21/4/2019: Resuming Progress in Earnest (Patreon)

Hey again everyone!

Wanted to give you all an update on things, now that I'm over a week clear of the stuff and starting to feel like what I assumed my old self to have felt like! 

I'll talk more about that in a sec but first off I wanted to let you all know I've resumed work now and for the moment at least it's been going absolutely swimmingly! I've even been working on the adult animations directly again for the Pharmacy Worker and actually enjoying it! Not to mention, and I don't want to freak myself out by laying out promises of progress juuust yet, but my capacity to work on things like little details and have them pop into my head as I'm animating has already felt... natural again, I guess!

I also wanted to thank you guys again for the actual increase in support I've gotten since I said to everyone maybe save your money until I'm producing stuff like I should be, as well as those of you guys who started calling me out on the fact that I was really starting to sink into what I'd always feared would happen; I listen to a lot of Youtube while animating and I'm sure I don't need to give any examples to you guys of content creators that fall to various forms of hubris and never seem to be able to get out of it, and I really think it was the combination of knowing people were kind and supportive enough to stick with me through the bad, and knowing that this was still reality and I was beginning to seriously and consistently fall short of the mark for what I could be doing, that gave me the impetus to make such a change; seriously, I would have had absolutely zero reason to try and crawl out of the mire I'd waded into if I wasn't doing this, or if I'd gone the whole 'well you should be grateful I'm even doing this' bollocks route, I know I'd be in quite a scary state currently and... well, just makes me want to return the favor and make this the best I can, for all our sakes!

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Which has actually been one of the most... spring-like aspects of this whole deal, is actually feeling the desire and want to do things return to me again; things like those little details in the animations were why I started making sprites in the first place, because I find it incredibly fun to put these things in and I think it looks better for it, and now that my head and body aren't reeling from the lack of those goddamn pills or sat in this weird unconcentrated inertia from the daily schedule of them, I realise that back when stuff at home here was very dark and I wasn't dealing with it at all well, having these to keep me relatively calm was really helpful and good for my motivation; but over time it just because a pillar in my mind that 'if you don't take these pills you will drop the ball, you will have no motivation anymore; these are the only things that allow you to function as a human being' from, well, really not having much of a clue about myself for the longest time xD

But I'm sitting here now, quarter to 10 in the morning on what looks to be a bright blue sunny day, feeling relaxed and in tune with things and weirdly enough not even that anxious anymore; there's a calm to knowing I'm stone sobre  in any and all senses that as someone who dovetailed from drinking to drugs to anxiety meds since they were like 14 is... weird xD One of my dad's slogans, which may give you a bit of insight, was 'why would I not drink in the evening? If I don't drink I'll wake up and that's the best I'll feel all day.' which was honestly my fear and my belief for the longest time too; I was just like dad, he said drugs were a good way for people like us to deal with stuff, so I could never even comprehend a situation where I was completely sobre because sobre = worst  xD

Now that's obviously not the smartest of things I know, but I was mostly raised by dad in my earlier years and he always had these little pears of wisdom, and they were the best he could come up with on his own so I can hardly blame him, but of course you grow up believing these things and then your dad essentially tops himself with alcohol and painkillers because he can't not be depressed, and there's... just nothing good to drag out of that situation really, you know? I certainly couldn't for the longest time, I was very angry and confused that the person I thought had worked out this secret to life had just fallen apart like that at the hands of their own solutions, and then left me and mum here to deal with the fallout of it. And for a while I just turned to what I knew, which was these anxiety meds, under the belief of 'well doctor says it's fine and I just want to feel better'.

But now that's over and, much as it's been the most difficult thing to admit and accomplish, my dad was wrong about a lot of things; those decisions ultimately ended up costing him his life and a fair portion of mine and mum's, and I knew that so long as I continued to say to myself 'well yeah his drugs were a problem but my drugs are perfectly fine because, reasons' I was just fooling myself into perpetuating the mistakes that led to his demise, for the same reasons he did. That's one of the things when you grow up with someone that thinks their depression is a form of wisdom and won't be argued with; he didn't even bother to listen when something he thought humans couldn't do like exist happily while sobre was brought up, and as a consequence you just go along with it as a kid coz, who else was I going to listen to? 

At the end of the day his mistakes won't bring me down too though, and I've gotten enough distance between me and and that time in my life that I feel I can start to focus on brighter things, much as it's still difficult from time to time I hope this will be the bookend to a part of my life where I needed to work some stuff out before I could truly start living, you know?

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Alright so TL;DR more self reflection and such, learning how to human again, things have been getting better and better and for the first time in... well over a decade now, I'm just sitting here with no substances other than coffee in me, and I'm feeling better than I've felt in quite some time! Almost insulting in itself really eh? 

Right, well I'd actually like to carry on with some animating now so I'm going to pop on with that; to everyone that's sent me a message I'll be working my way through now the withdrawl-anxiety's letting off a bit, and I'm looking forward to being able to share progress soon!

-S