I had to go into work on my day off yesterday! Beer has a nasty habit of hiring very unreliable older women with bad attitudes, and this one's been out sick like ten times in her first month. This is to say nothing of her habit of leaving early the moment she sees me go into the building, long before her shift is over or my shift even starts. (Needless to say, the store is looking for a replacement.)

Everyone was thankful, I got a gift card, I got some more hours towards my end of the year bonus, but it does mean I'm working six days in a row here, including today and tomorrow. Friday will be lovely and unfortunately much too short. My next day off is the following Tuesday. Some of my coworkers asked if I was gonna get my day off rescheduled, but there's just two people in that department, including me, so sadly, no. Not the end of the world.

In cammy.somnol news, everyone in the group was fond of the relaunch! It's very much just a start, but things are starting to crystallize. sushi called the island thing a "motif", and it reminded me I really should be pushing that theme with the graphics and look. It's all still kinda plain at the moment (as was intentional). Brainstorming those begins...

I'd also like to have a few different site sections. Here's what I've got at the moment:

• Cammy in the present (stuff about me, stuff about my Caby, I'm sure I'll think up others)
• Cammy's (not horrible) histories (a lookback at games, music, technology, videos, and so forth that I remember fondly)
• Interests pages (the return of the game reviews and score records, photo galleries, this time with fewer words, perhaps a subsite for the full run of Rediscoverings, and so forth)

I already have drafts of a few of the timeline pages.

I should mention I do obviously have a full backup of the old site, so I can take any of the old pages and rebuild them or repost them outright, if I really wanted to. Perhaps when I've built a much better site, I'll even toss the entire cammy.somnol v1 up on archives. That sure would highly embarrass past me, and possibly slightly embarrass present me! (For what it's worth, I only really consider that about page properly embarrassing. Everything else is just a missed opportunity.)

In more fun news, I've been binge reading perfectpacman.com since last night. That was the placeholder site Billy Mitchell (former Universe's Greatest, Most Accomplished, Most Awe-Inspiring, and Most Handsome Video Gamer, hot sauce salesman, and MAME enthusiast) bought to advertise his """first ever""" perfect Pac-Man game, and he let it lapse in 2017 and then someone bought it and wrote up nine asspoundingly long articles exploring his lifelong hobby of lying about stuff. It's exquisite stuff. I want this as an audiobook. It also means I almost didn't get this post done in time for work! Wahey!

As mildly bittersweet as it is to hear names I took as legend in my youth turn out to have fabricated their achievements (not that this is news to me), the website is, again, absurdly well researched and written. I love all the links to old Japanese websites (more reference material for cammy.somnol!) and that I finally know who named Blinky "Cruise Elroy" (Spencer Ouren, see Dot Two). The fact that it's in nine "dots" is a nice jab at Billy too, since he used to use nine dots in emails to teabag the guy who he cheated out of a fair competition at that Funspot in 1999. (It's a long, nerdy story about game glitches...)

cammy.somnol relaunches as promised! As also promised, it is incredibly bare bones. We will rebuild.

Have a bit from my sketchbook as a bonus. Trying to flex my (nonexistent) design muscles a little bit and give some old and new characters designs at long last. This boy's my first ever OC, one I came up with all the way back in 2014. Still need colors and also some more markings on him. I named him Felix, and he was originally an Oshawott (and perhaps I'll have a Pokemon alt for him), but as of now, the intention is to put him in Pinede!

He's kind of a worrier, imagines himself very unlucky, tiny and not very magical, but he's got a big determined streak and he's excellent at sneaking and fitting into small spaces. The guilds (and the gods, little does he know) are very keen to help him out and protect him where they can. He's also a surprisingly big eater, thanks to small-clawed otters eating something like a quarter of their body weight a day to maintain their metabolism. (Also why he bundles up—the coasts are cold :<) Feed him anything seafood or anything sweet, and he'll devour it and probably become your best friend as a result.

I'm a goofball and I got way too drunk last night.

Sometimes, you think trying new things is great fun. Sometimes, that new thing is Four Loko, and it causes you to sit blankly on the bathroom floor, hoping you don't throw up. Missed the rest of the group call, passed out before I said goodnight to anyone. Never again.

Anyway! I got that Setter done a few hours before then, so hopefully cammy.somnol launch soon??

I'm starting to think if I don't sit down and make time for this journal stuff, it'll never happen. I'll get used to it, promise! Am thinking about it nearly daily, lots of thoughts I should probably infodump here...

So as you can probably tell, I think it's about time to refresh my sites. The original cammy.somnol got pulled down in February of this year because I was in a pretty sore spot when I made it, it wasn't exactly as personal as I wanted it to be (felt very forced, very "old web" for the sake of it—not my preferred look), and I didn't like its original purpose, which was a "personal" site (stuff I kept closer to me and the group) while mariteaux.somnol was my "public" site (stuff people outside the group would wanna see—mostly mod work, really). A nice, properly thought out look and design was in order, so I parked it.

But over this year, I've started to feel like mariteaux.somnol isn't much my site either. There's a lot that I do that isn't represented on it currently; my stories, my more informational writing, my art (which I've been focusing on a lot lately), and my YouTube output. It's all kind of all over the place on different sites, while the site that bears my name is just my music (and kind of old music at that) and my modding work. And I'm proud of those! But they're only part of what I do, and now that I'm getting more confident in my art and just me in general as a whole package, it doesn't make a lot of sense to hide everything but what I think internet people want to see away. Again, it's my site! It's all part of what I do.

So, I'm redoing both. In a couple days, you'll see the relaunch of cammy.somnol, and then I'll park mariteaux.somnol with some kind of splash page and get to reworking that as well. The idea this time is cammy.somnol is more interest-driven and more about what I'm up to, while mariteaux.somnol is more my completed works for any old audience. In short, mariteaux.somnol pages are for stuff where the end goal is the thing that got made. cammy.somnol pages are for stuff where the end goal is the journey in getting there, and my own hobbies, life updates, and enjoyment. I've had this dichotomy in mind for months and I think it's solid and it'll work great.

My goal for all this site stuff is to bring everything back in pieces. When I relaunch cammy.somnol, only this journal will be on it. No other pages, not even an about. The goal is to bring it all back in time, because smaller updates are more conductive to getting things done. Then I can tackle each page on its own beyond that.

For both of them, expect a lot more site illustrations, more rambles, and less forcing the "old personal site"/"only the stuff you care about" angles. They're both my sites. I am me. I do a lot of different me things. I think having it all together and hiding less of it can only make me look better rounded as a person.

In other news, here's the post on the group blog I alluded to the other day, about me rebuying my childhood snowman plushie thanks to Caby's internet sleuthing abilities. He's been on my desk since I got him and it's been really hard trying not to rub his scarf like I did with the first one. Love him. So surreal to see still.

Hi! Third post. I'm a little tipsy, so let's see what I can do here.

So firstly, here's the last WIP of that Setter drawing I'm gonna post here, largely because flat colors are basically the last thing it needed before it finally started to resemble the final drawing. You can just see the final if you wanna see the next step. The goal is to have a background version for DeviantART (the background of which is gonna be turned into a tiled background for this whole site!) and a transparent (and grainy) version for this site. Of course, if you're reading this, that's already done! But it's not done by the 18th, when I'm writing this, so that's the intention.

Tonight was interesting. I was mostly exhausted and bored for most of it, but there's a store story I gotta tell you, which will hopefully set the tone for any future store stories I post here. Let me tell you the tale of the Kickboxing Guy...

"Don't be rude to me," he told me through a furrowed brow as I was checking him out.

"I wasn't being rude. I just have no interest in what you're peddling, and you've approached me and other people who work here before."

I serve a lot of random community members. Moms, dads, former teachers, former fellow students, crackheads, homeless folks, the fucking lot. This guy wasn't a customer, per se (though he did buy something a lil later). He was the Kickboxing Guy, at least to me. Slightly shorter than average, black, tonight, wearing a backpack, cap, and hoodie featuring a tiger on fire.

I first encountered the Kickboxing Guy talking to my grandma, who used to sit on this bench outside the store frequently populated by hobos and smoke many cigarettes. He came up to me and inquired about my interest in sports. I really don't care about them, but I've been adjacent to them throughout my life, so I answered kinda sorta in the affirmative. He handed me a business card for a kickboxing school, which I was blatantly not interested in (in case Cammy and Setter didn't give you an indication). I tossed it out and forgot about him, for the most part.

I'd heard stories of the Kickboxing Guy past that point. There was a kid (we're talking high school) who used to tear down the salad bar before they got rid of that who was approached by the Kickboxing Guy. He told me details of trying his hardest to avoid this guy's advances, letting him know he was on the football team during a busy season and he'd likely have no time for a kickboxing class. Somehow, the guy still left him with a business card. I found him obnoxious and maybe a little creepy, but not surprised he'd approached other men at my job.

The Kickboxing Guy came up to me tonight just after 8PM. Produce is in front of my register, and I was wandering the apples to stay awake. He wanted to know where the in-store butcher was, ostensibly. By that point, the deli usually closes, and Jose had even turned down the lights for the evening. I pointed him out and let him know the deli was about closed by this point, and then he hit me with it.

"Are you by any chance interested in sports?"

Suddenly, he became as obvious as a cheerleader in a tractor pull and I shut him down quickly, but as politely as I could. "I'm not interested in your school, thank you." I turned back to my register and walked off.

"...That's rude," he called from behind. I didn't acknowledge, though I certainly marveled at what had just happened as I dipped into the cooler to restock.

When I emerged back into the warmth, he was at my register with a tallboy of Mike's Harder. I'm fairly certain he only bought it to have a reason to continue talking to me. Awkward or not, I had a customer, so I started to check him out.

"Don't be rude to me," he declared before letting me have a pass at his driver's license.

I explained to him the best I could that about everyone I talked to who had an experience with him found him pushy, incessant, and all around odd. I wasn't trying to be rude; I just really was not interested in kickboxing.

A moment of silence passed. I was hoping to whatever was looking over me that I wasn't about to get kicked in the head by a blatantly off-kilter kickboxing instructor, either right away or the moment I left the store for the evening.

"I bet you've been talking about me," he said at last.

"...What gives you that impression?"

"You said it was an odd request."

"Correct? Me and several other guys here find your advances odd, but we don't talk about you after that. It's mostly "I was approached by a guy who wanted me to join his kickboxing school," "oh, I know him, he's weird", and then we move on."

He wasn't much else for words beyond that, thankfully, and he left the moment he got his can of Mike's. I told my manager what happened, at which point I was informed of his name and his former status as a dancer and singer. In the aisles of the store. To attract attention from the male cashiers. And he'd tried to give his personal number out to high schoolers, just in case they wanted to be his "friend" and "hang out" and "talk kickboxing".

The Kickboxing Guy was actually trying to solicit men, regardless of age. After being warned, he applied for a job at the store, at which point, he was placed on a permanent no-hire list. Apparently, another location hired him anyway. I am unsure if he's still working there to this day.

To tell you the truth, beyond that, I am rapidly disintegrating into intoxication, listening to Melissa Etheridge and staring in awe at the plushie I just bought. I'll have a group blog post for him tomorrow. He's rather important to me, and he's inspired tonight's music choice.

I'm just gonna go ahead and write two blog posts in one night, because really, that first one doesn't count. That's just the foreword.

Let's talk work for a moment. I work nights at a register at one of our local grocery stores, tending to the beer and wine section specifically. It's a pretty idiosyncratic job that I can ramble about (and I'm sure I will—did I mention I've got a bunch of journal post ideas already?), but one I'm pretty happy with. I like the people there a lot, I get a lot of space and privacy to dink around, and all the managers fucking love me. I know I got really lucky with my first job, so I'm not taking it for granted. I'm there and I will be there as long as they have me (and I don't have something better, natch).

The thing is, though, I just do not have 35+ hours of work to do there. They sure gave me those hours though! I think 37-38 is my record? And sure, I'm getting paid for pretty easy work—but it really is mind numbing. I'd rather take a slight pay cut to stay home longer and work on my art instead, and thankfully, with the hour budget in all the departments getting strangled a bit, they knocked me down to 30 total. I go in at 4 and stay until closing at 10 for the next two weeks. Still more than I initially thought I'd get, still plenty of money coming in. Tonight was my last eight hour shift for a good while, and I am rather thankful. My legs are still sore.

Speaking of art, I've seriously been getting into it these past two months. I'd been tinkering with it, taking it sorta seriously this entire year, but something clicked when September hit and I just got this major burst of confidence and I'm taking it as far as it takes me. I'm gonna have finished three entire pieces this month in a couple days, and we're only halfway through October. (I'm gonna try to go for a fourth!)

As such, I've been seeing some pretty seismic growths in my abilities. Definitely gonna have some redraws to do in the next year or so (but doesn't everyone?) Seriously, compare this Wyn from February with the battle Caby I just finished. Wack. Stuff is seriously just starting to make sense to me now. I figured out snoots, I figured out where eyes go in relation to snoots, I'm getting more confident in my shading and my ability to have objects hidden behind other objects.

Here's what I just picked back up after being stuck on it for a few weeks. It's that Setter you see on the front page lounging on a big island with his sandals off. I got stuck on the tree and it put me off art almost altogether again, but I knew I couldn't stop here, no! Took another pass at it yesterday and absolutely killed it. It's not like an amazing tree or anything, but it is solid. That's always been my goal and it'll stay my goal: no shortcuts, fundamentals over shiny shit. I'd rather have a wobbly drawing that shows my actual skill level than a real flashy drawing that absolutely falls apart when you look at it. (Challenging yourself is good! Cheating with fancy shading and overlays to hide crappy anatomy is not.)

Now I'm working on colors. That WIP just has the colors I put down for masking purposes so I didn't end up with a ton of bleed errors, those are obviously not going to be the real colors I use. I think this is turning out goddamn adorable so far, must be said. My goal is to light it with real warm shadows and some highlights and possibly a glow at the end. Of course, if you're reading this and I haven't rearranged the entire site layout yet, you can see the result on the front page! But here's a link to the finished piece if I have (futureproofing and all).

I've still got a ton to talk about, ideas, life improvements, trying to live healthier, but so I don't blow your head off with my words, I'll wait until tomorrow to write more.

Welcome back to cammy.somnol, intrepid web people. I think I pulled down the old site in February of this year or so? So that would make us eight months into radio silence. Thankfully, I'm reclaiming one of my sites again.

If you follow what I do, you're probably aware that I archived the Scratchpad back in February as well, the Scratchpad being my prior blog. What makes me come back after swearing off blogging? What's different this time? Why did I not just revive the Scratchpad? After all, I kept all the exported data...

I went over it a little in the "Thank You for Everything, Scratchpad" post at the very end there, but part of the reason I dropped it was because every single post had become a big production. I needed to write it out, edit it, gather images, structure it, and by the end, it wasn't so much a personal blog as it was an edited essay archive. That's great! No doubt about it. But I overdo everything. I didn't need to overdo my blog as well.

But it goes deeper than that, really. The Scratchpad was started back when I still had the "Content first" (note the capital C) mindset. For years, I couldn't much talk about myself. I was just the schlub doing all this stuff. The Scratchpad was me taking my ideas, opinions, and interests and turning them into Content, the kinda stuff people can share out (and indeed, a good handful of my Scratchpad posts did get shared out places! Very cool). It had to be this way; I didn't want to talk about me, who wants to read about that? Who am I? Not much without all this Content I'm making...

In short, it was really my rigid way of not really putting me, myself, and I out there, feeling like I didn't deserve that kinda platform, even on my own site. Guess that's kinda sad, but I'm autistic. I think in these really rigid ways and I have to consciously grow more comfortable with not working like that. I'm also still basically a teenager, and I'm doing my best to drop all the bad habits I picked up from being a teenager with shitty friends.

Thankfully, for all the bad stuff I can say about this year, I'm definitely getting more comfortable with a site that is about me—the badger boy behind all these stories and mods and drawings. It helps that I actually have things going on in my life now, working nearly full time for six whole months now, saving up for cars and trips, and just progressing in life beyond the NEETdom that I got stuck in because jobs were scary and lockdowns meant masks and I just wasn't wearing those thanks.

So I'll be here, talking about that life stuff. Creative stuff will factor into it, obviously (I'm me, I never stop making things!), but I'm trying not to edit it and make it Content. It's just a day-to-day place to talk about what's on my mind and what good things are going on in my world. I expect nobody but the Somnolians to read it and I am more than happy about that.

(Oh, also, WIP drawings. I'll be posting those!)