Weekly Update - 7-24-2021 (Mostly personal, but also pretty explosion) (Patreon)

Hey everyone. Yet another pretty short update this week, though there is a pretty rad animation Orex made this week that I'll be sharing.

First off, my personal week. It was a pretty decent one. I didn't manage to get any work done like I was hoping, but I'm trying to be alright with that - even though I've had a lot of time "away from work", so to speak, most of it up until now has been spent in a depressive state, so it hasn't exactly been restful. This week I felt pretty decent (aside from the continued extreme anxiety when I have an appointment coming up), but once I tried to start working this week and was still struggling with it, I also realized that I only just started feeling decent again, so I figured giving myself a bit more of a break would be a good idea.

So aside from the lack of work, I had another meeting with my psychiatrist this week. We talked about how things have been going for me, what changes I want to try and work towards, and she gave me a list of therapists to look into. I'll be doing some research this week to try and decide who I want to work with out of the 5 options she gave me; I'm not sure how long it'll be after I decide who to go for before I actually start having therapy sessions, but in the meantime, my psychiatrist worked with me to set up a list of small goals for me to accomplish before I meet with her again in a month, to help me get out of the stagnation of my comfort zone in a healthy, sustainable way. She continues to be a wonderful person to work with; when we were figuring out those goals, I was a bit overambitious with some of the things I wanted to accomplish, and she was quick to pull me back from those when necessary. After she discussed that, and why she pulled me back from it, I'm starting to get the feeling that "expecting too much to quickly" has been one of my key struggles with making positive changes in my life; I expect a lot out of myself, and when I fail to meet those expectations, I struggle to find the motivation to keep trying.

I'm going to keep taking it easy for a little while longer; I plan on trying to do some small work on personal for-fun projects, and if that goes well and I'm feeling productive then I'll try working on CPE too, but I don't want to force myself just yet. It still hasn't been a full month since I started taking the antidepressants, so it's entirely possible the effects will become even more pronounced over the next week or two. I have another appointment with the doctor who prescribed my medication very early next month; this medicine definitely seems to be helping with my depression, but so far I don't feel like it's doing anything for my ADHD/anxiety, so if that continues I'll probably talk to her about trying out adding another medication on top of the one I'm taking. The one I'm on now is only approved for depression, it just also has the side effect of often helping people with ADHD/anxiety, so it was a 50/50 shot whether it would help me with those too, and not a big surprise if it doesn't.

Anyway, that's about all I have regarding myself this week. Before I end this post, though, Orexius has been working on learning some special effects animation (which was previously one of the few remaining animation/art things I still handled personally), and he took the time this week to go back and animate a new explosion effect for the Seeker Mines you encounter in the game's underwater sections.

For comparison's sake, I grabbed an older gif showing the OLD version of the mine's explosion animation:

And here's the NEW animation:

Obviously the new animation lacks the ingame context, but hopefully you're as big of a fan of it as I am! After seeing this, I'm pretty stoked to have Orex go back and update some of our other special effects to be fancier. Much like my character animation work from the early days of CPE, it wasn't bad per se, but my animations and effects tended to be pretty basic. I'm not an animator, and there's a level of quality and flair Orex brings to the presentation that I have a difficult time reaching when I do artwork. Basically what I'm saying is, Orexius is awesome.

Alright, that's it for me for this week. Thank you all for reading, and for continuing to be so supportive and kind! I've said it before, but all of your kind words and reassurances really do help me to not feel so guilt-ridden when things don't go according to plan. After talking to my psychatrist, I'm going to try and put a little less pressure on myself, and try to find victory in even the smaller things, so I can work towards a healthier relationship with my work and life. Thank you again for reading, and we'll see you again in next week's update!