An update for Chloe
Hello! How are you doing? Are you doing okay? What’s new??
Our lives have been pretty much the same — moderately depressed, and distracting ourselves in various ways to cope.
HOWEVER!!
We have recently discovered that, by being creative literally 100% of the time, we can both distract ourselves from the crushing weight of the world and be productive at the same time! And holy fuck have I been busy!!
So first, Devin has this book idea that he’s been pouring hours of work into, with me as editor. And, of course, I got attached, and spent about a month straight just drawing art for the characters.
It all coalesced into one fevered night of haphazard animation and amateur voice acting, where I made this:
In all honesty, I’m quite proud! I love animation, but it’s one of those things that I just can’t get my brain to appreciate because it takes so long to do.
The next thing is a personal project for me that I’ve been working on almost nonstop for, like, two months now. I actually have no idea what it is! It’s…maybe a DnD campaign? But I’m so picky about how my stories go, so maybe it’s a webcomic. You see where I’m at? Two months of work, and I still don’t know what it is, lol!
Regardless, all — and I do mean ALL — of my free time has been dedicated to composing music for it. Wake up - make music. Done with work - make music. I’m up until 6am making songs so I can show them all to Devin before he leaves for work.
It has done surprisingly little damage to my mental health. I think because I’m still making something? And also because making music is SO MUCH FUCKING FUN!! The whole thing is set in space, and centers around this weird space station called Heavarin. So of course each ring needs its own music, and each person needs their own music, and each diamond-shaped satellite needs its own music, and each event needs its own music AND a reprise and...
Well, you get the picture, lol. There’s a lot of music to make, and only one me. But Devin’s being a good sport about it!
This is the first drawing of the station I did that wasn’t on the back of an old envelope I found on the coffee table. Below is the song that will play when you first come up on the station.
This is what the file looks like for the song “The Big Ring,” and below is what the song sounds like! There’s a couple audio inputs that are out of frame, but this really captures the rainbow, lol.
And for a reprise example, here’s the two files for the song “The Periphery.” The satellite is a prison called The Periphery, so the first song is when you approach it, and the second is for, of course, the prison break!
Devin is also having me write a few songs for him to use for, I dunno, something, but he’s all, “Oh, don’t use all those synths, Al! I want something acoustic!” and bruh. Synths :(
Health-wise, my brain stuff seems to be…on the level? I have regular checkups with my neurologist, and I’m no longer at risk of permanent vision loss, which is good! I’ve lost a fair portion of my peripheral vision, and it hasn’t come back yet, which means it’s not ever coming back, so. Yeah.
But I’m no longer going blind!
The medicine they have me on is…working. The side effects suck. I have a lot of nerve pain in my legs and feet, and I’ve lost some fine motor control in my hands. Which is bad and scary and I hate it, but Dr. Morgan says I can stop taking it if I want. But then that means surgery to install drains from my brain to my stomach because of all the backed up cerebra-spinal fluid and, you know what? I’ll take the terrible nerve pain and twitchy hands over that!
I promise, he’s not a dick about it, I just don’t like talking about it. I fucking love Dr. Morgan.
The worst thing that’s happened is I spilled an entire cup of coffee on my brand new laptop, and now one of the ports doesn’t work, so I have to run everything out of this hub, with my backup hard drive plugged into it.
I am…no longer allowed to hold things with my left hand. Because they will be dropped. And then I can’t use my hand for the next 24 hours.
So yeah, that’s what I’ve got going on! And I’m so sorry I haven’t responded, I have just been incredibly distracted! Please let me know what’s up with you, too!! I know this was all, like, overkill, but that’s because I just had so much stuff I wanted to tell you about, and I didn’t wanna text you an entire novel, lol.
Okay, that’s all, love you, byeee!!~
