zombie remake gamelife phase

in

Seem to have entered into a "zombie remake" phase of my gaming life – most of which I never played in their original forms: the amazing, limb-slicing DEAD SPACE remake was first, and now I've moved on to RESIDENT EVIL 2 (never played any of the original games when they came out) and DEAD RISING DELUXE REMASTER (which I attempted to play when it first came out). To swap between the atmospheric dread, low ammo, low health, and puzzles of RE2 and the pure mall-ratting insanity and narrative inanity of DR has proven a valuable balm for evening brain capacity needs. And when that fails, there's always POWERWASH SIMULATOR, that digital earthly delight to which, according to the Playstation app, I've given more than 61 hours of my life and will happily give many many more.

nowhere -> somewhere(ish)

in

After yesterday's mental kerfuffle of nowhere, managed – as is usually the case after one of those days (as Nick Cave reminds us, "When something's not coming, it's coming") – to get somewhere. Somewhere, yes, but more specifically that somewhere where I can dig deep into small, tiny pieces and rip and tear them apart until they become something new that works.

Been doing these mid-day daily text things again for a week now and I'm not quite sure if I want to continue doing this as part of a new way forward or if it's a remnant of the old to which I'm clinging like a dog clings to the last strip of their beheaded and desqueaky-ed toy.

For now, though I'll return to the clarity of yesterday's "creative principle": Fuck it, might as well.

point being?

in

One of those days – probably due for one actually, but damn it's been one of those days. Spent all too much time staring at the screen with the Projects splayed across it, kanbans and canvi etc etc, thinking of the right words and failing and then trying to add another extension to my improvised solar panel snow-clearing device and succeeding until I found it still wasn't long enough to make me not have to climb up on a ladder in 40mph freezing wind gusts and wondering, like that one clip from that one SEINFELD episode that's shown up in my Insta feed of late, "What am I doing?" What's the point? Freezing my extremities off (though it's rather cozy in there until it isn't so, to rectify, I step outside and recalibrate my temperature before stepping back in for another 30 minutes of warmth appreciation) in a shed, The Shed, for things that will fall into the obscurity of the internet of people talking at each other, but then I decide that the only point at this point is "fuck it, might as well" because if there's one thing I do know it's that there's no guarantee of anything except none of us getting out alive so there, I've found, after a quarter of a century of doing this to myself, my "creative principle": Fuck it, might as well.

process space

in

Now that I'm in month four of working in The Shed, I've finally figured out what the space is (beyond the obvious, a Shed in which I work and figure out the right heater-solar panel-grid balance, especially in today's brutal wind): it's a space where process – not result – reigns supreme, the spatial equivalent of my "Working" folder. Over the last few weeks, I've been removing anything finished or completed from the space, be it Weldo Quixote or Miggy the Shovel Creature or comics or finished drawings or scripts or anything so that, with the exception of a few pieces from CW&T and odd antiques and entertainments, The Shed's filled with nothing but the tools I use to make things and the limbs and sinew of various works in progress, a space of freedom from result in which I can alternate between planing a drawer built by my great-grandfather and writing another tale of REDACTED for mi hermano's musical inspirations.