It is my birthday today. Although I wanna be in high spirits, for some reason I’m feeling a little glum.
I don’t really have many people to celebrate with, and I’ve been going through cabin fever for the past 6 years. So I figure, since it’s my birthday and I have a blog now, screw it, why not use it to vent life diatribes from time to time? This isn’t going to be the Kasha-centric post I promised in my last post, that’s still coming, although it may be a while off as I’m trying to grind a bit more on her minigolf game before I gush about her.
As my life is primarily devoted to my own creations, I’ve naturally tended to isolate myself a lot even before the pandemic. I’ve been a loner my whole life, I don’t really have the social skills to keep in touch with a lot of friends – one of the biggest regrets of my life is not making more friends in high school and keeping in contact with them over the years, but it is what it is. I don’t have much offline contact with people, especially these days. My interactions with people tend to be almost entirely online, and I know some wouldn’t consider that to be socially healthy, but it’s all I’ve got and it’s pretty much all I’ve ever had.
I don’t wanna go into a boohoo sob story about how rough my life is – all things considered, I’m adjusted and my needs are met. Of course I am lonely, but I’m not depressed; I’ve been fighting hard to not spiral into depression, perhaps out of sheer spite for people who do have it. I’ve seen plenty of people on social media, famous people who are considered “thought leaders”, who tend to use depression or autism as a crutch for being miserable assholes to everyone around them, and one of the main things keeping me from becoming depressed is a desire to really NOT be like them. I try to look at things differently than they do and deliberately avoid the trap of feeling sorry for myself all the time.
I know I don’t always succeed and do come off as opinionated and even contrarian sometimes, but at the very least I’m pleased to have a circle of people I do get along with even if I don’t agree with them on everything.
I suffer from a general anxiety disorder, and I suppose that brings me down sometimes. If it ever turned out that I was depressed, it would be because I have bad anxiety. I’m fearful of many things and I’m kind of a hypochondriac who ruminates constantly about my own insides, which has granted me the gift of IBS, indigestion and GERD. Probably a number of unprocessed traumas knocking around in my head, but I try to press on with my life regardless. I’ve been trying my best to lose weight, eating less calories a day and exercising more, lifting weights and doing power marching cardio in my own room. I have managed to drop around 45 pounds this year but I still need to lose more. I don’t think it’s healthy to have mortal dread every single day though, so I still need to find a way to deal with that. My panic attacks and hypochondria have been getting ugly. If I could just turn down my anxiety I’d be able to be way more productive, it has been a significant and ever-present roadblock in my life.
It’s been difficult living in perpetual terror of some random happenstance or undiscovered medical issue killing me. Some days I don’t get any work done because my anxiety gets so bad it causes me real physical pain, among them being muscle tension, stitches in my side, butterflies in my stomach, indigestion. These all tend to falsely signal to my brain that I am in some kind of terrible danger, and it’s been tough living that way. Many days, weeks, months and even years have been lost to this constant anxiety I’ve been battling. The doctors keep saying I’m fine though, and I’ve been checked up countless times. They’ve been encouraging me saying I’m on the right path by dropping weight. Maybe I just need more things to occupy my mind.
Like many others of my generation I take comfort in nostalgia, safe things from my childhood that remind me of a time when I was really young and immortal. 90s cartoons, video games and toys have all become my creature comforts. I know that’s cliché and silly but I’ve noticed that as you get older you tend to retreat into your creature comforts more often. A lot of times I’ve come to find that I use my characters to symbolize my courage and get them to give me strength. When I really need it, sometimes I lean heavily on both my characters and the things I liked as a kid. I guess this image of Sachi snuggling her Garfield really drives that home. This is one of the most important things I’ve drawn for myself this year, and I’ve been using it as soul medicine.
Still though, as fun as it is to draw for myself, I feel like I’m missing something. I don’t know what it is, I can’t explain it. I think part of my motivation for doing this is because I want more people to feel what I feel from my characters (and probably also because I want tons of fanart of them, as selfish as that may be).
I want this universe I’m making to become really popular. I want to do tons of things with it, not just games, but maybe animated series, maybe comics, my head brims with all the potential I want to tap from this franchise.
But I guess right now what I really want is just other people to draw my characters. So if you’re an artist reading this, that’s what I’d like to humbly request of you. Just indulge my birthday/Christmas request and draw my girls any way you feel like drawing them. I could use some December dopamine and nothing brings that to me more than seeing other people draw my characters, whether it’s via a commission or a random act of kindness, that always activates my neurons. One day I’d like to reach the point where people just draw them of their own volition, and I’d cherish every single drawing like it was my own child. Eventually I wanna start a “thaumabooru” or something that’s just devoted to drawings of the girls from my games (named after the thaumasoldiers – pay attention!).
I’m not expecting anything from anyone, my heart won’t be completely broken if no one chooses to draw me anything, after all this is (so far) a small gamedev blog with a small readership base. But screw it, why not put the call out? I’m always looking for drawings of the ‘maidens and the characters from this universe, so please go ahead and draw me some if you’re so inclined. I might even share them in future blog posts for everyone to enjoy. Just humor me, I’d greatly appreciate it. Here’s one I got today.
GondolaMaidens by Anonymous
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