for that 'Mentales'/AFC Remake thing I've been intending to work on as a side project. I started writing a post about it on my Patreon a few days ago, but couldn't finish it because I just felt so stressed and exhausted. Makes sense to intend to write it there when I can instead of going on about it here, since it's been hard enough pushing through the brain fog to write this!



I've still not taken my new PC out of its box! I hoped to while I had the house to myself, but I don't really have the house to myself with the dog here, so maybe I'll just wait until my parents get back and can distract it so I don't have to.

As is often the case, I feel bad about being unable to reply to long comments people have left here! I've also got some emails recently from people asking stuff related to my old games - one even offering money - which I've read but couldn't muster the energy to type out a response yet. I managed to comment on Reddit in one of the communities related to my mental illnesses, and someone wrote a long reply to me which I wanted to reply to, and I haven't done that either. Makes me wonder how reliable other people are at replying to things, and whether it's just me who's terrible at it...

I'm never sure what to do when I'm consumed by fatigue like this. I end up wasting time on my phone, scrolling through Reddit and YouTube - this seems to be a fairly common thing? - but I hate it, and it just makes me feel worse. But sometimes it feels like it's the only thing that I can do, despite having a list of other things I'd much prefer to be doing instead.

I usually spend all day in my room, but it feels like it'd be cruelty to force the dog to stay in here all day with me, especially since it's used to sitting in a room downstairs where my mum works, which has a huge door/window thing opening onto the garden, so I've been spending a few hours sitting in there with it; a big reason for the lack of productivity, probably. Seems like a great opportunity to maybe try to reply to some of the messages I've been putting off, which I've tried to do... but I can't seem to manage it for whatever reason. I try! I just don't succeed.

I'd been playing Pokemon Legends: Arceus on my Switch, so that was something different that I could do away from my PC, but I've finished that now - and haven't written a blog post about it because, well, guess - and while there are other games I could play on that next, none of them particularly appeal to me at the moment.

Are you familiar with the Steam Deck? I vaguely heard about it months ago, but saw stuff about it recently because it's either coming out soon, or it's out already? Are you interested in getting one? It feels like it might help with this particular issue for me, because there are some games on Steam I'd like to play, but don't because I sit at my computer the rest of the time and would prefer to get away from it. Plus it'd be interesting to see if I could get my own games on there! I just wish things didn't cost so much money, and I'm still reeling from the cost of this new PC. There are plenty of games on the Switch which I could play but don't, though, so I don't know whether I'd even end up using it. Ehhh...

(At the very least, forcing myself to write these posts each week feels like it keeps me from falling off track completely...)