I'll try to shorten the detail here (COMPARATIVELY short), but I still want to give you some idea that I'm not just goofing off behind-the-behind-the-scenes (though I confess there's some of that as well).
As I've said, at this time it's no major life-threatening event in my life, so don't get TOO worried. But, that said...
Physically, there's been a case of vertigo. It felt like 2020 all over again! Looking ahead, there's no telling when or if that'll strike again. And I'm just happy I could get to my computer again, even if only for long enough to write this message.
Mentally, there's a lot of sadness. Most of it is the same-old, where it feels like nobody cares about everything I do...except for the robot "web crawlers", a bully or 2, and the figurative free space on my bingo card. As I was piecing together Monday night, if you don't notice me when I'm here, then you won't notice me when I'm gone. Feels like no matter how hard I try, all roads lead to no-win situations. When all roads lead to no-win situations, do you embrace despair, or pursue an illusion of hope? Personally, I swing back and forth between those two.
Either way, I'll be a starving artist before I know it. These truly are grim, dark times, and it feels like anything remotely positive is too good to be true. Absolute silence is par for the course, and very rarely maybe I'd find some bully shenanigans. But the absolute best-case is unfulfilled but good intentions. (For example, I haven't heard back from that curator, who only talked to me once, around my birthday half a month ago. Came and went as fast as a dream.) Don't go thinking this is Major Depressive Disorder, you armchair psychiatrists. No, it's not where the brain is hardwired shutting down and can't process anything. It's a reasonable (albeit severe) level of sadness as a result of the circumstances life has dealt me. Though, with that in mind, this isn't a mood or a phase...it's a crisis. And with no sustainable roads for both myself personally and the whole human race across the globe, the whole world is in crisis. (Nowhere near as cool as "Crysis" with the Y in it, because video game reference. And that's part of where the sadness comes from: there's nothing COOL or AWESOME about reality right now, except the physical computer I'm writing this from.)
I won't even touch on the various world events, since 99% to 100% of them won't change my day-to-day life in the slightest, and therefore are not applicable. So to both the right and the left, please, keep your conspiracy theories to yourself. I seriously don't care.
Let's pretend I'm wrong. How can you help? Leave some comments, play the game, review it, get me noticed (ideally in a good way, but honesty is more important than kindness). And compel as many other people as possible to do the same.
With all this stacked against me right now, I can clearly feel the shift in my mentality from "creative mode" to "survival mode". What this obviously means is that I can't pull myself to work on my game now, or in the short-term future.
If there's any good news, at least the latest article (Dev Diary Day 89) hit 10 reads, so...not sure how much the statistic robots count me refreshing my own page to double-check for grammatical errors and/or to admire my work. Still, for the hours upon hours I've invested, I sure haven't seen any return...at all. Imagine any of your favorite mainstream corporations, with their millions of dollars and armies of human resources, if they had magically been dealt the exact same hand I have of a (best-case) single-digit audience. That'd be fun.
Semper Bellum!
Jay