What's Going On: December 2021

I'm hesitant to keep people too in the loop, because I don't want to be a bummer, but I also want you guys to know what's... well, what's going on, like it says right there in the title.

The Bad News

First up to bat: the apartment backed out on transferring us to a downstairs unit. I kind of expected this, because they've done nothing but over-promise and under-deliver on literally every single thing I think they've ever told us. Like, when we moved in back in 2017, they gave us an apartment number, showed us where it was, and then a week before we moved in, told us we'd be going to a completely different unit on the other end of the complex.

When they were pitching the renovation last year, they said they were going to talk about it around June of 2020, but we didn't hear anything about it until October. When they told us we'd have 45 days advance warning to pack up our unit for the reno, we actually only had 14-ish days. When they told us they'd pay for our bills (mostly food) while we were displaced, they never did that. So on and so forth. 

So for them to suddenly clarify, after we'd given them a money order and everything, that they don't actually do transfers anymore and we'd have to sit on the waiting list like everybody else... it was a punch in the stomach, but it wasn't a surprise. The place we live in sucks, and we only took it because there weren't any better options at the time. Unfortunately, there are even less options now. We're still playing the waiting game and we don't know how long it'll take. Kinda don't have any choice.

My mother is starting the fourth month of her recovery and it's a game of highs and lows. She's showing signs of getting better, but only in small, specific ways. She is still mostly confined to a wheelchair and complains about pain a lot. I am unsure if she'll ever be able to make it back up the stairs to our apartment again, which is why we've been looking for other places to live. Unfortunately, because of covid or whatever, there just isn't anything available anywhere in our price range. We've sent emails, we've called, nothing is working. 

We saw her regular doctor today and we have a slew of things we need to do now. We've got to get her x-rays, we've got to set up follow-ups with her surgeon and neurologist, and we've got to get some tests run. Since her broken leg, she's had upset stomach problems that have made it really stressful for her to leave the house (or go outside in most cases), so the doc wants to track down what's going on there. Though the doc didn't outright say it, the implication feels like she's not healing quite the way she should be. 

There are some things that may help with that. Getting her up and out of bed and out of her wheelchair more, for one. Now that home care is over, the doc mentioned getting her to an outpatient physical therapy gym to help rebuild her muscle in earnest, so we'll be looking in to that. 

Unfortunately, that throws a wrench in to a lot of the plans I outlined in the previous post, because until I can get back to whatever is considered "home," I can't really do much. I can't capture video, I can't edit video, I don't have anywhere private or quiet to record voice over, and I especially don't have the computational ability to play anything made after, say, 2006. I'm writing these posts from a decade+ old hand-me-down business laptop that my cousin practically rescued from a dumpster. 

The best I'm able to muster is a little bit of writing, some music production, and very basic game development. But I haven't even been keeping up with watching my Youtube subscriptions, because the energy (and the time) I had for that stuff just isn't there anymore. It was actually pretty fun getting an explanation from the doc today where she broke down that my mom, and probably even me as well, are just burnt out from a very, very bad year and that all our brain chemicals are running on empty from all the stress. We're more forgetful than usual, we're more sensitive... we're just mentally and emotionally drained, and it's screwing with our ability to do... pretty much anything. 

The Good (?) News

Still, as the months wear on here at my brother's, I can't help but be bitten by the creative bug. You may have noticed I mentioned experimenting with a Ghostbusters fan game around Halloween. With Halloween more than a month behind us, it's been hard keeping focus on that, but I was working on it a little the other night, finally trying to nail down a narrative to tie the game together. But, if I'm being honest, I don't know what will become of it. I want to make it, because I think I can pull it off, but the further I get from opening the actual code, the harder it will be to go back to it. 

In the interim, I've been writing more here and there. Not as much as I used to, and not as much as I need to, but I've been jotting down series ideas as they come to me, as well as beginning two scripts for future videos:

The first one is a sequel to my NiGHTS documentary that's supposed to cover the production of Journey of Dreams, the Wii-exclusive sequel/reboot to the original NiGHTS. I'm not sure I like the direction the script is going, so I'm not going to commit to it ever happening. But I have four pages of something, which is more than nothing, even if those four pages haven't even gotten to talking about Journey of Dreams yet. By comparison, the first NiGHTS documentary script is close to 14 pages long. 

The other script is something more casual and more of an exploration of the style of videos I might be looking in to doing once this nightmare is behind me. I've been playing a lot of Painkiller from 2005, a game that sometimes struggles to run on this laptop, and I was watching a lot of Civvie11 videos, so there's an inspiration melding together in my brain that is kind of just happening and I can't stop it. 

Before actually being hired to write, that's just sort of how it went: I'd play something and my brain would just naturally start forming prose, like I could see the text in my head, and eventually I'd just have to sit down and get it out of my head. That's kind of what is happening with Painkiller. Unfortunately if I truly lean in to the Civvie inspiration, then I have a lot of legwork ahead of me playing the rest of the Painkiller expansions, so we'll see. This is somewhat similar to the conditions the Jurassic Park video was written in, and it took four years for me to get around to that. Then again, I don't have TSSZ to distract me so much.

On a minor note, I managed to rescue everything from my Photobucket account again. Checking with some other backups I had, I had an "old images" folder I was worried got eaten with that HDD That died earlier this year. I think I have most of that "old images" folder backed up on my google drive -- but it was missing the Photobucket backup. Now that I've re-rescued those images, the backup of the "old images" folder is hopefully complete again. One less thing to worry about, eh? I did a twitter thread on interesting finds.

The Future

Unfortunately, there's not much to say this time. My Mom's next doctor's appointment will be in three months -- though there should be lots of visits with specialists in between then. I'll try to keep you posted of anything significant, and fingers crossed it'll be more positive than negative next time. 

Don't worry, though. This too shall pass... eventually.