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it's weird. i'm alive for the first time in my 2 decades of existing. there's so much to do, where do i start?
my body is a weird science experiment. it's not really working at the moment! i keep almost collapsing when i leave the house. i don't think i'll be able to get around without support for much longer! how am i going to afford a mobility aid.....?
anyway, i was taking two different brands of my adhd medication, but i had to drop one of them because it was giving me insane side effects. my eyesight was rapidly degrading. fuck me, man, i need that!! it went back to normal after i stopped taking the evil form of my medication, but dude for a while that was terrifying. holy shit rubifen sucks! it was giving me heart palpitations too! what do they put in that shit?? is it designed to kill you??
but yeah, after dropping the evil rubifen, starting adhd medication continues to be the best thing that's ever happened to me. weirdly enough it's like, almost flawlessly counteracting the fibromyalgia fatigue. i used to barely be able to walk to my kitchen and back without collapsing from sheer overexertion. now...? well, it still takes me days to recover from the effort of doing the *grueling manual labour* of carrying a load of laundry. yeah my arms... my arms feel like they'll fall off... but i'm also leaving the house to get to appointments on foot basically every other day now. some days, i don't even feel fatigued at all! .....until i have to use a bit of upper body strength for.. literally anything.
my doctor also started me on beta blockers which are making me drowsy at the moment........ oh and also one of the pain medications i got prescribed gave me a stomach ulcer that i'm recovering from?!? yeah it's a new thing every fucking day at this point.
big picture wise, i'm coming to terms with the fact that i'm never going to be able to function on the level people expect from me. i've been disabled for much, much longer than i realised, and i spent too much time beating the shit out of myself for not measuring up instead of paying attention to where my limits are. nobody gave a shit! nobody told me "actually yeah the fact that you've never been able to stay upright without collapsing is a pretty serious impairment lol maybe you can't bootstrap your way out of that." nobody said that! they told me to try harder instead!
(try harder! i'm either not trying enough or i'm trying too hard! fuck these people! if i fall and hit my head i'll make sure to do it on their doorstep so they have to clean up the splatter.)
that's my health update done! what else..?
i'm back to work chipping away at my game project. i'm doing the smart thing and writing out a proper game design doc instead of wasting my time programming random features without even knowing how they're supposed to work. like inking without a sketch, sometimes that really works! sometimes it's suffocating and you have to take a step back. now that i have a functioning adult brain, i can write such a document without getting lost and confused every 2 seconds. while i'm at it, i'm drawing lopsided concept sketches in my notebook. they look like a child's scribbles and that's the point! art is art, and art is perfect, and life is art. do you get me?
i've been hooked on the videos of rhyme "shitty kickflips" kickflip since one of her second channel videos randomly appeared on my home page that was otherwise filled with fucking unwatchable garbage. this is really the only kind of stuff worth watching. she's right. the point of art is to just be sincere as fast as possible. speedrun sincerity. run in circles around your body until the heat strips away everything but your soul. the goal is to create a series of explosions each more devastating than the last and try to never stop.
(side note: since getting medicated i haven't been able to stomach youtube videos so i mostly stopped watching them and my life is better for it. i used to want to throw up from anxiety about death if i sat in silence for a few seconds. now i associate silence with pure focus. methylphenidate, everyone.)
it makes sense! it all makes sense. you don't work yourself to burnout, you adapt to make the creative process the thing that refuels you. if you start avoiding making art because you hate doing it, you break out of the box you've backed yourself into. you don't do things the traditional way, because you know it will kill you! if art isn't fun, it's because you're sick with expectations. evolve or die. do it as many times as you need. don't forget who you are either! this is how you survive.
being an artist is only worth it if you're self-absorbed to your core. furthermore, being a game developer is only worth it if you're a self-absorbed artist. so that's that! i feel like i've only gotten by this long because i've been asking myself how i can make my process more self-absorbed. i've been a lifelong dissociator so this is how i brute force my way into existence, i suppose. i was born 2 years ago as a 19 year old game developer. everything before that was caked in fog so thick it may as well have been a dream. it took me a really long time to figure out the ideal i should be aiming for, the outline of what makes me alive. it kept shifting, but i think i got it now?! i could write a thesis statement on my purpose. i've reached toddlerhood. i feel like i can finally breathe.
it's still hitting me. that i kind of know who i am. that's the starting line, right? i didn't think i'd get that far.