I'm in one of those dry spells with the journal right now where I'm not particularly into updating it. I should get back into it; lots has been going on. I guess it's the pileup that makes it overwhelming. Let's do a roundup quick with the last two hours of the month.

nofi

nofi is complete! I just need to draw a bunch more Alexis for it and it'll be finished. As of right now, though, all the pages are in place and they work great on Netscape 3.0. Your favorite retro browser will love it too. Perhaps I can convince Oliver to let it and cammy.somnol on Protoweb as passthrough sites in the future.

On the topic of art, I'm a bit out of it with that as well. I keep seeing a much sketchier, pointier, proportionally strange, and maybe edgier version of my art style in my head. I really should experiment and branch out. I've done my time with making sure everything is nice and neat and cute. I have the confidence for more range now--plus when I get back to marfGH and GH modding in general, I'd like to be able to reillustrate all the menus, and something weirder is basically required for that game.

After months of searching

I finally have a job and training days lined up! I went back to selling beer and wine because it was easy, and this one paid better than the previous supermarket. I just had my first beers of the year too (Wales trip notwithstanding)—I stocked up on some I wanted to try yesterday while I was in doing some online learning and getting my RAMP certification redone. I passed it in 40 minutes, natch.

By the third one or so, applying for jobs and doing the interview circuit becomes a lot less nerve-wracking. You know what to expect. A bad start seriously set me up for failure at Staples, and I was eager not to repeat it here. Plus, I've just gotten a lot better at talking to strangers and about myself thanks to all the traveling. Hopefully, I keep this one a little longer than six months, use it to finance some certs, some CDs, and another trip to Wales in 2025. Mostly I miss the momentum. Money appearing in your bank account makes a man feel mighty accomplished.

The big loss

Six months of seeing how much weight I could lose is finally over! I was never huge or anything, but ten pounds overweight towards the start of this year, and after finding myself devouring an entire chocolate bar in one go over Christmas, I figured that wasn't healthy. Weight loss is a lot like marriage to me, in that I didn't think either was particularly possible in real life. Not that I thought they were impossible—just that I didn't know anyone who'd pulled off either one. Still, I was curious how much I could lose, so I cut out all snacks and drinks other than water, and when it got warm enough, I started walking more regularly. You know Dry January? Same concept. Call it Junkless January.

Six months later, I end off the experiment at 155lbs. I started at 180, so call it 25lbs lost. I'm endlessly pleased. I dropped an entire clothing size, basically. My work clothes and shorts are both so much bigger on me now. The shirts I used to squish into, much less so now. Looking back, I'm not surprised I got that big. The aforementioned way I'd devour candy, the way I'd pair alcohol with chips, the way I'd have chips, candy, and booze in the same night—like yeah, you'll gain a little like that.

The good news is that you don't really have to quit anything, just take it slower. Only have one unhealthy thing a day and don't make it the entire bag of chips, and it's pretty easy not to gain it all back. In the past week, I've had milkshakes, cookies, and beer, and I haven't gained anything, so I think the next six months of maintaining this weight will be pretty simple stuff. If I do get above 165 or so again, I'll just start cutting back again—and I might do Junkless January every year as a respite from all the Christmas sweets.

Turning 25 and shifting priorities

Earlier this year, I posted a journal entry about people's reaction to the spy.pet stuff and how alienated I felt from the reactions of the Internet at large. I thought it was about that, but as that fades from memory and yet some of those feelings of detachment still linger, I'm beginning to think I just don't care about making things for other people to see anymore.

Well into my 20s, I joined Discords and forums partially with the intent of finding community and a place to chat, but admittedly, also partially to get people to gawk at my stuff. It used to be, way way long ago now, that I wanted the attention and the validation, being a teenager starved of that stuff by Brianna mostly, and even when I stopped needing that and started growing into myself as a person, it just became habit—and also that it's nice to hear other people like your stuff.

I'm starting to see people I know who are getting older like me and still clinging to this thing of "Internet people need to love me", wanting to have a known name, wanting to be popular, wanting to make money on their stuff despite having literally no actual wares of value to anybody. It just looks weird and desperate as you get older, and it's totally turned me off doing that. Having people appreciate my stuff is still nice, obviously, but they do that anyway, even though I'm a nobody. I get the nice emails, I get the compliments, and my tutorials for GH2 are still being linked out by MiloHax, even though marf bad.

I just want to make things for me, and if people find it and like it, that's great. If not, why should I chase them down? Why should I concern myself with seeking that out when I can just make stuff I find cool and people will come to me over the many many years I and Somnolescent will be around? I'll still have a bit of a public presence just because I like being social, but I'm there because I want to be there for what's going on, not because I need anyone to pay attention to me specifically.

Part of this is also that working on nofi has reminded me that I've done a lot. I think it's super cool to be up to so much, but I also don't need to build Rome every year. Again, it used to be insecurity, that I had to show just how much I'm capable of, but I think I've shown that now. Why can't I take things slower? Now that I've traveled and now that I've been with Caby in person, I want more of that. I want to shore up my real life, keep the five year plan to Wales moving, take more day trips, work a job, stop worrying so much about creating a lot of pretty good things and more about making a few really fucking good things my heart is super into instead. And I have some ideas. I sure do.

Anyway, so I'm turning 25 soon. I should draw a Cammy for the occasion. He's a good dweeb.