02/23/2019
Hi-ho, loves!
It's been quite a while since I did a proper update. Sorry about that. There's been some things going on since Otakuthon that I wanted to talk about but just... never made time. Since I wanted to make an update for something today, I figured I might as well cover it all.
Before I get into the more serious stuff, let me get some of the lighter/easier stuff out of the way.
First, I won't be doing any cons this year. In fact, I don't think I'll be doing cons for the foreseeable future. The reasons for this is explained in the heavy stuff
Next, I'm currently working on developing my own game! I don't want to give away too much, but I'm fine with sharing the concept. It's a "puzzle" game, but the puzzles are actually the complex thinking of people! It's meant to teach empathy as it requires people to understand the struggles of the characters you're helping (with a bit of help by "reading" their hearts to know what emotions are overwhelming them) and then help them get things together. Right now I'm working on a demo, which I'll release for everyone to try out. Once the demo's out, I'll see how people take to it. If it's popular, I'll launch a crowdfunding campaign to develop a full game. In the meantime, I'll try to share some of what I'm making for it here, though these updates won't be often as I'll instead make big development update posts.
Okay, that's it for the light stuff. The heavy stuff begins here. If you're not interested in reading about my own personal issues, you can take off now.
..
..
..
Still here? Okay then.
So let's start from the top, starting from Otakuthon.
Otakuthon itself was, for the most part, okay. However, two things that marred the weekend itself were just general poor sales (despite a lot more product compared to previous years, I sold about as much as I had the year before) and the fact that I had $100 stolen from me. Overall, though, it told me that doing cons was not something I could viably do without different products that will attract people. To be more specific, I need more books (I did think of some others that involve pixel art, but they're not really viable for me to do at this time). I need to continue Snowbound and Star of Destiny, I need to get other stories made. I need to attract a larger audience. So for the time being, I've decided to not do cons at all.
It's AFTER Otakuthon that things get... bad. The day after Otakuthon, while I was on the train home to Toronto, I suffered an anxiety attack. It was the second time in my life having one, the first time having occurred maybe a year or two before and only lasted for 30 seconds or so. This time, however, it lasted hours. I have said this to friends and I'll say this for all of you: if not for the person who I sat beside on the train (who got on the train at the next station after I got on, of which I had that attack half way between), it's most likely I would not be alive today. Suffice to say, I got through things thanks to that person.
However, that anxiety attack has more or less driven my mental state since. In a lot of ways, it's made me very nervous to continue pursuing writing. I have, on a few occasions, thought about giving it up. No, I'm not giving up. Despite these concerns, writing is far too important to me. However, it's certainly been very difficult to figure out HOW to proceed. This is what led me down the path of making a game; I can write, I can do pixel art and I used to do computer programming. If I can get my hands on the right game engine and learn to use it, I could make a game and could potentially continue that way.
But then we hit another major issue: finances. To put it short, I don't have a job right now. I've been looking since August (with a much stronger search since mid December), but that anxiety attack has caused issues here; I find myself being almost too selective. Fearing another anxiety attack, I'm only looking at jobs where I think I'll be able to function without issues; places where I have little interaction with others or where the number of people I have to interact with at a time is highly limited, or even places where I'm comfortable in the work environment (and overall isn't high paced, as high pace can also lead to anxiety problems). Essentially, I'm trying to avoid a location where I'm going to get another anxiety attack all together because I won't have the benefit I had when I worked for my father in the past (which was that if I needed a break because of mental stuff, I could get it off without question). This, sadly, writes a LOT of potential jobs off my list. For reference of how many it writes off, since December 16th I've applied for a total of 9 jobs... while I've otherwise seen likely over 800 postings.
So I find myself in this position of having no money, which I need to be able to, y'know, live as well as to fund making more of Snowbound and Star of Destiny, but also being unable to find adequate work due to worry about my mental issues causing... well, issues. So suffice to say, it's stressing me out to no end. Ultimately it's up to me to figure out, but I wanted to keep everyone in the know.
If you read all this, thank you. Just knowing you read it means a lot. If you want to try and help out and if it's alright with you, I want to offer a suggestion. While there's nothing significant anyone can do to help me out, there is still one thing that you can do if you want to help out in some way: watch my streams over on Twitch. I've been streaming Monday to Thursday from 7 to 9 PM EST (2 hours) for over a year now and, despite over 150 followers, I've yet to make affiliate. This is because I've yet to meet the required number of average viewers per stream. Getting more people in the stream consistently will allow the channel to hit affiliate. With affiliate, people can then subscribe to the channel and it can earn a small bit of money (I don't expect people to subscribe. I'm just pointing out why affiliate is good). Having more people also helps with Twitch showing the stream to others who might be into it. I'm also soon going to be doing regular streams regarding the game I'm making, so if you're interested in knowing more about that then there ya go! So if you can help with this, here's the link to my Twitch page:
https://www.twitch.tv/hythrain
