ｆｒｉｄａｙ

I finally managed to sleep in for a little bit later today, though it came in a very weird form. I originally went to bed just after 0000 and ended up waking up at around 0400. I'm stuck in 4-hour cycles again, when I do manage to sleep, which sucks but I can't be too choosy about my sleep. After failing to fall back asleep, I got out of my pod at 0530 and made some light breakfast. Settled down after I ate, did a little bit of work, and then went back to bed at 0800. Four hour cycles of work and sleep. Woke up again at 1300, so that was five more hours, at least. Unfortunately for me, I woke up feeling a bit ill. Hoping I can burn whatever this is off before it turns into more than just a sore throat. Cherrichus sent me the finished commission I ordered from her this morning, and that's what I spent time setting up; very excited to debut that on stream tonight. As usual, I'm not planning some big fanfare or reveal for it, I think it's a lot more funny to just show up with new things and get the genuine reaction to them, rather than hyping them up. There is one exception to this that's coming soon, though. More on that to come in the future.

Jules had a really nice stream last night discussing goals for the new cycle with our community from Earth; many of them have very simple goals, very realistic, and I hope to see them fulfilled this year before the cycle turns over again. I've got mine up on my homepage here, if you're curious. Speaking of my goals, I'm just about finished with digitizing Kilonova, I've got about 3.5 pages of the drafted manuscript left to convert, and right now I'm sitting at 18786 words, across 75 A5-formatted pages. Curiosity bade me style the manuscript in that way and it's been expectedly motivating to see my work in what will hopefully be its mostly final form. I need to send out some more correspondence with agents to shop it around.I anticipate being finished with it before the summer season hits North America (Earth), which means there's a good chance it could be on shelves as early as this time next cycle. There's a secret time limit I'm working against. Time is always running.

It's been so long since I've had an extended break that I think I'm starting to get a bit restless, now. Making work for myself each day, finding a routine. Routine is good, I like having an itinerary. Going to spend the afternoon organizing my OBS and re-balancing my audio once I get my manuscript digitized fully. Making more "work", but really just doing things that need to get done. My work days this week have revolved around babysitting Poppy Bot. She's finally getting over the bug that had left her ears a mess. I don't think we could have picked a more needy K9 unit, to be honest, I feel like I'm raising a toddler. The only way I've actually been able to get anything done without her just standing in my doorway to whine and stare at me is by dragging her bed from the living room into my room--which HARDLY fits it, mind--and tucking her into bed behind my chair. Needy. Needy. I go back to work later this month and I have mixed feelings about it.

A new set of full-body trackers should be here either today or tomorrow, it depends on when the mages get to porting them on Station and clearing them.

ｎｅｗｓｌｅｔｔｅｒ

There are a lot of 'zines' out there, digital magazines specifically curated around an IP or subject, united by that, and packed to the brim with original artwork from a variety of contributing artists. The last two that I've been aware of more intimately have left me somewhat disappointed, not because of the quality of the projects or art, or even the subject matter, but because writers haven't been included. "Back in my day," he cried, his hair greying, his life force fading, "magazines were packed with articles, too!" At least the ones I used to read. I consumed a lot of articles from magazines, all across a variety of subjects from advances in nanotechnology to new discoveries related to the stars in our local cluster. I digress. There are a lot of writers in the community that Jules and I have built online, and I want them to have greater representation. I thought that zine projects could offer that, but I suppose from a logistical standpoint, it may be much harder to organize and print/publish pages that have both graphics and extensive blocks of text.

I've been looking for alternatives. Even without researching, I know there are millions of newsletters out there, filling internet niches and circulating original written works in largescale email blasts that are organized with ruthless efficiency. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. Though I'm not particularly tech literate enough to compete with operations on that scale, I do want to try my hand at organizing a bi-weekly newsletter that features written works from the artists in our community. That being said, I've been digging around for resources that I can take advantage of to accomplish this, and it seems like Substack is the most reliable and affordable option.

As far as the design goes, I do live with a designer who has the aesthetic eye and skills to do just about anything I could ever conjure, but part of me kind of wants to try my hand at arranging it in Figma myself. I've played with the program a little bit here and there, testing different things and figuring out what each tool/option does, etc. but I've never tried to make something that would be used. My best bet, likely, would be to ask my bestie [Jules, ICYMI] to cook something for me. Or at the very least, to take my amateur concept and iterate it into something that looks more professional. I'm a bit of a stickler about appearances, especially when it comes to design (fuck you for doing that to me, btw, Jules) and I'd rather my own project not look decidedly amateurish. If there's anything that will turn supporters and contributors away from a project in today's world, it's definitely the appearance of something. One glance over a hastily cobbled carrd or a peek at a preview cover will form first impressions that you cannot, objectively, afford to squander. I won't really know the extent of my options on Substack until I really dig into it, as well, but I'm hoping it'll give me the option to organize something more structured than just BLOCK OF TEXT™ in columns or paragraph format.

I also don't particularly like the idea of pushing the newsletter via email, mostly because everyone receives hundreds of emails across dozens of inboxes these days. Contributing to that problem isn't the most appealing to me and I worry that doing so may result in the effort of both contributors and myself going completely ignored. Again, more research required. But that's the plan for right now; launch a newsletter every two weeks. Each period, I'll put out prompts and open submissions with a word count, and then comb through them to curate those that best fit the prompt and page limit for the newsletter.

I guess I'll wrap this up by expressing my desire for information regarding the publication and dispersal of newsletters. If you've got any experience doing as much, hit me up on Discord, you can find my links to get in touch on our Linktree.

ａｎｘｉｅｔｙ

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about my time in the services and how it has left a mark on me, for better and for worse. This surfaced a couple of days ago because I overslept and missed my own stream, hilariously enough. Streaming isn't something I've been contractually obligated to do, it's something I do for fun--there are no consequences for missing/canceling a stream. AND YET, I found myself pacing around stressed and anxious that there would be some punishment for something as simple as oversleeping. I spoke to Jules about it briefly. I stated the obvious, what I've just written, about there being no consequences, etc. for missing stream, but that I felt so anxious I couldn't sit still over it. On paper, maybe it does seem like I'm an anxious person after all. But then I get to thinking about why I feel that way; the only attribution is military service.

I think it's universal that the military instills you with this sense of urgency that really is complicated to try and describe. If you're a veteran, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. Not the "hurry up and wait" shit but the threat of devastating consequences for trivial shit. If you oversleep and miss a doctor's appointment there are consequences, sometimes even group punishment. If you aren't where you're supposed to be 15 minutes before your scheduled time, there will be consequences. And when you're in training, the theatrics are cranked up to 11. Your drill instructors scream that your 4 minute tardiness would have "gotten all your friends killed" or that your absence somewhere due to miscommunication would have "killed someone." That's bizarre. It's abnormal. And it's unhealthy, long-term.

The armed services pipeline is a fascinating case study in behavioral psychology. I'm not a psychologist, so I cannot state with any educated certainty what the actual psychological results of conditioning a mind within that context are; I only speak from personal experience. There's rhetoric about shaping and molding people into warfighters, like a potter with a wheel. But, I think the process is more like chemistry than pottery. It's a delicate balance that, when skewed too far in one direction, explodes. The worst that can happen on a potter's wheel is structural failure, in which case, you just mash it all back down into a lump and throw it again. You have the option to try again, the ability to try again, but with the mind, I think you only have one chance.

People are gathered up from all walks of life, some volunteered, some are here out of avoidance, others traded a military contract for time incarcerated, and smushed together in a controlled environment all under the same conditions. You eat when you're told to, exercise when you're told to, speak when you're told to, etc. To quote one of my favorite games, the military is "your daddy, and you're its how high." And it's relentless, I think that may be the thing that is often misunderstood about the training environment. There are no breaks. That constant pressure is always on. And the cost of failure, failure that isn't even yours, is often group punishment as a twisted way of building teamwork and cooperation. But really, what it does it foster a sense of resentment and an unspoken acknowledgment about who the weak links are. You live in a perpetual state of "go" during training and that, now coded into you, persists through your time in service. It sticks with you when that time comes to an end, too.

There's a pipeline to turn delivery boy into a warfighter, but not a pipeline to deprogram him when he can't fight anymore.

That's the real issue. The military hollows you out and pours all this shit into you, it desensitizes you, dehumanizes you, and the supposed opposition you'll face so that you don't hesitate when the 'time' comes. But what it really does is imbue you with anxiety flavored as urgency and professionalism. It makes you more judgmental, more controlling, it gives you an addiction to overworking to avoid consequences. I can't work on a team because in the back of my mind, if something isn't done to 'standard' the first time, I'm going to be outside at sunrise doing burpees until I puke. If I'm late, I'm going to jail, or my best friend is going to explode into a million gory pieces somehow, and it'll be my fault.

I've been back in the civilian sector for a long while now, but that conditioning is still there. I've talked to doctors about it, both "military" doctors and civilian doctors. There aren't enough resources for veterans, full stop. I think most societies pedestal their soldiers--how universal are soldiers?-- but provide them no recourse or care when their use has run out. I want you to stop for a moment and think about all the propaganda you've seen for your local military. All the digital ads. All the posters, the billboards. The documentaries, the television programs, the podcasts. Your impression of what any of that actually means is incorrect, unless you've served, in which case I'm preaching to the choir. Now, I want you to think about the resources you know of, off the top of your head, that are meant to support veterans. I'm sure the list is much smaller. And I'm sure that even if you are a veteran, that list is minuscule. It's not enough. The most notable resources are those meant to aid during a crisis, and while comendable and appreciated, most of us aren't living in perpetual crisis, we're stuck drifting somewhere between listlessness and crisis.