Hatena Blog Pro Campaign prizes
Today I received the prizes from the Hatena Blog Pro campaign:
"はてなブログProキャンペーンにご応募いただき、まことにありがとうございました。 はてなブログオリジナルのノート・ペンと共に、はてなブログProをご活用ください。 今後ともどうぞよろしくお願いいたします
株式会社はてな"
It's very cool! I had to have it shipped through Tenso, but I'm glad it's finally here because I finally have some Hatena merch!
I don't usually post on my Hatena Blog these days because I run my own microblogging service for Hatena users called Sudo Haiku. It's just a bit of a hassle to post on both
What comes after Sudomemo?
Haven't touched my blog in a long while. A lot has happened. The Flipnote Archive was released and a lot of new things happened with Sudomemo. Sudo Haiku is over a year old now. I've branched out a bit and taken up new hobbies and interests.
I've been thinking about this a long time but at this point I have to wonder if Sudomemo is really what I want my "life's work" to be. I've put so much time into it but it's a constant battle to keep people engaged or interested.
I'm thinking about my faith. It's a critical part of who I am. But I struggle. There's things I've struggled with for years and I am acutely aware, in day-to-day moments of conviction, of where the words I speak or actions I take don't fall in line with the faith I profess. Indeed, the fact that I do feel those convictions is reassuring to me -- evidence that my walk in faith is still steady enough to maintain the worldview that reveals my own sin to me.
It comes down to time, really. The time I spend on archiving old content, maintaining a community, so much of it is spent that I struggle to reach enough motivation to continue on my latest idea or project, and have to rely on finding sudden bursts of motivation to work on a new thing all at once before it evaporates again. I just added a dark mode to Sudo Haiku, something I'd been wanting to do for a long time. It took an afternoon to toss it together.
I don't know how much of this stems from my own disability, but I've always (in recent memory) struggled to maintain focus on a project for long times. I get it, I've found workarounds, inventing motivations to push forward is something I have to do on the daily. Many times those motivations are to do with living up to the expectations of other people.
I wish to improve my faith, to bolster it, to take up the armor of God
when I face my daily struggles. I know that the way to do this is to dedicate time to immersing myself in God's Word, to fellowship with other people of faith, and to do all things to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:23-33), something that I remember trying to do in the early days of Sudomemo, albeit a bit clumsily. I've grown a lot since then and had opportunities for ministry -- a recent event was somebody I worked on a project with online reaching out to me to ask me about my faith, something that amazed me -- but I still feel like I'm not where I need to be.
This all takes me back to Sudomemo and basically all the rest of my projects and whatnot. I question whether the time investment is truly returning anything worthwhile in the form of my own personal growth -- or the personal growth of all the artists involved in the community.
I've been thinking about it for years, and I don't plan to do anything sudden, but in all honesty I've been branching out to other endeavors for a while now, trying to grow in my knowledge and abilities. That's all well and good, but what I truly need to grow in is my faith, and that takes an investment of time which I presently struggle to make.
If anything, I think I could do a much better job running a Flipnote site if I took more time to invest into my faith first. I am convicted of my own struggles and must steady myself as is written in Ephesians.
Stuffed animal + cat pic
I tried drawing today
Thoughts on failure
I've been feeling like a failure recently. I worry about missed opportunities and being a bad friend and being envious of others. I struggle with loneliness. I wanted to make tools for others to be creative, but have so far not been successful. After seven years of failed attempts at getting started, I'm still nowhere near even a novice level of art skill. I feel like a fraud and a failure.
I don't know what to do. I just want to be a good person and do good things for other people, that's all. I want to be creative and give people ways to be creative. I don't know...
らくがき
"Whew, what a day."
My friend provided an image of their pillow as a drawing prompt, and this is what I came up with.
Also:
Hugs!
A little bit more from Sky: Children of the Light
September 14th, 2021
Game
Been having a lovely time with the game that my friend introduced me too. Here's some screenshots...
Crash-landing in the sand.. Ackpth! Blecth!
Dark beasts flying through the air
Song
I have this song that I came up with a while ago, and this game inspired me a bit to write a slightly different version that I think fits with the ethos of the game. The original song was about two people who are best friends in the realm of dreams but cannot remember each others names to find each other in real life. (No, it's not inspired by Your Name)
take my hand
hold me tight
fly with me under the moonlight
dream with me of what could be
adventure, treasure, mystery
Glimpses of something, I know not what
September 13th, 2021
There was a storm that came through.
I had a slow day at work.
I was able to roughly pinpoint the location of three different leaks in the roof.
My friend introduced me to a new game, which was enough to get me to finally dust off my Nintendo Switch for once. It's Sky: Children of the Light and it's adorable. We played it together for most of the evening.
I hope we can keep it up. I love spending time with friends. It makes me a bit worried.... every once in a while I'll catch up with an old friend and talk to them nonstop for a month or few. Inevitably though, things tend to fade away, but I hope that doesn't happen because I am having a blast and it's really added a positive note to my life lately!
Groceries, emotions, and wasted time... mostly
(September 12th, 2021)
Groceries
I had some groceries delivered.
I got eggs and bacon and my favorite kind of popsicle and some frozens and candy and a rotisserie chicken and some popcorn and a few other things.
Emotions
It's been a little while since this happened, but I felt really, really down due to loneliness.
It's left me feeling kinda of confused and thinking about things like my unproductive attempts to solve the loneliness, if the baseline of my moral character is good or not, what I need vs what I want, and the hows and ifs of how my struggles affect the people around me.
Wasted time
I spent a lot of my time watching movies and doing unproductive things. I did do a little bit of housecleaning here and there but I got tired.
Friend
Been talking more with that old friend that I mentioned before. A lot more, haha. It's helped redeem the day, honestly. They even drew something for me and it's adorable! 🤎
(Not sharing the art here because I don't want to expose their identity, but it's super cute and includes my Chocoblight character)
