Some thoughts on mental health (Patreon)

Hey guys,

I swear I won't make a habit of these TL;DR posts. I've been contemplating if I should make this post or not but I figure that some of you might be interested in the person behind the art. I also think it could be a relevant topic to some people and mostly I think that you deserve an explanation why my last project took so long where in the past I was able to pull off two projects in the same amount of time.

Basically for the first part of the year, I was depressed. It actually started several years ago, first it was pretty mild where it was just more and more difficult for me to be happy or excited about stuff, until eventually I couldn't do anything without immediately getting... bored? It's hard to explain, it wasn't exactly boredom but I couldn't go through almost any activity, I couldn't even stomach 20 minute episode of tv show so I just basically watched youtube where I could sit through <10 minute videos and slowly whittle the day away.

You can imagine that this made it pretty hard to work. Fortunately last year I was working on DDO, with pretty streamlined episodes - 4 poses for each character, very little story, very little transitions. I could do this almost without thinking and fortunately over the years of doing this job I could just autopilot these episodes. I still take pride in my work, so I wanted to have in some dialogue in them and overall I think the project turned out ok under the circumstances. 

Btw if you go back, check out the tracer episode, I was basically a zombie while making that one, huge thanks to Silkymilk for adlibbing the lines and making it more than the glorified GIF sequence it was.

Anyways, DDO was right at the level of difficulty where I could comfortably make the episodes without too much effort and thank to the power of Overwatch IP they had great reception. I released the project and my patreon, OF and subscribestar surged and at least my work life was pretty sucessful.

I was somewhat energized and started a new project. I really wanted to push my art forward with more story and I had this idea for size difference movie. I was however unsure of my animation ability and was heavily counting on mocap. I started preparing the models and testing the mocap setup and it was working ok. I saw that it would be a huge undertaking but I felt I could make it work.

Then I brought in the actress and I couldn't record even a simple walk animation. To this day I don't know what went wrong but the whole thing just literally stopped working. Suddenly I couldn't make the movie I commited to and it hit me hard. 

Some days I could barely get out of bed, I was dreading the days where I had to make an update for you guys cause everything moved at a glacial pace and I was pretty embarassed. Honestly the right thing to do would have been just to pause the patreon, OF and SS until I get my head right, but you can imagine I was terrified of that.

Somehow, the Youtube algorithm eventually recognized my mental state and started serving me psychiatry and self-help videos (which is honestly a terrifying thing that it can do that). I stumbled upon Dr. K ( https://www.youtube.com/c/HealthyGamerGG ) - Harvard psychologist and former monk turned twitch streamer who dealt with problems like parasocial relationships and loneliness. 

One video in particular stuck with me - It's hard to be of sound mind if you don't take care of your body. So I started going to bed at 11pm, eating healthy and working out. If you are depressed it probably sounds like an insurmountable challenge, but you gotta take it easy and step by step

If you want to try this approach, just start with better sleep, go to bed early, set an alarm so you don't spend all day in bed and just get the rhytm going. Then start eating better, cut out junk and fast food and eat more veggies and protein. If you drink heavily or use drugs, try to cut it out - I have my issues with alcohol, fortunately even when I was pretty low I recognized that drinking would make everything worse so I was able to avoid falling into that.

Go outside. Just go for a walk or even just sit on a bench. Eventually you'll have excess energy and you'll probably want to do more - I started jogging and working out. Lost weight, gained some muscle, I looked better and felt better about myself, that gave me confidence and people notice that.

Also if it's possible, go to therapy. It won't be an instant fix but at least for me each of the conversations made me realize some thing about myself and left me more hopeful. Or at least talk to friends. Not gonna lie I didn't tell almost anyone about my issues, it just felt like was being a bother and I wish I wouldn't have kept it to myself.

Right now I am feeling much better, obviously still have my demons and worse days but it's always going to be a work in progress.

Also maybe none of these might not be applicable to you, it helped me but everyone is unique. I also understand that stuff like therapy can be out of reach for lot of people and I can see the irony of me complaining about anything. After all I am making my own hours doing what I love, working as much or as little as I want. So yes, I probably should be the last to complain but hey, it can happen to anyone.

Anyway, this kinda turned out into an incoherent ramble lol. Hopefuly at least something was insightful or helpful to any of you. I just want to say that I am grateful for your support and in the future I want to do better. I want to do better art for you and for me to be proud of.