Freezing today inside my apartment in Brooklyn. False Spring tricked me into taking down one of my blackout curtains - like a goddamn chump. Weird day gig offered to pour money on the wounds, so I'm toiling for the fools today - if only for a little bit. Really goddamn cold today though.

Oh hey - I didn't realize I was named on the page, but yes I did some writing for Hazar, City of a Thousand Guilds. Got to do some fun medieval deep cut stuff which I think will make for an interesting faction to engage. Was waiting to hear if I could say I was involved at all. Glad it funded.

They're having big restructuring meetings again because people are very pissed and nobody is working. I'm having a laugh because they absolutely aren't using any of the protocols I designed. They might pour money on us if it means getting us to shut up and work. Which I'm amicable to. Good lord.

Celebration via showcasing knowledge on a topic remains one of my favorite ways in which a person can celebrate. Especially when a call for empathy is tied into it, which unites struggles in a way which would coax an ember of shame in those who would have turned a blind eye. He's so good at this.

Therapy scheduled for the end of the month. Let us hope my anxiety can be caged.

Great news everyone, it only took hours and me sitting in silence for awhile but there is now a print available of elliptic curve cryptography www.inprnt.com/gallery/acid...

I could see an interesting in-universe argument being made about newly forged Warforged taking on a more "human" appearance and how that gets into the politics of assimilation/erasure; but I do not think that WotC is capable of delivering that with nuance or grace. They do seem more "robot" here.

Today is commission work. Got up early, ate breakfast, showered, medicated. Did some light leisure reading of an old Traveller booklet. Gives me some thoughts about how the procgen for specific biomes could be played out. Albeit Traveller to me is often bones at best. But there's something to it.

The end game of the Steel Chrysanthemum game is coming to pass tonight, so I kinda phoned in the last big regional map for Kawa, Ryoko, and Gunsho Province. Like by all accounts, the party is only gonna deal with Shutai and then the Libraries. Still, may as well do this last L5R map for awhile.

Damn cold one today.

Point of Contact Supervisor: "We'll pay you the same double rate if you can come back on Monday for the crunch." Me: "All right." PCS: "Also you can feel free to take it easy." Me: "During crunch." PCS: "I mean, it ain't like this job will exist in two weeks." Me: "I figured as much."

Something nice about having been able to spend the whole day working on art stuff. Tomorrow, more of that - but also running what ought to be the penultimate Steel Chrysanthemum game, and also doing a pharmacy run. Need to finish up a map by Tuesday, but that's drafted up a bit. Then more tools.

Fun discourse. Consider this though: footnotes and marginalia. Or making a better world beyond personal preferences.

Other Superior: "Hey... would you come back til Sunday if we paid you half your rate?" Me: "My usual rate or the last rate you paid me?" OS: "How much did we just pay you?" Me: "Double." OS: "Oh. No. I meant half your usual rate." Me: "Dude, you're not a smart person and I hope you suffer."

...Well, I definitely didn't caffeinate today.

This is a project that I am very much looking forward to talking about in the future.

All right. Up. Got a single chore. Not being gnawed to death by crunch. God willingly, I'll finish up my commission docket today. Right nearly damn there.

Anyway, let's see what they have need of me on Monday. I've got shit I care about doing to do.

Superior: "So.. y'all probably gonna be out of a job on Friday." Me: "That's fine. I didn't expect it to last." Superior: "Sorry. Its all very fucking stupid." Me: "I'm glad to hear you say that, it means I'm not crazy." Superior: "...Might need you back next week though." Me: "I betcha will."

I'm so tempted to get back into WoW but also, I don't really want to get back into WoW. It doesn't hold the same magic as it once did, to me, as a player - but I do like exploring the art and implications. Watching an anthropologist explore zones has been insightful. www.youtube.com/@TheWorldscr...

And they're having big meetings about why things have not gone as they hoped while I take a chainsaw to the nonsense. I am notably not in a pleased mood, but it'd be /very/ funny if they exited their meetings and I fixed everything and then they gotta decide if that means they'll use my protocols.

All right - did some personal stuff today, and some editing work. Finished some tables for a Mothership hack - these being Personal References & Personnel Notes to replace Trinkets/Patches for the nonsense I'm doing. Almost done adapting/changing up all the class loadouts to fit the vibe.

Superiors: "Oh. Uh. Maybe we'll have something tomorrow." Me, not saying it: "You bottlenecked everything instead of using the flow protocols I built for you - at your request - and it'll all drown me come tomorrow, won't it?" Superiors, somehow gleaning my nod: "Probably a lot of work tomorrow."

oh, I guess I technically have been working for nine hours straight. That might explain why I'm ornery as hell.

Oh these people really sold out their thinking capacities over the past five years. "I don't know what category this belongs under" was said to me, with regards to a file being nested within a category. It was not about the file, but rather in a way that seems to have found categories alien.

Anyway, they've rehired me for the next week at twice my rate because crunch is bad and they've realized they meant for me to aid in building the new structure. But its just for a week, so we'll see. All this to say - if you need me for the next eight days; please understand my predicament.

Not letting that circumstance get me down, because I braced myself for the bullshit and shot that thing we call hope in the back of the head with a pearl revolver. But this is the kind of thing that does create cyclical desperation and prevents me, at 35, from finding purchase in a "career" proper.

Funniest goddamn thing, gang. Funniest. God. Damn. Thing.

First day of the new gig from the old contact, and I will say only this - they picked the right person to bring in for the crunch. We're just doing the same old stuff, but I'm like... the only freelancer back in there who knows the flow of things. So... my cadence will likely be obscenely high.

Looks like I'm re-learning Blender this month. Probably more honest to just say "learning." Sometimes it sticks, sometimes it don't. I did know how to use it for a small bit maybe a year or two ago.

When I was 21, I was coerced by some feds to spy on a guy suspected of having bought a kid.

I finished a tool today that I don't think is worthy of public viewing, because it is a wicked thing and it runs counter to my design protocols with regards to broad specificity. It dwells in vagueness - but I do think it works. As a table, it exists to cultivate ill-will and doubt in the self.

Working and watching Wonder Man as I work. What a nice show with actual set design, visual language, and something to say about friendships, posturing, and trying to be genuine in a place of falseness. Has kind of a Barry meets Curb Your Enthusiasm type of cadence to its pacing. Very nice.

Could be cool. I have very fond memories of James Stokoe's Half-Century War, and this feels like it might skew a bit more hopeful/heroic than that. Honestly its just fascinating to see an attempt made at playing the human side. Not usually a card fan, but I'm curious to the innovations in play.

And now we're in that fan circumstance of it being too warm outside for heat to happen inside my building, where as a result, it is now cold. I'll have a good April/May before summer begins to fucking melt me alive again, of this I am sure.

Chat, they waited three days to tempt me again.

And there's the mental collapse - glad it hit me now rather than during a very productive day. Wish it didn't hit me at all though; but given the state of the world I ain't fucking shocked. I just dislike how it manifests now. Vocalizing "No" as existentialism grapples me. Still. A productive day.

The point of emergence seems to be listening to the Motherlode OST from BfA while eating Chinese food and drinking a guava Monster. Each has worked independently n the past, and as of this weekend they do appear to be what can pull me from the abyss. My fucked up brain remains a mysterious place.

I locked in well on Thursday and Friday. Less so today for obvious reasons. I think there is something to be said for how I desire to go to a cabin the woods and feel isolation on my own terms. Not in a Walden way but more in a... god I haven't had a vacation since maybe 2023 way?

Many gracious thanks for the kindness shared yesterday. I woke up today, felt good, saw the news, and then distracted myself to appreciating the kindness of peers once again. My brain seems to be in an animal place again, in a positive way of speaking. Let us see how fast taxes will tank that. Lol

Today is my birthday, I turn 35. Life is as "stable" as it has been for a few years, but that means life operates feast or famine - and I must accept that the longer this goes, the weaker I become. If you wish to toss me a coin, I can be found here: www.paypal.com/biz/profile/... Now a ramble.

Pikachu turns 30 and goes to the White Lotus. Jennifer Coolidge isn't around to save you this time.

God, I needed to make that table. Not necessarily novel or unique, but one that is of usage case to make players/users question why someone would ascribe that to them. Very... frictive, but that is nice to do sometimes. Rather than a mournful one like in Rakehell, this reads more "Fuck my boss."

Finished one big fucking thing, finally. Now to reattach all my limbs and finish up the reasonably more doable smaller things I should've been doing to achieve small/partial progress victories the whole time.

...y'know it kills me that I could probably have just been saying "GM prep is a form of play" this whole time.

This company will be the death of me, and with each passing day it feels more and more like they are trying to engineer someone to go postal on them. I don't wanna just leave my meter running every time I look at an email from them, but we are approaching that point. Hired/Fired/Hired ad nauseum.

Mild progress today. Additionally fought the urge to write a manifesto and instead plugged away at my essay/instructional about table writing; because I did a consult last weekend and that helped me click some thoughts in place. Alas, way easier to just build one than to explain how. Moving parts.

Sleeting fierce out.

As I apparently need a reward mechanism to break free from the despairing time loop I've been trapped in; I'm going to be prepping some Mothership material tonight. I think the funniest thing about Mothership is that I don't much see people discussing how modular it is to design for. By a wide way.

Listening to someone talk about Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and they keep calling everything neoliberal - and like, sure. But then they get to the point about discussing the factions and the politics and specifically say: "I'm not going to talk about these." Buddy, where do you think we are?