It's Been About A Year Since I Started Taking A Vitamin D Supplement Regularly, And While It's No Silver

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. ☀️

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 🖤🤍

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 🌌

The Missing Sketchbook

I finally found one of my missing sketchbooks last night! Naturally, my first instinct was to take pictures and post it online, lol. It's around ten years old, so I've forgotten about nearly everything that's in here – this is a big deal for me!

This is the first page??? I don't remember the context of this sketch, whether it was by reference or whatever – but I definitely don't remember ever drawing anything this complex. The fact that I even attempted it kinda blows my mind 🐲

Holy frick it's a redraw of a super old Kirby puzzle I made... Every row, column, and diagonal has something in common – can you figure them all out? (Probably not, some of the answers are really obscure details that I could never quite capture.)

Once again, I have no memory of ever drawing something this complex, but my inner 14-year-old's heart is fluttering with excitement. The Mario vs. Donkey Kong series was my first time really sinking my teeth into level design! But that's a story for another day...

Mini golf courses! These are fairly simple, but I was always fascinated by the design and gimmicks of a particular one I went to as a kid. There's a bunch more of these in the other sketchbook I'm missing, including one with a waterfall!

WAIT WHAT??? ANOTHER BIG PAGE????? And it has a bunch of redraws from the original AAAAAAAA

Okay, okay, before I get carried away, the Big Page was something I did in my first sketchbook where I would fill in a bunch of boxes with little Kirby scenes!

Here's what the original (four or so years prior) looked like – much bigger page, but much, MUCH smaller boxes, lol. I remember it being so hard to draw that small, looks like I corrected that mistake in the newer one. Maybe I should do this again sometime...

Wait? Wisps?? Sonic Colors???

counts out the years on my hands

Yeah I guess that adds up, doesn't it...

I did a lot of perspective drawings in this particular sketchbook – it was kind of a natural extension of the mazes I drew in my graph paper notebooks (which I always did way more of than sketches).

This one was a test for the next two...

SPACE! This scene was inspired by the later levels of Thruspace, which I can't seem to find screenshots of. I really loved how the walls open up as you go, and you start seeing more outside the tunnel.

I hope I can stream Thruspace one day, it's still near and dear to my heart.

This sketch helped me map out the image on the right – one of my first pieces of digital art! I'm still really proud of the concept behind it. No two pixels touch orthogonally... although one's missing from the digital version, whoops!

This was for Mario's 25th, ten years ago.

Here's some Mario items and enemies, to practice shading with just a pencil. Honestly, it wasn't "practice" at all – I just thought they looked cool like this, and I wanted to try it out in different ways. Whether it looked right didn't matter as much.

I really miss that mindset…

Some more assorted sketches:

A few Chao in various shapes and sizes. They sure are a diverse little species, aren't they?

A Zelda dungeon room – I don't remember how it works. I just remember wishing I could make whole dungeons! (Still do, honestly.)

Finally, here's the wackiest one of all: A concept for a rotating game system! Each of the four colored sections has a control stick, two buttons, and a "paddle" at the bottom (the colored-in part). There's also an accelerometer, so you could rotate it and play from any section!

One game might ask you to put one hand on either side, like a regular controller. Another might ask you to hold it from the bottom, like a Game Boy… but four people could hold it and play like that all at once! It's a little like the Switch's multiplayer, but pre-dated by nearly ten years!

I didn't really come up with any games for it, though – and in hindsight, I think it may be a little *too* out there for anything much more than the obvious:

A Platformer But With Gravity

Steering Wheel

WarioWare: Twisted

But I'm just amazed I came up with this at all.

———

Anyway, that's mostly it! This is a tiny sketchbook with 24 pages, and I've shown all the big stuff.

Drawing was usually a way for me to express ideas rather than practice quality, but I'm surprised by how much I tried to push my limits here – only to completely forget it all.

This was the last sketchbook I kept up with regularly, before being overtaken by "I can't draw, all my drawings suck" for several years... right as I had just started looking at quality on my own terms. Luckily, I'm starting to catch up again lately ✨

I'm still missing one other sketchbook in between this one and my first, but it might be lost to time – I knew this one was buried in a box somewhere, but the other had been missing for much longer. If I find it, we'll do this again!

In the meantime, back to drawing.

my animal crossing oc, Rivers, may be her own character instead of a self-insert, but there was a brief moment where she almost wasn't… and it completely smashed my understanding of my gender identity

i started playing new horizons as myself, much like i did with new leaf. thing is, this was a very boring way to play AC, because i didn't click with the majority of clothing options, and mostly stuck to jeans and hoodies

(i also do this IRL, which is usually a yellow flag regarding gender…)

more importantly, this also extended to hairstyles. i didn't like any of the male styles at the beginning of the game, and wrote off the female styles as "not for me." so i went with the one i disliked the least, hoping there would be more options later.

and there are! after a few days, a magazine shows up that unlocks more hairstyles and colors. unsurprisingly, i still didn't like any of them. the only thing i could decide on was blue hair, but even that didn't feel right for some reason…

i started messing with the female hairstyles, just to try everything, make sure i wasn't missing something that might work. i still didn't click with them…

until this one appeared. and i froze up.

i don't really know how to describe everything that went through my head all at once.

"i like that one!" "that's not me." "it's cute!" "it's WRONG." "it COULD be right…" "…but i'm so scared." "…but it's so nice…"

"…why am i having such a hard time with this?!"

keep in mind: this was before she was Rivers. this was me deciding for myself.

and after an exhausting few minutes of chasing myself around… i finally managed to hit the A button. just to try it out for a bit. i could always change it back, after all.

i didn't change it back.

and for a little while… this was me! not just a character to project onto, but me.

in fact, Rivers only came into her own a few days later, after i was a little more disconnected from the idea of being a girl. (i am genderFLUID, after all!)

i wanted to try the same thing again with clothes, but i still had the same issue where nothing really clicked with me. at a certain point i just started trying on whatever might look cute on her, and that's when Rivers really became her own character.

in any case… i will always remember that moment of frozen hesitation, of hard self-examination, of asking difficult questions, for being the moment that put the biggest chip in my shell.

Thank you, Animal Crossing, for bringing me one step closer to finding my truest self.

wow look at all of this repressed stuff in my brain!! there's like a whole person in here!!! i gotta dig this up and start using it ok how do i express these things like other people do

...................................uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

i'm pretty sure that both my struggle to express myself and the fact that all of this stuff is repressed to begin with stem from the same issue, which is one of complete alienation

it's a little hard to explain, so strap in...

i have a very small and tight-knit circle of interests, mostly guided by one Special Interest:

✨ Video Games ✨

and surprise surprise, most people in my life are not into those things. nobody's ever bullied me for it, or anything, but nobody knew how to support it either.

i was homeschooled so i didn't get to hang out with other kids my age very much. most of them were into other things like sports, and i had no connection there. besides, they already had friends from school. once i turned ten i stopped trying to make friends myself.

the few friends i had who *were* into video games were either church friends or family friends, and lived far enough away that we had to drive there. which would happen when my parents wanted to meet up with theirs, not when i did.

so i got to see them like once a month, maybe.

that means most of my time was spent with adults… who have better things to do than listen to some kid babble about nonsense they don't understand, like games.

i actually used to autism spout, if you can believe that. most of it was met with some variant of "that's nice, dear"

so i learned to just… accept that nothing i had to say was important. that everyone else had more important things to talk about. that i was supposed to sit in my corner and wait for someone to reach out to me first out of pity. that i would be left out most of the time.

it seems silly for that to happen over video games, but remember: i have autism, and that's my special interest. it's all i have to express myself with. i didn't learn much else!

i did figure out how to express myself creatively, but honestly... that just added to the loneliness.

and trust me, i know people are allowed to have other interests and that sometimes i should just stop and listen.

in fact i would usually say i'm proud of my listening and observation skills,

except i am now 25 and still feel like i haven't really had my turn to speak?

truthfully, as an adult, i've had a few chances. but at this point it's not even alienation anymore, it's repression from being made to feel Unimportant. every chance i've had to lead the conversation, or come up with a topic… i don't say it. because who cares other than me?

and when someone else is already talking about other things, i just go into Listening Mode, because i have nothing to contribute. unsurprisingly, that is still most of the time. most other people have diverse interests, or they talk about other people that i don't know, etc.

so i sit there with nothing to say. while they have everything to say. because they know how to express themselves, and i never got the chance to figure out.

and this happens every time.

i can be at the same table as ten people who i call close friends and still feel completely alone, simply because they are all chatting about or doing something that i have nothing to contribute to. (that's not an exaggeration. this has happened. several times.)

and it's not just talking! i can be with a friend, who invited me there, playing video games together, and still feel like i am wasting their time that they could be spending doing more important or fulfilling things that they would probably like better!!

i don't get it!!!

the most i've ever gotten to express myself through my interests without feeling alienated for it… is here. social media. and y'all know this isn't the healthiest way for me to go about it.

but at least it's better than those empty pity interactions. ("so how's work going?")

anyway i realize i've focused a lot on "talking" and "video games" in this post but please know that the general sense of alienation and chronic loneliness is pervasive and affects a lot more than just those things. this is just the most direct way that i know to illustrate it

and even then, there's a whole lot more that i've repressed for so long. this is just the one that i'm the most familiar with, as i dig down into this huge mess of other things that i had no idea existed

it's a lot. there's so much. it's gonna take time to work through it all.