The video has the summary of before I cut my hours and then after I did. The reason I did cut my hours is because I really needed to focus and relax on updating everything online, as well as follow up with clients who reached out to me to work with them on web projects. Being creative is a mindset, and when I’m in high anxiety survival mode, I can’t concentrate even while my time is committed to something else. Thankfully my bosses granted me the reduced time to focus. I just wish I was able to control my schedule in a month by month bases, and not weekly. But working Sundays and two days out of the week has resulted to be a blessing. I also talked to my brother that because I have reduced my hours, I will only focus on paying the minimum of the bills, since to me it’s simply a black hole and getting my business up I need money for promotional material, advertising, and keeping my domains up and running. I’ve been doing what I can for a very long while, and axing that for the house I simply object to it.
Also side note – I looked into selling Life insurance and I quickly decided not to get into that since it was a beast all on it’s own. I need to stay focused on my projects and side hustle selling my services to business and individuals who need to get stuff done. I will also delegate/contract work to others who need it. My future 10 year plan is to create a studio of talented folks to do this sort of stuff, but I need to make it happen today first by making it work with my own talents.
The rest below I drafted it back in July, but after my meeting in August 12 with my siblings, then getting my wisdom tooth taken out, my mind totally changed. So I reworded a few things and now I don’t plan on moving until I get shit done here first. I need to push my business to the next level, then when I have enough money, move out slowly.
… I really don’t have much to say anymore. It’s been weeks and I haven’t been able to do what I listed to do. I’m just gonna repeat myself over again and my life is in a locked down state of affairs. People around me want me to be happy but shit is tough. I have no real motivator that says “if you feel ___ is holding you back, then move on”. This relates to work as a cashier, which is extremely limiting and redundantly monotonous. For the first time in my life trying that position out, after a whole year, I have to conclude that it really sucks as is but it has some good elements. It’s truly a dead end position though, there is no way around it. I have to complain about this because I’m burned out with it (at the time of this writing in July). Then the chain reaction of working so hard, standing up for hours on end, feeling the burn on my feet, getting back discomfort, just so I get so little from it and be short on bills, I get lost and feel what is the whole point of it? I truly feel I’m stuck. I try to look for other ways and places to work but that can’t be done either because of time needed and the level of uncertainty also disapproval from my family if I even try to rent out a spot in my dwelling.
Look, we all are here to enjoy life in all aspects of it. Be it with lots of sacrifice/investment in getting to our goals, so that it will feel much more meaningful, but we all know that the most valuable thing in this entire universe is our time. In of itself is finite, and having to earn for the fiscal year $8,000 all then just to see so little from it, living paycheck to paycheck, for months on end, to work for days doing something you don’t feel happy in, simply feels like life is wasted even when all you have earned disappears in a snap. I have so many goals set that I would love to reach them, but right now my challenge to stay on course has been truly hard. Thankfully I am blessed with things and forces beyond my own, giving me the chance to roll out as much as I can. I have a wonderful Girlfriend now that understands me, that motivates me. I have a family that will back me up if issues arise. I got it. No questions ask. It’s also a blessing that I have a job to begin with. At least it makes me look at things with contrast between it being bad as it is and also helping just a bit to live day by day.
What I am saying here is that I don’t want to spoil my time. I got stuff to do. That’s why I have a secret milestone. It’s just a measurement from the first day of the year to today. How much I can save for just 2 months worth and how much I pay for bills in the grand total scheme.
It’s all to see my options. The big prime objectives are constant though, in which I want to save for my game development stuff. I managed to do that with a job as a cashier, holding up in being a “homeowner” (really I’m just a stand in, in an awkward stance about it that nobody can ever understand but my family). My plans initially in the summer was to move out of “my” house. That plan was gonna roll out and take 4 months for me to accumulate what I need to get everything together but at the end I decide against that because my real goal was not yet fulfilled, which is my game developments and projects. Originally everything was going to go to storage, which will be my motion when I do execute it after I’m done with my current developments and financial goals.
Now you are asking, why? Because family drama. Everything was alright until a member stepped in and pushed his ideals on to everyone else, starting in 2014. Things have been slowly shifting towards the plans of purging everything new in “his” image. I don’t share such an ideal because mines have been consistent throughout all time, which is basically work on my projects and keep things as is. I want to maintain historical elements but since my parents gave up on the house long ago, it’s pretty much just for him now, because “there isn’t any other options” that feels lucrative than to set it up how he wants it. So, to get out of his way and not waste his energy, after I’m done with what I have to focus on first, I’ll move.
Getting away will help psychologically and emotionally. There won’t be any need of him plotting for me to leave and I won’t have any more anxiety attacks or overthinking about that. Years of work won’t be threaten like the way it has been, and it’s basically me fighting to protect my life’s work. All the art and development will be placed in storage containers and other extra stuff too once I’m able to do so. I just feel stuck and the best thing to do now is focus on my talents and keep searching for leads to get to my goals.
Anyways, now I have someone I promised a future with. This means letting go of the past. This exchange of value will only yield me, with hard work, something way better than just this house. This is my belief.
Another thing is that I’ve been largely dormant on actions I must execute to save my ass. I’ve been dependent on my sibling for a very long while in the midst of this transition, oddly. Is because of all the paperwork that has been processed without any detail passed on to me to see. Just like the electricity winter fiasco, where i didn’t know who was controlling the account and why they were charging such a high premium, I solved that issue by calling and changing things up under my name. There are other things still I don’t know what’s happening at all, and that unknown is the root of my siblings anxiety attacks. So I can’t blame him for being so rough, it is because shit gotta get paid or the house will be taken away. This is why I’m alright now to sell it, but my brother has other plans.
Again, some of these things are communicated in high anxiety arguments when things haven’t been talked about before. I’m pretty much walking in the dark here, bumping into walls. This whole experience has sucked me dry from doing anything creative and has delayed my projects. This is when I realized, when I was in connecticut with my girlfriend, that I have to do some drastic changes before winter comes again, and now we start the fall season. Shit is gonna get hard.
With all that said, I’ll do what I can about the content and website. No deadline set which means no promises.
Thanks for reading and caring about the matter. Next update will be when I get a chance. Right now I enjoyed my hours being cut down to only work on weekends, which is actually working well as a good strategy to keep me afloat. It’s giving me time to focus on my projects big time, but I’m low on cash so I recently requested more hours again, but that will be just to get enough money to invest so I can then focus on the next campaign and await for potential leads to come.
I wanted to be clear first that this is my personal blog and want to warn you guys that my grammar isn’t going to be professional. I am always learning new english techniques from folks who do know more than me and I will always try to be better every time I can on each post I do. Sometimes I will rush things so I apologize in advance. The whole point is to clearly communicate my thoughts to the reader through this page as transparent as possible. As for Mariolegend.com, that I will get an editor to help me formulate better articles going forward. This is only a heads up note just in case those who do wander in here, and have an english major under their belts, know that this shit is what it is – me.
With that said let’s go on with the actual stuff I gotta tell you guys about in this post.
First I want to apologize for not posting at all for the last few weeks. It’s been very transformative to say the lease. What had happened is that I got myself in trouble romantically, but financially I’ve been in “Grit & Grind Survival Mode” which basically means work hard in silence and save every dime I can for the future. All of the month of May I’ve been also trying to pre-produce the setup of my stop-motion animation project. I hit a few snag(s) but I’m still sort of on track with it. The reason why I’m uncertain is because I have a few conditions that are prioritized for that project, in which I don’t know if I’m going to successfully pull it off, before my brother decides to face me about working on the house. So what I’m doing is focusing on the story and environment I have (like a toy story narrative crossing with my original stop motion project from 20 years ago) to be able to fully tell my tale.
On a side note about fan made projects, the landscape of copyright and fair use has been heating up badly. Just to cut a long story short, companies have been fighting to take down folks who use their intellectual properties with anything they can. Since this stop-motion project was produced 21 years ago (1998), I did not know anything about copyright stuff at all – I was just a kid who celebrated and loved being in the many worlds from the games and animations I experienced back then. The therapeutic and ritual aspects of this is that it helps me move on to the next part of my life. So when I did the stop-motion back then, it was saying goodbye to my habits of playing with toys in general and moving them in bins forever. Since Toy Story 3 was basically that part of my life, I instead made a huge and very impressive production from it that totals 3 hours long. The last 30 minutes of the video are lost (but I’m trying to retrieve it) since my digital 8 camcorder is defective and I need to see if sending it to a service that can convert the tape into an mp4 will help the cause.
But anyways, I’m redoing a lot of the production for Season 1 of Famicom Land. Season 2 is, in a different take, where I’m working on now because it’s the current setting of discovery since the schematics of the house has changed a lot and will drastically change in the next few months if I don’t put the pedal to the metal. As for the time it takes place, both seasons are 5 thousand years apart, and introduces M (Mariolegend, who is my alter ego/persona of another instance of space-time) that creates also a crossing between the Tribus Fabula universe into the game universe. Lately though for the story, I thought up that it will play out as a parallel universe that takes place in my own world but some objects are alive within my house (as if Toy Story was live action in a way) and my alter-ego is transformed into a Toy himself, rediscovering the world and unlocking the characters that survived the cataclysmic event in season 1.
So with that covered, I also wanted to talk about my G-Legend Specials that I’m working on now.
There are many G-Legend Specials I’m working on such as; G-Spirit Versus Omega-G: First Assault, GerardoLegend 2019: A walk for hunger, G-Journal Special: Green Summer Heart, and G-Spirit Vs Omega-G: Smash out! (A live stream event, 3 players against the CPU that will play as Omega-G)
The theme here is going to work as a pixelated retro look and I’m first working on the consistency as I progress through production of it but first I’m concentrated on the stop-motion animation project pre-production setup before I can go ahead with the other stuff.
Since the trends of my schedule now is having Thursdays and fridays off, I’ve been using them to draw out my plans and write down things, and as well my time has diminished greatly because I’m also focused romantically on a new person in my life. This I will save the tale to be told in G-Journal Special: Green Summer Heart.
As for my suicidal bad side, it’s mute now for the time being. I’ve been keeping it at bay, and my new love has helped me cope by giving me new hope, as well I’ve been staying very busy and feeling confident about things in general.
Another side note, my depression has injured me to the point where my intellect has lowered down. What happens is that the hippocampus gets damaged permanently from long episodes, and things get really frustrating when calling back to common knowledge. In a nerdy sense, I 404 all the time when people ask me about stuff, more so when I don’t get sufficient rest while going through the course of the week at work. I’m recovering now from burnout and using the projects above as therapy for myself to get back to it again. I still hate my circumstance at work but I am trying to find new ways to use my skills to help others and find new leads to establish an alternative set of income. It all has to do with patience and I discovered that I need to just keep up at it and focus on controlling myself from going off the handle. Success is simply around the corner if I stay the course, as I generally tell myself now.
I feel much more confident than the last 2 months before, after the tarot reading, thus confirming my success – is just all about patience and perseverance.
With all that dropped, I wish you, my awesome reader, a wonderful summer, until next time…
So 2 weeks have passed now since PAX EAST 2019 happened. After the show, especially Sunday in which I wished to have gone, I fell into a bit of an unsettling feeling. The root of it all that I was trying to figure out for myself has to do with the overwhelming feeling of uncertainty. I have a quota I want to keep per month, and since 2 weeks ago my hours have been cut since I asked for time to go to the event, the schedule hasn’t come back to normality yet, where the lowest matching time would be above 16 hours per week, but this week I got 13 hours instead. Since I get paid bi-weekly, just calculating in this period in time, I will only get $371 after taxes (estimated), in which totalling from the previous check, $913, which is the estimated amount per month I get to cover for food, utilities, house tax, house insurance, and entertainment. This is not mentioning that I also have backed debts as well as I invest in my business side with the money I earn through my job. Thankfully I have my brother who earns way more than me to cover the big stuff and has a more consistent schedule than I do.
Furthermore, the pressure isn’t as high thanks to my younger sibling luck in getting more hours in. I still want to be able to pull my part but it has been really tough because I’m not hitting that specific number for the month. On average I get 900 a month, which I can’t even do much with it as 600 of it goes for everything I mentioned above, then contend with food. I might sound like a brat here but this is why I fall into a consistent cycle of depression. This is why I have started to pull back on updating because there is an ocean of bad moments, which sounds like complaining all the time, and only just a handful of celebratory moments that I can share. I wish I can, but life sucks for me right now that I can’t see it in the present. Hell I’m super numb about it that the only way to help it is to write it out here.
I’m putting it out there just to let you guys know that at this time of my life, it’s still very low even though it is way higher than last year. I still need to push myself to breakthrough this barrier. I have been fearing that once my crohns comes back, in which it has been in remission, that I won’t be able to do this style of work anymore. Overthinking as I usually do, I’m really concerned with the future. This is why I mentioned on social media that I need to do a big change. The main focus is to keep this site and my network alive for a bit longer before I can finish up on my big pies to start presenting next year. My motivation though has been at a stand still because of this overwhelming feeling. Trust me, It pains me to the point I had so many thoughts of suicide and just ending sounds so sweet and easy just because I fear disaster so much.
The true path, in which sounds way better money earning wise, I should have saved up to get my Adobe Pro certification. It cost $180.00 to register and take the exam. There are other cost layered on top of that, but if I get it, then I can actually share my achievement on social media and on freelancing sites like UpWork and Fiverr. This is only just a start, as I need to focus on finding a physical job that does graphic design or user design/experience. They are classes for those subjects that I can focus on after my certification, but in the meanwhile from all of this, the main passionate directive is still my game project. The problem is that I need money and developing my game takes a lot of time and focus to do. Developing a product won’t yield me any money at all until it’s ready for market, to even have that risk. In that time I need a secured income to cover the costs of living, breathing, and utility to make this real. Depression has hit me hard and uncertainty fills me with anxiety.
Financial security is number 1 on my priority right now. This is how I can pay my music and graphic artists as well as programmers. No monetary incentive, no game folks. Plain and simple.
This is why my despairing feelings feeds my depression and anxiety. I just want to know that for the meantime I’ll be alright and that I can continue without progress being interrupted. Is that simple. The quota per month that I require is $1300, that’s all. Nothing big in 2019, and I can finally feel fine and focus without having to complain about it. This is why I was saddened that I lost the spot at Seaport for the night shift as security. That would have lessen the physical pains and would help me enter a more balanced state.
Recently I’ve been feeling aches under my belly, the spot where the doctors took out 2 feet of intestines. This could mean my crohns is coming back from remission. I’ve only had 2 remissions before because I could control my shit, but the past 9 months have been really bad, habits wise. So I’m not surprised but a bit scared about this. I don’t want all my guts to get cut out. I want to restore my health again. This means taking drastic measures in avoiding smoke and alcohol (specialist recommendations). This includes cutting back on junk food too, and make my lazy way to making healthy meals. If I don’t adhere to the signs (discomfort before pain), then I’m gonna be in really bad shape.
So with that expressed, you guys already know. I need to get into shape and push away whatever negativity that may be. Sadly this only means less social party meet ups because they would normally include smoke and alcohol. This is why I only party as if I was a kid, playing video games, because I’m not a normally functioning adult that booze up and watch sports to ease up. Unfortunately I have to be picky about this or the quality of life for me will be shit going forward if I follow the crowd. Is that understandable?
In between all of this, folks also ask “why not do programming?” in which my reply is basically I’m stupid emotional. I terribly hate looking up on the screen and stare at code. I do it because I need to realize a concept, but doing it to help others I won’t because I don’t have the patience. If I don’t even have the patience for myself, why even go in the direction to teach anyone. I’m not even competent about it though in which I tried to learn for 10 years now.
One bad thing about being in a depressive state of mind for so long, for me, is that I noticed my brain is starting to forget everything. Complaining becomes a thing that happens a lot in my head. You then become indifferent, and you just float in space unable to react to things you have to do, but you don’t do because now perception of time has gone crazy fast. Anxiety is the results of snapping back to realize the time and then an overwhelming pressure of thoughts comes flooding in, paralyzing you. You then go numb and processing things suck monkey balls. Reaction is slow, and procrastination happens as the mind is trying to get back that energy wasted on pushing back on those thoughts. This cycles happen so fucking much that I just write off the next day. This also happens when I don’t go to work. I start fumbling and doing mistakes after a long break because my brain has been fighting itself throughout that time adjusting to the time of solitude. On that note it is why I’m really mad about the inconsistencies of my time schedule because I have to set my mind for it every week. Thus the “off days” I usually am here trying hard to figure out how to work things, worrying about tomorrow. I just want something consistent. Because after this low activity week, then there would be a high activity week afterwards. If not, then I know I’m in trouble.
Another note to consider is that at my job at the liquor store, seeing regulars and stressed out clients, has made me feel really sad about the position. Selling them their vices is like trying to comfort them to sleep with poison. All of them are loveable human characters. One of the rules in movies that make people not care for others is the fact that the characters have less screen time to find out who they were. In this scenario, the regulars and stressed out customers, come in from time to time and make you feel apart of their lives. You start caring for them. You want to comfort them but you know you can’t. It gets complicated.
This whole scene makes me feel like the world sucks. The world doesn’t suck, it just that the people are really fighting hard to live. This causes the drama and all of those emotions. For instance, there was a young lady who was purchasing a just bottle of wine but I noticed something was wrong – so I said in jest “don’t worry, you will be alright now going home with this” indicating the wine bottle, and she couldn’t hold her tears, so I asked what had happened and she said that her dog passed away as I finished the transaction. That made me sad. This wasn’t the only instance as there was another customer who brought his big greyhound in last year, but then later in winter had also passed away. You see, this is a lot. I can’t help but to grieve with them and to process this on my own.
It’s a hard job emotionally and psychologically. One wouldn’t think of it, but like water, the droplets of emotions start to errode that hard front one sets up as time goes by. It’s really tough, as I already been suffering from an emotional depressive state. You simply realize you can’t help but just do your job and go home.
Setting my mind away from all of that takes an enormous effort in my part so I can focus at home on getting in my projects. PAX EAST pretty much is my mecca and example of perseverance celebrated. The closest thing to seeing physically what I’ve been trying to do all these years is expressed on the show floor with many who have successfully punched through this wall I’m in. I was at the happiest state of mind there but I only knew it was just for that moment. Going back to my own reality…. Yup.
With all of that said, thank you for reading and hopefully I’ll have another post coming down sooner than later. I’ll be working on slowly in that PAX EAST special edition video for my GerardoLegend youtube channel in a few days so check back in or subscribe to it.
Times are tougher than expected now. Things have gotten out of control financially and currently I’m trying my best to sort things out but the next few weeks will be an interesting hard one nonetheless.
First let’s talk about my current ills.
I’m currently trying to communicate with the power company to fix the complex issue that my parents left me to do. The accumulation of debt had triggered the power company to want to cut the electric cord has my attention. It’s due to the neglectful act way back in September when my parents basically ignored the fact that me and my siblings were trying hard to keep things working. I JUST started my job and I get this avalanche of responsibilities hit me like a train. I went into depression right after seeing the mountain of crap I have to process. It almost feels intentional because my parents really want to sell the house but their bad financial habits of burning cash like water had us all in really bad shape at the end of the year.
This has yanked me away from making anything new.
Creatively it’s just been hard to continue doing my projects, so I cancelled them all until I can get back control of the situation.
Right now I’m looking at $1,300 in electric bills and $1,700 home tax that is due at the end of this month. I’m currently at $19 dollars in my account making 12 an hour and getting a paycheck every 2 weeks while my schedule is so inconsistent but average at 20 hours per week, maximum at 35 hours and the minimum at 18 hours per week.
So continuing, the power company is basically done with my “dad”, because the cumulative balance hasn’t been paid in 5 months, but the record shows that I, Me the son, have been putting in a total of $900 since. It’s all in the house account online. Even with that, they ignore it all. I have been cutting down on electric use since my parents left to florida by $150, saving enough so that my maximum that I can give to the bill, $300, can cut the big bill down. That’s the strategy, but again – the power company doesn’t want to have it.
So now I’ve been trying to call them but just the robot answers and I was told that all reps are only focused on emergency calls only at this time of writing.
This is just driving me up the wall and I want to resolve this as quick as possible.
With that said, in which is taking my energy away from being creative, I have to let winter freeze all progress down until I can. Financially I’m in really bad shape and I can’t do anything because it’s on my mind 24/7. Trying to buy food is hard too in winter, as I don’t use a car to get to places. I instead been walking to the grocery store and grabbing as much as I can hold, to then walk all the way home, 1 hours worth, so I can then make dinner after. I’m alone in this part of my life, but occasionally i get help from family and strangers, but not always. This is why I miss how my family used to be before 2018 happened. So now I see that all my time is tied up in living.
To explain more on what I mean about my time being all tied up in living, before 1 video would take just 8 hours to make, now it takes 5 days to do. Creating just 1 image, drawing or pixel, what used to take 3 to 8 hours now takes 3 to 7 days. It’s this I feel that everything I wanted to do is now near impossible. The time I have to set versus trying to get that concentration to make something is way more crucial to me, and any interruption can fuck me up big time and set me back.
When stuff like the electric company trying to pull the plug on me happens, I fall into depression and can’t concentrate anymore. I’m constantly scared about it and simply I can’t find a way to put my focus to do anything but to find a solution to face the situation at hand.
This is why I’m not going to make games, because again, time is way more important now and I’m being drained away with these things that is basically making me suicidal because I find doing my passion mentally satisfying but I have to push it aside. I have to be responsible and my passion isn’t paying the bills.
I’ve been going down this slump for the last 3 years now. It hurts. I thought maybe I can get an investor interested in my project, but nope, it isn’t enough. This was a factor why I tried to go into bitcoin and cryptocurrency, and that just made things worse. I went also into Forex, that killed me because I wasn’t mentally ready for it.
Trying to put together this post is also just bad emotions because of trying to line up what’s going on with me is just painful to think.
Folks, really, I’m tired. I’m tired of hitting a wall all this time. I feel so desperate right now.
Thus my next plan of action, when I get my check, is to reconstruct all 4 sites with a tool that will replace Adobe Muse and implement ads to them all. I really tried to keep things ad free, but at this rate I’m going to lose it all. I don’t want to lose it all – which means imminent suicide. I will self-terminate if I lose it all. Basically is all or nothing, and I don’t have energy to repeat shit again since my crohns is a hinderance and may complicate things in the future. To do this I need help from working with things like ads. I might even ask for help if things really get bad but I have a little bit of faith in myself that I can get over this shitty chapter but that doesn’t stop the negative thinking.
Continuing about my plans, I will have less invasive ads so it won’t be annoying but accumulation of time and combination with content that people will feel satisfy is key here. That’s where finding the money and time to do that is expensive now but not impossible. Expensive because of time, which is, again, much more valuable than money here.
I first must pay out of pocket to get things rolling, but after that I would have to find strategies that can help me get traffic here and my other 3 sites. I’m also going to plug-in an online shop for common goods that people can get that I can get commission from as well. ALL IN DUE TIME! That’s why this stupid energy situation is costing me my time.
Time, I repeat that word like crazy here. It’s something that cannot get back and I’m learning through this part of my life that I can’t simply waste it with this nonsense. 2019 I want to accomplish balance in many things. I want to be able to keep the things I have built. All I have created cost so much time to do, and to lose it all will be extremely devastating to me. So even though if the electricity gets cut, I will have to find ways, like journey to the city library to do my work on my off days, which are now limited due to priority in getting money to pay bills.
This winter I might get all of this bad shit happening and paying for utilities is even crazier this season. So it would slow me to a crawl but stop me. Cutting cost is the game here through this moment, which will end in 2 months, hopefully.
So if things get better in those 2 months, then expect me to return back to making anything big again and finding a programmer to help out, otherwise I project that this year it’s gonna be another 2017 until the end, and I’m really trying to make it better.
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.
