Finally Finally Finally (Patreon)

Oh dear lords of light above. I'm free. Finally.

The UVG ref screen is done.

Designing the ref screen for the UVG was truly, truly hard. It was a nightmarish slog. It's not just that I'm tired, with the project 4 months late in total. It's not just that it was really hard to design because I had to trim, adjust, and tweak a series of massive tables to fit on four coherent pages. It's not just that thinking this hard also made me see how I could have indeed better structured the referee-facing pages of the UVG. It's not just that this late in the project, I can see all its flaws magnified to great motivational benefit.

It should have taken me a couple of days total. It took me two weeks.

I'll be very frank (and a little bit suevian), I procrastinated hard. Like, really hard. And, at core, it was because the UVG has become a very, very emotional project. As you all know, my father passed away while I was working on finishing the book for print.

What I didn't go into detail was that for a long time I had a difficult relationship with my father over my art. He was a product of his own father and time and was driven to compete and win to survive. He did not understand or appreciate art. To my knowledge, he never had a favorite band or painter or architect. Engineering, business, politics, these things he understood. Art? Massive blind spot.

And for the longest time, I had a very hard time finishing any creative projects because I carried within me the childhood memories of my father simply not seeing or comprehending or caring very much about anything creative I did. I wanted my father to be proud of me and I feared that if he did not understand what I did, he would not be proud of me. So I dithered rather than finished. I wanted to finish projects, but my will failed me, my drive went away, and I left them hanging. Better abandon a project than face the certainty of my father being disappointed. That kind of thing.

An aside. Obviously, these are time-tinted lenses and who knows what really happened. This was the nucleus of anxiety and worry about art that I carried within me. Carry within me.

So here it was. The last piece of the UVG. My first really big creative project. And ... looking back ... wow ... it is kind of huge. Lots and lots of words, lots and lots of art, lots and lots of effort, lots and lots of amazing support from all of you. It has been transformative in many ways to me and to my life.

Here it was. The end in sight. The finish line. The last step.

And I dithered and I worried and I installed and re-installed Civ 6 rather than just finishing it.

At some point a few days ago it hit me that I faced not just the fear of my father being disappointed but the certain fact of never knowing again if he would be proud or not ... because he was no more. He is no more.

I have the finality of looking forward to my first great project completed and knowing, knowing for a certainty, that my father will never have the chance to tell me he's proud of me for the art and writing that I do.

It's a little tragic.

From Tragedy to Comedy

Yet life spins on and the sun shines outside, so here's some good news.

Longwinter is nearly done. I'll see how it goes this week, but ... I might, just might, finish by week's end.

And on the production side of things ... 

We've hammered out a regular old partnership with Exalted Funeral, the Moonrat Conspiracy, and Double Proficiency, to prep and put out Red Sky Dead City and later games and books together. This is a pretty big deal for several reasons:

• We're closer to having a regular little publishing house for putting out games and books, with a proper production line of editing, layout, and printing.
• This frees me up to focus on writing and art, which means I should be able to finish books and games faster.

It does mean the updates on the stratometaship won't be as pretty to look at ... but the final works will be much prettier!

So, I guess that's a win?

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As always, thank you for your support and patience, the heroes of this stratometaship! You've been amazing and you make all this possible. I'll prep some more art and wallpapers soon, but for now ... the full resolution wooden angel just for you.

—Luka