How Much is too Much
Keeping with the theme of attempting to make a blog post this week, I’m simply going to muse about a thought that’s been on my mind in recent times, and it’s a rather simple one at that. How much is too much? Over the past…. month, I believe, I’ve been steadily piling on more and more work onto myself for reasons even I can’t fully fathom. In total, I’ve been continuing to work on editing the sequels for my book, writing the query letters to try and find an agent somewhere out there gutsy enough to bite onto a 500,000 word work, trying to develop a fully functioning website with enough interesting content to actually warrant its existence, trying to bring social media online when I am quite socially inept, attempting to delve into the world of pixel art and steadily increasing my skill with it, working on the basic barebones of a video game by myself, planning out more short stories, trying to find more time for 3d art so I can enlarge the gallery, and still find time somewhere in all of that for myself. Oh, and did I mention maintaining a full time job? There have been many, many moments where I’ve sat and thought to myself “Am I doing this to punish myself?” and I think the answer is quite simply ‘no.’ That being said, it certainly feels like it sometimes.
I think answering this question for myself requires an introspection into the why. Why do any of us tackle this much work? Is it because we simply can’t stand the thought of not being busy, or is it because we know we cannot achieve our dreams without putting in the time and effort? I think there are many possible reasons behind the why that can differ from person to person, and truthfully, I don’t know what keeps driving me to find more things to do. Seriously, I feel like I come up with something new each day. I think the main drive for myself is simply knowing how much there is that I want to achieve and how little time I have to achieve it. When our days are eaten up by jobs we do just to keep a roof over our heads, it doesn’t leave much time to actually pursue one’s dreams, so we have to make the most of the time we have. In that sense, I’m trying to tackle everything that I can reasonably think to tackle in order to stand a chance of completing all these different things that I’ve always wanted to do.
For example, art was always something I wanted to get into, but it was always too daunting. Pixel art, on the other hand, was something I never really embraced until, one day, it just clicked with me that I could start with it with minimal pressure. Making something that looks good in pixel art is, honestly, simple. You are limited to only having to worry about a small area and, therefore, you don’t have the capacity to worry about details like you would with normal art. It’s bitesized art to me, and that makes it far easier to learn and get used to which, I feel, might eventually lead me to learning concepts and tricks that will open the door to digital art, which would be quite exciting. In the meantime, Pixel Art gives me a way to feasibly pursue making a functional video game by myself, something that wasn’t really possible with 3d modeling (I really like knowing all the stuff was made from my own hand, hence using the unity store or an equivalent is not on the table.)
With all that being stated, I think the answer to my initial prompt is simple “As much as you can handle without going insane,” which then leads to the point of balance. How do you balance all your dreams, your hobbies, your work, and everything else together to make it work? How can we section off the little bits of time we have to make room? Obviously, the answer is that we do the best that we can, but something that I think is worth repeating until the end of time is to simply remember that we’re all human. Yes, we might all have dreams worth working every waking minute for, but if we can’t find the time for ourselves, the time for respite, relaxation, and rest, then each one of us risks burnout, and when that happens, the dreams you might have fought so hard for will burn up as well.
You know, for what started out as a simple “God DAMN I am tired as shit” prompt, this really turned too philosophical for me! This is DEFINITELY the Sapphiria part of my brain coming out, so… maybe it’s time for a little Atom, or someone more fun! SO, let’s shift to quite literally ANYTHING ELSE!
FUN THINGS
ALRIGHT! We’re not doing anything philosophical for at LEAST another month! That was too much, so let’s talk about some of the things that are on my plate that might be surfacing soon!
SHORT STORIES! What have I got coming up you ask?! Well, I’m glad you asked! In the near future, probably a month or so, I got… NOTHING! That’s right, it’s a whole heaping pile of nothing! To put it simple, I cannot edit and write normally at the same time, so if I want to make some short stories, I would have to shelve my sequel for a prolonged period of time, which I’m not willing to do… right now at least! That being said, short stories ARE still in the cards, and I have at least two more in addition to the one that is currently planned in the Short Stories section of the site, but these two will be… different. Instead of being simple short stories, these two new ones would be… NOVELLAS! I think! God I hope that’s what they’re called, but DAMMIT I feel WAY too lazy right now to verify that! These two new short stories would effectively be equivalent to 6 or 8 of my normal sized chapters and would tell the stories separate from the stories in my book, as in you don’t need to read these to understand the novels themselves. The first of these stories would focus on Yenza, a relatively minor character in the third book, but a super intriguing character who will ultimately gain the title of Dread Captain. I wonder if anyone in the future will dig back through these posts and wonder if this means anything secretive… Anyway, the second story would focus on one of the many battles fought between the Sapphire Eye and UEC, specifically a young human child and her father as their simple and peaceful city suddenly finds itself under siege by the Sapphire Eye as the battle lines continue to push deeper and deeper into UEC space! I have no idea when these will surface, but it’s safe to say that when they do, they’ll be a weekly occurence, so keep an eye out for whenever I get around to them!
PIXEL ART! That’s right, PIXEL ART! The Flying Fennec is finally feeling brave enough to start toying around with posting Pixel Art, though most of my time with pixel art is going towards a video game, so I don’t feel like posting all of it purely to hide my creations that I would REALLY like to not get stolen on accident. That being said, I have been dabbling with injecting sprites into ALLTP, and I’ve begun prototyping a Sapphiria sprite to use on my runs of the game! It’s not super far along because it’s a side project, but I think she’s turning out great so far! For some reason, I can’t link her picture in the body of this blog, so… GO TO THE GALLERY TO SEE IT UNLESS I FIGURE OUT HOW TO LINK IT HERE! WOOO!
TWITCH! IF I put enough pressure on myself, I’ll eventually do it, right? RIGHT?! That’s my goal at least! Streaming has ALWAYS appealed to me, but also TERRIFIED me at the same time, this leaving me in limbo. I am desperate to start it at some point because I think it would do wonders for my outreach capacity AND because I simply just want to. That’s part of why I’ve been working on a Sapphiria sprite. I’m hoping that soon I’ll be able to start streaming on twitch for ALLTP while using her sprite, so stay tuned for that to eventually land!
GALLERY! Blender has taken a MASSIVE backseat lately, but it’s finally bubbling back up to the surface! I would like to begin work on getting another ship added to the gallery since it makes an appearance in an already published short story and will most certainly resurface in future shorts as well. I make no promises about when it will surface, but keep your eyes out for the UEC Trident Class Frigate!
Phew… Alright, I’m WAY too tired to keep going, but I think I’ve made an interesting read for this week! First, you got to see me get way too much into my own head, and then you got to experience the part of me that is a little off the wall. That’s all I have to share for now, but perhaps there will be more very soon to show off! With that said, I’ve got a sprite to figure out how to post.
CHEERS PEEPS!
The Flying Fennec