I decided to take a trip through my screenshot archive, because I’ve been feeling quite “meh” about practically everything for a while (and long before our current... event, so I can’t say it’s because of that either) and I wanted to look back at some times where I didn’t feel quite so meh.
I’m not really here to share any grand wisdoms or tell you how we all have our processes. There’s people far better at that than I am (judging by what I see going across my dash from time to time).
The earliest shot I have on this computer is from autumn 2018, the most recent shot I shot was a week or two ago in 2020 (not pictured because I couldn’t decide which one to delete to add it).
There are people on here who know (or they seem to, heaven knows I’m not in their heads) what they’re doing (I’m talking about TS4 here, but yes this applies to other things too, but I’m not going to tackle the big questions of life, no thank you) and frankly I still have no clue what the fuck I’m doing.
I’ll be the first to admit I lack follow-through. I like coming up with things, imagining them, toying with them in my head. But if I do that too much I’ve no interest in doing it. I kind of have commitment issues. I don’t like the idea of committing to something, spending time and attaching to it only to either fail at it or have it not work out (please do me a favour and ignore how that might apply to other aspects of life, like I said, not tackling the big questions here).
The amount of projects I have, whether purely gameplay based or story ones are very very long. And in some cases, I pretty much have all I need except, apparently, the willpower to sit down and take pictures or stage things. I get distracted by the new shiny, I start fleshing that out and would you look at that another idea.
I’m good with ideas, horrible at doing them. I know there’s some quote (isn’t there always?) by some big person that goes something along the lines of “everyone can have an idea, not everyone can do something with that idea” (horribly paraphrased but you get the gist) which always pops up in my head whenever it finds a new shiny and runs back to study it and pick it apart.
I don’t like getting things wrong, I never have. When I was a kid I’d stay silent in all classes because I was terrified of getting the answer wrong. Because what if I did and people laughed? I found out later (I’m glossing over a lot of past history here btw) that I have social anxiety, but I didn’t know that for like... The first 20-something years of my life.
You fail everything you don’t even try, or whatever the quote is, is probably one of my most hated quotes. You’ve no idea how suffocating that quote was to me for so many years. There’s an inherent difference between visible trying and invisible trying. Sometimes that trying is getting your head to a space where you can start visibly trying or letting yourself believe that you can try.
It took me years to get there and yeah I’m flakey as fuck and I get distracted. But hey, at least I’ve done something. No it’s not all I’ve got and I know I could do more.
But I also know that there’s a past me who wouldn’t even have posted anything because what if she spelled a word wrong? What if she didn’t get some English idiom and looked like an idiot? What if, what if, what if.
I know for a fact that past me wouldn’t have written this, even if it was only for herself to see. I know a more recent version of me might have done that, but deleted it. Another more recent one might have kept it saved. Is this the version that shares it? Probably yeah.
I didn’t really do this for any other reason than to get my thoughts out of my head and down somewhere else. Heck, I’d no clue where I was going until five sentences ago. But here we are.
I’m still not really doing the shit I know I could do. But I don’t quite know if that shit is what I want to do because past me wanted to do it, or if it’s something present me would enjoy too.
And then there’s that fear. What if I fail? What if it goes wrong? What if, what if, what if.
There will always be a what if. I don’t have some wordly wisdom on what to do with that. But I know past me was full of what ifs too. I know she would never hit post on this post. Because what if?
But I’m not just past me. I’m me, past, present and future.
Some snake keepers: I need to thaw my rats with a heat gun—with more focus on the head—to the precise temperature of 101.3F and rub it with gerbil bedding to better entice my snake. I then have to “run” it around the tank to feign movement and “twitch” the rat as soon as it’s caught so my snake thinks he killed it
Me: Sorry the bag had a hole in it so enjoy a sopping wet hot rat you bastards
