Alright so I feel like posting something positive, and it's good to take a bit of time to reflect a bit, so... yeah, sort of a progress report.
A whole lot going on, over these last few months. Changes, improvements. New stuff. And maybe finally taking a stab at beating some old stuff.
To start with, I've been a whole lot more open about... everything. And less masking. Less hiding.
I set this up, a bit ago:
An idea that came from my brother, actually. He's got a bunch of stuff like this hung up in his classroom (he's a teacher, and he always supports his students in all sorts of ways), and the idea was sort of like the opposite of hiding. Just sort of make it as bloody obvious as possible. And kinda get used to it, stop feeling quite as awkward about it. Also I just like the colors. The rest of the house is so darned bland, this room is my bastion of color in general. I mean really, what is it with modern home decor trends and having absolutely every bloody wall be "off-white"? I'll never understand that.
*ahem* Anyway, much of the family knows now, though my mom & stepfather still dont. I'm less awkward about it, maybe, but paranoia, decades old, isnt beaten quite that easily. Maybe though, it's starting to show some cracks.
I realize also that there's other things this approach could be applied to. It's occurred to me somewhat recently that even my closest family doesnt really know me as well as they think they do. I've had a tendency towards shame or embarrassment over my interests/hobbies/other things. So many things I keep to myself. Even with art... I only show a fraction of the things I make to anyone. Other things I draw tend towards being too creepy or bizarre, so I keep those hidden away. That's just with art, this applies to a lot of things. Like, heck, I've been writing game reviews for years now, and twice have been approached by review sites looking to hire writers (I declined both times, sounded like too much effort). Nobody around me knows anything about any of that. I'm not even sure why I keep things to myself sometimes. But maybe it's time to put a stop to that.
And with the burden of constantly hiding starting to finally lift, the depression is slowly lifting too. I'm more active, doing more things. Art is progressing (awkwardly), as is other stuff:
It's a laminated Python reference sheet, there's a few of these. The progress on this is slow, quite slow. But there IS progress. There's tutorials and such I've been going through, and I found sites online that are all about coding challenges and such to help you learn (which includes some for beginners like me, not just stuff for advanced users). I also have, finally, a couple of concrete game ideas I want to shoot for... nothing big, these would be small projects, reminiscent of the funky short horror games often found on Itch that I'm so darned fond of. Python isnt really for that, I'm going to be using game engines for that. It's difficult though, one way or another. But ya know what... I try to just remember, I did this before. It was with a small team, not alone, but I had a lot of control, and despite thinking I couldnt do it at first during that project, I *did* do it. If I can do that, I can manage this, despite being alone on it this time. On a side note, the game I worked on, recently hit consoles too, which just came out of nowhere. That's the fulfillment of a childhood dream, one I never thought could ever happen.
The issue of course is that programming is kinda hard without math, that dreaded subject. I'd avoided it for decades... my math skills are nearly nonexistent. Ask me to do addition/subtraction, I can do those, sure, though very inefficiently. Multiplication, very slowly and with many errors. Best not to give me multi-digit numbers. Division will get you a blank stare, I dont know how to do that. Anything past that and I'll throw a chair at you.
But I had a realization recently. Not so much about math itself, but about the nature of learning. I wondered: what if my hatred of the subject isnt REALLY a hatred of the subject? But moreso, it might be a sort of corruption of it. Caused by school, of course. School always REALLY wanted to drill this stuff in, every year, it was the one class type that never relented. And they tried to do it with a lot of braindead lectures and homework which was based on the braindead lectures. All with zero attempts to actually get students INTERESTED in any way. But a million ways to make it stupid and irritating.
Maybe, it was never math itself that was the issue. But instead, the learning method being the absolute opposite of how I actually freaking learn stuff. I mean, really, lecture me enough in a bad format with a WAY too bloated length (what took school 2 hours to teach can often be entirely found on freaking Youtube in a mere 10 minutes), and... yeah, it'll kill any subject for me.
So I did something I told myself I'd never, ever do:
I ordered these a couple of days ago... they're due to arrive today. Never thought I'd do something like that. The idea is that I'll do a bit each day, at my own pace. I got a notebook here, and I've got fountain pens ready. Which is another thing I gotta do, neither pen is working quite right, so that means some fixing is in order. I got the tools to do it and various ink bottles. Just gotta do it. I've been meaning to do this for awhile now, get these working and start really using them for stuff. Didnt buy the blasted things... and all the equipment that goes with them (turns out fountain pens are a whole big thing) just to have it sit there. Heck maybe I'll buy another one, there's a lot of that whole hobby to explore. That could be interesting. Some people like, REALLY get into that.
Also would fit stuff I already do. With art, I've posted stuff like characters I've drawn or paintings of plants or whatnot but my actual specialty is lettering of all sorts. I've got books on that and everything. Well-used books. Primarily I use brush pens for that (which are not actually pens at all, more like a weird paintbrush marker), but the fountain pens would do well too. So that's something to work on. The whole thing is really quite the rabbit hole. Didja know there's entire books that are just about fonts? There's a ton of those. Some talk about design elements that go into it, others are references for use when you want to actually use one in your work (aka, showing you the type of strokes and such needed to get it onto paper, which is a lot more complicated than it sounds).
It's kinda funny, really. That actually was another "school almost ruined it" kind of thing. I dont know if they do this in school these days, but back when I was in gradeschool and early junior high (or middle school, to some of you) they really, REALLY wanted us to learn to write cursive. And again, they made it absurdly annoying. Hated it, refused to use it, so instead I scribbled "writing" onto the paper like an inbred orangutan, even I cant read my "traditional" writing (so of course teachers couldnt really read it either, which created obvious problems at the time). And now here I am, decades later, and what I specialize in is basically a super elaborate, drastically more complicated thing that looks a whole lot like cursive but takes 5 times longer to get onto paper. And which I needed a whole book and tons of practice to learn. Imagine that.
Aside from all that, my health in general is doing better. Depression lifting means that, well, I can actually CARE more, which I really hadnt before. I'll not go into detail on this one, but... yeah, it's better.
Last but not least, I gotta show you this:
This thing was an idea from my therapist. Sort of a calming sensory kinda hobby thing.
Anyway, that's how things have been going. It aint at all easy, there's been plenty of challenges too, but... mostly, it's all in a positive direction. And there's always more stuff yet to learn. I just need to keep at it.
And now that's enough typing. My dog is staring at me. He demands, I obey.
A whole lot going on, over these last few months. Changes, improvements. New stuff. And maybe finally taking a stab at beating some old stuff.
To start with, I've been a whole lot more open about... everything. And less masking. Less hiding.
I set this up, a bit ago:
An idea that came from my brother, actually. He's got a bunch of stuff like this hung up in his classroom (he's a teacher, and he always supports his students in all sorts of ways), and the idea was sort of like the opposite of hiding. Just sort of make it as bloody obvious as possible. And kinda get used to it, stop feeling quite as awkward about it. Also I just like the colors. The rest of the house is so darned bland, this room is my bastion of color in general. I mean really, what is it with modern home decor trends and having absolutely every bloody wall be "off-white"? I'll never understand that.
*ahem* Anyway, much of the family knows now, though my mom & stepfather still dont. I'm less awkward about it, maybe, but paranoia, decades old, isnt beaten quite that easily. Maybe though, it's starting to show some cracks.
I realize also that there's other things this approach could be applied to. It's occurred to me somewhat recently that even my closest family doesnt really know me as well as they think they do. I've had a tendency towards shame or embarrassment over my interests/hobbies/other things. So many things I keep to myself. Even with art... I only show a fraction of the things I make to anyone. Other things I draw tend towards being too creepy or bizarre, so I keep those hidden away. That's just with art, this applies to a lot of things. Like, heck, I've been writing game reviews for years now, and twice have been approached by review sites looking to hire writers (I declined both times, sounded like too much effort). Nobody around me knows anything about any of that. I'm not even sure why I keep things to myself sometimes. But maybe it's time to put a stop to that.
And with the burden of constantly hiding starting to finally lift, the depression is slowly lifting too. I'm more active, doing more things. Art is progressing (awkwardly), as is other stuff:
It's a laminated Python reference sheet, there's a few of these. The progress on this is slow, quite slow. But there IS progress. There's tutorials and such I've been going through, and I found sites online that are all about coding challenges and such to help you learn (which includes some for beginners like me, not just stuff for advanced users). I also have, finally, a couple of concrete game ideas I want to shoot for... nothing big, these would be small projects, reminiscent of the funky short horror games often found on Itch that I'm so darned fond of. Python isnt really for that, I'm going to be using game engines for that. It's difficult though, one way or another. But ya know what... I try to just remember, I did this before. It was with a small team, not alone, but I had a lot of control, and despite thinking I couldnt do it at first during that project, I *did* do it. If I can do that, I can manage this, despite being alone on it this time. On a side note, the game I worked on, recently hit consoles too, which just came out of nowhere. That's the fulfillment of a childhood dream, one I never thought could ever happen.
The issue of course is that programming is kinda hard without math, that dreaded subject. I'd avoided it for decades... my math skills are nearly nonexistent. Ask me to do addition/subtraction, I can do those, sure, though very inefficiently. Multiplication, very slowly and with many errors. Best not to give me multi-digit numbers. Division will get you a blank stare, I dont know how to do that. Anything past that and I'll throw a chair at you.
But I had a realization recently. Not so much about math itself, but about the nature of learning. I wondered: what if my hatred of the subject isnt REALLY a hatred of the subject? But moreso, it might be a sort of corruption of it. Caused by school, of course. School always REALLY wanted to drill this stuff in, every year, it was the one class type that never relented. And they tried to do it with a lot of braindead lectures and homework which was based on the braindead lectures. All with zero attempts to actually get students INTERESTED in any way. But a million ways to make it stupid and irritating.
Maybe, it was never math itself that was the issue. But instead, the learning method being the absolute opposite of how I actually freaking learn stuff. I mean, really, lecture me enough in a bad format with a WAY too bloated length (what took school 2 hours to teach can often be entirely found on freaking Youtube in a mere 10 minutes), and... yeah, it'll kill any subject for me.
So I did something I told myself I'd never, ever do:
I ordered these a couple of days ago... they're due to arrive today. Never thought I'd do something like that. The idea is that I'll do a bit each day, at my own pace. I got a notebook here, and I've got fountain pens ready. Which is another thing I gotta do, neither pen is working quite right, so that means some fixing is in order. I got the tools to do it and various ink bottles. Just gotta do it. I've been meaning to do this for awhile now, get these working and start really using them for stuff. Didnt buy the blasted things... and all the equipment that goes with them (turns out fountain pens are a whole big thing) just to have it sit there. Heck maybe I'll buy another one, there's a lot of that whole hobby to explore. That could be interesting. Some people like, REALLY get into that.
Also would fit stuff I already do. With art, I've posted stuff like characters I've drawn or paintings of plants or whatnot but my actual specialty is lettering of all sorts. I've got books on that and everything. Well-used books. Primarily I use brush pens for that (which are not actually pens at all, more like a weird paintbrush marker), but the fountain pens would do well too. So that's something to work on. The whole thing is really quite the rabbit hole. Didja know there's entire books that are just about fonts? There's a ton of those. Some talk about design elements that go into it, others are references for use when you want to actually use one in your work (aka, showing you the type of strokes and such needed to get it onto paper, which is a lot more complicated than it sounds).
It's kinda funny, really. That actually was another "school almost ruined it" kind of thing. I dont know if they do this in school these days, but back when I was in gradeschool and early junior high (or middle school, to some of you) they really, REALLY wanted us to learn to write cursive. And again, they made it absurdly annoying. Hated it, refused to use it, so instead I scribbled "writing" onto the paper like an inbred orangutan, even I cant read my "traditional" writing (so of course teachers couldnt really read it either, which created obvious problems at the time). And now here I am, decades later, and what I specialize in is basically a super elaborate, drastically more complicated thing that looks a whole lot like cursive but takes 5 times longer to get onto paper. And which I needed a whole book and tons of practice to learn. Imagine that.
Aside from all that, my health in general is doing better. Depression lifting means that, well, I can actually CARE more, which I really hadnt before. I'll not go into detail on this one, but... yeah, it's better.
Last but not least, I gotta show you this:
This thing was an idea from my therapist. Sort of a calming sensory kinda hobby thing.
Anyway, that's how things have been going. It aint at all easy, there's been plenty of challenges too, but... mostly, it's all in a positive direction. And there's always more stuff yet to learn. I just need to keep at it.
And now that's enough typing. My dog is staring at me. He demands, I obey.
