The rantings of many.

Been broke for over a week. Running out of food quickly. Haven't been able to afford my hormones. This has been a shitty month.

I applied for a job today. I'm fully aware that my psychological state is still too delicate to withstand the stresses of a job, but I'm not going to make it like this. I don't have a choice but to take the risk of a complete nervous breakdown.

My doctor put me back on Effexor a couple of months ago, and I don't think it's helping. My depressive states have actually gotten worse since I've been on it, but I'm not sure what parts of it are that med and what parts of it are being off of my hormones. I've been off those for two weeks now - I just can't afford any more, and it'd cost about $50 for a one month supply. I don't even have $5 to my name at the moment. My doc won't prescribe for me, and neither would the endocrinologist I was referred to last month. I hate being stuck.

Yeah. Shortly after I got the iMac, deoxys died.

Well, after having to get a new case and reformat, deoxys is back online. I lost all my music, but I'll be getting it all back, in fact, I'll be getting a better collection without so many dupes and crap in it.

As for the case, it's a slight improvement - old case had a 400MHz G3, new one has a 450MHz G4.


I also stripped the iMac, and found a 256MB stick of RAM for altaria and another 120GB HDD for deoxys. Score.

I got bored and decided to root through the shed for a keyboard with a built-in USB hub that went with an older-model iMac that my grandmother was holding on to for one of my cousins. Well, that cousin was around, so I asked about it.

As a result, I now am the proud owner of a Blueberry iMac 266MHz.

Lo and behold, it's a gem. Jaguar was installed on it and works perfectly, it has half a gig of RAM and a 120GB HDD in the second drive position. I'm going to try to install Tiger on it later.

In keeping with my computer naming scheme, I have christened it "Jirachi".

Well, while I was monitor shopping, I found an old HP Pavilion 6330. Pretty much a doorstop, but they only wanted $10 for it, so I figured, what the hell. At the least, I could strip it for parts.

So, I got home, and I tried to fire it up. Wasn't really surprised when it failed to even boot to BIOS, so I looked at the memory. SDRAM.

A 256MB stick of SDRAM that would fit in deoxys.

So, of course, I stuck it in, and hoped for the best. As a result...

11:23 <+deoxys> Sysinfo: OS: Mac OS X 10.4.9 - CPU: PowerPc 750 @ 399MHz - 
                Video: NEC AccuSync 70 @ 1280x1024 on Rage 128 - Sound: Onboard 
                - Memory: U/T 173MB/640MB - Uptime: 17 mins - HD: deoxys HD 1, 
                U/T: 120GB/128GB - deoxys HD 2, U/T: 70GB/112GB

640MB memory over the 384MB it had before.

Dare I say that I shifted deoxys into Speed Mode? :P

I can't wake up yet. My heart is missing. I can't feel. I can't act. I can't respond. I'm completely numb, as I have been for the past few days.

I haven't lost my memory but I don't know who I am. I don't know what kind of person I am. I can't remember any of the good things, I only seem to remember the bad things, the things that torment and taunt me in nightmares.

There are fleeting memories of a gentle soul, a child ignored and twisted beyond recognition from a gentle being to an evil one. What happened to her? Is she still in there? Can I be her again, or is she lost forever to time and torture? Will she be welcomed by the world that abandoned her once already, or will she be rejected again? Can she face it? Can I face it if I were to become her again?

Can I stand up and face it?

I'm not sure yet. I'm not sure I'm worthy. I've broken so many promises made to myself over the years. I've failed myself.

If I were gone, would Claire be the only one that missed me?

Can a gentle soul co-exist with a solitary instinct and an almost cutthroat need to survive?

I don't have an answer, and until I do, I won't know who I am.

Safari for Windows.

Very interesting... I'm using it, and I'll say this much... it ain't half-bad! At least I'm familiar with the interface. :P

Well, the doctor put me on Effexor again. So far, my depression has lessened... and my ability to communicate is almost gone. It's getting harder to force the words out. Hopefully I can still get some words out tomorrow - I have an endo appointment.

Also, my car died Tuesday. I think the engine might have blown. I'm going to hope it didn't and try to determine if it's still usable sometime within the next few days. If it isn't, then I'll just drop the insurance. I'm not planning to be in this country long enough to put together the money to repair it.

So, I was supposed to update Decades today. Nothing's coming out right. It all feels wrong. I can't get the pose right, can't get the angle right, can't get the shading right. Wrong, wrong, wrong, and my trash can is filling up.

Then I get that thought again... forum's dead, chat's dead... who the hell reads it anymore? Does anyone give a fuck that I'm working myself to the bone, running the well completely dry, when it comes to my creativity? There's no feedback coming from anywhere. I could be doing the greatest work ever or I could be taking sucking ass to a new level, and I just don't KNOW!

Then again, it could just be me. While in Colorado, I was able to bang out updates left and right, even on workdays. Here, I've got all the bloody time in the world, and I'm struggling to make ONE update a week. It's hard as hell to keep going.

So, yeah, does anybody even read the bloody thing anymore or should I just stop here?

Comics updated:

Replica Saga: Crystalline (just 3 more of those left!)
Decades

News:

Awake Road will begin on 20 May, assuming Claire can get the site up in time.

No wallpaper this month. Soon as a donation redirect is set up, they'll resume. Server costs and other upkeep-related expenses are destroying my finances.

Also, hooray for idiots trying to spam me and such. The forum will go down in a few days for an upgrade and conversion, so hopefully the fly-by-night porn spammers won't be able to get in anymore once that's done, and the place will be safe.

RS:HCO will resume next Tuesday, with more non-mindsafe goodness.

I'm worried I won't make it through the day. My depression's NEVER been this bad.

I wish I was dead. This second.

I'm not coping well as of late. I knew I wasn't able to cope with the complexities of the adult world, now I know I can't cope with any of it.

Why do I bother to get out of bed? There isn't a lot to wake up to these days.

I'm feeling more vulnerable with each passing day. Less sure of myself and less in control. More scared of the world around me and the people that inhabit it.

Except for one person. That one person who leaned on me and allowed me control of her life and existence... now I'm entrusting her with the same, as I give her the control.

She who is mine... I am now hers. Where once I was content to be in control, now I feel more content in being controlled - but only by one.

Only by Claire.

"Dark, the only thing that's real, it's all that I can feel, and every single nerve is screaming
Wait, for sleep that never comes, my imagination runs, and reaching has left me bleeding..."

I seem to be on the edge of a manic state today. I should try to get some drawing done... I have none of next week's comics ready as yet.

Mother loses custody for treating daughter as a girl.

This country is fucked. It'd probably be better off as a parking lot now.

I should be sleeping, but there's three kids in the hhouse today and my maternal instincts are going into a very cruel overdrive. Little help?

Also, my seeding/TV show storage/master comic file drive died a couple of days ago. Luckily, I had backups on deoxys, so none of the comics were lost, meaning one of these days I can redo all of the older comics in the newer style if I ever decide not to be lazy about it or I decide to go to a higher-clarity format. The new drive will be in Monday, but I'm really feeling the hurt until then.

Yes, the horrors of unpacking House episodes one at a time to watch...

I can't get anywhere in my fucking life until I get SRS. There's no way. I'm getting called "sir" so fucking often now, I don't even want to leave the house, or try to go anywhere. Getting a job just became even less of an option than it already was.

I'm also going to run out of meds at the end of the month.

I'm going to go throw a couple of months "clean" out the window now.

Replica Saga: Decades has been updated for 1 April.

(I'll get an RSS feed up soonish if it isn't already...)

Also, I've released April's wallpapers. They're free. Yeah, I know. Some comics use the wallpapers as a way to pull in donations... I'm of the school of thought, however, that if people like what they can get for free, they'll support it more.

Then again, I haven't had a donation since December. Yeah, I think I fail.

Anyway.

As well, I got another monitor today, so deoxys (my Mac) is now back up and running, which is great news. This means that I can use one box for in-general everything while I focus on only a couple of tasks on gardevoir (my Windows machine) - those being seeding torrents with my new 5-meg line as well as working on comics. Yeah, I'd much rather do so on a Mac, but deoxys just doesn't have the power to handle the GIMP. I so need one of the newer Macs...

*dreamily eyes a MacBook Pro and sighs longingly...*

It's also amazing to see just how much my art has progressed. The cover for the current act of Decades was drawn last year, sometime during the middle of the year, even before I drew Decades Prelude #1. In contrast, I recently completed Decades #7, and the improvement is staggering. It's almost insane how much the quality could improve so much in just 8 or 9 months.

By the way... like the new icon? :P

( To save your friendslist view and maybe your sanity. )
First one sounds about right, second one is close. Silver's not quite the power colour for me.

Metalheads are boring.

Even with all the things I hated about the male role, I do miss being able to walk around without a top on. Especially in this humidity.

Also, I've managed to roll out some of the Replica Saga 2.0 updates, mostly banners and such. The rest comes whenever Claire can get around to it.