It’s been a few years since I’ve done my yearly State of the Spud, and the short answer for that mystery is because, well, there hasn’t felt like a whole lot of change. Broadly, my mission is still just to survive, and real recovery isn’t exactly possible until certain aspects of my living situation improves drastically. (If you’ve seen me [vent] on the Discord server, or happen to be related to me, you might know exactly to what I’m obliquely referring.)
This year, though? Yeah, there’ve been some changes.
Friendship is Dragons has finally come to an end after nearly 13 years. (Didn’t quite get to the anniversary, but I managed to land on Page 2011, the year it started, so it just goes to show that you can find a meaningful number just about anywhere.) To be honest, at time of writing, I’m still very much in a post-partum period. I miss it, plain and simple. I miss the structure it lent to my weeks. I miss the constant feedback and appreciation of comments on new pages. I kinda miss being one of the last long-running bronies standing, playing around in that world. I miss the constant writing practice that really noticeably sharpened my skills over more than a decade.
I don’t miss it enough to go back and start it up again, because dear god, the arcs I described in the epilogue would be nightmarish to actually do, but you get the idea.
In the couple of months since it ended (Oh god, it was the beginning of June and now it’s mid-August??), I’ve been admittedly struggling to change gears. I’ve made very defined plans as to what The Next Projects are, but I haven’t made as much progress as I’d like, even counting one month off as pure vacation.
Then again, a big part of my recovery process has been accepting that I’m going to work at my pace and no one else’s. If there’s been a theme of the last four years, a narrative to fill in the missing yearly States, it’s been, “Accepting Your Weaknesses.”
Friendship is Dragons was doable three times a week because it took me on average 90 minutes to make a page, which was always something I could do even on my worst days. That’s how it became my crutch. Writing a novel or creating a game mod, on the other hand, is something that takes more long-term discipline. And I consider myself to have made big improvements on my work ethic, but…
You know what, even as I write this, I’m falling into my old workaholic traps, so heck with it. No, I’ve gotten quite a bit done beyond just ending the comic. I’ve done an editing pass on The Interference, the self-insert fanfic I wrote when I was 14-going-on-15, that it was waiting for for nearly 18 years. I finally redid the Let’s Play of Dark Sector that I attempted 9 years ago. My dad, sister, and I completed a massive streamed playthrough of Satisfactory in Early Access. On the grand scale of things, I’m actually enjoying a grand rush of creativity and closing a lot of old wounds with that energy. It’s pretty great.
It’s just not as glamorous and actively updating as a thrice-weekly webcomic. And you know how it is – if no one sees the work, it’s not real to them.
I also have another perfectly good set of excuses to shut down my workaholism. Outside the internet, “IRL” as it were, I’ve been taking on one of my greatest fears – bureaucracy – to apply for disability, insurance, and food stamps. Processes that terrify me so much that I need to lean on family and friends for moral support. I fret about paperwork, I agonize over phone calls, I panic through interviews. Crippling social anxiety is a real bastard.
And that’s been the other big shift over the past four years:
Accepting that I’m disabled.
I have a mental disability that prevents me from being gainfully employed. I haven’t received a formal diagnosis, and I’m wary of self-diagnosis, but the main driver is probably in the realm of complex PTSD manifesting as debilitating social anxiety. I can barely leave the house for more than 90 minutes at a time. Even doing livestreams saps all of my energy for the rest of the day. I live with someone who can trigger me at any time with his temper tantrums and cause panic attacks that last hours. And situations where I have to go to places where mistakes can be devastating and judgment can be swift and sudden – like, say, applying for government help, or going to the doctor? Oh boy, those are the worst.
But I’ve been slowly pushing through. I’ve finished my disability application and now I’m on a months-long waiting list for inspection. I’ve just renewed my state health insurance and food stamps. All thanks to the moral support of my friends, and a lot of help from my mom, frankly. I’ve been slowly learning to ask for help, and to accept my new “normal.”
I mean, in retrospect, some of you older folk reading this are just gonna be like, “Yep, that’s called being in your 30s.” I turn 32 tomorrow, in fact. (I usually do the State of the Spud on my birthday, but it’s been a rough month already and I’d prefer the actual day off.) And I don’t refute that. But I also still very much feel like a scared teenager frozen in arrested development who’s just now starting to thaw a little bit.
Yet strangely, overall, I think the trend is positive this year for ol’ Spud. Sure, there’s a lot I’m still struggling with, and overall I’m still just trying to survive, but… I’m more sure of myself in who I am and what I want to do than I was a few years ago. I am Newbiespud. I very much like to create compelling fanfiction across various mediums. I have a mental disability that’s not going away anytime soon. But, like… at least I know that.
I haven’t made as much progress as my old workaholic self would have liked, but I’ve still made significant progress. Baby steps work, y’all. Asking for help sometimes even works. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
And as always, I wouldn’t be here still truckin’ without all of your support – you, the ones who’d bother to read a blog post from a D-list content creator. Thank you.
