Finally Bit The Bullet And Redid My New WillWare Assets To Make The Workflow Better, Set Size Specifications,

Finally bit the bullet and redid my “New WillWare” assets to make the workflow better, set size specifications, do higher fidelity renders (4K), etc. I’d been putting it off because of the math involved with making the proportions just right, but it turned out to be simpler than I expected.

It was very much worth the effort – I redid the old promo image as a test and it's way easier to put together now! Plus it comes in white too 🖤🤍

calling myself nonbinary was an escape from who i am not. calling myself genderfluid is an embrace of who i am.

it is weird to have effectively come out a second time and only now start having such realizations as "oh i do get to have gender euphoria" and "oh i am trans after all"

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...

Creation As Communication

It's not exactly a secret that I was the quiet kid, growing up. I was homeschooled, I was fairly sheltered, and there weren't a lot of other kids in my life – so most of my time was spent around adults. (Even when there were other kids, the reason was usually about the adults.) Add autism into the mix, and you have a very introspective child whose life happens around him, rather than through him. I mostly just sat in the corner and did my own thing, until somebody else reached out to me.

"My own thing," of course, involved a lot of video games and Legos. But at some point, drawing was added to the mix.

It started fairly innocuously – my dad showed me how to make a maze, so I took that idea and ran with it, filling stacks of graph paper with mazes of all shapes and sizes. Eventually I got a sketchbook, and started filling it with Kirbies and other video game things I liked. I didn't have much training with it, not even "how to draw" books; as a result, most of my drawings were fairly simple. But that didn't matter, I just enjoyed the act of creation. In lieu of talking, creation was how I expressed ideas – to myself, mostly.

Now, as I mentioned previously, I was not a major player in the life happening around me. So anytime I was dragged along to something important that the adults were doing, I brought something to do. Quite often, it was a sketchbook. And as I sat in the corner, plotting my latest maze or whatever, sometimes one of the adults would remember I exist, and try to involve me a bit so I didn't feel left out:

"Hey, what's that you're drawing?"

So I turned my sketchbook to show it.

Almost invariably I was met with the same answer: "Wow, that's amazing!"

We would spend a minute looking through the last few pages of stuff I've drawn.

And then they would turn back to adult business.

Now, I need to stress that to the average adult, these were absolutely incomprehensible hieroglyphs. That's not because of their quality or anything – but I was drawing either video game characters and scenes that they weren't at all familiar with, or page-spanning labyrinths that would take several minutes to make sense of, at best.

Even though I knew that their reaction to it was just cookie-cutter encouragement, it always felt like some part of their reaction was... genuine? Perhaps it was their tone, or the fact that they gave it more than just a quick glance – but they really seemed surprised by what I was making, even if they couldn't understand it. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, born out of the fact that I was getting any attention at all.

Whatever it was... I wanted more.

I started bringing my sketchbooks to more places, coming up with bigger ideas, and learning how to talk about what they mean when it was finally "my turn" to speak. I made certain things just to excitedly await the time that I could show it and talk about it and have my time in the spotlight (which was really more like a candle). And then, once it ended – as it always did – I would go back to my corner and draw some more.

Sometimes this was the most communication I had for weeks.

Eventually, I started to become proud of my creations – not just because of the attention they garnered, but because people had really nice things to say about them! I embraced my identity as the quiet creator, both because it was working really well... and because it was all I knew.

Then, my sheltered life came to an end when I went off to gifted school, and a couple of things happened all at once:

At some point I started to have some confidence in my drawing ability – enough to say I was good at it. Then somebody called my bluff.

I got on the internet. As it happens, lurking in the corner on the internet is a great way to be completely forgotten.

Life started requiring that I actually participate in it myself, rather than things just happening around me.

But I didn't just lose a hobby, or struggle with coming out of my shell. No, I have been dealing with the fallout of losing my main method of communication ever since.

All my childhood I was the quiet kid in the corner with his sketchbook, and suddenly I lost all of that. No longer did I have the sketchbook to fall back on, since I "wasn't good at it." No longer could I stay quiet, since I would be left behind and forgotten. No longer could I stay in the corner, since I finally needed to take center stage of my own life.

Not all of these habits were healthy, of course – but I never had the space to grow out of them. Instead, I had to drop everything I knew.

All at once.

Even today I struggle with falling back on these methods. It's why I stay so quiet until I've made something like a drawing or a level. It's why I struggle to keep up with friends that I didn't really have before. It's why I put so much emphasis on "projects" and "making stuff." It's why I spend so much time pushing my creative limits, shooting for the stars in the hopes that more people might notice, maybe even stick around.

Writing this just feels like another one of those Big Things to show people in the hopes that somebody else will know what to do about it... even though I know I'm the only one who can figure it out.

Honestly, in a lot of ways, I have figured it out. Being on the internet taught me how to stand out more, and be supportive of others. Having more friends my age taught me how to be present in the moment, and responsive to others. Livestreaming taught me how to speak out more, and come out of my own shell.

And all of these things taught me who I am not just as a creator, but a person!

...Even still, I struggle to find that piece of myself again.

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. ☀️

Redraw of my current Twitter avatar – my Animal Crossing OC, Rivers! I should properly introduce her here sometime.