Category: Random Author Babble

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.

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May 16

May 16, 2019

Catching Up

So I found myself with a numbing of emotions and sensation the last week or so directly after my PATB editing session. I have not been feeling talkative– haven’t been feeling much of anything, to be real about it XD but I thought I should check in as I narrow down potential sources and start to find myself again.

Firstly, I have a lineup of the covers I made for Wendy’s Foundling series to share now that they’re all complete. Expect to find them available sometime this summer. I’ll be linking when it happens. 😉

I’m really proud of how these came out. I can see my brain working when it comes to color and contrast again. These pushed me to be a better artist and I’m happy with the results of that challenge.

As for other things, such as a lack of emotion… I first suspected it was either Parkinson’s or mold related. I haven’t fully gotten free of my current moldy place, and it’s always my first suspect given the hell mold has put me through. But I think the end result might be drug related– supplement related for less of a sting. I have a damaged dopamine system from long term mold exposure, dopamine being the main neurotransmitter that is involved in Parkinson’s. My biggest worry was that I may have gained a level of apathy as a result of that being damaged even though I’ve reversed every other symptom. Apathy is a serious problem with Parkinson’s and it is one of those things where they know it correlates to the dopamine system but doesn’t always fix when dopamine levels are restored.

But just in case that wasn’t the issue, I started looking into the supplements I take daily, many to either repair that damaged dopamine system, support it, protect it, or clean the body of the neurotoxins the mold left in me. It looks like my high doses of NAC (cellular detoxifier) might be the problem after some research and experiments. It’s early, but so far so good. My feelings are returning and I’m starting to add in other supplements to see what happens.

What I find absolutely fascinating about all this is observing my behavior when I lose my emotions. It is so obvious how we are chemical beings who live off of pleasure and avoidance of pain, because when both were taken away from me, nothing was worth doing. I wasn’t burned by hot bath water, nor got any pleasure from completing tasks or interacting with people. It was chemical castration where I had to build habits because on a biological level, I had no incentive to do anything. No little thrill in creativity or touch of anxiety if a bill was looming. We are purely impulse to our environment (after being established biologically through our genetics, chemicals, and beliefs systems that dictate the conceptualization of the world that then affects those chemicals) and without chemical reaction to stimuli, we are lumps. Lumps that aren’t even necessarily motivated in not being lumps. @_@

I have literally been framing positive habits to live by because my internal motivation drive had been suffering for months now. I was once the type of person who would stay up until the wee hours of the morning, loving every moment of the creative process, reluctant to go to bed (mostly slept like the damned) and then would roll out of the blankets and get right back to the love of writing or arting or learning the moment I woke up. It is incomprehensible to suddenly lose that drive. I had to give myself a path to follow because I had no interest in doing anything, when before I loved every challenge, every new discovery just waiting for me to find.

I’m hoping that has now recovered, or will fully once I’m certain I’ve found the correct source of this issue. I miss who I am when I feel. I seriously hope it’s not related to the Parkinson’s given there are few treatments if it is. I suppose time will tell…

So a little note if you’re seeking escape from any kind of suffering. It’s good to remember full escape from suffering to the point you can’t perceive emotions is antithesis to being alive. Stress is positive — essential for motivation and drive and creation — as long as it’s in safe doses. We are reactionary beings of impulse. Even I, an introvert who can stimulate my cerebral cortex into action without needing external help, still needs chemical reactions to happen in my brain, otherwise there is no enjoyment of life.

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May 6

May 6, 2019

Neurotic writing: Clarity vs Flow

Okay, so I just spent the last 2 weeks getting Episode #1 to fit a more mainstream writing style. Short, concise sentences with a lot of adjectives removed. Direct simple sentences. And here we are. I fucking hate it.

I don’t like the flow. It’s gone. The flow is gone. But does it fucking matter if people can’t understand my long, run on sentences?

Am I fucking myself over by 1) deciding flow is more important or 2) deciding clarity of thought is? I spent days on each scene when I first wrote them to ensure that ideas were conveyed clearly with flow, and then spent a few hours for each scene to slice those sentences up to compromise with a style of writing that I don’t even subscribe to. But I’d be a fool to think my brain is anyway the judge of this shit, right?

I like decisions. I like basic answers that I can then go, okay, writing conform to this so I don’t have to overthink shit (like I am now.) I don’t even know if this is coming from a place of ‘artistic integrity’ so much as just plain fucking reality of I don’t like how I write when I write the way main stream books expect writing to be.

What wins?

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April 25

April 25, 2019

Wendy’s Latest Cover!

Did somebody say yellow? (No? Just me, I guess. >_>) OMF, I figured out how to use yellow in an image. It never happens, never. I think the mold toxicity seriously damaged some certain aspect of my brain, and color was in the mix. But no more. ♥♥♥ Something must have healed recently cuz not only do we have some lovely yellow shades in here, but it’s not covered in black either. Fucking winning. (My standards for winning, if you haven’t realized yet, are pretty fucking low. But still–Winning!!! XD)

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April 23

April 23, 2019

Disjointed for a bit

Hey babes, I just wanted to give you all a heads up. The writing flow might be a little sporadic this week. I have a book cover I’m making for the marvelous Wendy this week. She’s re-releasing a trilogy, and I want to make sure she has everything she needs sooner rather than later. And I’m also trying to get the first 50,000 words of PATB ready for the beta readers.

I feel a bit like my mother who (while with cancer) would clean the house before our super nice cleaning guy showed up. *sigh* But at the same time, I want to respect the beta’s time and energy and effort by giving them a format closest to finished. I didn’t go through and clean up my sentence structure like I wanted to the first time around. If I’m not careful, I will have these long, run on sentences that are difficult to read–big no-no in genre writing. It’s important things can be understood with ease. So, although I’ll be scheduling time in for everything, I think we’re all aware of how I fail at time management. >_< Because it’s Tuesday already. =_=

I’m currently deciding if I want to refer to the werewolf situation as a plague or an epidemic (or would it be classified as pandemic because it crossed onto another continent???) I think magical virus verse bacteria or parasite fits it best for the PATB world… unless I find a better term. Because it’s Tuesday and I got stuck trying to make sure I have the best fucking term for a fictional illness. Yeah, welcome to my insanity. Those poor betas.

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April 17

April 17, 2019

PATB Serial???

So, I might be trying something new…

The idea hit me while I was, well, not thinking about writing at all XD and it just stuck, like, being all, this is so obvious. You’re being slow as fuck with your writing, just release it as serial installments! Duh. And then I thought, well, maybe if I have a cover, but covers are going to be a pain in the ass. Like, that’s time spent. And my brain was all, bitch, you got this shit. One evening of Photoshop–Go! And now I have a cover and really, very few excuses. I mean, it’s not a bad idea. Just release it into KU while it’s being written, and if peeps want to read ahead, they can check out the website. I mean, this project has just been so slow with my health being all wonky. I feel like I’ve put nothing out there in ages.

I’m not sure how I want to break the books down. My lazy self is all, covers are a pain so just put half or a quarter of a book in each episode so shit goes faster. But my more pragmatic side sees that as having a lot of time between releases, which is what this is supposed to avoid. :/ I’m going to think on it, see how much time I want to invest in editing right now, etc. But yeah, I think this is a fun idea.

Oh, what do you think of the throwback to the first original Demon Arms cover?! XD check it!

 

Winning at photomanips lately, yeah? I’m digging the little debris that makes it feel like there’s motion even though absolutely nothing is happening. 😉

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April 11

April 11, 2019

Apathy

Dealing with an unexpected problem health wise. And it might be temporary–it might be nothing. Or it might be a sign of something permanent I’m going to have to deal with all the time. No clue. It’s a very frustrating issue though, one that, when it hits like it did the last couple days, feels overwhelming and inescapable. It’s apathy.

I thought at first it was depression, but it was too different, too distinct from the symptoms I was once consumed with in my younger years. No, this just sucked the joy from my actions and thoughts, the motivation, the enjoyment. I didn’t feel impaired in any physical or mental way, but I also didn’t feel much of anything. I could see I wasn’t myself, but I couldn’t spark the normal chemical reactions that would make me enjoy things either. It made everything very empty and dull.

I guess this is something pretty common with Parkinson’s, and it doesn’t have much correlation with how far the disease has progressed. Even though I have been able to protect myself from the mold induced Parkinson’s and regrow dopamine receptors and even remove the neurotoxins from my body and environment that were triggering the Parkinson’s, I may not have a lot of tools to fix this problem. Although increasing/restoring dopamine helps, it hasn’t actually cured the apathy, and scientists have theories but nothing really solid when it comes to answers. This may be a level of permanent brain damage, and I have little guarantee of what the hell to expect.

The last few days were an extreme hit of this lack of enjoyment, but it has been happening for a while on a less intense level. I thought it was psychological as my health returned and I found myself doing the same thing day in and day out. With my brain repairing, everything just felt so obvious, and in a way, so dull with no challenge to reveal. But challenges are all around me; I just couldn’t get my emotions to respond like they normally would. I wasn’t feeling my writing, feeling joy from creativity, feeling satisfaction the way I used to, but it wasn’t until the feelings shut off completely that I could see that they were wonky to begin with.

So, yeah, an interesting couple of days as I try to figure all this out. What I’m doing now is really trying to work around the apathy when it hits to ensure I function like a normal person even if my drive/motivation/basic impulses are lacking. I’m forcing myself to exercise since it seems to have some positive effect–although the mood alteration was limited, only a few days, so I can’t say 100% what worked and what’s mere coincidence. I’m still not fully myself even if I’m at least back to the medium level of feeling I was before. I’ll have to track my symptoms as they hit until I get enough cause and effect to get a better picture. I might be looking into stims like caffeine, look at nootropics, reward, dopamine creating behavior, that sort of thing. There are plenty of paths to run down and explore to find the answers.

And I guess I’m looking to cope with facing how things may progress, and what it may be like to live a life I don’t fully feel emotionally. I suspect it will not be an easy thing if I go by the last few days. >_> I have faced a lot of shit, let’s be real. I’m not sure how to deal with something that strips my joy away on a fundamental level I can’t escape. It is a very cruel way to live, robotic, without not just drive but no goals, no intellectual curiosity or response to stimuli. No love of life or art or creation. It’s like going through the motions instead of living a life.

I am, at my core, a hopeful person. An optimist. To think that can be stripped away with a chemical switch I have no control over is, well, fucking shitty. Will the drive that has gotten me to find the answers to my health problems be stripped away too? It is a difficult reality I may find myself in if the apathy gets worse… Or I may be worrying over nothing as I get healthier. I am a terrible fortune teller but very good at worrying. >_<

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april 2-2

April 2, 2019

Huh, way faster

One of the plugins decided to break–because computers are freaking fickle. But on removing it, the website is super fast in comparison. It was the disable right click thing. I gotta say, I will take the annoying constant theft if the website doesn’t lag like a motherfuck the way it did. What an annoying thing to compromise on.

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april 2

April 2, 2019

I hate not having money :/

This may seem rather obvious, but being broke sucks. I feel like a kid who has to wait to be able to do all the things I want to do, except I’m an adult and I’m stuck waiting because not having money sucks. Civilization needs to wake the fuck up and start implementing things like a universal income, but I suspect it will be a long wait seeing as humanity still can’t get over simple shit like equality and not murdering each other. *sigh* Fucking tribalism just won’t die.

I think of all the stuff I’d be doing full force if I didn’t have to worry about money, and it’s just frustrating. I could have gone into a ton of character creation and art for this VN already if I could just afford the full version of the cg program I’m using for reference. I could have started this whole thing sooner if I wasn’t caught up in publishing for cash instead of creating for enjoyment. And legit, I still have to go that route. I want the website to be enough, but it’s not yet. I seriously need to start focusing on publishing again before my KU income flat lines.

The pursuit of money has totally ruined a ton of my creative endeavors. My art is so caught up in the ‘will this keep me in a house’ bullshit that I just start to hate it all. Money is a shitty motivator for creative work. I have never looked at money and felt inspired to create or be a better person or do amazing things in the world. I look at money and I feel scarcity, or security, and it’s usually scarcity.

Blah. I’m just ruminating about the flaws of the world that could easily be fixed if society would just be better already. My car has over $700 worth of work I need to do to be able to use it again, my meds that sustain me are hundreds a month (and apparently I cannot beat the mold induced Parkinson’s without them yet–really painful lesson to face today,) and I just want to make cool stuff. Like, if I didn’t have to worry about money, I could have moved out of this moldy house already! Why is this shit so limiting?

Maybe I should try to convince myself to be more money oriented with the stuff I do. If I made a point to increase my income, these problems would be solved and more fun could be had. But I can’t even make myself want money, even though I can see how shitty it is when I don’t have it. It’s like I lack the basic instinct. I like to make things. I like to think about things, and I like to make things, and that’s about all I’m good at. It’s shit to realize the things I do can’t really matter unless I figure out how to monetize them well enough too. What a dumb thing to demand, society.

Blah. Guess I’ll have to make a million bucks writing. It can’t be that hard, right? *snort*

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