Critique.

American / Western culture of being inoffensive has swung far to the other side on the internet. I imagine the cycles will get shorter and shorter over time as more people are added to the mix. I can't count a single time that I've offered criticism for one of an astonishing number of online posts and got a negative reaction for it. At first it was just plain opinion. You post some art, leave a reply in the comments section and so on. I've said before that internet content is vastly mediocre. Call em as you see em. People are more interested in bumping click-bait so that they can get more social media points and that is interesting to me. Gamification. I won't give any specific cases for where this has occurred but maybe the adage of " If you have nothing nice to say then don't say nothing" has gone too far. We're not training a cultural muscle by letting creators go into the wash. It's nice to feel good from the comments and views that you get until the light attracts moths and then trolls even during daylight.

Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. I too am among the mass of creators that in one way or another seeking attention and verification. Looking for an audience in a sea of people that grows every single day. I care about these platforms as much as they care about me. At the end of the day I'll have my growth and my creative experience and perhaps even a few sheckles to show for the effort. But the main difference between most creatives that I encounter in cyberspace or the people in those communities and myself is that I DON'T seek to make it to your virtual fridge for a week. Maybe I have ambitions for timelessness in my craft and I work steadily at that with each passing week. To that effect I have enough attention and potential and inspiration to last as far as I can foresee.

I didn't know there were any unspoken rules on the internet. That's where this fantastic market that enabled google in the first place came from. Made all this possible. The wild west of the early 90's is now a much more suburban kind of sprawl. I get my coffee, go to the park , chat here , listen there and all of the sudden my network of internet exposure shrinks as much as the vast variety of it grows and homogenizes. Does that kind of thing worry you ? I used to think that expository writing about my condition and identity was a bad sign that I was perhaps becoming unstable again. Or that I would make digital promises on deaf ears to allow myself the mistakes and deviations from the milestones I set before me. I used to be envious of those who were in their own groove until I woke up one day and realized that I am in one of my own and I could have been loving myself for being here longer.

I wish I wasn't any kind of mystery. That I could weave complexity in to works and remain a simple person that people could have more confidence in. That employers would genuinely care about people I know who are going from job to job to avoid being , like myself, among the under-employed. I've been contacted by half a dozen recruiters this year who are all looking to get a bonus and generally vary in the ability to pretend to care about the prospects which are fed to them practically automatically. That there was more opportunity and transparency for people who are able and just need to work where clearly the manpower is needed. The price of corporate convenience has been intolerable my entire adult life. I'm reluctant to admit that I may not have a marketable physique for customer service. Or a particularly sharp single tool. At any rate I keep working because the experience is valuable to me and that will pay off. Somebody may be lucky enough to bank with me on that before-hand, but it seems unlikely this month.

I've had a hard time coming to terms with my disorder/disease/disability. I see people all around me who are clearly less functional and I understand that I too have been over that edge and back a couple times. But.. I'm having trouble making a space for myself that is separate from that experience. How can I fall in love again? Become independent again? Nurture a new skill? Pass my experience on. I'm becoming more and more concerned about that. Is it funny that the first thing I notice about a woman is her left ring finger? Even though at present I have no means to start that chapter I really anticipate it. I've heard tale and seen the remains of the artist who lives only with her craft. I've watched many other people I know ( generally not creatives ) struggle in to new families or adopt themselves into one. I never thought I would be so desperate that I would seek the conversation of CL strangers.

Many things fall through anyway. My motto for this year is to 'pull all the ropes' , eventually one of those things will break and I am not one of those things. The base goal being to never experience psychosis again if I can help it.

As usual there are a handful of other things going on with me this month. Boxy Brown looks good this week and should be ready for some internal testing by the end of the month. HTUR and other games are on hold until I make this smaller game happen ( trust me its easier than the other 3 in the air ) ... while subcutaneous is actually very close to completion, I think, there are many things to learn from this more traditional game.

Music - wise. I'm courting a couple of locals so that I can perform and record with them. I think playing more guitar lately has helped. I still feel mostly isolated but it has helped in general. ** I love how my mother gets snippy about the one trip I get to make back home a year. I get to see most of the people I care about for less than 2 weeks on average. What else wouldn't drive you crazy? ** I'm in the last stretch of the nerd-core beat tape that I've been working on for far too long ( between this project and that computer exploding ).. Also I've kinda let loose on prioritization and just started making things that  are relevant and inspirational to me in the moment. All these game projects kinda force you to live a few weeks in the future so that your prototype can edge toward the concept of the game you set out to make. The untold struggle of development ( that is very much specific to games.) continues.

Moving forward. Maybe I'll heard from one of the jobs I've applied for. I intend to go to the local college and hopefully receive some kind of funding to make that easier overall. Like before.. I can only go to school with a vague idea of what I want to do with the education I want. Who's to say that I'll get what I need or even my experience will lead me in another direction altogether. An academic director one of the programs that I'm looking into asked me if I knew what kind of job I wanted to have coming out of school. I want to solve creative and technical problems. There are many fields that I think fit the description and the coursework but I can't be sure until I get some more guidance. I can read instructions as well as the next monkey. Deep down I feel i'll be happier in a more creative and less technical field, but, those worlds have overlapped many times for me and I don't see either as a waste at this point. I have stretch goals. But don't ask me what they are as they are subject to change. My 11 year old self wouldn't be mad at me for not being an architect today.

To top it all off , repeated stress on my hands from this fantastic technology is starting to cause me physical pain. I need to get the hell out of this state. It's mostly poison.

My work will come out as it's ready. I hunger for cruel words far more than gold-star-stickers because I can only point out the shit in my life as far as I'm aware of it. And then post that shit here.

- See you next time. -

Observe, then attack.

Really I just wanted to post another image of the boxy brown progress. I want to get feature complete in the next week so I'm of course busting the buns. Definitions.. definitions.. here is the image.

its starting to make more sense but still needs work and some tuning.. It's starting to look right. 

Time of the Season

When the phone calls come in. Spruce up. Polish your things and sleep a few times a week.  There is a new prototype in the games section. Started up another little idea with the TOFGCo dudes over the break. It's never too early to test and I'm very proud of the feel and reliability of this proto. At any rate its a good time to take what I'm learning from these project sprints and have some quality items in the coming months. I have only one thing to say ; GIFTACULAR 20-GIFTEEN! Because development bloopers make games worth making :

See you soon.