So everyone is talking about what they have experienced in 2018, right? Well, it’s my turn to tackle this as well. I really don’t want to look back at the bad stuff that has happened, but the good stuff won’t have that shine if i don’t. So let’s get deep into the bad stuff first.
Side Note:This is a script for my video I’m presenting as well. I feel it makes it easier for people to choose either to read it or just listen to me read it out loud to you. It also helps me keep on track on what I’m doing in the video now, as I can’t wing it anymore like i used to because my mind just can’t.
Alright,
The first thing that happened that continued from November 2017 to January of this year is the bitcoin craze. All of the world was watching in as cryptocurrency stormed into town with new innovative concepts that can help humanity advance into a new more personal world for everyone in the globe. This is actually nothing new as it was something that has been happening now for the last 10 years. But sadly it was as expected a short lived thrillride that fascinated many in getting into it. The biggest of the promises is basically getting rich with the explosive trends. Bitcoin felt like an element that would have changed everything the way we lived by introducing blockchain in many places in our industrial world.
That is still pending, but sadly I won’t see anyone adopting bitcoin in a very long while. The scene has drastically changed and evolved to the point in making bitcoin obsolete for whoever wants to jump in now. The common man won’t ever need to use it as cash anymore. It’s a novel idea now, and only the crowd was interested in leaving the control of the Fiat currency, but instead, cried like a baby for governments to instill their corrupted hands on to it and deliver it back to the world power of the international monetary fund. Thus rules in place blocked concepts like crypto from ever gaining any dominance although not absolutely. There is still potential that the world will adopt a better world currency that bitcoin promised.
The IRS has put penalties to anyone who tries to incur crypto without reporting it. That by itself stops anyone below the middle class from ever adopting it. Even though 10 years have passed since bitcoin got introduced, I feel we need at least 30 years more for the world to comprehend it and make the crypto market mature enough for everyone to be in it. The Status quo never changed after the tsunami of bitcoin in the year 2017, but it gave rise to shady pyramid dealings with folks who thought they were protected by the element of anonymity by getting into crypto. The IRS isn’t stupid, they prepare themselves for anything that remotely seems like counterfeiting or schemes that try to undermine them and the very system we all are in.
This is why everyone flocked so hard on Bitcoin, because it is the new wild west. No rules, new frontier, with promise of great wealth and riches one would only dream about. This was true to only that 1% who won the lottery, but not for me or my family. We got tricked into the whole craze late in the game. I wanted to learn more about it but not like the way i carried it out. I feel so heartbroken about it and lost when all the money just simply disappeared in the rollercoaster ride that was bitcoin. I was just too clumsy and dumb to understand this new thing, and many have gotten burned by this too.
I went and invested in websites that promised returns, that vanished within 3 weeks of their arrival. Thousands gone. I thought there were people who believed in changing the world, but instead acted in the shadows to deceive and trap those who acted to find riches as fast as abnormally possible. Seeing examples of many who have won, it felt like a mosh pit of zombies wanting to get rich quick. My father bombarded by fear and stress, was getting convinced by a crook who just wanted to absorb as much money for himself as humanly possible, praying on my stroke-ill parent who only wanted for his family to be at peace.
Bitcoin was in the center of this hallucination. This is the true experience and why bitcoin globally will not be taken seriously for a very long time with the average joe. This is why the market dived once all the schemes were revealed by the governments as games to hurt the innocent. This is why the giant tech companies had to block crypto ads to parent the innocent who just wanted to break away from their hell.
This all happened within 7 months in 2017, and concluded in April of 2018.
Just in how crypto fell in value, I decided to go back into game development, and put the last of what I had, money value-wise, into it.
I just wanted to get a prototype working so i can tell everyone about my game and be able to find others to help me push forward this 7 year old project that originally was a story I started 20 years ago. I worked on this so much and so hard. So I seeked for someone to help me advance to the next level in making it a reality. I projected to have an alpha build by June of 2018, but that didn’t happened. Instead, i missed the deadline I had to submit to Boston Festival of Indie games, and I slided into a deep depression that caused a suicidal episode. My parents telling me they are gonna sell the house didn’t help at all with me feeling any better.
I had cut my wrist, knowing that i can’t go on anymore. The debt overhead, the house, letting my parents down on the bitcoin bullshit, letting my family down in general just had me spiritually defeated. My dreams crumbled. My heart crushed in a million pieces. Then after I felt really dark and hopeless. I really just wanted to end my life.
In July 2018, my wisdom tooth broke. I was malnourished, my body was showing signs of breaking down. I was suffering pains as well. The heartbreak was too much, but then my parents, helped me at this time. I had to choose to wake up from this down turn. I tried to recover myself from it by taking vitamins that helped with my mood, but it wasn’t enough. I was still feeling dead inside.
My parents then suggested for me to leave with them to florida for a good 3 weeks. AND just when I was getting ready to leave, my desktop computer just goes bad on me. I couldn’t finish my 3D model I was working on, so I left it alone and just… Go to florida and focus on family.
That helped a little. I got to see my niece for the first time. I went to disney world… That was such a good highlight. but more on that later-
It helped, the bad feelings were subsiding. Then i texted my brother and told him to help me. He agreed to find me a spot at his job. Thus another miracle right there-
Okay, I guess 1 more bad moment before I go into the good.
The final nail of hurt was September 29, 2018, where I missed Boston Festival of Indie games because the guy who promised me to work on my game had vanished. Then I get a text from him saying he can’t continue any longer because of the technical conditions set and also he was suffering. He hasn’t had any other job but making games for others, and at that time he didn’t have any income. The pressure in paying rent was there, and the agreement had to be broken. It wasn’t fulfilled, he wasn’t able to do the battle mode I paid him for to do because of technicalities that discouraged him from doing so. That’s why I told him to do what he can. He succeeded in making it the character move and climb ladders but no battle mode because, again, the package library that was being used was a pain to understand it.
That killed me. That hurt a lot. I was looking forward in seeing what he could have done.
Then I got scammed again on instagram.
At this point, in late October, consider me not feeling anything anymore about life. Reality hit so hard that I just became numb falling deeper into despair. My health diminishing as I put energy into my new job, and nothing to look forward for the future but bills and more debt. depression had set in again really hard, and I tried to “work it out” by just focusing on my job but I just got lost more and more into my negative thoughts.
Instead, work helped to put a hold on those thoughts until I returned home.
It has been really tough to do anything creative since then. Even to stream live was just so hard for me.
~Now enter the positive parts of the year~
My wisdom tooth breaking smacked me with some sense. I realized I had to wake up from this feeling and I pushed hard. I got angry against this negative bind my mind had over me. Then the trip to Florida helped a lot. Meeting my Niece for the first time was a wonderful experience, not adding that my sister took me to Volcano Bay at Universal Studio park. We even went to Downtown Disney. It was a great time that blinked me back into sense.
Then to my surprise, my brother had actually got me a spot at his job right after I arrived back home from spending the time with my parents and sister. This happened right in August 2018.
I got to see my brother get married. I made new friends. I’m still without working phone service lol
My parents got to fly over and experience my brother’s wedding as well. They stayed home until late October, then they left back to Florida. It was a great time, putting my focus on grinding and paying back what was owed.
I also started saving up for the Nintendo Switch in late September 2018.
My job has been very welcoming with great people to work with. The pay is meh, but it doesn’t hurt at all to know that the ensemble of workers are super kind and wonderful. It makes me care more about the place.
Then I was invited to go to a meeting of entrepreneurs called the moonlighters. That was good and I felt I made progress in being brave and going alone. later in November, my sister gave both me and my brother a huge surprise that basically turned things really interesting for the next couple of years.
As for my health – to find a balance, I intensely switched into vegan/pescaperian diet. It has resulted in more stamina and agility than what I had eating meat. Alas, it has been hard to cut away 100% in eating dairy foods, but I keep it at a minimal. I notice that when I do eat meat, I get sick for 2 days but when i do grains and soy products, I tend to get back that lost energy. Even giving up eating bread helped in alleviate my asthma, surprisingly for me. This also helps to control that depressive mental state a little bit. It doesn’t get rid of it though. Reality is still there.
Rocking hard 5 weeks streak of working, i hit a all time high in earnings in November at $1,900. I wasn’t even counting but the bank reported in the amount and I was shocked. Since it’s the maximum most busiest time at my job, they gave me the extra hours. This gave way to me being able to get a Nintendo Switch Smash Bros edition at the day of release in November. I immediately had buyers remorse, so I placed the item in the attic until it was time to break it out in December.
After all of that, entering December, I was able to pay my electric bill in full confidence. I’ve been saving up my power use at home, and working extra hours helped to cut down on electricity use.
I’m in total efficiency mode. It helped my brother focus more on the bigger picture as well, which is paying the other stuff that are equally as important. The only trouble here is saving for the biggest bill coming up in February 2019 – In this note, I have to grind hard and ask for extra hours at work to cover this one.
So there is an immense progressively positive movement here. I’m single, so I don’t have anyone telling me to do stuff. That’s where I have to really be hard on myself because there is no one that will give me that hard love than I. It’s hard. I’m getting forgetful on things, so I’m losing stuff too.
I’m alone.
You may take it as a negative, but it is also a positive. I’m happy in being alone, but having someone extra reminding me or watching my back would be super great! I just am not that lucky right now to have anyone like that with me. If you do, treasure them.
With that said, thank you for having the time to take all that in.
I also been on my twitter pushing/retweeting my fellow brother’s awesome indie game progress tweets out; ReTweeting for my dev frands. I am also doing updates in my game progress sheet as recently my music composer have finished up work on two tracks for the game. Pretty much I’m doing the little things first and twirling my way towards artwork after all the updates are set.
Project progress sheet
Another big news is that i got my ticket for PAX EAST 2019! It will be in March when that happens so I have plenty of time to work on my many projects and get something done by then. I will definitely have some sort of preview to share when I get there on the floor on my tablet. I will try to get all the tickets though, as I reserved my spot for Friday. Second hand sales are tough and expensive to get afterwards but I’ll definitely will be ready to get them as I work my butt off the next 130 days before the show.
Another note here i like to share that’s relative to my previous post is that I’ve been controlling my bad habits. The first step in getting better is to admit there is a problem. That’s why I write about it so that it’s out there and can be worked on. People, you definitely know no one is fucking perfect, so why fake yourself if that problem will surface and break you down all on it’s own? That’s why I fucking write about everything that needs to be looked into. So since I did, I feel much better and in control.
Now to spill another secret ~
I did an irresponsible financial act by giving into buying a video game console. Which one? The Nintendo Switch. Why? Because of Smash Bros Ultimate. With the paycheck I got last week on Thursday, I used half of it to get my reservation I placed 1 month prior. I felt regret by buying it but not anymore. It’s something I was subconsciously planning on getting since the first announcement of the Switch, but it got really hard to resist when the game, Super Smash Bros, was shown online. The last preview really nailed it and sold me on it. So without any resistance i just went dive into it. My family members yet don’t know of this act. I plan on getting my next paycheck (within a week from now), to pay my dues. Regardless to say, I feel like “god” intervened and rescued my ass this time, again. Mysteriously a quarter of the power bill was covered and my brother helped on paying the gas and water bill, which basically was not even that bad at all.
I guess the clouds parted for me in this instance. VERY ODD I might say. I acted selfishly in this and feel like shit about it, but somehow i got away with it. I felt buyers remorse and really thought about re-selling my unit on ebay But a friend convinced me not to. Getting anything in these conditions is bittersweet. Then I had a meeting with my siblings and my brother fully backs me in my pursuit of my gaming venture, yet he doesn’t know of my possession. The Nintendo Switch is not just a mere toy to personally play, it’s the tool of power that I have to connect with my twitter amigos and the world. This means I will use it to set a new chapter in my online presence to livestream and also hope to profit from it as well in the future with other plans. This also means I have set schemes to upload game reviews and plays on my youtube channel, so having a Nintendo Switch will help me follow trends online and be on top of things gaming wise. I also feel better that I am back into playing a new Nintendo product. Unfortunately rumors are swirling that a new version is coming out next year.
Anyway, all of this sounds like a lot of work, which it is, but I will take it one step at a time. So the full reveal of me playing the switch won’t happen until I feel I have at least redeemed myself, in which I hope is before thanksgiving.
Back again, after a bit of self fixing. Things have been working out now since I’ve gotten my new job at the liquor store. I had so many nights with so many doubts. Folks who never understand why, even if things are shaping out, that negative thoughts claw themselves back into the front seat. You can feel all the good vibes in the world, and just 1 shatters everything. It doesn’t matter what happens, it’s all about perception of the individual and the world. Life is uncertain but we all use regret to better ourselves, and perception is key going forward in paving the road. To combat against the negativities, I dive into my glorious past where most of my creative energy is stored. The how i used to fill my void of that energy is surrounding myself with everything that I interface as playful.
Discovering my old VHS tapes and looking back woke me up to a realization on how I used to concentrate my creative powers into everything else. Today as an adult, I starved myself from it. This is why writer’s block happens often. My space isn’t even setup for creative purposes either and mostly I feel like suppressing this from everyone who doesn’t understand. This of course creates so much struggle within me. To release this energy from being bottled up for so long I usually have to go into “play” mode. This doesn’t mean just video games, this also is communal. What I mean is, I also need to socialize to analyze. My mind is never quiet and always is working on a creative solution. This is worse when i drink. The safest way to have fun and express is by playing video games, and that is something looked bad on me because most think that’s what i only do.
I have to confess something dark and deep here –
I’m an adult. You know, that means I also masturbate. This also means sexual tension is real. This part of being an adult is draining for me, because there are so much crap that entangles around this. Behaviors are suppressed. So this also means I spend entertainment money on this, live. Entrapped within this virtual state of being, the only cheaply way out is to communicate with a live model online. I feel so inadequate and not really confident with myself because of my standing so I get my experience elsewhere. It’s my vice, like many have their own. Who here is to judge is only on your part not mine and I don’t care anymore. This is already hard enough to write about but I do see it as a problem because it has evolved and it is threatening me. Expressively I deprive myself from any real relationship because of all the hang ups that come with it and feel it’s best to accept that my life is a failure. So having an anon moment with someone online is something easy to obtain but hard to achieve in real life, having that lustful spontaneous expression that’s pure superficialness. This adding to my frustration fuels the negative thoughts. We live in an online world anyway, and it’s just harder when you’re $-180k in the hole in a capitalistic world. I may have the looks but I’m no good for anyone, at least not at this moment in time (this is my block). Everyone perceives others in their own light, and judge them out. There isn’t much justification here, that’s why I can relate to deadpool when he was single. Anyone with human sense must understand this. I simply cannot lie, I really love big booties.
In a brighter light –
This darkside of mine, which goes deeper – I’m getting back control. The rummaging of me looking through the old 25 plus years of tape brought me back. Time travel as you will, knowing everything is one, seeing that it truly is, got me back into control. Certainty, understanding that I play a roll in my own path. The choices I make can help me go deeper into the abyss, such darkness leading me to logically think of ending my life, or choosing to surface back up by my own accords and guides of wonderful people who do show up coincidentally at the right moment when I reach out. Today, October 17, 2018, I am still in financial straits. With everything falling apart, in a micro-level, my mind wants to set up a date to phase out my own existence still. The best vibe here is that I understand why. The Why has to be strong enough to surpass the fear, and unite with it also to project forward.
I feel now, with the deep reflection of my pure past self, that the only way forward now is to have patience and take things step by small steps. The anxiety attacks I get while thinking about financial crap i settle by my own system of play. It’s truly my reset button. I get into a creative state of mind, and with that the energy to express life purely. When fear enters me or when depression and anxiety attacks, it fills my dark thoughts – and finding an orgasmic solution is a way I go about to settle such intense feelings down cheaply and swiftly.
Only after, the depression lingers and i just feel tired all day. Folks think I’m lazy, but I just don’t want to live.
The only way back is going into play mode or social contact. This is where my actual job comes in – the real reason why I’m sticking with it is because I love my co-workers and they also feel similar to my own pains. I get energized by being able to serve others and I feel useful again. This feeds my creative powers back up and I start channeling myself again to a more positive light.
So you see, I found something that counteracts the negative vibe at the moment. It’s always going to be a battle, a war. This is fine, it only shows there is a soul inside. Hope fills me, and with that I start taking risk again. Acceptance at work is the only thing i need, money is second but necessary because of the system in which we all live in.
So all of what transpired this year after the fall in February 2018 (bitcoin crash), and my programmer quitting on me (more details on that in the video below), Steve RAW materials being locked up from the public (more details in the video below), and my restarting of the dark zeta project (more details in the video below), now I feel ready to get into making stuff again.
The best of the best positive discovery here is that I found my stop motion animation still in good condition. It’s pretty rough because it was the first time I went all out to do a feature 2hrs video by using all analog setup. For those who don’t know, that means I used 2 VCR decks, 1 boombox tape recorder for audio fx and music, and recompose the movie twice! LIVE! meaning I recorded up to 3 times over again into a new VHS tape all while I’m queuing up the audio fx live. It was the biggest thing I have ever did then. On top of having all my siblings and my best buddy voice some characters – this cannot be lost and I plan to fix it up for the public view in episodic format.
So before i do get into polishing it up, I’m going to first finish my twin avatars that will be in the animation series and on both GerardoLegend youtube and Mariolegend youtube channel. This is going to take up about 2 months to make, so think of this as getting ready for 2019 media extravaganza!
As for Dark Zeta, More info in the video lol
Thank you for reading and understanding my madness. I’m just a regular joe trying my best in balancing my life together in this cyber world that we all live in. I hope you have a wonderful joyful day.
So it’s been many weeks since the last post and here is another update-
—–
Okay, I’ve been in the background working really hard in getting my shit together. I simply suffered a very bad burnout from everything. Making a game is terribly hard when it comes to not having any balance at all and I don’t have balance. This is why I had to stop 2 months ago. On top of that the coincidence of my main computer rig that I’ve been working on my projects on has been showing really bad signs of breaking down. So far it doesn’t let me even work on anything after a 30 minutes that’s been turned on. It just started doing that so I decided to unplug and take a step back from using it.
In conjunction to it, I saw it as an opportunity to visit my sister in florida for a couple of days. I never before met my niece up until this trip I made to florida 2 weeks ago. THAT was such a good choice I’ve made. It helped me alleviate the pain I was suffering within. I also had to cancel on the dentist thing until I returned. When I came back though, my brother had already set up an interview with an employer to work in the same shop he’s in. That was 2 weeks ago immediately after I have arrived back to boston. Thus I’m working now…
The last few weeks after my birthday has been chaotic for me mentally. I’m going to start in April of 2018, where I stopped signing into facebook.
The reasons behind logging out of FB has been mostly being unable to focus. My mind and heart broken by the simple fact that I feel things are all wasted trying to find a solution in getting out of this rot that I’m in. It has definitely affected me physically to the point that my wisdom tooth broke (more on that later).
First, my perception of heartbreak has to do with time and availabilities. Opportunities that I had in being with someone always have been broken by the fact that my attitude in committing has been really piss poor. The thought of the entire culmination of failures hit me really hard in april, driving me to the question “what’s the point to all of this?”
After that I decided to deactivate my facebook for a week, but then felt that I was much better off since I found my time being even more productive. My mind wasn’t about that perceived image that I made up in my head of being perfect anymore – instead – I was much more focused on getting my art of game development done. The marketing qualities of twitter over facebook though held me on that side of things, and I felt compelled to post my progress there instead. Then burnout started to creep up.
May is finally here and after feeling abysmal with my feelings of the past lost aside, my friend who’s helping me program my game gave me a delightful surprise of an update.
Spirit G Black Jacket Zero
That gave me fuel to continue more furiously in my efforts in creating Dark Zeta. Then bills started to build up on me, and the lava underneath of financial trouble was still flowing up. Not paying attention to that, I burned through the month by creating a few new maps for my game.
Then a friend from facebook hit me up on messenger and told me to return. I was feeling so free away from the walled garden that I ignored her plea. She then kept begging me to return and I felt concerned. The level of addiction is high I felt, and I wasn’t the only one feeling the burn. My compromise though is to hangout on the sidelines in messenger instead, avoiding all the personal notes and accomplishments that might hit my ego hard and deform my thoughts on things emotionally. I realized that my level of jealousy has gotten to a madding stage and keeping away would subside such to a controllable degree that I could put that into a productive direction. It has worked, but I felt even lonelier. Perception of mine got warped big time but support helped bring it back to base with the help of family and close friends.
So my idea for my facebook grand return was to create an animated avatar. The purpose for such an avatar was to refresh my image and go into the new internet age with a more animated take. Take all the personas I made and direct them as such in general over all social media platforms. Then after focus on my 12 year old YouTube channel, Mariolegend, and expand from there using my avatar.
Once I digged out my old model I started in 2015 of my character self (a 12 year old project btw), I re-proportioned the model’s limbs and then felt to go more cartoony with it. A smash bros style look to it really but I still need to play around with cell shading to see if that is more appealing as I’m not yet done with it.
The concept was to get it done in a week, and then exploded over a month long project. At the end of June, I started to feel the financial burn again and the old feelings started to surface as the lava underneath creeped closer and the heat got hotter to pay those pesky bills. Depression hit me harder as I realized that what I was doing will take longer than expected. Anxiety attacks scrambling what to do – made me lose more time.
Let’s rewind back to January 2018, where bitcoin crashed. That was when all my 5 month efforts fell apart, losing over $12k and my plans for the years to come. It had set me back to zero again – so this feeling has creeped up on me again and unlocked all the negative thoughts, creating a wave of loud noise that broke me down.
Suicide was on the table again.
I slit my wrist in pure desperation, in silence. Letting my arm bleed out a bit. I saw the major vein and I stopped. I used an X-acto knife that was beside me. I created a clean cut across but didn’t put enough pressure in to really do some major damage. I stopped.
What stopped me was the yell in my head. I dread to see the end to things. I always did since I was a kid. When someone told me Volcanoes destroy everything around it’s area, I got scared if we were living next to one. The dread is always naturally there.
I started then talking to my computer about its purpose. I believe that we are all energy stuck in a vessel experiencing everything around us in many different ways. So I felt connected to it after working with it for so long. I told it that we have to keep going. I just want to be able to find a way to do the things I love. Making a game takes a lot of everything to do. Then my mind switched and thought of my family. I don’t want to waste time working knowing that all of this is just temporary. I don’t want to lose time away from my love ones either and making anything technical I have to lose myself into it to really know how it works. There isn’t much time left either – my dad had a many strokes and my mom has high cholesterol levels that gotta get fixed.
Time is limited – And I want to enjoy the time I have on earth with my love ones, even though I’m in an absolute financial disaster because of my horrendous choices – I have to be with my family.
The best of the best positive discovery here is that I found my stop motion animation still in good condition. It’s pretty rough because it was the first time I went all out to do a feature 2hrs video by using all analog setup. For those who don’t know, that means I used 2 VCR decks, 1 boombox tape recorder for audio fx and music, and recompose the movie twice! LIVE! meaning I recorded up to 3 times over again into a new VHS tape all while I’m queuing up the audio fx live. It was the biggest thing I have ever did then. On top of having all my siblings and my best buddy voice some characters – this cannot be lost and I plan to fix it up for the public view in episodic format.
