Sky's Journal

The original Mario Maker was lightning in a bottle, and Miiverse was the spark that gave it life. As a semi-popular creator, I got a TON of comments from players young and old...

At long last, a new adventure dawns. Starting June 1st, I'll be playing Terraria for the VERY FIRST TIME – joined by my lovely friends @harmonyfriends, @jadeghosthill, @notquiteapex, and @somethingwittyandweird!

All of us have been looking forward to this for SO long – Apex and Marissa especially have been marinating in plans to show me all the wonderful and horrifying things this game is capable of. It's sure to be a treat, especially if you liked their shenanigans in my first Minecraft playthrough!

the switch eshop is (sadly) no stranger to slop and shovelware, but when i found a guy releasing a game every week? i knew i had to investigate.

in its wake i find myself looking at all the plans i made that sifted through my fingers, and i'm trying to rebuild what i can...

in an ideal world we'd be most of the way through color splash right about now, looking ahead to terraria next month... but that didn't pan out.

neither did the birthday stream that needed a couple months of prep work... nor the cool and weird games i've been picking up... or even any multiplayer gaming nights.

practically the only thing i was able to stream was chuchu rocket and its dlc. which i didn't even get to finish!

you might look at all that and ask, "you didn't overwhelm yourself, did you?" in fairness, i absolutely did freeze up from being overwhelmed, but i was still determined to do as much of it as i could, even if i had to postpone some ideas...

and then the depressive funk hit.

i really do think the funk was unrelated to my overladen plans; it matches up with patterns and symptoms that i've dealt with in all my working memory.

but god, the overload sure made the funk worse, and the funk sure made the overload worse. cyclically.

so as i rebuild the pieces i don't want to repeat my mistakes; i'm excited about all this stuff still, but i'm trying to space it out better and give myself more room for small, spontaneous stuff. that unfortunately means some plans like the big birthday stream are going clear out to NEXT year ;-;

(it's also probably a little early to be rebuilding so many plans... but we'll take it one day at a time.)

the funk wasn't a total wash, at least; i've been working on that big video, and there's NO way i would've been able to fit that in between all of those streams. honestly it's big enough that i really could've only done it with this much downtime... i was too intimidated to work on it otherwise!

i don't mind that my body forced me to rest – not so much as i mind when it did; some of these streams really built on each other in ways that i desperately wish could've panned out as planned. but i gotta listen to my body first, and i'm glad i did!

a number of people have asked so i figure i should mention: yes, i'm in the middle of a depressive slump lately. even with meds, therapy, and the support of wonderful friends, these still crop up every so often and kick my ass for 3-4 months before going away on their own.

as far as depressive slumps go, this one's pretty mild. i'm still holding up okay and i still have good days where i get things done. most of what i've been working on lately has been behind the scenes – but the stream i did earlier this week was great!

...what i haven't told anyone yet is that, the day after the stream, i was bedridden for the whole day. it was one of the worst depression days i've had since college.

most of my bad days lately have not been nearly that bad, but the bad days still outnumber the good days for now.

there's not much i can really do about it, other than ride it out? i have a number of tricks to keep my head above water, and ways to make the good days better... but the bad days will happen whether i want them to or not. it's just a fact of life right now.

and to be clear, in case anyone is worried – this is not your classical emotional struggle of "nothing matters why bother" or "i'm so lonely no one loves me" or etc.

this is, instead, my body's nervous system freezing up at the mere thought of doing anything. it's an overactive stress response.

in other words – and i hate to ask this, because i wanna hang out with y'all and have fun – the most important thing anyone can do for me right now is... consider me booked for the foreseeable future. my dms are clogged, my responsibilities are piling up, and my ability to Do will be slow for now.

this started around the beginning of february, and based on prior experience it'll probably be sometime in may before i start to perk up again.

there will be no flashy, grandiose announcement that i'm suddenly back on my feet, because that's not how this works. it'll be a slow ride back to normalcy.

in the meantime i'll still be doing things spontaneously whenever i have good days, as long as they don't bear the crushing weight of Obligation attached to them. i would ask y'all to show up for those, but you already do that because you're all cool as fuck! thank you all for having my back and being amazing friends – the card some of y'all sent me was very special and i will cherish it forever 😭

i found a guy on the switch eshop who's been vibecoding MULTIPLE new games every month by himself. most of them are simulators. all of them are obvious asset-flip ai slop.

so i did some research... and bought a few of them. tonight at 7PM central, let's break them in half.