What I'm up to

I don't know if anyone even cares about me here anymore since it's been so long since I've been active... but I feel so bad about falling behind with everything that I feel the need to apologise about it again!

I've not checked any artwork here in a while, and I've been falling very much behind with messages too. The artwork is largely because I have 5000+ deviations in my inbox - largely due to groups - so I keep putting off looking at any at all... I think I should just unwatch those groups though; I can't keep up with them at all.

I'm also struggling with weird self-esteem, self-confidence and avoidance issues though... Stupid little things scare or bother me, and I feel like anything I'll say to other people will be 'wrong' or off-putting or even hurtful (due to social incompetence rather than intention!), so I tend to retreat into myself far too much. I also assume that everyone is happier, more skillful, and has a better life than me, so seeing evidence of that all the time sends me into a spiral of envy and despair... I need to change this, but to say it's 'not easy' would be an understatement!

Despite all that, I've been focusing a lot on a game that I'm making, in the desperate hope that I'll finally be able to make a decent living off what I love to do. I feel it's possible; the only barrier is actually pushing through the dark treacle of depression enough to finish the probably-too-large game projects I try to tackle all by myself. I've had some success with making games in the past, so I know I can probably achieve that again... It's just a matter of putting the effort in.

The game I'm making at the moment is a browser-based single-player story-driven RPG which will tell its story through hopefully weekly 'episodes'; sort of like an interactive webcomic in some ways. It's a reboot of my most popular game series (MARDEK), and I'm excited about it! I've been doing a lot of concept art for it, though it's all fairly crude so I post it mostly to my development blog instead of here.

I'm hoping to get funding for it from Patreon, which I think could work out quite well if I were producing content regularly. The challenge will actually be keeping my motivation up...

So yes. Sorry if you've been waiting on a reply from me or something, and I still haven't forgotten about the entries to that description drawing challenge I set up ages ago!!! I suppose I'm just too focused on trying to find some kind of stability, and it's taking time...