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Closing out an Era, from my Eyes.
5 years ago
I feel like this deserves its own journal, not only cause it's shaping up to be 5 pages as I write this but I don't want to put it in with all that other stuff from before. It's turning into almost a mini biography! XD Maybe I will start making a habit of writing personal journals again from time to time, and this'll kick that off. That said, this might get a little too personal. If you're still reading by the end, I appreciate it.
But yeah, lots of people doing this kind of thing, and mine is a bit late to the party, but I'm gonna put my own spin on it. Looking back on the last decade... I do want to kind of just personally sum up how it has felt to me. But to spoil how this journal is going to end... thank you.
(Also keep in mind the details of this are all still a bit mushy in my head, I went through a lot of my older uploads to see if dates or ideas matched up with the recollection of when they happened in my head. A lot does and I tried my best, but I probably still messed a few things up over time. It's only inevitable over the course of nearly 13+ years. ^^)
The decade for me didn't actually start in 2010. It started in march 2007. That was the year I lost my dad. You might notice I've said that about anytime someone or something close to me has died "I lost them." It's a genuine thing of feeling like they are lost. I'll eventually find my way back to them, and in the meantime... make this shitheap of a world work somehow.
That was what the last discussion with my dad was about, we were talking on the phone about where I wanted to take my life. At the time... I really wanted to get into writing somehow. Other things had fell through but I was working on a novel and I was looking for a job in journalism maybe? Something to keep my mind fresh while I branched out. We spoke for about an hour on the phone about all of this and then he signed off with "See you on Thursday." Those are the last words I heard.
I finished that novel I was telling him about a few months after he died. I won't go into my feelings about that story right now, but needless to say I dedicated it to him at the time and then... What now? There was that horrible, horrible feeling starting, what now? For a long time there was no now to me. I was an anarchist and drifted for nearly two and a half years doing nothing but starting fights, contemplating literally going out in a blaze of glory fighting someone, or worse just suicide. I told people I never got suicidal at the time, and it was a lie, there were lots of times I contemplated just taking a knife and putting it into my heart...
Finally, sometime in late 2009 after just boredly sitting at home playing games and watching shows on the web, (I think I was marathonning MST3k I was so bored. ^^) no friends, almost no family, almost no outlet... I discovered gimp 2.4, and I started randomly drawing digitally. Scanning stuff in and tracing it. At the time it was just silly little sketches of some older abandoned ideas but after a while I started fleshing out that world more and coming up for characters in it. Inevitably I went on to the beginnings of the stuff you've come to know on this channel as well. I started having people who saw them tell me they really did like them and I should peruse it, but I still didn't think I'd ever reach that level...
Then in 2010... I saw and ad for and read Dreamkeepers.
That genuinely kicked it all off. After looking at all that amazing art and watching david lillie's tutorials on youtube, I felt reborn. I didn't plan on making any comics myself at the time, I was still scared of it and planning to make an illustrated book instead, (and looking back I wont beat around the bush, I was still terrible. ^^) But now that void was feeling a little less empty. Now I felt like I could make something of this. Now it was a mission.
It stayed a mission throughout a good 4 years in various incarnations. I still stayed mostly a lurker and kept away from furry stuff officially, but sometime between 2012 and 2013, I had an odd dream about dressing up in a white cat fursuit. I think you all know what that inevitably led to. XD I was still hiding a huge body of my stuff from people, embarrassed at older work even then. But so many people kept telling me that I was onto something with my stories or my art, I just had to find that breakout thing that would make it all worth it. I was optimistic.
2015 is when all that changed. I kept posting things well into 2016, but the seed of all the problems I had started then. I was doing extensive rewrites of the main story I was working on and could not get the following parts off the ground, I was in the midst of redesigning all the characters for it, I kept inevitably getting newer ideas for new stories and posting stuff up of them, I was trying to learn to use both a new program and a tablet for the first time, ALL of these exact same things were also happening to another close friend nearby... and I couldn't help either of us. Nobody was biting. Nobody seemed interested anymore... I burned. I crashed and burned hard, and it all felt pointless.
By early 2016, I had thrown almost everything I had at the time into a folder, cut ties with several people and I never planned to work on any of those stories or ideas I'd come up with ever again. I wasnt' even sure if I'd keep my fursona, I was ready to just quit online entirely.
And then... there was the second big revitalisation. One of the few things I can give an exact date for, July 10th 2016. Probably about 2am my time. MXL started streaming. XD
I was bored again, I was directionless again. And this time, I somehow got over my massive jitters and said hi to both him and the people there. Just joking, just enjoying the show. And then it happened: the biggest surprise came when someone there made an offhand joke about being put into the suit he was drawing back the front...
Every jitter I had died. Without missing a beat, I summoned all my courage and made a joke about how I'd find it funnier if it was upside down too. And nobody ridiculed me. Nobody judged me. Nobody treated me like a freak. Least of all MXL himself! It didn't stay the topic as much as I wanted it to, but the more I talked and opened up about some of this stuff, the more people started to ask me if I had a page or drew...
I kept coming to those streams which were pretty frequent at the time, but I kept my head down and didn't tell them very much. This went on a few weeks. Finally, I sat down and said "fuck it." I redesigned a couple of my characters one more time...
Almost all of you know how the rest of this decade turned out from there. For better or worse. For me, no question: better. And in the middle of all that nonsense up there I'd say the two stand out moments the most are absolutely discovering dreamkeepers and that MXL stream, inspiring me to get over the biggest thorns in my side. I mean I know it probably sounds ridiculous to some people, but I also don't need to tell you I'm not the only one brought up in a house or environment where you're made to feel like shit for being you. It was practically giving me anxiety attacks at the time.
At risk of telling future time travellers how best to erase me from the timeline... XD Without those two events, for one reason or another, I most definitely would not be here today. You would not have helped change me into the person I am, and I would not have helped you. You guys give me a purpose. That's sounds like such a cliche but its so true. Thank you.
So why did I feel like sitting down and writing all this today? Because it's 2020. It's a new decade, for me it's almost 10 years since that first event that sparked all this off. And because it is starting out to be a shit of a year, for so many people. The perfect capstone for all the crap that's come during this decade. And I've been here before, I should feel so hopeless, it should fill me with absolute despair. But despite all that, I can't lie: There is still a tiny little bit of Noel living on in me going, all the way back from 2007... "You're important. You can still help. You can still make this shitheap of a world work."
So... what now?
Thank you very much. And thank you very much if you read this far.
But yeah, lots of people doing this kind of thing, and mine is a bit late to the party, but I'm gonna put my own spin on it. Looking back on the last decade... I do want to kind of just personally sum up how it has felt to me. But to spoil how this journal is going to end... thank you.
(Also keep in mind the details of this are all still a bit mushy in my head, I went through a lot of my older uploads to see if dates or ideas matched up with the recollection of when they happened in my head. A lot does and I tried my best, but I probably still messed a few things up over time. It's only inevitable over the course of nearly 13+ years. ^^)
The decade for me didn't actually start in 2010. It started in march 2007. That was the year I lost my dad. You might notice I've said that about anytime someone or something close to me has died "I lost them." It's a genuine thing of feeling like they are lost. I'll eventually find my way back to them, and in the meantime... make this shitheap of a world work somehow.
That was what the last discussion with my dad was about, we were talking on the phone about where I wanted to take my life. At the time... I really wanted to get into writing somehow. Other things had fell through but I was working on a novel and I was looking for a job in journalism maybe? Something to keep my mind fresh while I branched out. We spoke for about an hour on the phone about all of this and then he signed off with "See you on Thursday." Those are the last words I heard.
I finished that novel I was telling him about a few months after he died. I won't go into my feelings about that story right now, but needless to say I dedicated it to him at the time and then... What now? There was that horrible, horrible feeling starting, what now? For a long time there was no now to me. I was an anarchist and drifted for nearly two and a half years doing nothing but starting fights, contemplating literally going out in a blaze of glory fighting someone, or worse just suicide. I told people I never got suicidal at the time, and it was a lie, there were lots of times I contemplated just taking a knife and putting it into my heart...
Finally, sometime in late 2009 after just boredly sitting at home playing games and watching shows on the web, (I think I was marathonning MST3k I was so bored. ^^) no friends, almost no family, almost no outlet... I discovered gimp 2.4, and I started randomly drawing digitally. Scanning stuff in and tracing it. At the time it was just silly little sketches of some older abandoned ideas but after a while I started fleshing out that world more and coming up for characters in it. Inevitably I went on to the beginnings of the stuff you've come to know on this channel as well. I started having people who saw them tell me they really did like them and I should peruse it, but I still didn't think I'd ever reach that level...
Then in 2010... I saw and ad for and read Dreamkeepers.
That genuinely kicked it all off. After looking at all that amazing art and watching david lillie's tutorials on youtube, I felt reborn. I didn't plan on making any comics myself at the time, I was still scared of it and planning to make an illustrated book instead, (and looking back I wont beat around the bush, I was still terrible. ^^) But now that void was feeling a little less empty. Now I felt like I could make something of this. Now it was a mission.
It stayed a mission throughout a good 4 years in various incarnations. I still stayed mostly a lurker and kept away from furry stuff officially, but sometime between 2012 and 2013, I had an odd dream about dressing up in a white cat fursuit. I think you all know what that inevitably led to. XD I was still hiding a huge body of my stuff from people, embarrassed at older work even then. But so many people kept telling me that I was onto something with my stories or my art, I just had to find that breakout thing that would make it all worth it. I was optimistic.
2015 is when all that changed. I kept posting things well into 2016, but the seed of all the problems I had started then. I was doing extensive rewrites of the main story I was working on and could not get the following parts off the ground, I was in the midst of redesigning all the characters for it, I kept inevitably getting newer ideas for new stories and posting stuff up of them, I was trying to learn to use both a new program and a tablet for the first time, ALL of these exact same things were also happening to another close friend nearby... and I couldn't help either of us. Nobody was biting. Nobody seemed interested anymore... I burned. I crashed and burned hard, and it all felt pointless.
By early 2016, I had thrown almost everything I had at the time into a folder, cut ties with several people and I never planned to work on any of those stories or ideas I'd come up with ever again. I wasnt' even sure if I'd keep my fursona, I was ready to just quit online entirely.
And then... there was the second big revitalisation. One of the few things I can give an exact date for, July 10th 2016. Probably about 2am my time. MXL started streaming. XD
I was bored again, I was directionless again. And this time, I somehow got over my massive jitters and said hi to both him and the people there. Just joking, just enjoying the show. And then it happened: the biggest surprise came when someone there made an offhand joke about being put into the suit he was drawing back the front...
Every jitter I had died. Without missing a beat, I summoned all my courage and made a joke about how I'd find it funnier if it was upside down too. And nobody ridiculed me. Nobody judged me. Nobody treated me like a freak. Least of all MXL himself! It didn't stay the topic as much as I wanted it to, but the more I talked and opened up about some of this stuff, the more people started to ask me if I had a page or drew...
I kept coming to those streams which were pretty frequent at the time, but I kept my head down and didn't tell them very much. This went on a few weeks. Finally, I sat down and said "fuck it." I redesigned a couple of my characters one more time...
Almost all of you know how the rest of this decade turned out from there. For better or worse. For me, no question: better. And in the middle of all that nonsense up there I'd say the two stand out moments the most are absolutely discovering dreamkeepers and that MXL stream, inspiring me to get over the biggest thorns in my side. I mean I know it probably sounds ridiculous to some people, but I also don't need to tell you I'm not the only one brought up in a house or environment where you're made to feel like shit for being you. It was practically giving me anxiety attacks at the time.
At risk of telling future time travellers how best to erase me from the timeline... XD Without those two events, for one reason or another, I most definitely would not be here today. You would not have helped change me into the person I am, and I would not have helped you. You guys give me a purpose. That's sounds like such a cliche but its so true. Thank you.
So why did I feel like sitting down and writing all this today? Because it's 2020. It's a new decade, for me it's almost 10 years since that first event that sparked all this off. And because it is starting out to be a shit of a year, for so many people. The perfect capstone for all the crap that's come during this decade. And I've been here before, I should feel so hopeless, it should fill me with absolute despair. But despite all that, I can't lie: There is still a tiny little bit of Noel living on in me going, all the way back from 2007... "You're important. You can still help. You can still make this shitheap of a world work."
So... what now?
Thank you very much. And thank you very much if you read this far.
Cheers dude, let's have a great 20th century~!
But guys like you, Bluelilytz, Fox0808 and Fighting-Wolf-Fist keep inspiring me- thx for this and keep up the good work- time will change everything in the end and it is up to us if we give ourselves up or adapt in the future.