i'm a cybersecurity analyst now! it's surreal. I've finally attained a career, at 35. many of you have known me for a long ass time, and know the hardships it took to get here. my health is still bad, always. but i have learned to deal with it better. money helps, naturally. i've been playing a lot of FFXIV and no man's sky.

i've been entirely unmotivated to make art though. i get so much fulfillment from work that i was lacking with art. i make art for myself, first and foremost, but it still sucks to post things i spent months on that i'm proud of and have no interactions through it.

so yeah. bummer, that.

but i've started learning to make music. something i've wanted to do for many years. i bought a MIDI keyboard and have been learning how to play piano with it. it's been nice. i don't feel bored by practicing the basics over and over, which is a first. i come from a musical family, and i played clarinet in the school band as a kid, and was in choirs a lot. music certainly comes more naturally to me than art because of the aphantasia thing.

so this might help me fall in love with art again. maybe i just need a break.

i hope you've all been well. until next time

dragoneer was always so lovely to me. he helped me out when i was in some of the toughest times financially and needed help finding commissions. he was chill to talk to. he took on so much for the fandom. at the time i was an active furaffinity user he was working full time while also keeping FA going, through thick and thin.

there was drama surrounding him that i never really followed closely. so i can't speak to that. but i also know that it's rough having to go through shitty decisions and personal growth when an entire community has their eyes on you.

he truly loved us, and for that i am grateful.

it's been a real long time
info: https://sites.google.com/machinesbleedtoo.com/commissions/home

stopped since posting, cos i am le tired
but you can follow me here
https://www.twitch.tv/machinesbleedtoo

the last semester of my degree is here!!! one of the days is 12 hours long when travel is considered. it'll be a rough 3 months

but i'm currently doing a 3d character unit as a break from the usual tech + neurosci stuff, and it's gonna be hella cool cos i can make something for hyaline's game (which i still haven't forgot about, just uni has had to take priority.) the assignment is literally "design, model & rig a monster" which is, obviously, RIGHT UP MY ALLEY. yee-fucken-haw

commissions are something I don't plan to do ever again, if i can help it. i finished up all of them before the semester started. just a PSA i guess. i want to move onto all my art energy being spent on project work

speaking of, i revived an old account that was originally for the game but i've repurposed it for more general stuff:
https://twitter.com/PlanetHyaline

just an update on how things are going
i miss being involved in the art community
when i am free from uni i'll have some time to be a part of it again

I signed up to mastodon originally in 2016 on an account I've abandoned cos I just realized instances exist (I meant to use it back then, but I uh, forgot. I had no recollection of signing up and panicked when I found my name was taken lol)

I got an art one:
https://mastodon.art/@machinesbleedtoo

and a tech one:
https://mastodon.technology/@gabriel

I finish my degree at the end of this year (unless I get More Bad Luck, a thing I'm infamous for...!) so I need to start actually interacting w the tech community, hence that second one.

I've been sick of tech monopolies for years. I stopped using social media much & installed lineage OS on my phone w/o google services at least a year ago and it's been wonderful, so it's nice having a twitter alternative. I can see what I want to see (my own timeline, instance timeline or all of mastodon timeline), people can (and do!) still find my art when they're not at the .art instance, and I'm getting interactions on what I post on social media for the first time in years. algorithms just ruined my ability to get discovered anywhere. I pretty much abandoned my FB page too. I'm sick of seeing every bad half-baked opinion of my friends because it's become normalized to post those & algorithms rewarding outrage because it gets high engagements. I get my news from actual journalists + podcast thesedays. I've stopped falling prey to that phenomenon of getting mad based on assumptions based on feelings & an oversimplified & false idea of how the world actually works because I saw some post with the same sentiment go viral once

I also started posting to IG now they have a web version lol. it's full of bots & still facebook (i refuse to accept the rebrand, they suck, I SHALL NOT FORGET) but it's just a lot nicer for artists for discoverability + it being....a visual platform. i have to resize everything which can get tedious, but eh, it's worth it for now
https://www.instagram.com/machinesbleedtoo/ art
https://www.instagram.com/machines_bleed/ photography

(why was FA auto shortening my journal title when i still had space? :S)

[title was referring to weird URL redirects before I updated it] on my PC it's just constant, I can't access any of FA w/o it redirecting me to Definitely Malware or random news stories from legit places. At first it was sometimes, then it was always. It happened on two PCs too. Right now my laptop isn't doing it, but it was earlier on. Very weird

EDIT: SO I REFORMATTED PC AND IT REMEMBERED MY BAD URL ENTRY which was furafffinity. triple f. i rely on autocomplete and i'm dyslexic. well thank god it was something that silly, i have never done this before 😭😭😭😭 my hubris got the better of me. i misread friend who said they had same issue, so it turns out i've just generally forgot how to read. i've had a fucked couple of weeks so i guess it finally got to me lolll

Hello! I want to return to using gallery sites more, i just can't compete with the dumbassery of twitter & facebook's algorithms
so I made a buzzly and plan to post more here (and, like, on time)
here it is if ur interested
https://buzzly.art/~machinesbleedtoo

long time no see y'all
life has got rough financially so i endeavour to keep this up through the last year of my degree
All info you need is here:
http://www.machinesbleedtoo.com/hire