TPA36

I had to go shopping today, not only because I needed food but also because my stomach was mad at me. It didn't want to eat Bob Evans frozen ham and cereal for breakfast. I have to make this food last until the 8th when my stamps are renewed. Chicken and rice sounds good, I'm sick of hamburger and noodles. I'm also out of Classica sauce which means I can't make spaghetti. Right now I'm calming myself with some Cheeze-its. It's like comfort for my stomach. I've been told that there's this thing called "food anxiety" where you worry about what you'll eat for the next few days. So I need to extend my food until the stamps come back. Being poor isn't fun.

Moving on, one of the issues I've been having is playing new games. I've got a bunch I want to play or finish but I don't have the joy or motivation to do it. But, there's the ADHD part of me that jumps from one thing to another. I don't finish games, I let them fade. So, I've been trying to finish up a game called "Chained Echos." It's a fine game, but not the one I want to play. I want to play Persona 5 Royal. But, and this is a big but, I want to finish the game I started before I play another. Not finishing a game is like dropping a movie in the middle of a scene. It leaves a mark on your mind because it's unfinished. It lingers in your head like a metaphor I can't think of right now. And it haunts you. The inner child iniside of you wonders what happened next. Now some games, and films, I can leave without knowing the end. Yesterday I was watching "VHS Halloween." And despite the high reviews, (anything over a five when it comes ot horror reviews is usually watchable) I thought the movie was terrible. There's two, count them two openings about adults trick or treating. And there's a character who says the almost exact same line "Aren't you too old to be trick or treating?" Did no one watch these before they were shot or read each other's script? I know each of these anthology films have a different director, but it's off-putting to hear the same line in the span of thrity minutes. The one that broke the camel's back, for me, was one where the characters are chopped up and made into candy. One of them is so freaked out by the "monster" that's haunting them in the candy factory tries to kill herself by jumping onto the conveyor belt to the chopping block to escape. Looks like the man with the candy ball head is too much for an adult to handle. Each segment feels like it's a trumped up version of Goosebumps that lacks any style or wit to it. It's shock and gore for it's own sake which makes this entry possibly the worst entry in the series and I'm a sucker for found footage films. Maybe I'm not in the right mood. Maybe it's the depression but I felt sick watching half the film. So I turned it off. 

Going back to Chained Echos, it's a standard fantasy game RPG with interesting characters but it seems to lack something. Some kind of bite or draw that would sink into you when you first started playing it. It's something older games were able to replicate that newer games seem to fail to perform. I think it's this fine comb that the developers go over on their games. Something a lot of indie games lack is the time to let the game sit for a moment and let it cook. It lets you step back and see if there's anything wrong with the game after you've gone over it so many times. Nintendo does this by making their games months in advance before they announce them but Nintendo has that laser focus when it comes to games and the money that lets them sit for a time. Chained Echos isn't doing it for me but it's not entirely the game's fault. I'm not mentally healthy right now so it falls on me to be better so I can properly enjoy a game.

Speaking of enjoyment, I've enjoyed the Canid series so much that I've bought the second one that just came out. It's awakened the inner child in me, the same one that enjoyed Disney's Robin Hood when we rented them from the library a dozen times. Robin Hood and Zootopia remain two of my favorite Disney films that draw me in. It's probably because they star a fox as the main character. This was a likely source for my Reynard character from my RTF series. I need to be nicer to my characters. Pain is good for them to grow but if I keep beating them up they will never rise up. I've been trying to run happy scenarios in my head for my characters but it's like trying to suddenly change your brain chemistry. 

I know I'm not well. I know it because I still think about how I may never become a writer. That it's too late or I'm not qualified to be a writer. I'm doing my best everyday and it's exhausting. I hope these pages are helping. God, please help me to do more. I've got five minutes, maybe I'll spend it in prayer. 

I did this execise that my therapist sent to me. It was based on Dungeon and Dragons where you stand infront of a mirror that reveals your true self to you. Your strengths, your flaws, your wounds, all is revealed. But, before it shows you, it shows you a traveler you might recognize. Someone in your life or someone you created in your head. I picked my Nicholas character and wondered what I would wish for him. I wished for love and peace on him. He's a broken kid that Nicholas. His mom doesn't care for him and he had to move away from all his friends in Boston to go to Columbus Ohio. It's a death sentence becaue he was hoping to use his connections and his reputation to get out of the poverty he and his mother had been living in for so long. But now all that has swept away. So, when I saw myself in the mirror, what did I wish for? What kind of blessing would I put on myself? I asked for peace and understanding. And this frustrated me because a part of me wants productivity, and validation. I thought that wishes are best something that are left unfulfilled and that dreams are something worth going after. I wish myself that I had peace because my soul is in torment over these kinds of things. I don't think I'm good enough or that I've put enough effort into writing. So, I must make peace with the fact that I'm John, not Stephen King.