post title from: PilotRedSun
words: 1,636
to be frank with you, i'm not sure how to feel about this month. or i guess, last month? well i'm talking about November today, not any other month. for starters, i was all over the place. my mood was going up and down, bouncing across the walls, going in every-which direction. i didn't stay happy or sad for too long, which might've been a good thing. in the end, i came out of it the same as i'd feel any average Thursday.
if you couldn't tell, i'm referring to my incessant mood swings, which have plagued most of my Junior year so far. you can even tell from how i start these blog posts—the last two have been rather drab. i've been on a streak of ending things on a sour note, which kinda sucks. no one wants to listen to me whine about my social life, or lack thereof. people wanna hear about... not that! or maybe i wouldn't know, since i dunno who actually reads this blog (although the total number is probably less than six).
so how can i dig myself out of this rut? pfft, hell if i know. but now that the fall production is done and over with (which i'll get to soon enough), i have more free time than ever before! i'm sure i can find something productive to do this month, especially with the upcoming two-week Christmas break. who knows, you could end up seeing another devlog post. geez, how long has it been since one of those? i've also been chatting with a new friend as of recent, and they've given me some new tips on stuff for George 1.5. so maybe development on that will start up again?
i do wish i got more done during Thanksgiving break, though. i was only really working on the web site and not much else. don't get me wrong, i like the new update and the improvements it makes. but y'know, it probably shouldn't have been my main priority. after all, it's two years younger than George 2 (which, as you may know, turned into G1.5). basically everything came after that game, from Sid's Adventure to the original Lost Labyrinths. so yeah, i've been pretty all over the place for the last few months. but it's not like i could've dedicated all my time to my games. no, i had other plans.
alright, now for the big one. the fall production. the "theatre kid" in me needed something to do during the year, and that filled the gap. so how'd i like it? well... at least i wasn't totally depressed during it! yeah, if i'm being honest, it wasn't exactly everything i hoped it would be. i dunno, it just didn't really click with me like last year's production did. this play was much darker in comparison, and the character i got absolutely fits me as a person. yet, i still don't feel very fulfilled. usually, i feel a lot happier at the end of a production, but not this time.
instead i felt rather empty, a bit like how i felt in March. my parents could tell something was wrong, since i wasn't very emotive or expressive afterward. not like i usually am, but they know i can actually feel. even though i spent more than two months getting to know my castmates and performing with them, i still feel like a stranger to them. now that the stage is closed until next January, i'm not actively forced to talk to people. that might be a good thing for others, but for me? i'm practically a ghost yet again. even a year later, i rarely talk to anyone outside of theatre, let alone outside of school.
however, with all that said, i definitely didn't regret doing this. i had some fun, albeit in short bursts. and i got the chance to connect with one person in particular. i didn't really know her a whole lot before the play, but now i consider us actual friends. the only reason we even got to that point is because we were scene partners, and now that friendship is probably gonna slowly die thanks to my inability to initiate.
i genuinely don't know why i physically can't start conversations. my mom doesn't even know what to think, my friends probably think i'm a dick, and my therapist is gonna have to try really hard with my case. no one can wrap their head around what's up with me, and i'd be lying if i said i wasn't anxious of how my castmates really view me as a person.
if i could nip this in the bud and have the ability to talk to people on my own accord, i'd probably be a lot happier. unfortunately, i ended up with a nothing burger Freshman year and a horrendously mediocre Sophomore year because of it. ah well, no use crying over spilled milk. at least i can say i've noticeably improved over the last couple years. maybe i could at least try at some point.
but hey, it's not all bad. i got a new play on my portfolio, a few new friends and stronger friendships, and a decent chunk of blog post for this month. it wasn't quite everything i wanted and more, but that's more of a me problem. if i keep comparing every new play to the first one, nothing will ever seem good enough for me. i was just in a better state of mind back then.
i've definitely been ranting about school too much, to the point where it's one of the top 10 words in the entire blog. maybe it's even top 5, i haven't checked in a while. one of these days, i should give that topic a rest. the only reason i switched to this blog in the first place is because of how repetitive and boring the old blog posts used to be. now i've fallen into that same trap, except spread over an entire year.
maybe these blog posts really don't have to be that long, either. ever since Daydreaming, i set some arbitrary word count goal for myself with each new blog post (around 1.7k). but like... i know i can write shorter posts. the very first one on this was a bit over a thousand, and the very first Old Blog post barely cracked a hundred!
there's a few other topics i have in mind, but i don't feel like writing the rest of this post over again. it feels like every post since the creation of this blog has always mentioned or focused on my social troubles. but it's getting so freaking tiring. i dunno why i've restricted myself to only ever talking about how goddamn lonely i am, but i'm done. i wanna talk about games, streaming, old videos, some actually INTERESTING sh*t.
now that i'm writing this, there's a whole slew of stuff i wanna rant about!! but i've already written most of this post anyway! i literally wrote the next section yesterday! ah, well. this December should be better. i've got no best friends leaving, not as much self-doubt, and three productions under my belt--that's good enough for me! now get me the hell out of school!
...oh yeah, the web site got an update, too. notice anything different? might seem like it came out of the blue (which it did), but this has been in the works for a decent while now. this was actually the first update to have a prototype! i added a secret experiments page that held the original vision for the index page. it's gone now, but you might still be able to find it on archive.org.
version 4.0 has a big focus on what i call "creative consistency". what i mean by that is each page is tied by two main things: the checkerboard background and my logo. instead of the entire site being stuck with the same old colors and layout, each page has more room to breathe. take the Patch Notes page for example. instead of a lame old box, i constructed a beautiful, old-fashioned computer terminal that displays all the updates! same thing with the Blog page--it's now more decorated than ever. everything's a bit more lively now, even if there isn't much new content. i put a whole lot more work into it than v3.0, since not everything is stuck in a generic box now.
there's a very good chance a new patch will come out in at least a week. i had to sorta rush this update due to the blog post, and not everything is polished to perfection. i might also tinker more with the experiments page, since it doesn't have a purpose right now. some more background decor would also be nice, specifically for the Art Gallery and Games pages (which i already have some ideas for). you could technically call this "part 1" of the update, but 90% of it is already fully realized anyway.
sure, i could've just delayed the blog post, but i just barely made it to the one-year mark. i'm still on a hot streak, and i don't plan on breaking it, at least for a little while longer. i've had a lot of fun making this update and getting to use the fully use the skills i've developed without any help from my web design class throughout the years. what started as a forgotten, incredibly ugly project turned into a rather neat corner of the internet, and i'm proud of that.
thanks for reading! i'll try to keep it more positive for the coming months, since it's more fun to write (and read, hopefully).
see you all soon.