So July sucked.
Before I talk about plans, I want to kind of go into what’s been up lately and maybe give some more perspective on why the fuck I’ve had a lot of difficulty keeping up with things. I’ll (try to) keep it short.
I think the foundation of all this can be traced back to 2018, which was one of the worst years of my life. Here is a shortened timeline of shitty things that happened.
Endured one of the worst periods of sickness in my entire life and then had to be alone for about two weeks as my wife went on vacation with her family near the end of 2017. (I realize this can read as anger towards her, but it’s not, it was just the way circumstances fell. The vacation was to see her sister all the way across the planet and not only was expensive, but had been laid in for months, and I was through the worst of the sickness by the time she had to go, so her going was completely the right choice.)
Tried going off my medication to see if it was actually doing anything for me. It was. Wasted three months getting off, then back on, the meds, near the beginning of 2018.
Ran into some SERIOUS financial problems.
Began running into a series of vague and apparently unrelated health concerns starting in June 2018, some of which persist to even this day, that have STILL amounted to basically nothing. (I genuinely wondered if I was dying more than once. Not that I felt like I was dying, more like I was afraid that these vague concerns were the early signs of something that would become lethal in the near future.)
My grandmother died in September, as well as my family dog a few weeks later.
So that was last year. It kind of shook my sense of reality, in a way, my sense of permanence. In short, it REALLY fucked me up.
2019 has been better so far. There’s been a lot more stability, but there have been some setbacks. Probably my biggest problem is anxiety. I’ve had anxiety issues for as long as I can remember. But they have gotten worse over the past few years or so.
And then, a few days ago, for the first time in my entire life, I had a panic attack. It really fucked with some plans, some big plans, that I had made with members of my family, and forced me to cancel. To be clear: I’ve never panicked so hard that I’ve had to outright cancel very big plans. This has kind of shaken me, as I’ve always been able to basically just deal with my anxiety. Like, it sucks, but I can just get through it. And although the panic attack wasn’t what I would call on the bad end of the spectrum, it does make me concerned about how bad it might get.
Anxiety and depression are the two biggest things that kill my productivity. And clearly my anxiety has gotten worse. I’m in the process of figuring out a more long-term solution to it, but my generalized anxiety is probably the biggest reason I’ve not made nearly as much progress as I would have liked.
So where does that leave us with fan fiction?
I think I need to admit something, to myself and to everyone else: I am bad at maintaining multiple projects. Maybe once I was good at it, or even okay at it, but I am bad at it now. Going forward, with some obvious exceptions, I think I am just going to work on one thing at a time from now on. Maybe I’ll feel differently in the future, but I think I need to commit to this for now.
So I am just going to go full steam ahead on And There Was Another for the moment. I am going to try and write it until it is done, given it is the closest to being finished. Once it’s done, I’ll go hard on The Will To Live, finish up Part 2, and then make some more progress on Nerves of Steele.
Honestly, I’m kind of desperate to get all this stuff wrapped up in time for The DOOM Chronicles, because just recently, I’ve actually been really feeling it. Like, I’m actually getting amped to write Episode Four. And I want to go into that with both time for a lot of preparation and a clear head to focus on ONLY writing DOOM. I want it to be really good.
And for whatever reason, it’s just hard for me to focus, to really focus, on more than one thing at a time now. If I have another project that needs finishing, it’s a little like having a radio tuned to static on constantly in the room with me. I can ignore it sometimes, and turn it down low, but it never actually goes away. (Though, to be clear, having something on major hiatus, like The DOOM Chronicles, doesn’t really fuck with me, for some reason. I don’t know, my brain is just kind of fucked.)
So those are my plans.
Also, I’m sorry about not having more machinima out by now. I ran into some REALLY annoying, unexpected problems with Not Alone, so I need to fix those before it comes out again. But soon!
Wish me luck.