20 october 2024
20 October 2024, Sunday
Been quite a while, hasn't it?
Well, I'm still here. Haven't started doing commissions yet, though I said I would... getting a terms of service document put together is excruciating. Also haven't really been making any feels posts, despite wanting to; haven't been writing much in general. It's just been art for a while, a little bit of programming (wrote a userscript to mute reposts on BlueSky yesterday), but almost no story-writing. School is sucking all the time and energy out of me at the moment.
My head is really weird and fuzzy today, kinda lightheaded; but there's a big speech assignment due on Tuesday, so can't afford to rest.
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23 september 2024
23 September 2024, Monday
I've made finally an active decision that this is the week I finally try and start doing art commissions.
There was a grant that covered my first couple years of college with a bit to spare each year, and it's run out. Even without counting textbook costs (somewhat optional as they are) there are still supplies to get, room and board and tuition to pay for. I need money, and I don't think I'm capable of holding down a job while still working on school --- maybe not even work-study, if there are any of those left at this point.
Fortunately I got a ko-fi up and running a little while ago, so people can pay me! I just need to draw up a contract, terms of service, something to explain what the rules are, what I am or am not willing to do ... and get over myself enough to actually do it. The prospect of working with clients is kinda daunting. But you gotta do something, to live. I doubt I'll be able to get quite the $3k I need on commissions alone, but if I manage to do that alongside maybe getting a summer job? It's ... possible. I have to believe that it's possible.
Getting a job in the first place hasn't gone well. I've never even gotten to the interview stage before. Never worked part-time in high school, since I was too depressed and too insomniac to do much of anything back then. There's nothing to put on a résumé.
Some people make a living just as freelance artists, off commission work. Probably I'm not skilled enough for that, yet. I'll keep learning, keep growing as an artist, and maybe get there someday. Maybe not. Long-term I want to get certified for IT work, fixing hardware, that kinda thing --- used to be I wanted to be a programmer, or at least vaguely intended to go down that route, but the current state of career programming is frankly deeply unsatisfying to me. Embedded programming sounds at least a little interesting, but what are the chances of that? Motherboards and SO-DIMMS and whatever are at least real, physical objects. Fixing someone's computer has a real effect on their life.
So the plan for the foreseeable future is, not necessarily in this order:
- Make a little money drawing things for people on the internet
- Seek diagnosis for my many mental problems
- Try and move towards starting HRT
- Get my A+ certification
This is open lab week for my PC repair course, so I think I'll see if I can take a laptop apart and put it back together without breaking anything.
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21 september 2024
21 Sep 2024
It looks like I haven't been active here at all since maybe January of
this year. So it's been a while. Part of why I ended up talking a lot
in tildechat was just from ... re-evaluating some things, sort of
separating myself from the online social environment I'd fallen into
over the years. Such that on returning I stopped paying much attention
to here.
But I've got a home directory on tilde.town. It takes up nine whole
megabytes! And this isn't the biggest machine --- that's part of the
fun, really.
So I'd like to do something, with it, even if I'm not totally sure what
yet.
This was also the year I shifted to living on-campus, instead of doing
online classes and commuting. This was kinda last-minute, so I had no
in-person classes in the Spring semester, and ... essentially with the
English course I was taking there was a bit of a situation where the
professor graded an assignment zero, with no explanation given other
than that I should meet him in his office. His office hours did not
align with my incredibly fucked sleep schedule at the time, so I figured
--- ah, well. It's just one bad assignment. I'll do better next time.
The next one too was zero. And then the one after that. And my meds
ran out. I came to think my professor wanted revenge on me, that as a
punishment for failing to meet him the first time I'd doomed myself to
fail the whole course.
In a way, I had.
Eventually I checked the syllabus in desperation and realized this
pattern was vaguely in line with the AI policy. I wrote an 800 word
email arguing against this. The response came back, to meet with him.
No explanation given. So I didn't sleep at all one night, went into his
office, and heard that the whole time it was just that. Policy.
The assignments I'd managed to do beforehand were reassessed. But by
the time I was medicated again, by the time I was sleeping more than
once every other day, I was so hopelessly behind that I just ... stopped
bothering, for everything.
Instead I got back into art.
I used to draw constantly as a kid, but as puberty hit, as mounting
depression kind of irreparably damaged everything about me, I stopped.
Retreated purely into tech stuff, a bit of creative writing here and
there.
And now it's back, and ... it's been good for me. I've been making
friends, through putting my art out on the internet. My mental state
is, frankly, dogshit, but at the same time better than it's been in
years. I can feel things now! Which means I break down sobbing over
fucking nothing, that I'm anxious pretty much all of the time. But it's
better than the apathy. Anything is.
Part of that whole change, is starting to become well enough to actually
introspect a little. So I've been reflecting, on my self.
AND FUCK, I'M TRANSGENDER
I'VE BEEN TRANS THIS ENTIRE GODDAMN TIME
THAT CRUSHING SENSE OF HOPELESSNESS WAS GENDER DYSPHORIA
OH GOD
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