I've posted before about the stuff on my plate (forum making, website mood of rehauls, probably something else I forgot on my ling to do list) but I think the weirdest thing is feeling like making one short/not short comic and like...working on a game?
The short/not short comic is an idea I've had since I was a kid that I've been thinking on how to rehaul most of the story itself. Instead of it being another serial, I've been thinking of having be a short comic in terms of it's a one-shot but it's also not multiple volumes or long enough. Like, throwing out a number but it might be like 50 pages a la European albums?
The game is rehauling the Order of the Flowers story and making it into a VN. I think I mentioned that before on here. But I've been reading for other things, seeing how Renpy works and going "it might be possible..." Problem is my initial ideas for it are too ambitious, the kind that would take years. And sure I could ask for help or make a team but LOL that would end up the same as always: me sitting for years for the other parties to remember we had a thing going without me messaging them once in a while every few months before I also give up. This is why I do things solo. I don't trust anyone. (Aradia excepted)
Which means easily 5 years as a hypothetical for that game in demo terms and ngl I'm pretty tired of spending years on something that might end up being ignored as always.
This leads into my weird things.
I need to finally finish that Footballerinas pitch. I need to finish what's left of Chapter 4 of Ara & Celi so I can see it maybe idk I don't take 5-6 years to do C5 again.
The former is just me trying to make time for it since I figured out how to get over a creative block with it and get over my self-esteem issues. The latter...really, I've talked about it adnauseum on here and with friends, and I think today I realized it wasn't burnout my issue with it.
Or maybe it's part of it but--after I got back from Finland, I was pumped to work on C4 and make all da pages. Then I got the flu. Then in the last week where I finally recuperated, Covid lockdown started. Yay. I didn't even get to touch the sun normally again lmao.
And I was okay with it, I made more pages for C4. I still have the last two to do.
Then I just...hmm. Let's say have an internal breakdown over everything that lasted for about two to three years. To the point where during 2022 or 2023 I left clues and hints on drafts of stuff I'd share with people that was meant for public viewing later (such as Aradia's site) and nobody noticed or asked.
Anyway, a lot of that fallback of Covid lockdown, having to do it more than other people because of elderly citizen parents, and essentially just isolated 100% until this year...while everyone I knew, masked or unmasked, vaccinated ot nor, went on with their lives...I didn't have a good time. I still don't, tbh.
And Ara & Celi was the one that got the brunt of that cabin fever.
And I know this because today I saw my thumbnails sketchbook and script notebook. Had a second thought of working on more thumbnails for future chapters. Then I grimaced when I grabbed them and literally plopped them down hard with an "ugh" and went off to do something else.
I've done that for almost two years now.
Is it burnout? Is it grad school burnout that never got cured? Is it experiencing an actual comics community IRL in Finland, something that is not available to me IRL where I live, and then only a month or two later having my life upended? Is it burnout from Covid life???? IDK, I still want to create. I just also really don't care anymore.
I said once to some friends 2022, 2023, that maybe I just feel like my comics career was a waste of time, and I should just retire. It was suggested that maybe I can just take it slow.
I guess. I also just feel like my life is going nowhere and will proceed to go nowhere. I'll be here twiddling my fingers while everyone else I know is living their lives again. I've tried to change it, and nothing has worked out. So I give up. I've resigned to my fate of having wasted a life.
(Please do not say anything in response to the above, I am BEGGING you, I will not be pleased with even an ironic comment.)
So again, it's pretty weird that I do want to create other things. So I think it's really just Ara & Celi that's the issue. The "albatross."
And that's not good because I WANT to work on it. I don't want it to be unfinished. I want to tell all the stories I wanted to tell with it.
I just appear to can't work on it or not want to work on it... (Repeat here all my burnout claims from the previous toot.)
Man, would be nice if I could collab with someone to do the art for it, huh? Too bad collabs end with me holding the bag or going nowhere, so I gotta do everything myself!
I might just delete this entire thread when I come back to it later lmao. I just had this epiphany and had to dump all of it.