A week or so ago, I had quite a few plans lined up. They were all in a queue in the back of my head and I was going to deal with them one by one. One night, before talking to a friend of mine on the phone, I was sitting down on my bed with my notebook and supporting material out. I was even considering whether I should use my golden professional’s pen — the one I used to write my Heroes in Hell story — to work on this story that I planned to send out to a very interesting opportunity.
So here I was, with this story that had been in my head for a while and then I talked with my friend on the phone only to feel really … odd afterwards. I immediately put away everything and even cleaned my room a bit. I thought I just needed time in the washroom and that this particular night was, to pardon the phrase, a write off and I would continue the work I began the next day.
Instead, after almost two years of staying up late, eating at odd times, going out in ridiculous weather, and having my insides get hammered out by sheer stress my body decided that for the first time in twelve years it was going to open itself up to a stomach bug. As my friend told me, it’s not so much that my body betrayed me at the worst possible moment, but rather it was that I’d been betraying it for much longer and it decided to make me pay the piper that night.
The following day, for the first time in a long while, I didn’t go on my computer: at all. I sat in front of the television and just stared at it. For the next week or so, after my body and its digestive system decided to go through its factory reboot I didn’t do any writing at all. To be honest, I just didn’t care.
It’s like, when I got sick, something I’d been hold on long and hard to, released itself. I started going to bed at a consistent time. I didn’t really go outside all that much. I went through something of a movie marathon and caught up on Orphan Black. I found myself doing something that I hadn’t done in a few years: which was actually taking it easy. I’m no Alan Moore. I mean his talent, genius, and eccentricities aside I can’t just get back to work right after throwing up or being otherwise considerably ill.
I actually needed to rest and do something that wasn’t work. Or rather, do nothing that was work at all. So I didn’t write for a while. Even though I’m not where I want to be, everything I’ve been doing has not been worth destroying my body or my mind. So I didn’t end up sending out the writing sample I planned. I decided to take care of myself instead and actually relax. In the end I think that will serve me far better than if I tried to soldier on through a muck of exhaustion.
I’ve just been tired and it finally caught up with me. I hated being sick the way I was because I lost control of my body but now it’s strange: that ever-present heaviness and pressure in the core of my stomach doesn’t seem to be there as much. Perhaps a part of it is that I just don’t really care as much any more about pushing myself, but I think it’s also that this time off doing something else really helped me.
And tomorrow I am actually going to be leaving my house for a longer time. I’m going to the Toronto Global Game Jam again at George Brown College. I was originally hesitant in doing so. So much has happened in the indie game scene these past couple of months and I didn’t know if this would effect my time at the Jam. My friends aren’t going to be there. Aside from some organizers, I don’t know if I’ll know anyone there really. And I’ve been reluctant to go outside: finding it easier to deal with matters at my parents’ home with my resources around me.
And, hell, here I was talking about going to bed at consistent hours and eating properly and now I’m going to a two day Jam where I will be sleeping in my — admittedly — comfy clothes in a sleeping bag on a hard classroom floor that is never truly dark.
But I think it’s time to get out of here for a while and do something else. My goal is to go out and make a story: a Twine. And that’s what I’m going to do. And maybe I will be social. Maybe I will talk with people. It’s entirely possible and if it happens, great. If not, that’s fine too as I have so many ideas that now I will have the excuse to use some of them.
I’ve not been totally negligent in the writing field either. I managed to edit a previous story of mine not too long ago and send it out, and hopefully with my next project I can free myself up more to do other things. So I’m going to make another game this weekend on my own. And, who knows, maybe this time around I won’t take a thousand years to write another post on here. One thing about being a writer and doing more work is that you don’t always have as much time to write Blog posts as much as you did.
But either way, you will definitely be seeing me again.
Mythic Bios 