I'm (Almost) Back! (Patreon)

My dear beloved Patreon supporters. How are you? I'm good. Actually, I'm great! Last night I went to a cinema and watched a movie. This is actually incredible for me. It had been 12 months since I last did that...

If you are up to date with the saga of the last few months you'll know I was in pretty bad shape. For the first four months of this year I had my eyes more or less entirely closed, and was so sensitive to sound that a leaf blower across the street could bring me to tears. Even the sound of my own voice would stress me out. Only 5 weeks ago I was still in this state. What changed was that I was finally able to get to see a neurologist and get a new diagnosis. I didn't have head trauma. The symptoms were real enough to confuse a neurologically trained optician, but they were all caused by anxiety. I'm now on meds and will be seeing a psychiatrist in July for an ADHD diagnosis (I suspect being untreated into adulthood may have contributed to my symptoms of audio-visual sensitivity becoming that bad.)

For more details on my discovery and everything that happened check out this thread on twitter. 

Through May I've been recovering, getting outside and enjoying the autumn colors (I'm in the southern hemisphere)...

And I've also been doing a lot of cooking. Yesterday I even made my own cultured butter to use on pancakes and popcorn.

Watching Guardians of the Galaxy 3 last night with sound blasting and fast paced visuals was a bit of a test. Slight eye discomfort towards the end and a few scenes that felt slightly too loud for me, but I'd call that a raging success. The home made butter on home made popcorn was also fantastic (I smuggled it in ;-)

So today I went out and purchased a new monitor, and here I am, typing on a computer screen for the first time since November. Wow.

So what's next? 

I don't think I'll be back to using a computer "full time" for a week or two. Maybe it will take all of June. We shall see. My past experience was that computer screens generate the most strain compared to TV, projection, or phones. But then again, last year I was still dealing with a visual system strained from too much anxiety. I'm doing so much better now that I suspect its mostly just a matter of desensitization through exposure. My new monitor has a nice high refresh rate too, which I hope will be less annoying.

To begin with though, I'll be spending June doing a lot of Innkeep design documentation work. While I was sitting around with my eyes shut for months I was at least able to occupy my mind thinking in more detail about the games narrative arc, setting, characters, and some final design decisions. I'm really happy with how it turned out. Actually I'm VERY happy. The world, story and characters are feeling very fleshed out and interesting, and I'm looking forward to sharing more about them soon.

Thank you so much for your patient support over this past year I've been on hiatus. 

Get ready for awesome Innkeep dev update goodness.

Peace,

Daniel