Alora Fane

Always annoying; I'd rather be getting stuff done!

I missed posting this on the weekend! Surely the foundations of the world will crumble as a result of this critically important failure.

I've mostly struggled with depression and a lack of direction this week. Nothing new there. I started writing a long post about it, but scrapped it because I've said it all before.

I obviously need mental health help, but it takes so damn long to get any. I've started the process, but all I can really do now is wait.

I've done little bits of game dev work this week, though nothing worth showing. I couldn't decide whether to focus on the recent Belief Battles/Frayth thing, ports of my old Flash games, or whether to get back to Atonal Dreams, so I spent much of the week tangled in different negative assumptions about each one without really achieving much of anything.

And, shockingly, I've still yet to do any promotion-related stuff. The feeling is something like opening a door that, once opened, I won't be able to close again, and "I'm not ready yet", or something. "Maybe I should wait until after I start therapy again", I think, but then I think about how long that's taking and... bleh.

I've wondered whether to start using ChatGPT as a therapist in the meantime, but all the AI stuff gets me down too. I joined a bunch of subreddits related to it recently with the intention of keeping up with the rapid developments, but it just means I'm being constantly exposed to how yet another of the skills I've spent years refining can be done by machines now, which leads to thoughts of dwindling usefulness and hopelessness about the future and... well, depression.

I did however compose three pieces of music last week! Well, two and a half; I'm still working on one. One's for the Belief Battles/Frayth thing, another two were just for the fun of it. And it has been fun working on them, and satisfying hearing the results... when my brain's not numbed by the depression, anyway. So I at least achieved something.

Speaking of brains, I saw a thing on Reddit earlier in the week about how even low-grade 'knocks to the head' - as in things like contact sports - can cause subtle but significant cognitive impairments in the long run. My brain's been literally cut into twice, and while I've thought - or maybe tried to convince myself - that it's not really left me impaired at all, maybe things like fatigue and focus, motivation and memory issues are lingering effects of that?

Though I'm also a nearing-middle-aged man living in his parents' not-exactly-basement without a partner or hefty paycheck to motivate me, so it's hard to parse the circumstances out of the equation. Maybe it should be impressive that I'm doing anything at all considering the bitter blend of far-from-favourable factors.

(I've also been struggling with insomnia lately for no apparent reason - stress? - which only exacerbates things.)

I've been meaning to post more music to the YouTube channel I set up for that purpose, but the potential for a handful of views hasn't been strong enough to motivate me to spend the not-insignificant about of time and effort to make a video. Hopefully with more videos they'll start to pick up some momentum, and hopefully I'll be able to get that momentum started soon.

...The most frustrating thing about depression is that it robs everything of any potential for pleasure, so even things that'd normally be a fun escape - games, personal projects - feel like some gruelling, frustrating chore. So I can't even go and pleasantly distract myself while the storm runs its course.

I just have to endure the downpour and wait for it to end.

(I ended up basically rewriting my scrapped post here anyway. Maybe it was valuable just to get it out? Ehh.)

1 COMMENTS

Maniafig222~2Y

I'm sorry to hear the depression is flaring up again.

Mental health service seems to be a slow and arduous process the world over. I always hated waiting for physical health stuff, I can imagine it's only worse for mental health help. But because it's less visible, people have to wait so much longer.

Even with things going well for me by all accounts, both professionally and personally, I sometimes still get these moments of dull grey, where I feel listless without reason. It makes me wonder why the human brain does this, it had to serve some primal purpose once, right? But it's hard to imagine what.

I've been playing MARDEK again, which has been quite interesting. I simply cannot escape that game's grasp. It also led to me delving back into my memories of Taming Dreams, and the deep nostalgia I've come to carry for it. It's surreal to think it's almost 8 years ago, that. It makes me wistful, a sort of mixture of happy and longing.

I hope that you can get that to work on PC, especially that elusive third episode! I would also still love to read that series bible you'd made for it!

I'm sorry to hear the depression is flaring up again.

Mental health service seems to be a slow and arduous process the world over. I always hated waiting for physical health stuff, I can imagine it's only worse for mental health help. But because it's less visible, people have to wait so much longer.

Even with things going well for me by all accounts, both professionally and personally, I sometimes still get these moments of dull grey, where I feel listless without reason. It makes me wonder why the human brain does this, it had to serve some primal purpose once, right? But it's hard to imagine what.

I've been playing MARDEK again, which has been quite interesting. I simply cannot escape that game's grasp. It also led to me delving back into my memories of Taming Dreams, and the deep nostalgia I've come to carry for it. It's surreal to think it's almost 8 years ago, that. It makes me wistful, a sort of mixture of happy and longing.

I hope that you can get that to work on PC, especially that elusive third episode! I would also still love to read that series bible you'd made for it!