Beyond here, there are no landmarks.
Now playing:
Little Goody Two Shoes - Ceramic Grove of Wheat
On paper, everything should be perfect right now.
Earlier today, I finished drafting out the script for my Daydrinking Jam VN and sent it to my teammates. I'll get to meet up with one of them—my cute artist friend—in person for the first time within the next week, both to sketch out ideas together AND to attend a live concert together with other friends for a band I love. For that matter, winter has finally ended, and my seasonal depression has begun to clear up.
What else?
- I've started chatting regularly with another schizo system I've been around for some time now, and already we've had strikingly good chemistry.
- My workout routine is bearing great fruit, with me being strong enough to move as much weight as I ever have, while I'm also rapidly dropping body fat.
- All of my relocation plans are lined up, with me not needing to do anything more now beyond showing up at the right places at the right times.
- The community around my jams is flourishing, and it's looking very likely that this year's Toxic Yuri VN Jam will decisively trounce Spooktober, my biggest rival in the jam space.
Things are looking great across the board, really... and yet, I'm haunted by dread. Indeed, I'm writing this at nearly a quarter past 2 AM because I knew that I wouldn't be able to sleep if I simply tried to lay down.
So then, what's on my mind?
Around a year or so ago now, I received something like a vision or a premonition. This isn't anything out of the ordinary, mind you, but just the latest iteration of the flashes of vaguely clairvoyant insight I get from time to time (because I'm descended from psychics and I'm favored by my tutelary deity of fate and fortune, etc etc).
As usual, it wasn't anything so clear as a written prediction or some rigidity detailed sequence of events, but rather a vivid mental and emotional impression of what the end result will be, along with a through-line that traces through everything which will have led up to it, and which underscores what will come to pass as a result.
Part and parcel with these premonitions is this sort of spiritual compass readout I get that loosely steers me in one direction or another, pointing me towards the duties I need to execute—my "purpose," as some might call it, or perhaps my "fate"—and away from paths and activities characterized by what I call "definite wrongness," which can range among everything from self-destructive behavior to a nontrivial misallocation of time, energy, and resources that should've been diverted elsewhere for something far more meaningful, etc.
Unlike all of the previous premonitions, however, this one has been extremely potent, persistently flashing more and more red warning lights at me as time goes on despite my initial doubts about the severity and scale of the ugly picture it's painted for me.
With this premonition, my compass has been pointing me in one direction:
Away.
But it's not so simple as just moving out of the country. No, more than that, I need to manage my resources far more carefully than I have been in the face of a looming economic catastrophe, lest I end up in a vastly weaker position financially and end up struggling to support my community and the underlying currents of genuine creativity and artistic passion therein through my game jams—an important duty of mine that I mustn't neglect.
Thus I've been desperately gathering any materially useful information and intel from wherever I've been fortunate enough to find it, scrambling to prepare myself from the storm of definite wrongness that gathering on the horizon at a scale so intense and so beyond anything I've seen that it frightens me.
By the time I'm writing this—nearly 3 AM now—I've made most of the changes and adjustments that I can to harden my position. You can rest assured, my dear reader, that I'm solidly positioned to continue my game jams and the like through the next few years, come hell or high water~ All the same, things look bleak, and my sphere of control is ultimately a tiny, pitiful thing.
Amidst all of my good fortune—for which I am endlessly grateful—I've been worried dearly for the future, for the safety and well-being of those I love, and for what might become of the ideals I've fought so desperately to embody, defend, and encourage in others.
After all, I might have a ghostly image in my mind about what's to come, but I certainly don't know exactly what will happen, exactly when it will happen, or exactly how it will happen. It's all in broad strokes, since ultimately, the future is not set in stone, and a degree of noise and randomness permeates everything.
Nevertheless, I'm doing everything I can to appreciate and show gratitude for the fruits of my fortune and labor, and not to let the dread paralyze me, hence why I'm still joining game jams, still taking road trips, still making plans to go to concerts with my friends, etc.
No matter what the future may hold, and no matter where we end up, we must keep living.