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Officially Declaring Hiatus Over
3 years ago
I'm making this post to say that I am fully back. I intend on continuing to improve upon my work to push out more fun stuff for you lovable weirdos! Also because I wanna see more of my own kinky stuff XD. Furthermore, I have plans! Specifically, I wanna make a comic. More below on that, but first it should give a little backstory on what the hell has been going on.
7 years ago my life fell apart. I had been dealing with poor relationships and a divorce, when my job at Microsoft was ripped away from me. Hilariously, I happened to be out for surgery to repair a torn ACL in my right foot, got an invitation that was critical to attend, and sat in a meeting of 500+ employees as well we're unceremoniously laid off.
Getting a job right away was impossible, I was still recovering from my surgery, and was going to need months of physical therapy. Eventually I was well enough to start searching, but something has happened to the industry: for some reason all the big companies decided they were going to get rid of QA and make the engineers do testing. Added to that the huge wave of engineers seeking work, and I found myself unable to land anything.
More bad things happened, my car was totaled because I lent it to someone, and even thought my insurance SHOULD have covered it, because it involved a fucking deer, they got away with not helping. I was forced to take a job at best buy, which was ok as far as jobs went, but fucking paid nothing close to what was needed to live in the bay area and I was needing to walk about a mile to get there. Then the store move, turning that into two miles of walking each day. I was exhausted and eventually was one too many days late ( by less then 15 min mind you) so ofc I was fired. And this began my spiral of depression.
Tried to find another job, but ended up having to move back to Colorado into my parents house. I was ashamed, defeated, and completely hopeless. Over the last few years I've struggled with suicide, crappy customer service jobs, and for many months at a time being completely and utterly penniless.
And then around March this year something finally clicked, or broke, or whatever. I found myself able to do things, finally started drawing again, and getting motivated. Then I was hired at the place I work now, back as a QA eng and actually useful once again. Nothing really changed either, so I have no idea how I just... Woke up.
I still have depression, I had it long before since childhood and I'll have it till the day I die. It's a nasty fucking spiral of feelings beyond the worst emotions, a hollow void I don't have to look into.
So way, can't claim to have figured anything out, but I'm done letting it control me. My goals are simple now: do decent at my job, work on my art, and be social with friends. And of course, work on my comic.
A little about my plan: a good 20years ago now, when kingdom hearts one and two were in their hayday, me and my best friend hatched a story. This fan comic, spanning at least 9 unique and well thought out worlds over 3 acts, would tell the story of a group of characters battling against a force literally eating the world's from the inside, one beyond dark and light. We still have most of our notes and planning. Some of it is in my gallery, hidden in plane view. And I want to make it real. I'm older, much more cynical and with much higher standards, and I still think this story is amazing, and I want to share it with people.
So expect to see more of me in the future, I don't plan on going anywhere this time. Somehow my art has managed to improve somewhat despite me not picking up the tablet and I'm going to take it as a blessing. My coauthor and I have been discussing the project, and I hope to be able to share some concepts and stuff with you soon.
Currently, I'm in my second week of my new job, which is why I've slowed down a bit again. This will change as I get more confident in the role and have more free time. I've been working on some pictures on and off throughout the time, though I ended up getting sick the last few days. Never convenient timing but things will eventually calm down. Also kinda fell into a rabbit hole of rp ing haha, but I count that as a success breaking out of my social isolationism. Soon more art, friends, soon!
7 years ago my life fell apart. I had been dealing with poor relationships and a divorce, when my job at Microsoft was ripped away from me. Hilariously, I happened to be out for surgery to repair a torn ACL in my right foot, got an invitation that was critical to attend, and sat in a meeting of 500+ employees as well we're unceremoniously laid off.
Getting a job right away was impossible, I was still recovering from my surgery, and was going to need months of physical therapy. Eventually I was well enough to start searching, but something has happened to the industry: for some reason all the big companies decided they were going to get rid of QA and make the engineers do testing. Added to that the huge wave of engineers seeking work, and I found myself unable to land anything.
More bad things happened, my car was totaled because I lent it to someone, and even thought my insurance SHOULD have covered it, because it involved a fucking deer, they got away with not helping. I was forced to take a job at best buy, which was ok as far as jobs went, but fucking paid nothing close to what was needed to live in the bay area and I was needing to walk about a mile to get there. Then the store move, turning that into two miles of walking each day. I was exhausted and eventually was one too many days late ( by less then 15 min mind you) so ofc I was fired. And this began my spiral of depression.
Tried to find another job, but ended up having to move back to Colorado into my parents house. I was ashamed, defeated, and completely hopeless. Over the last few years I've struggled with suicide, crappy customer service jobs, and for many months at a time being completely and utterly penniless.
And then around March this year something finally clicked, or broke, or whatever. I found myself able to do things, finally started drawing again, and getting motivated. Then I was hired at the place I work now, back as a QA eng and actually useful once again. Nothing really changed either, so I have no idea how I just... Woke up.
I still have depression, I had it long before since childhood and I'll have it till the day I die. It's a nasty fucking spiral of feelings beyond the worst emotions, a hollow void I don't have to look into.
So way, can't claim to have figured anything out, but I'm done letting it control me. My goals are simple now: do decent at my job, work on my art, and be social with friends. And of course, work on my comic.
A little about my plan: a good 20years ago now, when kingdom hearts one and two were in their hayday, me and my best friend hatched a story. This fan comic, spanning at least 9 unique and well thought out worlds over 3 acts, would tell the story of a group of characters battling against a force literally eating the world's from the inside, one beyond dark and light. We still have most of our notes and planning. Some of it is in my gallery, hidden in plane view. And I want to make it real. I'm older, much more cynical and with much higher standards, and I still think this story is amazing, and I want to share it with people.
So expect to see more of me in the future, I don't plan on going anywhere this time. Somehow my art has managed to improve somewhat despite me not picking up the tablet and I'm going to take it as a blessing. My coauthor and I have been discussing the project, and I hope to be able to share some concepts and stuff with you soon.
Currently, I'm in my second week of my new job, which is why I've slowed down a bit again. This will change as I get more confident in the role and have more free time. I've been working on some pictures on and off throughout the time, though I ended up getting sick the last few days. Never convenient timing but things will eventually calm down. Also kinda fell into a rabbit hole of rp ing haha, but I count that as a success breaking out of my social isolationism. Soon more art, friends, soon!
Pretty excited to hear you're going to start a comic! I was also a big fan of KH when the games first came out (have since lost track of the story and how many games since then! But the first two were good!). So really looking forward to what you produce =)!
I hope things work out for you and it's good to see you around FA again.
And I'm super hopeful for the story. Just today for the last... jeeze 5 hours I've been chatting with my best friend and coauthor, gathering our memories and organizing stuff. Turns out, he kept almost all of our notebooks from back then! We started organizing things into a timeline, character profiles, world designs and such, and I really can't believe everything we came up with! And were not even a 1/3 done with going over notes~
I really hope to share it with you in the near future, once we figure out the first couple chapters!
Take care Sef! It's always wonderful to hear from you~
OH, and since you ARE such and awesome person, here's a sneak peek, the sound track to the first book, and one the guiding lights for how we want the Book 1 to feel: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?.....5ZIPvPEREBfXBV
Really cool that your friend kept nearly all the notebooks! I'll be keeping an eye out for sure.
Thanks for reading the comics we'd been putting out. It's cool to hear they're motivating for someone. I'm always happy to see more projects being produced by people in the community and yours sounds like it's going to be good! Hope it's a fun and an exciting process for you guys!