Feeling rather bleh at the moment. Just woke up from some of that hyper intense REM state sleep that always leaves me feeling all disoriented and messed up.
Right now, my head is full of cobwebs, I feel dizzy and confused, my head hurts, I am having a lot of trouble focused on what I am doing, and I feel a slight tingle all through my body that is a sure sign that I have not been getting my recommended daily allowance of oxygen due to my untreated sleep apnea.
Sleep hurts me sometimes. That’s not supposed to happen. That’s not right.
I’ll try not to go off on one of my “why can’t I take care of myself properly” ranting ruminations. Because depression, that’s why.
Depression makes self-care very difficult, especially for someone who was neglected as a child like myself. There is only so much I can do and that amount varies from day to day and moment to moment.
It all flows from that terror of leaving my tiny little hidey hole of retreat from the world inside my head. Anything that involves me leaving my tiny comfort zone activates my deep anxiety and the clock starts ticking on how long I can fight that deep anxiety before I have to yank my tentacles back and close my shell for a while.
Yeah it’s a weird image. Those happen here.
I’ve thought about the tentacle thing before. Not in the ecchi hentai schoolgirl orifice invasion sense, but as a metaphor for my approach to life. At all times I stay in my comfort zone deep inside my mind, and deal with life via extending cautious tentacles into the real world, always ready to haul them back in like fishing line on an automatic reel the second something makes my anxiety level exceed its very low trigger point.
On a good day,. I am willing to come out of my shell a little in order to get what I want or to take advantage of something good. But for the most part, anything too far away from my timid tentacles to reach is simply not possible for me.
I’m just too damned scared/
That is the source of all my “I just can’t” moments, where I can’t do something and can’t explain why .The real answer would be, I suspect, something like “because my depression won’t let me” or “because that scares me and I don’t know why” or, I supposed, “because my tentacles aren’t long enough yet”, although that answer would probably get a few strange looks.
To put it mildly.
Growth and recovery, for the likes of me, comes from pushing myself to stretch those tentacles out further than they have ever gone before, maybe even taking a few steps out of my usual anchor point.
If all goes well, what I get out of it is proof that exceeding my limits does not always lead to instant catastrophe and regret and self-excoriation over how stupid I am for having done something I “know” is a bad idea.
If it goes badly, of course, that catastrophe happens. My anxiety explodes like a fucking hand grenade and all I can think of is surrender and/or retreat.
Whatever lets me go back to my teeny tiny comfort zone and lick my wounds and wait for my anxiety level to slowly go down to the point where I can feel safe.
Well, as safe as I ever feel, anyhow. An acceptable minimal state of panic equivalent to my usual level of background panic.
Those are the stakes. I might get a littler better or I might feel a lot worse for a while. I never forget that extending my limits is good for me, but that won’t matter if my red alert condition is triggered and I am helpless to fight the raging storm inside me.
That said, I have made a lot of progress over the last couple of years, and that comfort zone is bigger and stronger than ever. And I have gotten a lot better at weathering the storms by reminding myself that it’s only weather and it will pass and after that I will be warm and dry on solid ground once more.
But it’s still a tentacle based world for me. In a sense, getting the writing gig that I did made me backtrack some because I could work for… well, not a living, but for money, anyhow – from the comfort of my computer and not have to deal with the world at all besides sending my script to Prasad every working weekday.
Oh, I pulled the trigger on that, by the way. Along with my 60th episode, I messaged him that I wanted a raise from $10/episode to $15/episode. And that I wanted to work directly with the animator(s) and Ryan, our voice actor.
I am positive that if I can work with them directly via some robust online collaboration platform, I can improve the quality of our little toons ten times over.
Here’s one of the latest ones :
Ugh. The “automatic” lip syncing is terrible, the timing my my jokes is all wrong, and the whole thing comes across as amateurish, clumsy, and laaaame.
At least, from my point of view. If you thoroughly enjoyed that, god bless you, but from my side of the screen, it is not good enough, damn it., not good enough.
I have mentally quoted that line like a thousand times when I am fed up and my controlling urge is on the rampage.
That’s why I am very reluctant to actually watch the things. It pains me to see my words go wrong like that and makes me feel acutely embarrassed about being associated with such shoddy work.
When I ignore the videos, I can be the faithful writer who just writes the thing, submits it, and collects his paycheck.
But if I watch them, when I obsess over the final product and that is not good for me.
Working directly with the team is the only solution, as far as I can tell. Well, either that, or get my own account on GoAnimate.com and make the fucking things myself.
And let me tell you, I ma very tempted to do just that.
Maybe I will.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.