#this stuff is proving to be a bit challenging in the burnout days | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

honeybeanboo · 3 years

Text

genshin boys with eating disorders : pt. 1

DISCLAIMER: okay first off! i have an eating disorder and i wondered what my favorite characters would be like in my situation! i am not pro-ed whether it be BED, ednos or anorexia or others. i'm using this for comfort and please do not use this post to further your own disorder!

CHARACTERS:

albedo ✔

bennet ✔

chongyun ✔

diluc ✔

kazuha

kaeya

razor

childe

venti

xiao

xingqiu

zhongli

MAJOR TW //

eating disorders, mental health challenges, bodyshaming, dysphoria, self harm, fatphobia

┅ albedo ┅

❂ restrictive eating disorder

❂ started + time had: before the traveller arrived, he's had it for a year or so

❂ who knows: sucrose suspects although doesn't hasn't told anyone yet

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥

the nature of albedo's ed is forgetfulness and recording

he works in his camp all day, at his desk, doing experiments which in itself takes up a ton of his time! what started the behaviors was simply overworking himself and to the point where he was almost getting sick [ :( albedo ] the alchemist would forget to eat, multiple meals a day he would skip, chemicals in the vicinity making it unpleasant to eat, so he would opt for nothing at all

albedo doesn't recognize what he's doing as an eating disorder, he pushes the thoughts away when they remind him of what he's doing and that it's wrong,,, over time, he would end up having a small breakfast and wouldn't eat until dinner, subconsciously slipping into a routine and writing down each meal he would have, taking care to never fill more than half his note-page

chemicals in his lab constantly are bubbling and changing, so even when he decides to eat, they interrupt him and he constantly leaves unfinished food on his desk for sucrose to find later and wonder why he always leaves it there

- has always been secluded but avoids mondstat more and more, sending sucrose into town for errands and stays in dragonspine to do experiments -- this leads to never getting new clothes and in turn, him working to stay in the clothes he has

- denies everything if mentioned, seems confused at the mention

- very protective of his notebook

THIS MAKES ME SAD ALBEDO SOBSD

┅ bennett ┅

❂ restrictive eating disorder

❂ started + time had: around the time he became friends with razor and met fischl - around 6 months

❂ who knows: fischl definitely knows but chooses not to say anything due to how bad she is with talking about feelings :(

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥

the nature of bennett's ed is dysphoria and responsibility

as we all know, bennett has always had horribly bad luck and although he doesn't know it, a lot of people admire him for his perseverance, albeit avoiding his company

he almost always finds a way to overcome the overwhelming hopelessness and guilt of always relying on other people for help and bringing them down with him, but as he enters his 15th year, it gets too much :(

when he met razor, and befriended him, the boy was something of a miracle, he stuck around, he helped bennett and taught him survival tactics :D he was bennett's best friend but bennett felt so incredibly guilty about relying on him for protection, friendship, and good food, he began to turn it away and began to disappear without warning to neither fischl or razor

he would go out adventuring, trying to bring back things to cook for lisa, for razor, for fischl, for kaeya, for diona, he felt like a burden and gave back as much as he could to make up for the consequences his company brought

≡ trans bennet headcanon: he's always been told he's small and thin by his dads, even before transition, so after he began to do more physical activity and bulked up a bit, it weighed on his mind

- dysphoria plays a lot into bennett's ed, not wanting to fill out the curves he always hated

- after a particularly bad batch of eggs he had cooked up, he threw up in the cat's tail's bathroom and that in turn started a small purge cycle before someone in town noticed and took his to the doctor which scared him enough to make him stop

bennett i will just sob and cry on the floor

┅ chongyun ┅

❂ restrictive / purging eating disorder [overeating in beginning]

❂ started + time had: started during his intense studying period for his exorcisms (can't remember the specific method he mentions) - around 2 years

❂ who knows: no one, although an older woman that works at Wanmin Restaurant is worried about him

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥

the nature of chongyun's ed is control and work

chongyun has always been unstable, whether it be physically or emotionally, due to his build-up of ying energy, so it's no surprise when he bubbles over during the crunch of studying. his teacher pushed him harder and harder each lesson and the things he had to do to keep his stirrings in check weren't the healthiest, one of which was eating specific foods in excess

he bubbled over one day and had a full on mental breakdown, but with his family not near the place he took lessons, he turned to the thing he thought was making his ying energy multiply, not the workload but instead the food

the exorcist's disorder waned off when he met xingqiu, it being the happiest time in his life, a friend to talk to about practically everything, but then when his exorcisms began to only cause distress to the people he thought they would help, his energy became too much and he began purging, which helped enough for him to continue [ :( i'm so sad ] the popsicles help to calm his stomach after a purge and he came up with a low cal recipe to eat tons of

- the calories didn't matter much to him, but xingqiu was very into numbers as well as books, so it began to weigh on him

- he passed off any bad mood as just tiredness from his work

- xingqiu, my man i love him but he's completely oblivious although slightly worried about "burnout" for his friend

┅ diluc ┅

❂ restrictive eating disorder

❂ started + time had: around when him and kaeya were fighting, like really fighting and he hurt him badly - 3 years

❂ who knows: a lot of people suspect, but either dismiss it, or are too scared to confront him due to his intimidating nature T-T

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥

the nature of diluc's ed is discipline and control

diluc tends to be very critical of himself and very hard on himself, which you may not know just from talking to him, or even from being a friend of his, as he tends to keep a lot of stuff to himself - if he makes a mistake, he takes all measures to make sure it doesn't happen again

when he and kaeya were fighting and things got violent, he burnt him quite badly right on his eye which is the reason why the captain wears his eyepatch - this scarred the brothers' relationship badly and diluc quite took literally took those scars unto himself,,, he would let himself be burned easily by his elemental powers, constantly feeling the immense guilt of their tension :[ he healed easily, but would do it again and again

although kaeya forgives him, diluc continues to remind himself every so often that he is the reason for problems, taking the responsibility to fix them, even though they may not even be his! he acts alone and aloofly even when the other person doesn't blame him in the slightest [ TT ]

diluc doesn't drink, he doesn't want to lose control, he never wants to loose control, which is why people almost never see him eat

he eats in small portions and toughs it out, disciplining himself, trying to prove himself worthy to no one but himself

- people have offhandedly mentioned that the bartender never seems to eat or drink - "hardly seems human sometimes"

- when he was caught by the traveler being the darknight hero, this worsened this "discipline" for himself, the man not thinking himself worthy if he was defeated so easily

≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡

and that's part 1! i'll make a part two soon because this is really fun and i really enjoy making these- i will include a more wide range of eds in the second part which will be kazuha, kaeya, razor, and childe

bennett's really made me sad dang

anyway bye!

#cw disordered eating #genshin #genshinimpact #genshin imagines #eating disoder mention #eatindisorder #genshin boys #albedo #bennet #chongyun #diluc

42 notes · View notes

autismus-obscurus · 7 years

Text

AutistAgent Dev undercover

Hey guys! I know my blog has been dead for a while. My internship in a psychiatric clinic started and I have to study for upcoming exams so I don’t really have time to blog much. But I’d like to write a little summary of the first two weeks to recuperate a bit and get my thoughts into order. To not spam your dash, the rest is under the cut.

SO, my internship is in a psychiatric clinic. To be more precise it’s part of a big institution that has everything from open and closed stations, to living spaces for elderly mentally ill people and heavily disabled peeps whodon’t have anyone else. I work at an outpost, the day clinic, meaning people come there from Monday to Friday from 8am to 4am. They’re not stable enough for a normal psychiatrist to work with, but also not so bad off they’d need to stay several weeks at the clinic. The “regular” time in the day clinic is six weeks, but it will be extended if necessary. The main buildings are on the other side of town, which is around 700m by foot, and we walk back and forth once, most of the time at least twice a day. I have never been so fit in my life. (Jk, but it’s been a while since I worked out regularly.) I think what most people don’t realize is how normal everyone looks. Even on the stations it doesn’t really look like a “mental hospital”. Sure, I haven’t seen the closed stations yet and my next intership might be a bit harder. But over here, those are all quite nice people who hit hard times. We have a lot of them with chronic pain, with depression and anxiety. At least half of them are sick because of their environment being shitty to them. Of the fifteen patients, five are women who got burnout because their partners manipulated them into doing everything for them. Trying to change their approach and not let themselves get pushed around is a big challenge and super draining. We have some that hit a low because of trauma, because of a loved one dying. It’s harsh, and it’s sad. The first few days were horrid. I slept really badly for a few days and was constantly tired. Add to that the stress of a new environment and lot of people around, I was a mess. On the third day I stared crying after a group because I picked up the emptions (mostly sadness) so intensely. Hyperempathy can be a bitch. I still get close to tears now and then, mostly when I’m extremely stressed because then my emotion regulation shuts down. The first few days I fled to the toilet very often to calm down. My stim pad and music helped a lot. In the second week I didn’t need it as often, but I still stim during groups, mostly by stroking the fabric of the chair I’m sitting on or wiggling my fingers. I’ve also noticed I rub my hands and arms a lot while speaking. A year ago I would have tried to suppress it, but screw that, I need to stim to survive this.

The people are really nice. The psychiatrist who is responsible for my internship is a cool dude who likes D&D and wear bow ties every day. I’ve started the mission to find out how many different bow ties he has. The number as of now is 8 and counting. None of them know autism very well so I doubt they’ll pick up on it, even though I don’t hide my stimming a whole lot. I still make eye contact, even though it’s as always pretty unstable. I have trouble focusing on a point, anywhere in the face, and all the years of training make it hard to not make eye contact. Conversations with the patients go reasonably well. I guess I really learned how to do smalltalk by now. (Pro tip: It’s always the same. I can’t tell how many times I’ve explained where I study, what I study, in which semester I am, and where I’m from and what route I take by car. Seriously.) I often accompany patients to therapies. The other therapists are super nice. A lot of the therapies benefit me as well. I like to think I wouldn’t need it unless I hit super hard times (I couldn’t either way, because then the insurance would act up and employers don’t like people with problems), but now that I’m here it’s really helpful since i get to see both sides, that of the patients and the reasoning behind it. I started drawing again, and finally got around to use pastels for the first time, for example. I bought my own pack now and will start to practise portraits so I have something to sign should a band I like give autographs on a festival. The relaxation sessions are pretty chill too, after I gave up on meditation for lack of time. I even got around to work out again. (And caught a cold, woo.) We did a small trip to a nearby city in the Netherlands, which was hella cold and also entailed me not finding shit. At least I saw a bunch of cute dogs. Surprisingly, the conversation once went to gender stuff and the toilet situation. Surprise, not actually surprised, there’s people (women, in this case) who don’t want only unisex toilets. Why? Because they don’t want any other gender, with the reasioning, hold on this is gold, the men always freak out as well when a woman comes into their bathrooms. I was mad at first but if I think about it now, it’s hilarious. The bow tie psychiatrist cleared things up, but apparently she gets very fired up about the topic every time. I didn’t start a fight like I would have in a more comfortable environment, but it wasn’t necessary, bow tie guy has our back. In the evenings I unfortunately have to study, which only recently sorta worked because I’m not totally dead when I come home. I get to study my target language a lot, since when I’m bored I usually do some vocab and I occasionally write about my day in my target language.

Now for the bad bits. What sways me the most is that I have no clear routines. In the morning we make breakfast, but since I don’t know where everything is and how many people we are and what everyone eats it’s next to impossible for me to help. In general, I sit around a lot between therapies and meetings and when the patients are eating. It makes me feel terrible. Both nurses are basically unreadable to me and have a very, uh, powerful way of going around. I suspect they think I’m hella annoying, but I think that of everyone so who knows. Also, I managed to prove I can’t make coffee or screw a coffee flask shut. Hella embarrassing, to say the least.

Some therapies are hella uncomfortable for me, and it’s a bit problematic since I can’t step out (social anxiety, also I’m not supposed to be the one with problems.) One patient is in the clinic because of panic attacks, but he’s also hella sensitive to sound, just like me, and hates being touched. In one session we were supposed to do a game where we clap hands with each other and I was honestly really relieved when he said he couldn’t do it. Another therapy session was about touching hands with each other while we walked past, and look each other in the eyes and it was honestly the most uncomfortable thing I’ve done in quite a while. The excercise is about knowing your own boundaries and i guess it makes sense (but I’m not sure what that’s good for when you can’t step out because you’re not a patient.) There’s also a billard table in the clinic as well and one patient just thrashes the balls around every time. It’s like he lets all his aggression out on the queue. You bet I flinch every time. Chill the fuck out, mate (especially since he says he’s not aggressive. Sure bro.) Food is a smaller issue. I got stamps for the cafeteria, but some stuff is just... nope. So far I’ve managed to avoid stuff I couldn’t deal with, or ate just enough to convince people I was full. Some food there is actually really good though and the clinic is literally in the same building as a small supermarket and a bakery, so it’s chill.

Overall, I’m surprised how well I deal. I know what I have to avoid now, so it’s really chill. I might actually go into therapy after all. There’s some icky stuff, but once I’m not an intern anymore I can do my own routine and organize stuff.

#dev rambles #actually autistic #psychology

7 notes · View notes

jam2289 · 5 years

Text

Explorations in Business - Part 2 of ?

When I was first talking to Abbey and John about doing something crazy like starting a business based on meditation coaching I think I needed some permission, some social validation. That was a start. When I talked to Bryan I connected with someone who started with my skepticism and was then able to see a good path forward. Now, I have to start defining what that path is and how to walk it.

There is such a ridiculous amount of work to do. It's a bit overwhelming. That's why John and Abbey recommended that I go with something that I'm truly interested in in that first meeting I had with them, because otherwise you just burnout anyway.

I bought MeditateWithJeff.com a couple of days ago. Actually, I bought it in 2017 when I first had success with managing my chronic pain with meditation. I didn't do anything with it, I didn't even have a plan, so I let it expire. Then, a couple of days ago I bought it again through domains.google.com. I looked at a few different options and decided that I'm going to build the site on WordPress. I looked at a few options for hosting and decided on SiteGround.com, which was a good decision. I'll get back to the website in a few minutes. First I want to go over some of the things that I've been thinking about for the last couple of weeks.

The first thing I need to do is start getting some feedback from people. That's what my site is all about right now. Product/market fit is the first step. Many people think of it as two things: market research and product development. But, really the two need to go together. If you make something that no one wants then you're wasting your time. If you find something that people want that you can't or don't want to make, then you're also wasting time.

After product/market fit the main focus will transition to distribution, i.e. sales, marketing, and advertising. That means that I need to be doing product/market fit and thinking about distribution.

Over the last couple of weeks I've talked to a few people about this idea. I have a problem, it's weird to explain. "Yeah man, you just feel into your pain, and then, like, the feeling of pain changes man, because, like, your brain is rewired man." It sounds like some hippie stuff. I'm going to have to get better at presenting it and I think that will prove a challenge because it is a weird concept. It's like trying to describe a sensation to someone that hasn't experienced it.

I could focus on the opioid crisis, although I'm not sure that I will. I think that a good way to present part of this is that there are two basic ways to treat pain: you can either move away from it or toward it. That's true for all things. Moving away from pain, such as ignoring it, often works. If the pain is small and/or if the pain will only be there until the injury heals. But, if the pain is a lot and it's going to stick around because you can't really fix the underlying cause, then ignoring it just doesn't work.

If moving away from the pain won't work then maybe moving towards it will. By voluntarily confronting the pain your brain rewires itself to experience it in a new way, it restructures your perception. You still feel the pain, but as a signal rather than something that takes over your awareness.

I think that I might try to use the idea of the phenomenal field to try to explain it, but I might not. I have to think about that more. Maybe a good metaphor would work, although I'm not sure about what that would be at this point. I was thinking about personifying pain too, turning it into a personality. And, actually, as your neuron chains become coated in a thick myelin sheath they can't help but fire, and that is a lot like having a little personality operating on its own in your head. That's how addiction works, and that applies to pain too. That's why brains can get wired to provide phantom pain signals sometimes.

Obviously I'll use my idea of Jeff's Meditation Matrix to describe the four different types of meditation, and how they are useful for different things. (My dad recently told me that my grandfather considered private prayer a form of meditation. It's interesting that I came to the same conclusion so many years later.)

I'll use my story about getting sick in Africa and then having complications with the spinal deformities as my credibility until I start to get other testimonials that I can use. The anecdotal evidence is the best evidence in this situation.

The ancient idea of the shaman usually includes that they are a wounded healer. I just think that's interesting.

Pain is a signal. I've written about that in my philosophy article "The Most Important Question in Philosophy". I think that's good to emphasize. Pain is good, useful, and important. Most of the time it helps us. It is a signal about damage and threat. Things we need to pay attention to and handle. Usually, the worse the pain, the more urgent the problem. It's good to keep those things in mind too rather than demonizing pain.

I also don't want to forget to emphasize that you should always be working on solving the underlying problems too.

Number of attempts is a measurable metric. I'm not sure if that will be useful, but it might. Accumulated time might as well. I don't use these for my own meditation, but my personality metrics are outside of the norm.

I've been looking into some scientific research. I didn't need to before because I was just trying to find what worked for me. Now, people might want to hear someone other than me say it works. And, the research is there to some extent. The medical community seems to be taking ancient meditation techniques from thousands of years ago and just renaming them when they study them. For instance, mindfulness interoceptive exposure task, or MIET. (Exposure therapy is the idea of voluntarily confronting problems, so it's a good analogy.)

I think a good way to present my timeline is to say that after I had the answer in practice, then I went looking for why.

I need to learn to present a structured story around this. It's a lot of stuff over a number of years, so that's not an easy thing to simplify down.

It can go something like: the misadventure in Africa, long treatment in the US, found neck deformities, wasn't a stranger to pain before with shoulder injuries and concussions, my meditation story about already having trained for a year with an Ishaya monk and that didn't work for pain, then the ten day silent Vipassana retreat, my making of Jeff's Meditation Matrix, and then seeking a career change and going to FounderCo. Something like that is a good structure.

To a certain extent I did work on reinventing the wheel, but that's how wheels get better.

I'll focus on individuals first. Once I have some successes then I'll try to expand with a corporate program and insurance deals.

I'm thinking I might need to form a private health organization to protect myself legally. I think that's basically a contract. I'm debating how to structure pricing, but I need to make enough of a margin to be able to afford to advertise, or the business will just stall out right away.

I'm thinking 500 dollars for the first month. That includes the first month membership, the lifetime private health membership, and three private one-on-one onboarding sessions. I believe it will be more effective if I have private sessions at the beginning to help people get started. That takes a lot of time, but I think it might improve the success rate a lot.

The failure rate might be high. I'm asking people in pain to pay attention to their pain. At first this is worse, much worse. But, on the other side it's better. Many people will decide that they don't want to go over the mountain to get to the other side. I'll have to iterate the process to improve my numbers there.

I've been thinking of having membership be 100 dollars per month. I'll have daily sessions set up that are group conferences where you can join in and go through a session with me. For the monthly fee you can join as many or as few of them as you want. My father pointed out that there are businesses advertising that they don't have a monthly fee. So maybe people are tired of that model. Logistically it's just so much easier on my end though, as opposed to charging for whatever sessions they join.

I need to start thinking about the marketing message too. I think the before after bridge is a good one, i.e. "Here's what it was like before my experience, here's what it is like after, this is what you can do to cross the same bridge." Problem, promise, proof is another good format. Challenge, solution, invitation sounds better, I think. I have to address the major objections: not enough time, not enough money, and it won't work for me. We'll see how well I can do with those.

Another good copywriting formula is: who it's for, problem, why the current thing they're doing won't solve it, how I discovered what does work, and how to get the same solution. I think I like that idea best.

I have to plan how I'm going to run the calls. The group sessions will especially need a good structure that people can be used to. I'm thinking of something like this: welcome new and old, a tiny version of my story, why we do this, what works, what doesn't, how we do this, awareness games, meditation, good experience during session, non-satisfactory experience during session, good experience during session, questions and answers. I think that structure will work well. Probably a similar structure for the individual sessions.

I need a good statement of what I do. Over the last week or so I've told a few people that I'm doing this now, that felt odd. I've been thinking that something like this would be best: I help people with chronic pain change their perception of pain through meditation. Something like that.

I'm going to run into statistics questions and I can handle those with the case versus class ideas. Who matters? The individual case is what matters. And even more than that, the individual phenomenal field.

I help people in chronic pain learn to perceive that pain in a new and more manageable way through meditation. That might be better.

I just built the website today. It's designed to capture information. Then I posted it in Klippel Feil Syndrome, pain, and meditation groups on Facebook. I don't think it really made sense to do the meditation groups, you have to focus on the people with the problem that you're solving. I've had some of the posts deleted for advertising in groups, I've had some likes, I've had some people start responding to my questions, which is awesome! Bonnie even said she hopes that I'm able to move forward with the project soon. Encouragement is always good.

Since I have the domain name through Google and I'm hosting my site through SiteGround I had to forward the DNS. It took half the day for the website to become functional, which isn't that bad. I wanted to put together something quick so I put up a tiny bit of my story, some pictures, I shot a video and put it on Youtube and linked it to the site, then I created some survey forms for people to answer questions. I checked to make sure the forms were working correctly before I started sharing the site.

This is I what I wrote to begin the page.

- - - - - - -

In December of 2015 I had a misadventure in Africa. Six months later I had finally killed the bacteria, but I still wasn't getting better. A friend of mine that's a chiropractor took x-rays that revealed that I have had four major spinal deformities my entire life. It was a time-bomb just waiting to go off. The C1 vertebrae in my neck had slid into my brainstem causing damage that effected everything from my memory to my heart rate. It also caused severe pain throughout my nervous system. Through many trials and errors over a few years I've found many answers that work for improving my health. One of the most important ones is a way to rewire your brain so that you experience chronic pain as the simple signal it is rather than an all-encompassing, life crushing interference that it all too often becomes. I'm working on learning how to spread this skill by starting a company that coaches people through this process.

- - - - - - -

The pictures included one from in Africa, a few adventures before Africa, and a few after.

The video is 23 minutes long, which is a bit longer than I intended, although I didn't really have a plan when I shot it.

I let people write answers to these questions.

- - - - - - -

I will have some specific questions and then some areas where you can say anything that you think I've missed. You'll have to put something in each box. If it doesn't really apply or you've already answered it, you can just say that or put n/a.

Good feedback will help me to start this right.

How long have you been in pain?

What have you tried to manage the pain?

Have you found anything that has helped?

Have you tried meditation before?

Have you tried meditation for pain?

What type of meditation have you tried?

Has meditation helped you with anything?

Would you be willing to try meditation?

Does this seem reasonable? Three private sessions one-on-one to get you started, daily group sessions that you can join. The first month would be 500 dollars. Give me other ideas if you have them.

After the first month what sounds like the best option? One-hundred dollars per month and you can join as many group sessions as you want. Only twenty dollars per month, but it's five dollars for every session that you join. Or, something else. Let me know.

Last, but certainly not least, anything else. I need to know what you're interested in, why you're interested, how committed you are, etc. That's what I was trying to do with the previous questions, but add anything else that will be helpful here.

- - - - - - -

After I got everything done the darn pictures wouldn't load. I worked on that for entirely too long. Eventually I called SiteGround and now I'm glad I chose them, because they were really easy to contact and they were helpful. I had launched both Weebly and WordPress at the same time. I just wanted Weebly for this part to be fast and easy. I have the cheap version of Weebly so I had to use three survey forms instead of using one, but that's a small thing. SiteGround support just put the WordPress page to the side for now and everything was working in about 2 minutes on the phone with them.

Then, I included a contact form at the bottom for people to put their email addresses into so that I can inform them when I launch. Hopefully some people engage with it.

Here's what I wrote to share it on Facebook.

- - - - - - -

In 2015 I took a trip to Africa. It didn't go well. That lead to me finding out I have spinal deformities. A vertebrae in my neck slid into my brainstem. Over the last few years I've explored and experimented with options. One of the things that I've had success with is changing the way I experience pain. Now, I'm working on making a program so that I can help others do the same. I'm looking for feedback right now. Take a look, I'll put the link as a comment. It's MeditateWithJeff(dot)com

- - - - - - -

That's a start at least. I have a FounderCo meeting tomorrow evening. I'm glad that this time I'll be able to say that I've made some progress.

________________________________________________

You can find more of what I'm doing at http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

0 notes

horrorinreallife · 6 years

Text

The Boo Bus

That’s the Into the Wild bus. It was a book!

Ok, so today I got a real whopper of a tale. Part horror, part love story, part unprovable murder. There’s a tiny bit of government stuff but it’s fairly subtle so it won’t be too overbearing. Also, again, it’s just a wacky story that makes no sense! That’s the beauty of creative writing.

Once upon a time there lived an altruistic conspiracy theorist entrepreneur who actually didn’t live in Nevada (I said it was a whopper of a tale) who wanted to teach people a lesson. He had worked exceptionally hard to build his gum ball machine empire business from the ground up (not only in sweat equity but also taking as much money as he possibly could from his wife’s rich and ridiculous family). However, his life lesson plan he felt compelled to administer to people kind of changed on any given day (we can all relate! 😫) so it wasn’t like *the most* effective.

Anyway, he really wanted people to work for a living and understand the challenges involved with that AND he wanted people to understand the plight of an artist AND understand the extra challenges minorities in America dealt with versus the more privledged upper class. Those different concepts COULD be exceptionally contradictory, but again, all very important points of view.

Anyway, to top it all off his wife had worked in the social services sector for decades, dealing with the criminally insane in a secret governmental rehab unit, which had essentially robbed her of her right mind. At least that was the conclusion that the altruistic conspiracy theorist had come to. Although not wrong, as if anyone reading this has dealt with an extremely unstable person for any length of time, it can and will uproot your life if you aren’t aware of... you know what, nevermind.

Anyway, the tragic truth was that she had a disease of mental decline similar to Alzheimer’s but it definitely wasn’t because he had conjured up the cure! And at this moment in time, there is no cure for Alzheimer’s. He knew his wife’s life was in his hands and he knew what was best.

What was best involved involving just such a staggering amount of people into a joint delusion for her benefit that it was very hard to believe, again, I stated that this was a real WHOPPER of a tale. Anyway, the treatment he had conjured up for his wife was constant and ever-increasing mental stimulation. It didn’t particularly matter if the mental exercises made any sense, it was just important to keep them constant and keep them increasing in difficulty. This was exceptionally loving and romantic, kind of (?????), so obviously everyone was on board. The problem was that the altruistic conspiracy theorist entrepreneur did not realize the extreme risk and damage he was putting on himself (if you’ll take a moment to Google ‘caretaker burnout’, it is a very real a serious thing) and others who were just kind of simply left in the wake of this master plan.

One particularly brutal casualty (keep reading, I’ll come back to this briefly which is poor story-structure!) from the altruistic conspiracy theorist entrepreneur’s involved a fun-loving clown about town who had a *bit* of a drinking problem. You see, the altruistic conspiracy theorist entrepreneur, above all else (aside from his wife) wanted the kids in his town to:

A. Turn down thier goddamn music

B. Stop driving so fucking fast, cars were a liability and gas-waster goddamnit!!!

C. Stop drinking so much and fucking each other all the time

Well, kids are going to be kids so he was really up against a challenge. He also had two children from two different previous marriages who were artists who were quite talented. He knew if they couldn’t get it together and fend for themselves he could just use thier work and sell it once they “were no longer among us.”

Anyway, he figured out that by using a special algorithm within InstaSnapMyCam (the hottest, most widely-used app on everyone’s phone), he could essentially class the stupid drunk kids into groups and then manipulate their daily chatter, they’d fall into easily-controllable groups, until he could figure out what to do about them. This was all based on some marketing bullshit, I won’t bore you with all that, this is just a story!

Anyway, unfortunately one of the most beloved of the town kids followed the algorithm a little too literally one night in a drunken haze and had a most unfortunate accident. Although “there was no way to prove it” everyone kind of had a hunch.

Well, unfortunately the U.S. Department of Your Worst Nightmare had a few strangely-resistant to bullshit nonsense robots introduced into the population at random so eventually the whole sham would come to a crashing halt but it was going to take quite awhile because everyone at the U.S. Department of Your Worst Nightmare actually knew how to party AND understood beurocracy like you would not believe. They also understood actual patience and empathy for others which is a challenging skill, especially the more difficult the people you are tasked with... you know what, nevermind again!

Anyway, I guess this isn’t really horror, maybe more science fiction? I just am not sure what genre. #writerswrite #writewhatyouknowordontknowwhoevenknows

0 notes

luckycatadventuresnews-blog · 6 years

Text

A (not so) brief “history”...

Back in April 2016, near the end of my first year of studying Game Development at George Brown College, I had a few random game ideas pop into my head that I could work on as personal projects. I had recently abandoned a pipe dream project to make my original character, Super Tamanegi popular in her own game (I will revisit the franchise I want to build around this character at some point). I was discouraged at the time because I was told my Super Tamanegi idea was “nothing special”, but I wanted to do something in relation to making games.

I was tossing the idea in my mind for a few days before I mentioned the idea to the individual that called Super Tamanegi “nothing special”. That person actually liked the idea for Lucky Cat Adventures! Yay!

My original idea was to have different cats all in the style of maneki neko statues. I wanted the art to have every cat pose like a maneki neko in their dormant phase, and be an actual cat while in battle. This game is heavily influenced by Pokémon. I wanted the maneki neko version of the cats be the equivalent of a Pokémon being in their ball. Upon further reflection, and some constructive questioning on Deviantart, I realized that it may not have been practical or believable even in a game setting to haul a pile of maneki neko statues around and summon them into battle. Also, some of my ideas for cats simply would not translate well into maneki neko statues.

So I decided to scrap the idea of every single cat being a maneki neko when dormant. There will be another way to carry your cats around when you battle!

I had my groove on to brainstorm cat ideas over the summer of 2016, and I started a world map concept in the autumn of 2016. I only had one piece of artwork posted on my Deviantart page for the longest time, of a female protagonist character. The only thing I won’t scrap from this initial character idea is the colour scheme of her clothing. She is still on my Deviantart gallery if you wish to dig around my gallery folders and find her.

I dropped out of my second year of Game Development in October 2016. I had the flu for the couple weeks leading up to my reading week, and in an attempt to catch up on course content I watched a lot of YouTube tutorials for the programs we were learning in class. I ended up ahead in a couple classes with knowledge in a few programs, and then realized I can learn what I want at my own pace, for free (about a $9,000 discount)! I worked on my idea for a world map for a bit, posted the work in progress of the map online in December 2016, and then abandoned Lucky Cat Adventures for a 2017 New Year’s Resolution to make a 2D side scrolling beat-em-up game.

The New Year’s Resolution lasted about three months. I got a pile of art done for the side scroller and then wanted to start programming in Unity. I intimidated myself out of working in Unity as I struggled using it at school, so I shelved my beat-em-up idea (for now). It is a more well-received game idea than Lucky Cat Adventures, so I will get back at it once I am finished with this game.

I spent the rest of 2017 working on art assets for Lucky Cat Adventures on and off. I finished my world map concept (minus placement of buildings) at the cusp of 2017/2018 - over a year later than I started it. I made it my goal (not my “resolution”) to dedicate my time in 2018 to Lucky Cat Adventures, and have a playable game ready for December 2018. Although I am not working as consistently on the game as I had hoped, this is still the most consistent I have been in regards to working on a long term project. I do struggle to work on long term projects, so I want this game to be a milestone for me to prove that I have an attention span haha.

I was working pretty steadily on either art assets or non-art-related planning up until the later half of February 2018, when my primary laptop died on me, holding about two weeks’ worth of not-yet-backed-up work hostage. Just prior to the laptop death I had the flu (first flu season getting a flu shot and I still got the flu), and was experiencing some social media/social life burnout which was affecting my motivation quite a bit. Once the laptop died I temporarily lost all hope in finishing the game. As the weeks progressed I was getting more productive, so two weeks’ worth of work to be stuck in a dead computer was quite a bit of work to lose.

I have since had a friend help me recover those lost files, and I am adjusting to using my gaming laptop to work on Lucky Cat Adventures. This week is the first week I have been motivated to get back into social media updates and regular planning and asset creation for the game. As it stands right now, I have all the time, motivation, and functional technology I need to get back into the swing of things...

BUT...

I do have a major financial dilemma at the moment. I have lots of debt. It’s becoming a struggle to keep up with monthly payments on this debt. I need to sort that out sooner rather than later, and that might mean taking time away from working on this game (I might need a second “real” job for the time being). It’s my only setback. I don’t have enough of this game completed to start crowdfunding, so I need to sort out my own finances for the sake of my sanity. If I have slower days at my current job, I can work on stuff pertaining to this game (it’s a bit more challenging to lug my gaming laptop around than it was my more compact and now dead laptop, but still do-able). I’m hoping if I find a second job I can also work on the game during downtime. Also, I really want to budget for a 13-inch laptop again just for ease of transportation.

So that’s basically everything relating to Lucky Cat Adventures from the start up until now. It’s been a bumpy and inconsistent start, but I’m still determined to finish this game by the end of this year!

#game development #solo game development #adulting #goals #2018 goals #lucky cat adventures #personal project

0 notes