Last Night I Digitized An Older Maze Of Mine, Star Road! It's A Simple One, But I've Always Really Liked

Last night i digitized an older maze of mine, Star Road! It's a simple one, but I've always really liked how the paths flow around the pattern of stars 🌌

we all know adhd leads to forgetfulness, but here's some especially insidious ways that this wears on me:

i forget about things that i'm looking forward to, like games, events, or days off – so my future looks bleak, boring, distant, and joyless, as though every day is just going to be another day of Work and Not Much Else.

i forget about my own burnout and how little energy i have – then i push myself too hard and collapse almost instantly, over and over again. then i guilt myself about being so tired all the time!

i forget about my own accomplishments, no matter how big or small – leading to a strong sense of imposter syndrome and even worthlessness. digital projects hidden in folders away from sight, physical works fading into background noise on a shelf somewhere…

i even forget my own emotional state, and the events that lead up to it – meaning i usually end up internalizing all my feelings, bottling them away for years without ever acknowledging or processing them, simply because i forgot they were there!

my world consists entirely of what's in front of me right now, and what's on my mind right now. even then, i don't even have my whole present, much less any of my past or future.

i'm just doing my best with what i have, in the moment.

now that i'm counting out everything that happened this year… what the literal shucks was 2020??? even for there being a pandemic and having to stay indoors, this is still the most high-velocity year i can remember since college – but, unlike college, not all of it was bad.

granted, the first half of the year was pretty bad – my grandmother passed away, working from home was a rocky transition, even nearly got kicked out (that's a story for another time). yet somehow i made a ton of levels, poured my heart into Rivers, and built Cartridge Tilt.

meanwhile the second half was like restful discovery: forging an important new friendship-turned-relationship, coming out as genderfluid AND pan, improving my living situation with a new desk and other nice things…

and i've barely even scratched the surface of this year!

i may not have accomplished everything i wanted to – and honestly, who did? – but i'm happy about the fact that i not only survived 2020, but did so with grace. despite everything, i have new skills, new resources, new friends, and a new understanding of myself.

i don't keep new years resolutions well, so i have just one for 2021: finish more stuff than in 2020. not "make" more stuff, finish more stuff.

my creative energy definitely suffered this year, but now that i'm finding my footing, i hope i'll get to do some neat things soon 💖

it's been about a year since i started taking a vitamin D supplement regularly, and while it's no silver bullet, it does still clear out a significant chunk of brain fog!

of course, i literally never go outside so that should've been expected, but… i nearly didn't start at all

so many people over the years told me that i should just "go outside, exercise, get some vitamin D"… it made me so resentful. it sounded like people were blaming all of my mental health issues on lifestyle choices.

and yet, despite knowing better, i still internalized all of it

for a while i tried to convince myself to just go outside and take a walk… it never helped, but i always figured i just wasn't doing it enough. if i just tried it more, maybe it wouldn't be so overwhelming for my autism.

if i could practice, make a habit, stop being so lazy…

it's telling that i thought taking a vitamin D pill would be "giving up." never going outside again, resigning myself to a sedentary life where i wasn't "truly" taking care of my health.

well guess what: i'm glad i "gave up," because it's helped a lot. ☀️

This time Sky’s made a monster: introducing Cartridge Tilt, a random level generator for Mari0 that builds glitchy, corrupted looking mappacks!

Read more and try out some pre-generated maps: https://forum.stabyourself.net/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5396

It may look like an incomprehensible mess, but this uses a structure-based generator under the hood to give order to the chaos – generating familiar elements like pipes, hills, and bridges, but in completely random orders and positions. Recognize anything in these screenshots?

Seriously, this is over 1500 lines of Lua! You can check out the whole thing on Github, and even run the script yourself with several options: https://github.com/skysometric/cartridge-tilt

Moonshot Scaffold | SSG-R79-3HF

A treacherous ascent up a space elevator that's still under construction! As you go up, less of the elevator is constructed – meaning fewer platforms to catch you if you fall. One slip could send you tumbling back through the stratosphere...