?Visual Novel Update And The Slave Harem?

June 30, 2019

Hey babes,

No worries, no long ass ramble this week. XD I thought I’d check in and let you all know what I’ve been up to. It’s kinda exciting because I think I finally found the perfect software to be able to make the visual novels/interactive novels I’ve been looking to make.

But first, Wendy has a sexy new book out!

The Slave Harem: A Kingdom of Slaves Book by Wendy Rathbone

FREE IN KU!

The slave harem is all. If you enter, you can never leave. Contact with the outside world is forbidden.

With a secret talent for seeing auras of physical and emotional arousal, Ren, a sought-after pleasure slave, is sold to a mysterious master in a foreign land where he will become part of a collection of beautiful men.

Though the men appear welcoming, there is competition and jealousy among the ranks. And their mysterious master who is heard but never seen elicits more questions than answers.

One friendly slave, Li Po, helps Ren settle in, but it is the voiceless man, Zanti, who draws Ren’s attention. With his wicked beauty and bratty scowls, Zanti is the least welcoming of them all, and Ren’s training and control are put to the test.

Gay harem, slow-burn, enemies to lovers. Extraordinary and strange. Hot and cold. This book explores the many levels of sex, lust, loneliness and belonging. And maybe, just maybe, there can be love.

That back burner project…

I’ve been thinking about visual novels and interactive novels for a while, but I’ve been dealing with a lot of little roadblocks. And I’m not just talking about my current writing responsibilities which I consider to come first (or my health issues which keep smacking me down whenever I get complacent.) My biggest concern is time– Okay, let’s be real, it’s money, cuz if I had crazy $$$, I wouldn’t even have to think about juggling. XD But I live in a limited reality, and time is my current currency.

The two current problems holding everything back on developing visual novels were:

1) How do I make a game on a time schedule where I’m writing other stories at the same time?

2) How do I make pieces of a game and be able to share it on the website without having to distribute it in big patches?

For a while now, I’ve had ideas on how to solve these problems but nothing solid. The last half of the month I have found what looks to be the answers to both problems, and it’s pretty fucking exciting!

Solution to problem #1: 3D Modelling for fast, customizable art

With time being an issue, I realized I didn’t want to make character art by hand the traditional way. I didn’t want to draw a dozen different poses for each character (the Demon Virus visual novel starts off with about ten main characters and expands as it goes. @[email protected]) The amount of artwork required just seemed mind boggling. I knew the answer was 3D avatars or modeling so I could design, dress, and pose a character into all those versions, and that way I wouldn’t have to draw it all.

I’d been doing a little research off and on, keeping my eyes open. Then I realized the software I’d been seeing people pose avatars in could easily be used to actually sculpt characters. With a free program, I could make completely unique characters in my style. The last couple weeks I’ve been teaching myself Blender 2.8, and yeah, I think this program is going to be the answer to the art situation.

My First Trial Run

This is a one of my little footlings or ‘Lokies,’ small spirits that jump into the bodies of less complex life forms and walk around being brats. ^^ I learned a lot just sculpting this little guy, and currently learning a lot retopologizing (so boring but essential if rigging is involved =_=) and soon to be texturing/coloring.

I’m just in the preliminary stages of understanding the program, or 3D modelling for that matter. Been watching a lot of youtube tutorials to figure it all out. Conceptual art stuff that I just think as one thing is now all these separate stages in the art process, such as lighting, the viewpoint, surface texture, colors and materials, rigging a character to pose, etc. It allows for so much more versatility than a 2D image, but I have to learn it all first along with all the damn menus that go with each aspect. Eventually, I may be able to do little animated cut scenes, which would be super cool for a visual novel. I don’t really want the characters to look 3D, but I think there are tricks in lighting to help make the 3D model look 2D in the end.

Right now, it feels kinda tedious, but at the same time, I’m well aware how much work it takes to make a character look like that character from a zillion different poses and I am just beyond the patience at this point in my life. So I’m learning 3D modelling, taking the time to save me time later, so I don’t return to the path of neurotic details as an artist. I’ve got better things to do, damn it.

Solution to problem #2: A web browser based game creator

While researching game engines/software, I kept coming across wonderful final products created in Ren’Py. It’s a versatile program I think would be perfect for my needs of the final game. But it’s not what I want in the development stages. I need something I can smack on the website and update as I please until it’s finally ready.

I think I may have found it in the name of an open source program called Monogatari. I just found it the other day and I haven’t delved too deep into the functionality and limitations of it, but it looks like it’s going to be a good fit.

Why a web based storytelling mode? I could regale you with smart marketing shit about how having people show up at my site to play a game helps brand me into people’s minds so they will come back to read books, etc. I mean, it’s a perfectly valid reason… but this is more about avoiding problems in terms of content.

Let’s be real, some of the stories I plan on making could be problematic if they’re obtained in ways without proof of age of the consumer. As much as I cry foul when it comes to all this insane, Puritan based censorship, I have to because some people end up fined/in jail over sexual drawings of characters. It’s one of the reason that, although I’m an artist, you don’t see a lot of sexy art from me ever since I started writing erotica as a business. Looking into the business side of things revealed to me the disconnect when it comes to the laws in my country and the understanding of what is real and what isn’t. It might be a modern world, but some peeps are still running on drone minds who think drawings are people, and when you draw something, it must mean you want to do the same in real life to real people. It’s a problem in our laws I’m too aware of to ignore.

Having these sorts of things contained to my website, stuck behind a paywall that involves the acknowledgement of age and the viewer’s responsibility if lying about age protects me as a creator… and I guess it protects people from ideas they can’t handle. I’ll have less mature demos on the main site where no one needs to log in to read, but the fun stuff is going to be exclusive until a final game is built. And some content may be forever exclusive and never sold when I get into the more taboo subjects because of very real fears. (The moment imagery gets involved with erotic content, free speech is labelled obscenity and targeted. Text alone seems to be ignored outside of censorship, but images are what gets people thrown in jail if not careful.) Until the world gets better or I can afford a better legal understanding, it’s just safer to cover my ass.

Life keeps moving along

That’s about it for now. I’m still trying to figure out the answer to the apathy. I’ve had super good days and some really dead inside days since I put out that last newsletter. Being real here. Spicy food, or at least capsaicin may be a helpful tool in battling the problem. It seems to release serotonin in the gut and spark dopamine, and I’m seeing positive results with it.

We’ll see. I’m not giving up. I want this problem solved so that I don’t have to fear my creativity slipping away. I’m sorry that it means I’m less active as a writer atm, but again, to be real about it, if I don’t figure this shit out, I may never want to write again, you know? Apathy steals motivation, drive, lust for life. I gotta win this asap. Every time I ignored the problem because I felt good, the apathy slipped back in and I wasn’t prepared with a way to battle it. I’m hoping I’m more prepared now with what I’m learning.

I hope you’re all safe with the crazy weather hitting. Stay out of burning fires and heat waves and rainstorms flooding giant swatches of land. I’m in a relatively stable area atm trying to enjoy some sunshine (in very limited doses to my vampiric skin. XD)

Oh, and I hope everyone enjoyed the free 24 hour pass. That was a super cool promo I have a feeling I’ll be doing next year given the great responses. You guys rock! Ttyl, babes! ^.^

?A Birthday Gift to You!?

June 15, 2019

Hey babes, I’m doing a reverse gifting this year. 😉

If you go to my website, up until the end of Wednesday 6/19, you can signup for a free membership day pass. That means for 24 hours you can read whatever you want on my website for free.

You guys have been awesome, and this gig has brought me so much happiness and fun in my life. I want to be able to share that on my birthday. Please, enjoy. <3

Now, if you happen to be interested in getting me anything this year, can I make a suggestion? There is an amazing woman (an MM reader at that) raising money for the 3 teens she has taken in. These kids are from difficult circumstances and are at critical points in their lives where they need help to keep them from letting their traumatic pasts decide their future. Patricia is doing her best, but life cost $$. I would love anyone looking to pay their good fortune forward to pay it her way to help her and her family keep doing amazing work.

Website update

So I had to switch back to the previous membership software on my website. I really wanted the new software to work. I had put so much time and work and damn hope into it, but it just refused to live up to expectations. No one could sign up. It would be these bouts of Paypal refusing to work with the software, and it was crippling everything. Last week after being contacted by another individual trying and failing to be able to sign up, I realized this wasn’t going to change and I finally dealt with it.

You’re probably not going to notice much different with the fix. I had to rebuild the shop page and products from scratch, but it looks spiffy. A few visual differences mostly in the member’s area, and the auto-renew now works. The software has updated since the last time I had it installed and they now have a marvelous cancel auto-renew button so people don’t have to go to Paypal to figure it out. The last thing I want is for people to feel trapped in a subscription (and on an equal level, this avoids people having to hunt me down to get what should be a simple thing taken care of.)

It was kinda painful to let the dream go of the other software, but whatever. At the end of the day, shit needs to function. So sorry I took so long in addressing this.

Bright New Future

So as I hit my birthday (it was on the 12th) and look at another year of life, I’m happy to say I seem to have finally figured the health problems all out. *fingers crossed just in case* I’m finally feeling like myself, aka, I’m obsessing over projects and feeling the creative spark. It has been so liberating after having felt dead for so long.

I touched upon this a bit some weeks back, but it was a topic just so life-consumingly miserable, I didn’t want to talk about it. Or maybe who I was when like that made me less communicative? I don’t know. But I’m going to go into it now because I seem to have found a tentative answer when it comes to emotional flat lining, aka apathy, I was living in the last months.

A Chemical Girl In a Chemical World

The last months I have been consumed with the hard reality that I am a chemical being, and when those chemicals don’t spark, life is not interesting. We don’t notice it, mostly because our chemical reactions are so damn distracting. I’ve had problems since I started my latest Parkinson’s treatment experiment March. It wasn’t apparent at the time. I was focused on all the ways I was getting better—and I totally got better. No more weird claw hands, or pain everywhere, or bouts of narcolepsy/extreme exhaustion. I was spending a lot of time training myself in how to just live again, how to slowly start adding in aspects of life to juggle. It wasn’t until April I started to notice something was wrong.

My body was fine. Strong, no longer wheezing in response to allergies—I haven’t taken an allergy med in weeks and I stopped the shots months ago. But I couldn’t get myself to work. I couldn’t get myself to focus. I couldn’t get myself to care about things. I could see it, forever observing myself as I had to force my body to move, to do what should be so easy. I didn’t care about anything; not my health improving, not the art I love to create, not anything. Rationally, I knew not doing things was detrimental to life, and it was only through rationalizing that I could make myself act. But I wasn’t depressed—I had been depressed for long years and I damn well knew I wasn’t that. I wasn’t anything.

I started chasing down the usual suspects, certain in something was the answer to this weird apathy. Allergies, PTSD and dissociation, hormones, drug interactions with my supplements, food choices messing up my gut biome. And while doing that, I was training myself on how to do things while not caring. How to get up when I had to tell my body to move instead of my body just moving. How to clean when I didn’t care if things were clean. How to make myself write, even if it was just a couple hundred words and I didn’t feel inspiration or emotion in a single one of them.

I thought about what it is to live, and in lesser amounts, die. I was not alive as I know living to be. I was occupying a body that wasn’t responding to stimuli. I thought it was only emotional at first; I couldn’t feel joy. I couldn’t feel intellectual curiosity. I couldn’t feel. I would find myself staring at a painting or listening to a song and feel nothing, no spark of anything. It was so broken because I remembered what I was supposed to be feeling but I couldn’t reach that place. During this time I understood exactly what is was to be a chemical being that didn’t get feedback from stimuli, and it was robotic and lifeless. There was no reason to be around because this wasn’t living, and I kept wondering how long it would take for death to take me now that my body was strong. How many years would I have to live like this, not caring, not loving, not laughing, not wanting or responding? The misery of being ill seemed somehow better than whatever I had become because even in that insanity, I still felt alive.

I suspected it was Parkinson’s related. Apparently apathy hits about 40%, and with it, for those with caretakers, it is probably the hardest aspect of the illness because the individual doesn’t care, doesn’t feel, isn’t motivated. They literally can’t engage in life and their caretakers have to endure it all. Here I was with early onset Parkinson’s, having found a way to cure every fucking symptom placed in front of me, but with one aspect so damning, I could easily see myself leaving my family to spare them the person I was becoming.

Then I got a new symptom, one that forced me to not give up, to work around my apathy and seek an answer. I started losing physical sensation.

A Little Background On My Wild Parkinson’s Experiment

So some months back in March I took a leap and tried something creative when it came to the Parkinson’s. I couldn’t find any info of anyone else trying it for a treatment, but I figured I’d see what it might do. I decided to make my gut bacteria work for me by seeding it with probiotics that produced dopamine. I wasn’t sure if it was going to work, but it did, beyond any expectation I could have expected. It was practically overnight, and I kept waiting for it to go wrong, but it didn’t. My body moved again, my brain functioned again. I could interact on levels I hadn’t been able to in years. You know how I was talking about the website fix? That took 1/2 a week when the fix before took 4 months. My brain and body were working and it was a freaking rebirth.

But something wasn’t right. One day I found myself standing with my hands in scalding water wondering why it didn’t burn, why I wasn’t moving away like the instinctual base animal I was. My tongue and throat had bouts of numbness. My fingers lacked sensation. My sense of smell was weakened. I would repeatedly poke myself with toothpicks to see where the numbness was, if it was getting worse, because all of a sudden it wasn’t just my emotions but my senses that were failing to get information to the brain.

I of course thought tumor or brain damage from the mold exposure. Combined with the lack of emotional response, I was suddenly seeing an alarming image of potential brain deterioration in aspects not linked to cognition. I looked into hormones (perimenopause was a suspect) and other neurotransmitters imbalance potentials like serotonin. Allergies too–numbness is connected there even if I hadn’t experienced that symptom before. Something wasn’t registering in the brain, wasn’t reaching where it needed to get.

I tried a few different experiments: eating spicy food until my numb senses would suddenly scream in reaction, same with hot water on the skin (not damaging levels) trying to stimulate a response, trying to see if whatever neurons were failing were still there to react or not. They were, and sometimes I would wake out of it, the same way I would wake out of my bouts of Parkinson’s before.

That’s when it clicked. It was just like the Parkinson’s, but new symptoms. Not an excess of pain but a lack, not an exhaustion or a weakness in the body, but not any excitement either. No cognitive issues but clearly some sort of brain hiccups where emotions and sensations failed to register.

I first tried increasing the dopamine, going back to my old standby of Mucuna just in case the probiotics and kombucha (made with neurotransmitter rich probiotics) weren’t doing the job. Then, after feeling just brief moments of humanity only to lose it, the desperation that came with being numb again inspired me to be more extreme and go off all dopamine support for a day to see if it was some sort of overdose. I had heard that schizophrenia was too much dopamine but none of my symptoms matched that, but I figured just in case, just to see. Really, what did I have to lose?

I started getting subtle emotions and sensation back, but at the same time, the Parkinson’s symptoms flared up again. I decided to compromise and just lower the dose. When I first started this experiment, I had looked at probiotics and probiotic drinks like a medicine, yet here I was drinking it like a staple now. I cut the dose and made sure I didn’t sip through the day, but instead had measured amounts at predetermined times. The Parkinson’s symptoms again alleviated (thank fuck) and I started getting trickles of me back.

Reactivating Reactivity

I found myself staring at a vibrant blue, outdoor wall a few days after I cut my dopamine dose down. I couldn’t even tell you why, exactly, because it wasn’t a shade of blue I could even say I like when in my normal state of mind. But there I was staring, straining for something familiar. The entire day I had been out in the world and had felt nothing, but this blue wall had garnered some sort of reaction. Something in the color sparked me. That evening, I had two arguments. Full out shouting matches. I hadn’t realized I hadn’t been feeling anger either until I found my emotions turning on. By the second argument, I was actually feeling something in my body during the experience.

If you think that sounds weird, the previous months when I smiled— well, when my body smiled… My body would have an impulse reaction to a joke or familiar happy setting and I would smile, sometimes laugh, and then stop. My face felt like a mask, fleshy and stretched, and that was it. I was observing myself wondering why the chemicals weren’t flowing. There was no feedback, no reward to the action of laughter or smiling.

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter responsible for motivation. Now when you hear motivation, you might think big things, like having the grit to go after a life goal, or get a master’s degree, or what it takes to crawl out of a cozy bed to go to a crappy job every day. But chemical motivation is happening in every single thing we do. When you taste something, the chemical reaction is your motivation. You may not know it because you’re already trained to the Pavlovian response to expect a reaction as normal, part of the process. But if you had spent the last months the way I did, you would see that without a response to taste—be it registering taste, salivating, having hunger—you wouldn’t eat.

Without a chemical reaction in the brain, a sunset can’t be beautiful. Without the chemical reaction when meeting people, you might as well be alone. I found myself talking to someone who I usually enjoyed seeing, remembering how hyped up our conversations would get, but I was forcing myself through the motions, not feeling anything. Even something as simple as picking up an object: there is a reaction, a sensation, something that sparks in your brain to reward with information about the object, sensation, texture, pleasure if it’s soft and soothing, or pain if it’s sharp and bitey. As biological beings, everything we do is in reaction to real world stimulation, or the thoughts in our heads—and if a happy thought can’t make you feel anything, you’re not going to have happy thoughts. You’re not going to have any thoughts after a while because why bother? Without a chemical response, life is a big bowl of who gives a fuck.

Cutting the dose worked. I can’t say for certain why it worked but I have numerous theories. I didn’t realize dopamine couldn’t cross the blood/brain barrier when I first started the probiotic experiment. That means the dopamine being produced in my gut (although perfect to fill all the dopamine receptors in the body) couldn’t reach my brain. Only the dopamine precursors (amino acids from protein) could, and then the brain had to convert it to dopamine to then transport through the brain to utilize.

My initial theory is that by lowering the gut dose to ensure all the dopamine receptors in my body weren’t full, it allowed my body to send a signal to my brain to start producing dopamine there, which in turn started to reignite my senses and emotions once the dopamine receptors were receiving again. My second theory, after having read some interesting information about the thalamus in regards to Parkinson’s, makes me wonder if it’s not the dopamine in the brain itself that excites things into normal activity, so much as the signal that dopamine is low.

We are biological beings that need dopamine to function in basically all aspects of our bodies. You are looking at your screen right now because you get feedback from it that your brain uses to make dopamine. It’s why the phone is so addictive, why it’s so hard to put down little video games or how you can get lost in social media for hours without realizing it. When we don’t have dopamine, our bodies seek to create it. How? Through seeking stimulation and food that will lead to the chemical reactions that create dopamine. When dopamine levels drop, hunger kicks in. It may not be the dopamine itself that gets people motivated to act, but the lack of dopamine which then pushes people to seek out things that stimulate production of it.

A Sensory Obstacle Course For Life

So I figured out this ‘cure’ last Sunday, and although everything feels amazing atm, I’m afraid I’m wrong about it all and I could slip right back in to that terrible state of being. I’m working to stimulate my brain to ensure that it’s producing dopamine properly, because once you lose those receptors in relation to Parkinson’s, they’re gone. It’s been an interesting challenge (now that things can interest me.) I feel like I’m setting up an obstacle course for my life while totally trying not to look at it as recovering from brain damage. I’m trying essential oils for the olfactory senses, music for the ears, I plan on digging out my acrylic paints for visual stimulation, and at the core, brain puzzles and challenges to stimulate my intellectual curiosity. That one has been the easiest to feed now that it works again (fuck, I missed my curiosity T_T ) and I’ve been wonderfully frustrated as I try to teach myself Blender for 3D modeling.

Ha, that has been a total revelation! The battles I constantly have with my creativity— the neurotic, obsessive insanity I fall into as I slam against a wall trying to understand something new— that’s not just a habit of who I am; that is how my brain has adapted to produce dopamine. It liked clawing through tough challenges because that gave it chemical stimulation in reward. The insanity I put myself through as an artist is solely because my brain wants the best hit of dopamine it can get.

The body doesn’t care if it’s positive or negative stimuli; it just needs stimuli to have essential chemical reactions for life. Which probably explains why I’ve been snappish lately too. >_> Did you know anger addiction is a thing all because of dopamine? (This is probably why the world is so fucked. Anger is a chemical rush, and some people feed off of it. Talk about drama.)

Getting Back To Living

Long ass story short, I’m back, peeps. Mostly. (I fucking hope this is permanent. >_<) I’m still not 100% with some things, a lot to do with my drives and curiosity and ability to feel joy or even sensations. My time is going to be focused for a while on habit forming for stimuli in my life until I feel safe that my senses aren’t dying on me. It hasn’t even been a full week since I got myself back—it has felt like the longest week in some ways, though. When the senses kicked back on, it was so easy to just sink into experiencing life.

I expect once the newness of returning wears off and I have a positive set of habits to ensure I’m getting needed stimuli, I’ll be back to my proper writing schedule. I spent the first half of the week fixing the website and now just indulging in getting my ass kicked by inanimate software. I’m learning the 3D model stuff because I want an easier solution to make a fuck ton of gorgeous art so I can try my hand at a visual novel. It’s damn exciting to finally feel like I’m moving forward on that.

I’m already getting a feel for the tools and vocabulary of Blender 2.8 (free, btw, if you ever want to go play around with this stuff,) and I’m pretty sure my background in digital painting is going to translate well once I get this all figured out. There are even animation aspects I could utilize, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. XD I’m having fun (I can actually have fun!) and it’s just great to be alive again.

I hope you all enjoy this marvelous week. Even when things feel tough, remember that every challenge you face is also something that stimulates your body/brain to be able to experience life fully. Chemical beings live off of the downs just as much as the ups. There’s value in it all.

Comments <3

Minor Construction

June 8, 2019

I think it’s done… It was weirdly easy, so it’s hard to trust that I didn’t mess something up. XD Emails have been sent with passwords. Sign ups should work as expected now. I have rebuilt the shop (cuz it worked with the old software) and everything is back in there. I’ve only moved active members, aka, if you let your subscription lapse, you’ll have to create a new account, that’s all. For those who bought art and audiobooks and aren’t active, the old membership system is still in place. So if you want to download a backup, you can. You can reach your old content here.
~Sins

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

June 3

June 3, 2019

I’m Alive

Hey, I just wanted to check in with everyone. I had a few hectic weeks and I’ve been all over the place mentally– and a little physically. I ended up in North Carolina for a few days, which was actually really nice. Except for the airport and the racism; that just sucked. I’m pretty fucking disgusted with how acceptable racism is the further south I travel. It’s so common culturally, I don’t think people even realize they’re indoctrinated in it. :/

I’m working on the PATB Serial to get the first episode ready for publishing. My goal is to post some scenes from different short stories as I work on that, just to give you all something new to read, but without my brain needing to jump from past to future in the PATB series. Less confusion, less redundancy, less boredom.

I’m musing about a lot of shit lately. I might be slipping into (or squatted right down in the middle of) a midlife crisis of sorts. My birthday is on the 12th. I’m facing how I’m ‘healthy’ yet have lost a lot of passion and joy and drive in my life be it from the Parkinson’s or something else, maybe stagnation after being ill for so long? I’m not sure– maybe it’s everything. Maybe I’m just not good at sitting still, and I’m fighting a lot of guilt around that because I don’t know how to balance my life between work and living. Work has been my creative endeavors, always, and that is my passion. I’m not feeling the spark. I haven’t for months now.

It might be time to look into hiring help, writers who are willing to flesh out my outlines–outlining being where I feel most like the creative soul I am. But money has been difficult because my productivity has been down (fucking common sense there,) and it’s just a frustrating cycle right now. Because I don’t know if it’s the answer, and finding out if it’s the answer feels like this big leap of faith. I am very good in conflict, a grand procrastinator who writes term papers in an evening and gets A’s on that shit. And I worry that’s what I’m doing to myself now. Just looking for any old cliff I may fall off of, and waiting until it feels inevitable that I’m going to tumble until I finally act.

I don’t want to be that kind of person in life, especially when it comes to my work. But it’s honest to who I have been up to this point with mold toxicity and death seeming to loom just ahead as I wrote to keep from falling into that pit. I don’t know. It’s been long years only knowing how to live one way, that way full of anxiety and fight and flight at every turn. I am as I am, yet struggle in knowing how to be this way without trauma or illness. I took all this time just waiting to see if my chemistry/my love of life would kick in already and point me where I really want to go. It’s not happening. No sparks.

It might be a midlife/newbirth crisis. >_> It might be my surroundings. I am very isolated lately with little ability to go out into the world. My car needs repairs (finally have it in the shop now) and being ill has been very effective at cutting people out of my life. I miss being around different people and borrowing a bit of their energy to spark my creativity. I miss sharing art and being good at shit and not having to feel guilty–do you know how many times I apologize for being good at stuff because I know it’s not normal for others to just jump into a field and flourish? Ugh. Self awareness is the worst. Maybe I’ll avoid creativity all together. I don’t think I’m even seeking intellectual curiosity at this point but the basic chemical reactions that are part of being a social animal. I might be happy just to hear about other people’s lives and then go home and write a crazy story… I miss conversation. I wish people could fucking understand me and talk about more than the weather or the mundane, but fuck it, I’ll take what I can get.

There is so much shit I want to do that I don’t have the money for. That could be what’s crushing me a bit. Like, I seriously want to find a software where I can create 3D renders of my characters that look 2D (because I’m not a huge fan of hyper-realism for anime style art and I want to work with outlines) and then use that shit to make elaborate interactive novels. Sculpt, pose and repeat. I mean, legit, that would be fucking fun. But I totally bet that kind of software isn’t cheap — might not even be available unless I have some crazy computer set up. Maybe this is my brain fail lately. I definitely still have creative sparks, but the projects I want to do and the way to execute them feel beyond my means. I don’t want to waste time lining the same characters and coloring them, etc, etc, when my brain already sees such an obvious shortcut of ‘just get the right software so you can do other shit at the same time.’ It’s not a lack of passion, so much as, I see that the wrong path will waste the little energy and time I have, so if I’m going to do this shit, I want to take the most efficient path.

I have about 5 different interactive novels/mini video games in my head that I can’t fucking touch because I feel held back by a lack of knowledge, and more importantly, resources. What an ugly feeling frustration is– no wonder I’ve been ignoring it. If indie creators can create elaborate handheld minigames, the software has to be out there, right? I’ve found software for turning graphics and text into an actual game, but not how to render 3D characters–not quickly or efficiently while also cheap, at least. But it’s totally out there, just closer to the video game aspect instead of the interactive novel aspect. I bet I could find info when searching there instead…

This is a big, fucking spiel of whatever. Why do I feel so defeated when I haven’t even started? This just isn’t like me. Where did my beautiful, manic self go who didn’t believe anything could slow me down?

I don’t think I talked a lot about this here, but I’ve been researching into how gut biome affects mood/behavior/personality, and I wonder if this is a symptom of my new gut biome. I might have lost something essential without realizing it. We are in reality manifestations of our biology, psyche, and environment. In the same way we react to stressors in our environment, we act in ways programed by our biology and set by our psyche. PTSD might seem like a disorder of the psyche, but the psyche has only adapted to previous memories and the biological forces that are pushing it. It rationalizes but doesn’t necessarily define. So, what if in targeting the Candida that was producing neurotoxins that were destroying my dopamine transmitter genes, I wiped out something in the gut biome that allowed me to act on impulse, that allowed creativity to flow without giving self doubt time to flood in? It was easy to discover the bacteria that created dopamine and use that to cure my Parkinson’s, but what element leads to inspiration/creativity/impulse? Where did my inner daredevil go and is that as easily programmed back in?

I’m rambling, but eh. This is the part of me I miss. I want to find my fun mania again. It was never ‘out of control’ for me the way people would describe their creative genius. It was just a way to live without all the mundane shit overwhelming in and trying to pretend it had value. Who the fuck wants to be bored in life, really? What lie is that that being stable and in control means a lack of lust for life? Why wouldn’t you want every moment to be fun, a challenge, a new thing to learn and overcome? This weird apathy (which I fear is long term damage from the Parkinson’s) strips all the joy away until life is about going through the motions, mechanical and dull. That’s not real living; it’s fucking sociopathy when we take away our chemical reactions to stimuli. :/

How frustrating to see this as a far more difficult problem to overcome than the PTSD and mold induced Parkinson’s. Because when my lust for life dulls, my passion to problem solve fades as well, and it is so much harder to act… I guess I’ll look at the chemical byproducts of Candida. Maybe the answer is in the microbiome I cleared out.

Archive: June 30, 2019

Minor Construction

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

June 3

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