I've been swampedddddd. Not getting enough sleep, doing a bunch of work...life's been hectic for me recently.

I've got a bunch of story work to do, because the number of stories to write for farn is officially increasing from two to three. And I'm actually working on expanding the roster of villains. (I've got a full roster of heroes, albeit heroes that I need to justify why they are doing what they do, but villains...I'm coming up short. So I've been working on fixing that. Mostly I need mooks since lead villains I mostly got covered.)

But like.

Just...need to survive the work week.

Today I spent $400 on clothes, which was all good clothes but the cost made me die inside a bit.

​Anyway, feeling sick to my stomach for some reason, so...gotta rest.

I've been, frustratingly, busy as of late.

I was on the last week of league/tft quests so needed to grind them, which ate up a lot of time.

I've been busy with work.

I literally had my car turn over sideways due to going into a ditch on Tuesday. (Surprisingly--as far as we can tell--the car is fine; I am fine. I'm not traumatized, but I am just frustrated and confused.)

I've been busy with stuff.

I don't even remember what.

Just.

I've not had free time. I don't even know why. I've had objectively more time but objectively have been getting less done. I did things. I was doing things. I just don't remember what they were. I was really busy.

Now, granted. Life stuff has happened. We're up to knowing the name of four voices that aren't soulbounds like Vee and Ruby. (Morgan, our Aussie; Bella, our southerner; Ashe, our high-pithced 'hiiiiiii' voice; and now, Amanda, our deep 'yo' voice.)

We've been doing at least some work on our novel.

We've done a little bit of work on our castle in minecraft.

We've done stuff, but we've been left quite busy.

This week started promising in terms of health between both showering and brushing teeth and now I've done neither.

I've not streamed this week and between picking up a shift on Sunday and the staff meeting tomorrow, I probably won't, which is frustrating.

So like.

​Just not a great week.

But the covid I got certainly made me feel like I was.

Do I have a lot I should be saying on my blog?

Oh certainly!

But genuinely I got hit so bloody hard by covid I just couldn't do anything.

I've still not entirely recovered, so you may or may not see me blogging, but I'm trying to reclaim my life from my sickness and normalize it again.

​Trying.

We had eight hours of sleep last night, not counting naps.
We've been keeping up on coffee drinking and tea drinking at normal times.
We're pretty sure our hydration levels are normal, and food intake regular, and workouts about normal.

What gives.

Why are we this badly tired?

We're still doing productive stuff, mind you! Today we did a little extra notes writing (nothing new in terms of worldbuilding, but writing down some notes we had kept in our head) and actually did a little bit of the revising we needed to do on the current chapter we're writing (I know the dangers of the eternal edit loop, but this edit is necessary because to tell the narrative we need, we need a specific tone and content within, and while we nailed it in the earlier sections of the chapter, the later seconds drifted away; we found the spot it drifted and are working on fixing it, which will be worth, trust me).

So not a lost day with nothing done at all.

But.

Still.

We're not supposed to be this exhausted all the time.

​What's wrong with us? Is it really the sickness?

And the answer to that is quite simple: internet issues, into computer issues.
I had not one but TWO days with 12+ hour outages to the internet.
And last night, my computer bluescreened on me. (In the middle of a stream. During a ranked game of tft.)

Suffice to say, been quite frustrated recently. I've been through a lot of struggles right now.

Currently, we're snowed in, which is a big issue since I only have one day of medication left. (Maybe two? Would need to track down the remnants of one that I think I have still in the old storage location.) And we're still sick. And it's cold. Very cold.

So having an inability to use my desktop for any reason. No power. No internet. Computer bluescreening. It's infuriating. I live my life online. Which is, explicitly, not a bad thing. Neurotypicals consider it such, but to someone as neurodivergent as we are, as isolated as we are, the internet is a literal life-saver. We need it to survive. We thrive on the internet.

So being denied that for any reason is just--it's frustration beyond frustration, since it shouldn't have any reason to happen and it is super duper mega big of an impact on someone like us.

​But, anyway, we're back to normal now. We're currently bored out of our minds right now, tho. (Which is why we are actually making a blog before midnight. xD) The reason for that is that we are busy doing necessary content creation work, which leaves us unable to do anything really fun. We burned through the entirety of our buffer for vods so we need to start uploading them again. But those vods take a ton of processing power. Like, a ton a ton. So we can't really do much else while uploading vods.

We need to build up the buffer again (ideally to 65 but 62 will give us at least a few days), which means spending the whole day effectively doing nothing but uploads.

Simultaneously, we're going through our five and a half hour stream from last night, to clip moments from it. (Clipping clippable moments is something we're trying to do more so that we have more content to show off.) Which is a grind. We're doing nothing but listen to ourself and our content. And uploading. And nothing to break up the monotony. No games, no watching of content, nothing. All focus on the task at hand. We're only 3 hours into the vod and only on the 60th video. (For the record, 58 is tomorrow's video pretty sure. 59 needs editing so can't be uploaded yet and thus skips a day. But like. That's basically no buffer at all.)

Granted, last night's stream was only our seventy-fifth stream. So we're getting nearly caught up. But we still gotta get the process fluently rolling, moving, to be more automatic. Ideally, vods would be uploaded the day after a stream and we'd be streaming most days. All of it is necessary. But all of it is a grind. And it's not fun.

We want to be doing other things. ADHD is incredibly overwhelming. The urge to do something, anything, is so strong. And being unable to is just...so...maddening. The presence of nothing has always been my worst nightmare so being left with nothing but myself has left us feeling bored out of our minds and basically just...struggling hardcore. We want to do something, anything, else. But there's nothing we can do. We only have the task at hand.

Needs to be done tho!

I feel like we can actually succeed at our goals--if we keep at them. So gotta keep networking, gotta keep expanding, gotta keep doing what we are doing so that we can do what we are setting out to do. We are aiming to build a communitBree. So we need to actually do the work needed.

It was down for about 12 hours, which is why we didn't blog yesterday.

Pretty much all we did in that time (the entirety of it) was alpha test our Civ 3 mod some more. The mod which is, theoretically, playable--it has literally everything in the game, as we intended it to be.

But which is not actually playable, because we haven't put in any of the Civpedia files to let people (including ourselves) know what a building, wonder, or even unit truly does. So like, it works, but it's not something that people can really understand. It'd take endless trial-and-error and/or actually looking at the game files to figure out.

Of course, balance is also an issue. We wanted the "civilized" techs to be harder to get, and for tech progression to require more and more of an investment as the game progresses, and for wonders to be a dedicated investment to build, but all of them on this first alpha test were too low. (We'll need to do a second test.)

We wanted the warring AI nations to mostly be at a stalemate with each other--on the first run, an AI Persia was slowly but surely beating the AI Greece until they declared war on me, so I needed to buff the Greeks.

We wanted each of the non-original-four civilizations to have a wincon and playstyle, but while the Hordes were a terrifying success (their draw is having an overwhelming horde of units that can cross ridiculous amounts of distance), and the Celts worked well enough, the Goths were notably weaker than they were designed to be, so we needed to buff them, too. We also made Germany more threatening (they were actually doing quite fine so this buff might've not only been unnecessary but also make them too strong now), by offering them a wonder placing a free shield buff in every city on the continent, which also makes warring with them lucrative (since capturing that would instantly be a boon).

Another thing we did was nerf spies and their upgrade (originally called Ninjas, now Assassins since I gave the Hordes the upgrade of the current Ninja), because they were annoyingly annoying, menaces that shouldn't be spammed as much as they are. So we upped their cost and made them weaker, meaning sending them in for harassment now carries a greater risk.

We do need to figure out a buff for archers as across the board no civilization seems to be building them tho.

Anyway.

​Mostly, we wanted to say that we need to get much much better at self-care.

Perfection is the enemy of doing good.
We need to brush our teeth--perfect doesn't matter.
We need to change our undergarments daily--wanting it accompanying a shower isn't mandatory.
We need to shave more--wanting a shower isn't mandatory.

We need to shower--it doesn't need to be the fully full shower.

This mindset also applies to other areas of our life, too.

We don't need a win to play League of Legends.
We don't need to climb to play TFT--or even play ranked.
We don't need it to be long or good in order to stream.
We don't need writing to be perfect.

We don't need to progress much in a game to play a game--30 minutes is more than 0 minutes.

We don't need to do perfect, we just need to do good enough.

So wish us luck in actually following through on this. (Chances are, we won't.)

As a reminder, tomorrow we should start an upload for youtube of our vods and then shower.

So that's what's going on right now.

​I did agree to work tomorrow tho so gotta go to bed now.

Thankfully, not covid (that or a false negative), but like.
Everything tastes like cardboard, with only some sweeter things having flavor.

So.

​Could be better!

The excessive dead tiredness;
The possible fever the last couple of days;
The cough I developed today;
The fact that none of my food or drink today has tasted the way I expect, tasting worse and more like cardboard.

That's, uh.
That's alarming.

It's all mild. It could just be my anxiety running wild. The dead tiredness could be lack of sleep.
The fever could just be it being absurdly cold.
The cough could be due to overexertion.
The food/drink could just be a bad order of operations in eating it, especially given a slightly burnt tongue (altho I should note I didn't receive "ow too hot" feedback prior to feeling like my tongue was burned).

So as much as I would like to just say I'm definitely sick--I can't. It could just be me spiraling, connecting the worst case scenarios together. After all, I still taste things, they just don't taste the way I am expecting them too, and the cough isn't consistent and the fever if existing would be so mind as to be virtually undetectable.

Which means unless I get worse, I can't call in sick tomorrow for work.

But, uh.

​I need to be very very careful. And vigilant. We sadly have no at-home test kits, but might need to try and get one tomorrow.

I had my generator running with internet every night without power, and six days into the outage, my power was fixed. So that'd be...Thursday, power, Friday, power, and today is Saturday, with me not having written a blog since then.

Mostly, that was me just being stupid and not doing the blog in spite of having it on my mind. Anyway, I suppose I should mention, I've basically caught up on life since the power outtage. I managed to finally grind out the league/tft quests, and thus my only reason to play more was if I wanted to attempt to raise my rank higher. But, I'm content to have it as-is, and leave it there.
(That said, I will have to put some time in to the preseason on Ashe, because while it certainly won't be optimal, I have in mind a hybrid poke/dps build. I already run comet with celerity and approach velocity for lane power that allows for building dps or poke, taking a tear to start. I know in past seasons Shieldbow + Manamune worked as a combo. But now I'm thinking that Shieldbow + ER + Navori would work as a combo, maybe Manamune as fourth or going full crit if not.)

I'll say that a lot of the lack-of-me-present is largely thanks to me being very unhealthy in mafia games. (Silver lining, there's like a 50-75% chance I get banned soon which, hey! Fixes the issue there. >_> <_<) I've been pouring 4-8 hours per day into mafia.

And then I tell myself. "Okay, never again."

And then I do it the next day, and say. "Okay, never again."

And then I do it the next day, and say "I can't keep doing this so this has to be the last day." And then it isn't.

And every work day, I go "okay you can use the phone but no looking at mafia".
And then every work day I look at mafia.
And then I say "okay you can browse offline, but you can't log in to post".
And then half the days I end up logging in to post.

And even though I have every reason to not pay attention to games I am not currently alive in the game as a player in, with my removal from the game as a good way to experience the sweet release of no longer caring and just moving on.

Turns out, as you might have been able to guess, I keep reading.

So mafia has been very very very bad for me.

I kept telling myself. "I'm going to be less active, I'm going to do less, I'm going to do things with more control."
And then I got more unhinged instead.

So like.

I basically have destroyed my life for the umpteenth time thanks to the game that I love but I hate how much it impacts my life. (I'd like to reiterate that I can't go too explicit because of ongoing game rules, but everything I've said here is generic not-game-specific enough to be fine especially since it's all public info and not game-reliant. Just generic things piling up tbh.)

Still.
It may be tempting fate, but I believe that phase of unhealthy mafia activity has ended in my life. (See also, may get banned soon.)

​We'll have to see.

Anyway, with my life beginning to normalize, some to-do things.

I need to finish my art profile picture, but any time I can be lucid and not absentminded, I should be working on my novel instead.
I want to work on minecraft but I know I won't finish my novel goals if I do.

The majority of my time needs to be spent on novel-writing.

Tomorrow I need to, ideally, stream, but if not, at least build my youtube video buffer back up again. (Ideally ideally, do both!)

I need to actually make the thread about youtube videos released that I said I would do.

I need to take a shower tomorrow.
I need to get back into brushing my teeth.
I need to get better at applying the moisturizer to my body to keep it from having breakouts.
I need to shave.

Which is...well. Both a lot, and yet, not a lot.

I've got less work in the next couple of weeks.
But like--on that note, I need to keep up my workouts. I've been quite pathetic there.

I developed an entire routine--and then have done nothing with it at all.

​I need to get better.

I don't really have anything on mind in particular. Lots of random things, need to brush teeth, need to shave, have a change in work schedule, am working a shift tomorrow as a sub that I thought I was going to work originally so it's no change anyway, haven't gamed today, probably just a bunch of random stuff.

Doing better mentally overall, but not resting as much as I should on a Saturday, maybe.

I guess I'll risk mentioning that I am working on a new profile picture for my twitch, twitter, and discord. I've become a little more cations ever since learning that there's art thieves going around trying to claim credit for the ideas of others by literally completing their art before they finish it and such, but like.

I'll risk it. Nobody reads my blog, anyway. So like. By the time an art thief would come along to try, I'll have presumably long-since finished it. Or, they'll try to steal from the unfinished product too soon and later my version has radical differences proving mine came first. Or whatever.

My point is, it's probably safe to share this.

The thing I wanted to comment on is the mask. The mask. Because WHOAH. The MASK.

Do you see how good it is????

Like--the shading's not perfect, I'm not quite sure how to fine-tune it but realize I might need to adjust it to be better. So that part, could use some adjusting.

But the rest of the mask is just...like...WHOAH. It's so good!

Do you know how hard it is for me as an artist to be proud of my art???

I'm proud of that mask! It's SO good. Like, the more I look at it the better it looks. It looks EXACTLY like the genuine article does. So I nailed it.

Still got a ton of work to do, mind you. Gotta do what I did for the mask, to the collar.
Gotta do what I did to the mask and will do to the collar, to the shirt.
Gotta add in the skin.
Gotta add in the hair.
Gotta work on details.

But like.

I already have done a huge thing with that mask and it is good.

Like--I like the eyes. Hazel eyes are notoriously difficult to draw, having a mixture of gray, green, blue, brown, and gold in them, with the exact color changing in the light. (And yes, I'm quite certain it's those five, we've seen all five in our lifetime under different lighting.) Trying to capture that in art is notoriously difficult.

But like--while I really like the eyes and I feel like we nailed it, my perfectionist self-doubting self may fine-tune them some more later.

The mask?
The lighting/shadows, maybe. But beyond that, it's just...it's perfect. And I love it.