#vt's personal problems

[equinoxts2]

Hiatus

Hi everyone. Just to let you know, I'm on indefinite hiatus due to increasing mental health crashes over the last week. I need to take some time away from the TS2 community to recharge. None of this has to do with interactions I've had in the community. It's just that my life has had too many disruptions this month and I can acknowledge that I need to step away from what little social media I'm on for a while.

I genuinely thought I was healing. I thought things were getting better for me. I've been gradually reducing my doses of the vile-tasting antidepressant I've been on longer than I can remember, and toward the end of April, I came off it completely. It just seems like my mental health has taken a major nosedive since then, and I don't want to believe that coming off the meds has caused that. I never wanted to take it in the first place - it felt like giving up, and it didn't stop me being desperately depressed for ten years. I consider it to be a violation of my mind and tastebuds, and not much else. I don't want to start taking it again.

I hope my simming friends are doing better than I am. I wish you all so much love and fulfilment. For now, though, I can't stick around - I need to meditate, heal, and just sim for me for a while.

[equinoxts2]

I need help. I desperately need support. Remember in January when my mum had to be taken into hospital for a while? She's still not doing great, according to my dad, and I think she's masking that for my sake. I've been so stuck and frustrated with wanting to play that I haven't been able to find a way to get through the building, and dad says that all the conversations I've had with her about finding solutions are just adding to her stress. I feel so guilty because I never even noticed. I thought she was better. I'm scared and I feel like I'm collapsing.

On one hand, I do want to get the building done now, so that's one less stress she has to deal with. On the other hand... yeah, I'm scared. I don't feel like I can face anything now. I depend on my mum for pretty much everything - I literally cannot cope with daily life at all and I've been getting increasingly fearful for my own future as my parents have aged. I don't want to lose my best friend. Not like this... not when I still have the stress of building hanging over both of us. I feel terrible.

Hug me... please... *cries*

[equinoxts2]

OK... I need support and advice.

I'm really loving writing up my loreposts, and they always get me fired up about the (still WIP) rebuild of Kulo Sena... until I get to the actual, y'know, rebuild part.

As anyone familiar with my personal posts knows, I loathe building and associate it with soul-crushing despair. I am not exaggerating in the slightest. But I'm at a point where everything needs setting up again, and no other downloaded or pre-built lots actually suit my needs or my sims', so... building.

I have forty-five lots in four subhoods (and that's just the residential lots!) to do, and I've been back to square one for this or that reason so many times over the last three weeks. I can't stand it.

I know I can build, but I despise doing it. I also know that if my lots aren't "good enough" - if I slop through building to get to playing faster - I'll get dissatisfied and scrap it within the first three households. It's a vicious cycle, and it's depressing.

What can I do to make it less of an uphill struggle?

[equinoxts2]

I can't take it any more. Kulo Sena (including the subhoods) has grown way too big, and I don't have the heart to cut anyone from the cast - not even any of the "nobodies" I introduced as townies or as settlers in the newer subhoods. And that means so much building.

I also feel like Kulo Sena and I are outgrowing each other... but I don't have a concept for a new hood, other than: - I don't want to play to any challenge ruleset - I want to start smaller, much smaller, but not legacy-style - I have a few vague ideas for a brighter, quirkier aesthetic and it's just hard to start from nothing. I'd have to make a new download cut, recolour hairs, build a different style of houses, make sims, name sims... you have no idea how much I actually struggle with TS2 setup.

Any advice or suggestions, simblr friends?

[equinoxts2]

It's official. I am retiring from blogging.

You see, I think Kulo Sena and my TS2 playstyle have outgrown each other. I'm converting the Senaverse into a solo RPG setting, and I'm planning on starting a new hood in TS2 - one that works with, not against, the limitations of the game, while still being escapism and self-expression for me.

Here's the thing: it can't truly be that liberating feeling of getting to do anything I want with my game if I'm sharing my stories. Not while I still suffer from PTSD. I feel like when I share what I do, I'm censoring my own gameplay because "I have a blog!" and although I'm not wanting to be Evil in my game, I do want to create different ways of living for my sims, and I hold back on that when I blog for fear of triggering my readers.

Solo roleplaying, on the other hand, is the best thing I've done as a creative project since before I discovered the TS2 community! So I'm taking a step back from simblr, and from discussing my game with the wider simming community, and I'll be playing solely for me for the foreseeable future.

I wish all my friends and followers the same fulfilment with their own games and projects as I'm starting to discover with my solely personal ones. Take care, all of you, and I might see you around again someday!

[equinoxts2]

I need motivation

I can't take any more setup.

You see, my CC-heavy game and very specific requirements for how I want things to look and feel... they don't make picking the contents of my Downloads folder easy. I hate setup so much - it depresses me, and as someone who has actually lived through ten years of depression, I don't use that term lightly. Setup to me genuinely equals major existential despair and losing the will to live.

That's why I've been putting it off by playing in my solo RPG adventure, which doesn't need me to build lots or resolve mod conflicts or wrangle purple soup. It's also taught me a lot about how I like to play, what I enjoy and what I don't, and what I can actually handle playing out (which is more than I originally thought I could!) But I want Kulo Sena back as a TS2 hood, and that means setup.

And I can't face it, honestly I can't. Help...

[equinoxts2]

Hiatus Announcement

I'm going dormant for a while, because I need to curate a whole different selection of downloads for a completely new hood in a world that is not the long-established Senaverse. It will be more in keeping with what my playstyle and attitude to life is now, trying to manifest love, as opposed to my angsty teen/early twenties self that just wanted to see the 21st century burn.

Additional personal issues under the cut.

I am also grappling with an identity crisis - I've just got used to being Quin, and now I find that I'm constantly calling myself by the name of my solo RPG's main character (and they're not called Quin.) I almost feel like I'm becoming this character and the demons in my head are trying to convince me that I'm going bananas.

In addition, I'm struggling with mixed feelings about my aroace nature - I want to say I'm proud to opt out of all that romance and woohoo nonsense, but there is a part of me that resents it, mostly because (apparently) when I was born, my dad said something about how "no man will ever come near me" and my primally spiritual mindset can't not see that as a curse.

And that's not even mentioning the species dysphoria - I want to love myself and how I look, too, but... I feel like I don't want a gender, or an ethnicity, or even particularly a body, and certainly not a human body. In other words, I don't want to be defined by any neurotypical, heteronormative labels. In my heart, I've always been a little floaty glowy wisp of starlight that embodies universal love. But every time I look in the mirror and see a bearded lady with a very large frame and lingering anger issues from school, I die a little.

So I'm taking time away from simblr, because I need space to work through these problems I'm grappling with, without the bizarre temptation to jump back into blogging and dig my simblr chameleon skin out of storage.

And I am not crazy. Deal with it.

[equinoxts2]

So... I don't know if I'll come back to blogging about Kulo Sena. I'm back to playing TS2, but it's the solo-RPG spinoff hood that I won't be sharing pics or gameplay from, where I'm testing out some of my new ideas. And since that's just for me, it's making me rethink whether I want to share my KS gameplay on simblr.

My reasons for stepping away include: less pressure on my worldbuilding, stoytelling and landscaping skills; reconnecting with what I actually want to do with the Senaverse rather than what I think will get me likes; not having to pause and take screenshots every five seconds, then spend ages sorting and editing them; not feeling obliged to protect particular sims from bad ROS because I downloaded them from a simblr friend.

Maybe one day I will come back to blogging. Maybe not. But for now, I'm hanging up my screenshot program and just playing for me. I'll still be around to like and comment, but don't expect any gameplay updates. There may, however, be a few zany worldbuilding posts now and again - I keep thirteen scrapbooks and counting, some dating back to 2011, full of inspirational screenshots and gameplay ideas I've collected, and who knows, maybe my ideas on how to use game mechanics in a different way will be useful for someone.