I may not have played League today, but I did just about everything else! Including some minecraft time, but notably. I actually did Phyrra and Cyrus work. I only finished 2/8 of the songs I need to (the opener/closer of season 1), but that's still huge! Writing two songs in one day is a huuuuuuge accomplishment. Smaller than ideal since one was partially written and there's a BOATLOAD of stuff I need to get done for Phyrra and Cyrus, but this was something that did need to be done.

Sooooo.

​Success!

That depends on what I manage to do tonight. So tomorrow, I may move it back one day, two days, or no days, depending both on tomorrow and today. Basically: I might not be doing Phyrra and Cyrus tonight (tho it's not off the table altogether), but I did have an idea which I want to investigate. (Basically, I was thinking of making a tiktok and releasing daily videos with a particular gimmick.)

​But today, in a blog that will last until at some point the site inevitably removes the content, fails, or something of that sort. As in, a blog that will presumably last a fair amount of time rather than remain invisible. A public blog that may not last forever because no website does and websites can pull stunts like deleting content on them. (And weebly isn't a site I have much trust in.)

I wanted to, in a broader platform, put on here what amounts to a slight copy-paste of blog-worthy material I've been placing elsewhere. (Heck, it was those answers which actually got me back to blogging here.)

Someone asked me what I think is my most useful talent/skill. I told them that it's my bottomless barrel of creativity and ideas.

I literally come up with a bunch of ideas every day. Some are for things to do in games. E.g. builds in League, ideas for things to do in minecraft, comps to test out in tft, customizing modded versions of Civ 3 in the Civ 3 editor.

Some are for things in real life, which I would do if I had the resources to do.

Most are for various different forms of entertainment, though:
Video games that I come up with that I'd love to create, if not for lacking the skills.
Webcomics that I come up with that I'd love to create, tho sadly most are too ambitious given my level of skill.
Stories, usually novels (but occasionally shorter ones), that I (mostly--some are rather ambitious) have the capacity to create, if I focused on them and dedicated myself to making them.
Songs that I lack the skills to create.
Music that I mentally compose but have no way of bringing to reality.
Animated stories that I would love to create but which with what little research I have done would cost in the range of one million dollars to actually fund (due to animators being expensive and voice actors being expensive--keep in mind, one million dollars is the amount I estimated with animators/voice actors working at just below market rate, and that it's closer to 1.5 million if they charge market rate or higher).
(Heck, I've also come up with ideas for becoming a streamer, doing tiktok videos, maybe dabbling in youtube creation!)

I can pitch to people my ideas and they will always go, "That sounds so COOL!", pointing out how awesome, amazing, and unique the idea is, how incredible it sounds, how they wish it was made (so do I! My greatest regret is that all of the beautiful things inside my mind that will never be created because in spite of how rich their worlds/characters/etc. are I cannot make them all), and how they wish me luck in my creative endeavors.

But then I can't actually make them.

Yet they appear on a daily basis.

Literally almost every day, I am creating a new idea.

But even if I could commit to an idea, each idea would take, what? A year? Two years? At minimum to pull off. (Some ideas I've calculated could take ten years to pull off!) A year or two, for one idea; new ideas, every single day.

I make new ideas faster than I could ever create them.

And few, if any, of them are bad. Most are wonderful, vivid, unique, breathtaking, highly creative, and just...overall. Something that should be made, which had every right to be made.

They just...aren't.

And then there's always the chance.

That I go my entire life without bringing any of them to a fully, wholly, entirely realized life. Where they are, in completed form, distributed across the world for all to have access to. There's a chance literally nothing I ever dream up ends up being made. After all. I've been actively trying since I was 13 (I've been making things my whole life, but 13 was the first time I had the idea of marketing these ideas to others outside of my brain), and that was 14 years ago--

In 14 years of trying, I've yet to succeed. In 14 years of trying, I've not once managed to pull it off. I've always fallen short, I've always failed, eventually, at some point.

That doesn't mean succeeding on my own is impossible, or that I've given up entirely. I haven't. I just need to be realistic in accepting that, yes, I've got a very high hill to climb.


Not gonna lie tho--
Something I really really wish I had was a sort of 'life manager', or at least, 'idea manager'. Where I could have someone who could keep me on-track, keep me on the road to success, remove the distractions from my life or at least strictly budget them, force me to work on things even when I don't want to, find ways to work with me to focus my creative energies, brainstorm my ideas with me, and with their push, get me to make them real.

But, I don't think that's something I can get. Not for free, anyway, and I certainly don't have the money to pay someone to do that. It's also something which I imagine would be more effective to be done in-person, both because I am liable to forget things online, procrastinate, etc., and it's harder to get things on-track online compared to in-person. I can definitely say there's a huge difference between my dear friend reminding me to do something and my mom or older sister (both of which I live with) reminding me to do something.

The former, I may do, but not always, and often with delay. The latter, I may do with delay but almost always WILL do, often immediately.

I know that if I had someone who could do that sort of thing for me, I would, guaranteed, succeed--but waiting for a person like that to show up and accepting defeat before then is something that will mean I never will succeed.

So I try to make do without, to try on my own. With a very very low success rate, but trying > not trying, waiting, and hoping that in the future some mystical force will come to my rescue/aid.

I was also asked what ideas I would make if I had the time/focus.

​The big one would be Phyrra and Cyrus, an anime-style 2D animated (ideally posted onto the web) series. Separated into four seasons, each approximately 12 episodes (tho I believe the last season would do better with 2-4 extra, for 50-52 total instead).

The basic premise; the world (the working universe title was INFINIverse/INFIverse, but I found out both of those names for a universe were taken so I settled on colliniverse, the origin of that being the collision between INFINITY and Nothingness) is a High Fantasy world. The protagonists, Phyrra (a swordswoman) and Cyrus (a tactician/strategist) Thaumason (Thaumason is pronounced almost identically to 'Thompson', just instead of a soft 'puh', it's a soft 'muh', and is about as common a surname in Lilim as Thompson is on earth), are twin (fairly mature-for-their-age) 11-year-old adventurers, with aspirations to become the greatest adventurers of all time--even in the world of Lilim (the name of the planet), this is an unusual oddity, since most adventurers start at least at 16, if not 18, with the average adventuring age being 16-36.

They didn't want to wait that long, but they realize their young age will be held against them. Their goal is to seek out the legendary artifact, the Book of Infinity (which, in actuality, is a remnant of INFINITY itself, but to explain that I'd need to give an explanation for what INFINITY was), which rumor states is able to grant the user(s) any power they imagine, including ability to magically age oneself.

In the first episode, they succeed--they find the book in the same chamber containing the four major elemental books (Book of Fire, Book of Water, Book of Air, Book of Earth), and they manage to actually activate the book of infinity...which triggers the curse/trap of the book. Designed to kill any individual who touched the book, when both of them grabbed the book at the same time, it instead switched their souls, placing Phyrra in Cyrus's body and Cyrus in Phyrra's body. However, it also gave them access to magic (magic, in this world, can be learned by anyone...but it takes approximately 30 years to master, and even 'spellbladers', who use specialized specific lesser magic oriented on one specific trait, are typically in their 20s), as well as the ability to access and master the four elemental books.

To escape, they activate the book of air, summoning its guardian, Gora the Rock Golem (all elemental books are protected by their opposite element), who helps teach them the spell necessary to leave. And from there, their adventure continues. The cast of the Thaukama (Thaumason + Nakama portmantu) expands to include Ace Samson, a teenaged adventurer skilled in tracking, ranged weaponry, and medicine (think the DND class of 'Ranger'); Cedrick (don't have his last name memorized, oof), their initial rival adventurer, a spellblader whose magic is specific to telekinetic control of platinum spheres; Kaze, the Wind Shade (guardian of the book of earth); Myra, the Siren/Mermaid/Sea Serpent (guardian of the book of fire); Bard Tune Song, a teenaged street rat (think an even more hypercompetent Aladdin) whose father was a powerful Demon that resembles a werewolf; Clara (also don't have her full name memorized, oof), an apprentice Paladin (Paladins being a specific spellblader school specializing in light magic); Hera, the Dragon Phoenix (guardian of the book of water); William Grant Clemency, an Adept (basically, can see the true nature of things) who is nobility in Lilim's New World (largely uncivilized new continent, think America circa 1700s); Lilian Rose Wolfe, a tailor; and Alena (also don't have her full name memorized, oof), a young Botanist/Alchemist.

Throughout their adventures, they fight monsters, villains, evil overlords, and make their name known, all while seeking a way to undo their switched souls...because as long as they are in each other's bodies...they won't age so much as a day, and are stuck eternally 11 until such a time as they figure out how to undo the curse permanently.



I can explain more, like the way the four worlds (afterlife, demon realm, spirit realm, mortal realm) work, the way spirits work, the way demons work, various magitek items involved in the setting (they have stuff which basically is on the level of a smartphone), etc. but I think the idea is clear enough.

I originally thought that there would be much much heavier themes involved regarding the body swap, that it'd touch more heavily on issues like effectively being trans--but over time, I realized that in spite of the body swap, it's actually only a minor thing. Something that, yes, comes up, and yes, is essential to the plot, but which is only a minor thing. It's a story of adventurers first, a coming of age story second, and has the issues of the body swap only third.

I have names for almost every episode; I have mentally worked out almost every episode; I basically know what happens, when, down to the episode, with entire plot arcs mapped out.


But, 1: I have no experience writing for an animated project, I have no clue what I'm doing, and,
2: Animation is ludicrously expensive. Initial google search I did right now says one second of animation is $150 at the cheapest--times that by 60 for one minute, times that by ~25 for the length of the episode, times that by 48-52, and you get: $225,000 * 48-52. (I did a google search two years ago and I think that one said $30/second, which is cheaper, but still hugely expensive.)
Just for the animation.
And then you've gotta hire voice actors.
Not to mention, composers to compose the music for the series.
Not to mention, video editors for sound effects.

It might be possible to get a kickstarter going for the project. But to get a kickstarter, I need to be in a position better than what I am in now. Plan is to write the initial script for all the episodes, try and map it out loosely scene by scene, roughly estimate the amount of time it takes, finish the lyrics for the openers/closers of each season, maybe make some loose storyboards of panels screencapping loose ideas of what I want to make, and hope the fuck that by the time I get all of this done, it's gotten me enough competency to know what I am doing to the point where I am able to justify a kickstarter to fundraise it.



All of this is ludicrously ambitious, I know, but Phyrra and Cyrus is the project I have most wanted to complete for over two years now.


If I give up on an ambitious project that I am very much out of my depth for? If I decide that I need better connections before jumping off the deep end, if I decide that I need to be established in an industry already before branching out?

Well, the main area I'd do that is in writing. Right now, mostly superhero stories. Well, one's a superhero story, but most of them are supervillain stories; I've thought up at least four different ones. Most have some inspiration from Worm, but each is distinctly their own universe, with their own rules, their own premise, their own characters, etc. Writing them is comparatively easy, and they're largely fleshed out enough where I could make any of them reality; I just haven't done them yet.

When it comes to talents I would like to have but do not possess, the obvious answer would be the ability to animate things myself. (That, or the ability to do everything necessary in editing videos. Either skill would save me a ton.)

But in skills not applicable to my ambitions...life skills. Washing/drying laundry (my mom showed me how to do it once or twice, did not stick as a skill, need to learn the ins and outs of it), washing dishes or at least how to properly handle a dishwasher (how to organize it, what to put where, what I need to do to run it, and when run, what to put where), cooking food, and also: doing makeup.

Laundry and dishes I think I can maybe figure out how to fumble through on my own, cooking is something that I haven't really done but which I may have the ability to fumble through on my own, so of these I'd say the skill I'd most want due to it being the one I least think I can fumble through on my own, would be learning how to apply makeup to myself.

I've seen makeup be applied to people before, and even have them talk through the process as they were having it applied. But in order to get good at applying makeup, I'd need to have all the supplies in front of me, and be able to freeze-frame, frame by frame, analyze with clearly visible what's-what things, step by step, work through it, and figure out what makeup is right for me.

Tho that said.

There's one skill that's both project-related, AND, real-life related: voice manipulation, as a skill/talent. Changing your voice takes lots and lots of practice and is something I lack right now, so I REALLY loathe my voice right now. And if I put in the work to have a more feminine voice, then in the process, I might pick up the skills to be able to voice some characters, or if not, at least give a better model for what I envision their voices to be. Or if not, at least hopefully allow me to sing better. Basically, lots of stuff with my voice would be useful for projects, but it's something that also would help for transitioning, too.

(Basically, overall: for a project? Animation. For real life? Makeup. For a combination of both: voice.)

​I was also asked what in 2020 I'm thankful for. In that, I instantly found my answer: ​increased presence on twitch and one community in particular there where I joined their discord and even am involved on their minecraft server.

I realize I don't have the setup for streaming, in spite of what I would want, and I realize that being involved in those communities isn't letting me spend time creating things on my own that have a tangible permanence to them (by which I mean, being involved can make me contribute to jokes, uplift spirits, etc., and my contributions there aren't meaningless since the community wouldn't be quite as good without them, but because I am one of dozens upon dozens there, while every drop I add into the pond matters, none of my additions there are something people will remember as being from me years from now; they helped, they were important, they meant something, but while you might remember the general vibe I contributed, you wouldn't remember my specific contribution to the vibe, because it's not my community, it's a community I am a part of).

Which is to say: doing stuff there isn't, for instance: making a game, writing a story, making art, making an animation. So spending time there isn't helping me succeed in any of my life's ambitions/dreams.

But I am, explicitly, okay with this, because I value that community in my life that much. They're worth it. I've asked myself if I would rather succeed in my goals or spend more time in the communities I love and remain a nobody, a person who hasn't succeeded at anything with tangible permanence to it, whose only successes are contributions to communities I am a part of but explicitly not the head of. I've asked if I'd rather strike out and succeed on my own while giving up on the communities I'm a member of, or if I'd rather remain intimately a part of those communities at the cost of increasing my odds of never succeeding in my grander goals.

The two are not actually mutually exclusive, of course. Spending less time in a community doesn't mean a total severing of ties with them; being intimately a part of a community does not mean I am guaranteed to fail at my grander ambitions.

But if it ever did come push to shove a choice between the two. I think I'd take the community I feel at home at, over the shot at success.
Ideally, I get the best of both worlds, obviously. I'm intimately involved in the community, but still trying to strike out on my own. But I value the community I'm spending time in more than I value a shot at success.

I want to succeed, but if I didn't succeed and spent a life in mediocrity, obscurity, in nothingness, but remained a part of communities I'd cherish, I would be content with that. Not happy, because I want to succeed. But content. I even developed a theory that was, more or less: almost every human has dreams and ambitions of doing great things in their lives, but most give up on these dreams and ambitions and fade into obscurity without being memorable on the grander scale of things; my theory is more or less that the conclusion I reached was the conclusion they reached, too; that it's alright, that it's okay, to not become famous, to not have tangible permanence in a legacy lasting after you are gone, if you are happy with the community you've built in life. The two are not mutually exclusive, but if forced to choose between one or the other, community > fame 9 times out of 10.

It's important to not accept defeat, to not give up, but it's also important to see how strong you value things. I value the community I've become a part of more than I value success in tangible permanence. And I know getting both isn't impossible. (Heck, basically all of the mods in that community have done exactly what I aim to do. They're becoming successful writers, artists, etc., and are successful streamers, who're building communities of their own! Yet they're still a part of the community. But their own communities, while overlapping with the community I know them from, are explicitly THEIRS, not just a carbon copy clone of the original community. I want to build a community of my own, that is truly mine, unique to me, and still be a part of that community. I know it's possible because I've literally almost a dozen examples from that community demonstrating their successes. It's just something I'm struggling with.)

I apologize for the haphazard lazy throwtogether of content I put elsewhere copy-pasted to here, but I figured it'd be good to get up on here, too.

Not that anyone reads my blogs, butstill. At least in theory, my blog is more accessible than the original location.

Well, in real life, anyway.

Four months without blogging should give you an idea of where my head has been; not great.

New, at the latest, coming out day: April 26th, 2022. That's a loose estimate, but an apt one, because I've worked on things a couple times or so, and this is what I loosely mathed it out to be, approximately.

​In addition to wanting to get back into blogging, I also want to clean up some other aspects of my life. Things will not get better unless I make them better.
Short list:
-Stay more on top of blogging
-Stay more on top of my emails (need to do this)
-Stay more on top of brushing my teeth (oof this is not going well)
-Actually do work on a project during times that I have felt 'bored' rather than wasting the time.

Now is one such time. I'm not feeling league/tft right now, I'm minecrafted out for the day, I am actually staying on top of mafia stuff (aside from tracking the queue forum), so now is the perfect time.

Well, admittedly.

I've lost two hours since I started that...

...But it was a really productive two hours, as I managed to sort almost all of my stuff on my desktop.

I'm still not sure what I will work on.

I'm thinking of attempting to write in a google doc the Phyrra and Cyrus loose script for the animation (which should be here in the notes written down what I did get done before), since I still remember my loose idea for every episode. I should also be able to find the notes reminding me of each episode's name.

It'll take a little bit of time to do, but hopefully I'll make progress.

Wish me luck on my endeavors!

​I definitely need it...

But at least I haven't dropped another day, been doing work every day.
The two main things I've been working on; trying to get details done on Phyrra, and also trying multiple times to get the aesthetic of Kaze down--I thought that Kaze would be literally the easiest character in the cast to draw. He's a shade. Living shadow that lashes out strikes of air, slicing, dicing, piercing, thrashing, ripping, pulling, twisting, throwing, just, air itself in the form of a shadow.

The aesthetic I drew from could be summed up as from two sources; Kazeshini from the filler arc of Bleach, combined with a Darkness Elemental from Dragonfable.
A male, but incredibly effeminate form--very thin, pretty short, but still recognizably masculine, and yet a being who is mostly formless. White eyes and an occasional slasher smile, but no nose, no ears, no form beyond shadows that flicker like black flames. Recognizable arms and legs, with a recognizable chest, but for this to be bathed in shadows that make it not look like human skin. Anthropomorphic enough to still appear to be arms, legs, a torso, a head, but with enough obscurity to not give clearly defined edges. Where you can't tell where 'skin' begins because there is none to speak of. Where the shadows bleeding off of Kaze don't give a center of mass, because there is no center of mass.

I've tried multiple times to nail the aesthetic, but every time came up with frustrating failures. So I ended up biting the bullet and actually googled for the reference images from the two main sources of inspiration for Kaze.

And there you have it. (Yes, I did have to refer to an image of kazeshini not from the show itself, because none of the images from the show gave me the references I was looking for.)

The Darkness Elemental on the left, from Dragonfable, was one of the main aesthetics I was going for with the look. See the face, the shoulders, the chest? and the look on the arms (albeit, the arms on the darkness elemental are much much too big when it gets to the firsts)? That somewhat-transparent, wreathed in black darkness that oozes the aura of a blaze?

Now just give it the more anthropomorphic shape of kazeshini on the right, and you've got Kaze. This image shows perfectly the proportions of what I want Kaze to be--the thin, but still masculine, chest, with the approximately right proportioned arms and head, with the slasher smile and the killer eyes. (Bonus; this image has hair which looks a bit like the black flame-like aesthetic I am aiming for, at the forehead.)

It should be so easy to draw. Pencils provide the perfect medium to do it--you can nail the aesthetic of a living shadow, of flame-like wind sheathed in darkness, just by using pencil mark after pencil mark after pencil mark.

But it's still so darn hard to nail.

Still, tho.

​I'm trying!

Slow and steady, but it's something. Every day doing work, no matter how little, means every day work is being done. Small steps, little things, maybe not the best of things, maybe not as much as I could do, but better than nothing and that's something I'll take.

In this case, decided to follow through on what I said yesterday. I tried to draw Phyrra's secondary weapons yesterday without references.

Phyrra's primary weapon is a longsword--well, a longsword that is proportional to her size. That is to say, if she were to grow to an adult size, and the longsword were to scale identically to her, it would be a longsword. As in, it is proportional to her as a longsword. It is a longsword for her. For an adult, not quite sure what that'd be. I used a google reference image of a broadsword, but heck if I know what a good sword type would be for something that by is wielder would have the aesthetic of a longsword.

Her secondary weapons are a series of multiple (about 2-4) shortswords, each with no guard (which I always think of as being the hilt, in spite of the hit being what you grab the sword by), which past the first episode, she can control with a combination of telekinetic magic and wind magic. Which for an adult, would probably be long daggers. (Think like Sting and similar being Hobbit-sized swords; for the people those weapons were designed to be used by, those were daggers, not swords.)

Turns out that you can actually find some very good references in like 30 seconds of searching, 'hiltless sword' (in spite of, as I mentioning, it not being no hilt I was looking for; I was looking for blades with no guard). Apparently, the aesthetic I was looking for is common in older Viking swords? (When you think of Viking swords, you probably don't think of them as having no guard. You think of them as having the Riders of Rohan sword, like this look, more or less. Or maybe you think of them as having a longsword. But the images I found had almost zero guard, which is what I was searching for.)

So I got some good tracework images to have as a reference. Mine are probably too long proportionately, and need to thus be shortened a bit, but I got the aesthetic right, and with the aesthetic right, easier to make!

...And thus, technically speaking, not on today, but like. It was 12:45 when I did it, if it weren't for daylight savings time, it would've been on today anyway.

So I did get some more done, albeit basically nothing. (Just sketching out Phyrra's daggers. The plan here is more or less, sketch out her sword, sketch out her daggers, sketch out her gloves, sketch out her other clothes, etc., sketch out her face, then retry putting them all together.)

I was feeling really, really uninspired today so I didn't do much, but hey, I got some work done so...not doing nothing, therefore, deadline remains!

I did a second trace, and then tried to do a drawing.
I wasn't happy with it and couldn't find a way to make myself happy with it so I abandoned it half-way through, similar to one of my drawings yesterday.

So the more I have done is mostly failures.

I'm disappointed, but I shouldn't really be surprised. I've never drawn any of the characters from Phyrra and Cyrus before. I know what they look like in my mind's eye, at least mostly, but with me never having made them before, it's not going to go well immediately.

I should be doing more, but uhgg, this is workkk.

I know I need to do work on it every day, but once I've put in some work for the day and feel an overwhelming uhg feeling, kinda hard to put even more in.

So for now, just farming in minecraft. (Need to replenish on my supplies. Mostly, I'm looking to get a boatload of torches.)

I suck.

I want to do more but can't push myself to do it in spite of what I've said.

Some work done is better than no work done, butstill.

Phyrra and Cyrus will never be made at this rate.

Barring extenuating circumstances (power outages, something drastic which leaves me with no supplies and no ability to get them, vacation), every day I don't work on Phyrra and Cyrus in some way, I move the date of coming out back one day.

I did work yesterday--failed sketches of Kaze, but still work.
Today, I already have done work--a trace of the main protagonist from The Promised Neverland. (This is work because Phyrra and Cyrus are both 11-year-olds, just like the protagonists of the series, so this gives me a sense of how to draw them right.)

I'd have done more, but my work station collapsed, causing a cavalcade of errors, including my drawing pencil catapulting out to Narnia (by which, I mean, can't find it right now).

This won't stop me, but it'll mean I need to spend time searching for it--something I can and will do, but not while watching a stream. (Am multitasking. Well, was. Losing the pencil means that the only multitasking I can do is search for the pencil, which I tried and couldn't find yet.)

Trying to make excuses not to, trying to put it off.
This is, pretty obviously, not the blog about League. I can still try to make that later, though I have some slightly different thoughts there overall.

I admit, I don't know exactly where to begin with this.

Basically, this is something I've toyed around with blogging about before but never managed to form enough of a coherent thought on it and the more depressing aspects of it overwhelmed me anyway leading to my blogs being short ones where I noted I was feeling awful and couldn't blog, or something to that effect.

It does come from a bit of a morbid place; one of the things spurning on the urge for this blog was me thinking of "what if?" scenarios where I am about to die from diseases, and then more or less going, "why wait to be dieing to do that?".

I suppose I can start with this. I won't go into details to respect their privacy, but basically. My friend, who was my girlfriend for two and a half years, is dating the love of their life, and hearing about all the things their girlfriend does, it makes me realize how much of a failure I was as a girlfriend.

I definitely had the same love. My friend is never going to stop being the love of my life, painful as that is to me since I know I'll never be their girlfriend again. But what I did with the love, is where I more or less think the failure comes in--or rather. More or less. The lack of what I did, in that I didn't do anything. I never sent gifts. I never put real time and effort into figuring out a way to meet them in-person.

You might attribute that to differences in personality, of their current girlfriend just being that significantly different, but in many ways, from what I have heard, they have quite a number of similarities to me. They've done more to progress their relationship in less than two months, than I did in over two years.

On the one hand--that's amazing for them! That is awesome for them! That is really, really good, for the both of them. It is proof that the two of them were made for each other, more or less. They are really, really good for each other, they are better as a couple than I was as a couple with my friend. And because they are so good for each other, assuming that nothing catastrophic gets in the way of their relationship, I know that they will be tremendously happy together and that knowledge gives me a lot of happiness.

I do genuinely get happiness from seeing friends, especially this friend, happy. I want them, especially this friend, to be as happy as is humanly possible, and their current relationship gives them that more than I ever could, and I do genuinely think that is a good thing.

But, it does highlight my shortcomings. It does highlight all of the "what ifs", of things I could have done better, of things I could have done differently. Our relationship wouldn't have continued if I had done things better, if I had done things differently, mind you. The feelings they have are the feelings they have and the feelings they have are that their current girlfriend is the love of their life. Nothing I could've done differently would've done anything to change those feelings so they would still have ended up together regardless. (Which, again, I feel the need to reiterate--is overall a good thing! It sucks for me, but it is genuinely better for them and since it is genuinely better for them, is a good thing.)

So what I'm more or less getting at here, is. This is not regret of "if I did things differently, maybe we'd still be together".
No, this is more regret of, "seeing what their current girlfriend has done for them, it makes me realize what I missed out on", more or less.
I could have done so much better for them.
And I didn't--and as a result, I just feel like in comparison, I am a failure compared to what I could've done.

Basically, every time I hear what my friend's current girlfriend has done for them, I realize, it's something I didn't do for them when I was their girlfriend, which I could've very very very easily have done, but I didn't. I didn't even think of most of those sorts of things. I had the love, but I did almost nothing with it.

There were times where I considered doing more. But 'considered' isn't actually doing, and even those things I considered pale in comparison to what their current girlfriend actually has done.

And overall.

I just feel like.

Seeing the current relationship makes me realize why I suck.
I feel like a coward. Too scared to do anything. I feel like a failure. Not as a girlfriend, mind you, but more as a person, with the lens of my time as my friend's girlfriend just as a way of exposing the underlying fault I have as a person, if that makes sense.

To put it another way--I don't think I was actually a failure of a girlfriend and I doubt my friend would think I was, either. But I do think I was, and still am, a bit of a failure as a person, and it is realizing that I didn't really succeed as a girlfriend which helped expose this. (Again, to reiterate, nothing would've stopped the breakup; even if I had succeeded as a girlfriend, feelings be feelings be what they are. But that doesn't stop me from lamenting the lost opportunities that have passed me by, things that we could've done while girlfriends which we can't do as friends. I could've done so, so much more than what I did, but I didn't. And that's a failure on my part.)

Like I said.
This blog is really, really hard to compose properly.
I'm still not sure my thoughts, feelings, are being properly conveyed. I'm worried that they aren't. That the wrong message is being sent.
I feel like the part about thinking their current relationship is nothing but positive, is clear enough; I feel like the part about me knowing nothing would've stopped them from entering into their current relationship, is maybe clear enough, and as per above, that this is a good thing.

But I'm not sure I'm really getting my point across.
That I feel like looking back.
If I were less incompetent as a person, then on both ends, there would be more good memories from the relationship. More for them, more for me. (There's plenty of good memories, mind you. But I mean, so so much more than what I gave. To reiterate, their current girlfriend has given them higher-quality memories in two months, than I did in two years. And what I mean is, if I had been a better person, if I had thought to do more, then we'd have had much more, I guess is what I mean. I still feel like this is poor wording to get at the concept.)

I identified the main problem, at least I hope so. It's that I was way, way, way too passive. Just as a person. And I am still way, way, way too passive. I've more or less, just been...waiting and waiting, rather than controlling, planning. I feel like I am pathetic, that I am a coward, held back by my fears (no matter how justified or not they may be), always held back by an endless number of excuses, usually procrastinating endlessly.

Those things weren't specific to my relationship, but realizing what a better girlfriend I'd have been if not for those things is what I am getting at, basically. That's what I mean. By seeing the current relationship my friend has, it revealed to me that as a person, I am passive, a coward, too timid, too afraid, making excuses (I made so many trying to avoid this blog!), always endlessly procrastinating.

Lamenting the "what if I had those qualities" of the past for what that'd have meant, doesn't do me much good though. (It is what made me think of this blog in the first place, in tandem with the bucket list, but it is not productive to dwell on.)

But what it does give, more or less.
Is motivation.
It is reflecting on that which lets me see. "Bree, you didn't have those good qualities back then, and you have all these regrets now as a consequence...so why not make the changes now, so you don't have them in the future?", more or less.

Realizing a fault I had in the past which made life less rewarding than it could've been if not for the fault, basically. Serves as motivation to move forward in life trying to fix the fault, so that in the future I won't have regrets due to the fault. That with the fault fixed, I have no further regrets from the fault. (The regrets from, in hindsight, realizing I had the fault and what would've been better if not for it, will never go away, but having fixed it helps a lot.)

This fault will be very, very, very hard for me to fix.
It won't be an overnight improvement.
I will have to fight every. single. step. of the way to put it down--and worsening it is that the fault will fight back at every single stage.

Do you think having fears combined with excuses combined with procrastination, is a combination which lends itself to trying to correct itself? No, it's a combo which tries to reinforce itself, and every time I will be trying to push those traits away from myself, they will push hard in resistance.

I am always afraid. I am always a procrastinator. I always make excuses. I am so good, such a natural, at them. And every time in the past that I have tried to fight back, they have managed to reinforce one another as to keep me passive, keep me stable, keep me unchanging, keep me immobile, keep me rooted down, grounded, stuck, in place, not moving forward for stupid fear of being catapulted back.

In fear of losing it all, in fear of losing my life, I have lost (out on) things I easily could have not lost (out on) if I was less afraid, if I didn't put them off, if I didn't talk my way into taking the path of least resistance. Which is precisely why this is so. damn. hard. It is the path of least resistance to be passive. It is the path of least resistance to do nothing. It is the path of least resistance to do as little as is humanly possible and rely on others.

I am not happy with that.
Mind you, nothing really makes me happy right now, depression does that to you, but I am dissatisfied with the idea that I am not going to have any progress in my life.

I'm not going to proclaim something along the lines of. "That changes now!". Or "that won't happen anymore". Of overnight success, of overnight suddenly becoming somehow, mystically, magically, on track.

Like--I don't even know what I'm going to do yet, specifically, to get out of this funk. I have some very loose ideas (see below) which are progress, if I work on them, if I progress on them, but like. I don't have a plan here. I kinda wish I had one because I think it'd help me a lot, but one of the excuses I made for not trying this before was precisely that, not having a plan.

So screw a plan, I'm still going to try.

It's not much of an immediate change--but an eventual one? I am setting an absolute, hardest of hard, absolute LATEST deadline of January 23rd, 2023, for coming out as a girl publicly in real life. Everyone online has known for over six years. I don't want it to be over ten. More than that, I don't want to reach thirty years old and still be trapped in the living hell of my current life.

And to reiterate this--that's the latest point. Latest. As in. "No matter what. No excuses. Nothing. No amount of fear. No amount of backing out. No amount of cowardice, second thoughts, hesitation. No matter how awkward it will be, and it will be awkward, come out, period, end of discussion." That'll be very very tough to do, but I refuse to let myself not do it.

Preferably, I move that deadline up. Within a year, for instance. But this is a date which I felt was a good starter, because it gives plenty of time for my fatass of a dad's poor health habits to inevitably kill himself (after which I could immediately come out), while ensuring I don't wait 20 years for something to happen.

I am willing to wait two years to be myself. I feel like my dad's health is poor enough that it is very realistic that he could die in that time.
I am not willing to wait twenty years to be myself--while I feel like my dad's health is poor enough that he won't live that long, it is still a considerable chance that he could, especially if he (shock! gasp!) actually cleaned his habits up. (He won't, but if he did...)

So I am setting myself a decent deadline, so that I can actually hold myself accountable. I do have this more or less planned out. Day before, shopping for girl clothing, next day, wake up early to make the announcements publicly online on places where people in real life can see it, go to the Y and talk to them there, while there text my mom, come home with her, and face my family.

It is a plan which I can adjust closer to the time I do it.
I can do it at any time, too.

The main reason I'm not doing it sooner, I suppose.
Is.
I guess.
I want to exploit the safety for a bit longer.

I don't want to be passive with that safety.
But in a sense--I want to practice, so to speak, with that eventual outcome, by pushing myself now in other ways.

Granted, said practice could just be me failing, me not doing anything, in which case. Maybe I move the deadline up.

In fact, that actually sounds like a neat idea. I don't have any clue how to implement this. But a rule of more or less, "The more I fail to be less-passive now, the sooner I force the lack of passiveness". As in, the more I fail at my current endeavor, the more I push up the date of the coming out.

The less use I get out of my current life, the more I push towards changing my life.
Right now, I am not getting anything out of my current life--so if not for this being a change I'm making literally just today, I'd be pushing the deadline to be much much sooner.

Right now, my plan is to commit to trying to make something, screw the excuses.
I want to commit to making something.
Truly commit to it.
At work, I threw around two ideas. One being a webcomic as a safer/easier option.

The other was Phyrra and Cyrus.
I have made oh so MANY excuses to put off working on my pet project there. And some of them are probably valid. I don't have a wide enough voice range to voice every character so I would need voice actors, and I probably cannot animate things on my own (though I will be looking into that).

But a lot of the excuses, I just.
I'm sick of not doing what I want to do, because I have the thought of those things causing failure. I know it won't come out perfectly, but I want it to come out. I know that I could do this better with planning--but past a certain point, excessive planning which I can't complete, just...doesn't do me any good.

I have put it off, saying I need to plan more.
I have put it off, fearing that it'd fail.

I don't know how, exactly, I will manage to make it so that I don't.
But I am not going to succeed if I don't try and right now I'm not trying. Talk, no action.

I do have a very, very loose idea of maybe a way.
I have tools readily available at my disposal to help me.
I have had many many many times where I am watching streams and gone, "I want to watch this, but I want to do something else at the same time" where I was pseudo-bored--still invested in the stream and wanting to watch it, but wanting to do something in addition to the stream, and I did nothing or might as well have.

There's stupidly obvious things I could do.
I have boatloads of art supplies.
I have an endless supply of most things I would need to try, and if I am watching a stream I can open a tab to look at any artistic reference I want. I can draw.

Granted, yes. I have made a very strongly-standing excuse which I don't have a workaround on, not really anyway, of.
I can't scan my drawings into my desktop.
And even if I could--I don't have an art program beyond paint on the desktop.

But the thing is.
I don't need to put the art on the computer.

I just need to make the art, actually make it, stop talking about it, and do it, and then see where it takes me.

Do art while doing the stream. Concept art. Or storyboarding. Just. Working on it.

I have the tools. I have the skills, and if not, the ability to learn the skills. Like, one thing that I don't have is a video editing program or whatever would be needed to make the final version of Phyrra and Cyrus and even if I did I don't know how to use one--but these are things that a quick google search would fix.

I can literally solve one of those in less than thirty seconds, and the other can be found in the same amount of time (albeit, presumably, as a youtube video or something, taking time to watch, and practice, and such).

I made the excuse of not knowing it and it being something I won't be able to do.
Ignoring that it is something I could learn to do very easily.
And there's no excuse not to.
I've been lazy.
Not doing it when I could have.

I don't know what order I will be doing things.
I don't have a schedule, not a plan, not yet.
But I am getting started.

Because I feel like if I don't start trying to make something of my life.
There won't be anything in my life.
I was okay with not doing anything in my life when I felt like I could live a life of a nobody and be content--but I'm not happy with that anymore.
So why am I still doing what I was doing, when I was in that mindspace? Why am I still doing nothing, when doing nothing was a byproduct of a mindset that I am no longer in? Doing nothing was something I was fine with when doing nothing still allowed me to be happy, but right now I am not happy and doing nothing does nothing to make me happy.

I am sure I will invent a myriad of excuses in the future, so future self, screw you for being a self-sabotaging prick.
But right now.
I don't have those excuses.
So I am going to put in the work that I can.

...In fact I was planning on it already but I realized I didn't make the blog entry yet.
Yesterday in my mega-blog post one thing which I neglected to mention--Phyrra and Cyrus continues to be something I work on. A while back, don't think I mentioned it, but I added something to Bard's character that made perfect sense and made a particular storyline feel more nuanced and natural (albeit having one necessary adjustment earlier in the story to accommodate for it).

Very, very recently, I did similar for Clara, adding a significant section to her previously-rather-underdeveloped (considering her status as a childhood friend of Phyrra and Cyrus) backstory which helps increase her role in the story ever so slightly, fleshing out an already-planned moment.

So Phyrra and Cyrus is not a project I have forgotten about.

I also did today lay the groundwork of the simplified expanded Rise of Rome scenario, too, but that blog can wait.