Heyo NG!

It's been a minute since I've really talked or interacted much with the community at large. I've kept in good touch with quite a few members in general, but I haven't really interacted much with the wider community for the past few months, as I'm sure that's been made aware from previous news posts of mine.

So in terms of how I'm feeling?

Honestly, things could be better, I won't lie. Everything's not 100% back to the way it was, and I know and fully accept that things will never be the way they were. The bridges I've burned are staying burned, and out of all of the ones that got burned, only two of those are bridges that I personally want to stay that way. The rest? At first, it hurt that I couldn't rebuild them; now, I'm accepting what's done is done and am just agreeing there's nothing I can do except keep moving, keep finding joy in life.

I don't want to sound like I don't care for the well-being of the people on the other ends of any of those bridges; in all honesty I want them to get what's best for them and their spheres of influence, and I really hope that I show that in what I do. But there's things that you can change and things that you can't, and I can't change other people and how they perceive the world at large. I can only change myself - I can only look at my own actions and be proactive with my time and behaviors; I can only try on my own end to show natural kindness and empathy instead of thinking of making enemies as "natural"; I can only really make any kind of big impact and help others if I give what's needed to myself without being selfish. I know I'll forget that under pressure and stress, but I know I have to come back to that line of thinking because that's the truth.

What's been helping me be happy recently, though, are my IRL endeavors. I don't talk about my IRL self online to the general public because internet safety is a thing I take pretty seriously for myself - especially after being exposed to a lot of people in other communities under threat of being doxed and harassed because of how they talk about their IRL selves online - but I will say that re-focusing my efforts to my IRL self over the past few months has honestly been enriching. I still find joy online and through making music to post on here and in different communities, but with what I've been doing IRL and with how much I've been seeing of myself, I honestly want to keep the real-life stuff as a major focus. That was the point I wanted in the beginning, wasn't it - to have this online music thing as a "hobby" while my IRL pursuits got the bills in and became the major breadwinning activities? That's the whole reason why I don't make money off of my music or try not to monetize or throw myself onto YouTube's corrupt clutches, wasn't that what I thought?

I'm not suggesting me leaving NG to make it clear, but I keep coming back to that point time and time again. I don't think I'm ready to go fully back into my usual schedule of things, and I especially want to take things slow as I start to recognize what I need to do to help myself and others. As much as I want to, I already told TGO that me helping to lead this year's Treasure Hunt in my current state would probably do more harm than good and that I just need some time to recoup to help lead next year's Hunt. I am still in the process of getting things to people that I know are waiting for things from me, so know that I haven't forgotten the things that I should get done. I'm even taking the music stuff slower than usual, since honestly I think I'm on a current burnout slope despite having a lot of ideas and desires.

That said...

If I understand things correctly, the rest of this year is currently planned to have a mixture of both old and new music coming out from me. There's a bunch of projects that I've been working on that are starting to release some of my works, so I'm excited to show some of them.

One such project actually released its teaser trailer today - I decided to take a plunge into making music for animation, and I'm happy to have a hand in a senior capstone project for a group of SCAD students, known as "Whittle Me This". I worked with another SCAD musician/sound designer on the project, and I'm excited to get to see it hopefully make some festival circuits soon enough (sidenote - once they release the credit of the other musician since I don't know if I can, check their stuff out!).

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/project/6728437

I've also started looking into making music for different kinds of projects - I have a couple of pieces on a couple of Roblox games (neither of which have officially been released yet); I'm working on helping make the soundtrack for a couple of indie games, both of which I found out about because of NG; I'm taking part in a collab or two that's happening here on NG; two FNF mods that have been in development nightmares for literal years are going to release demos soon with my music on them; and I've also had an idea for an album floating around and started on, which I'm really happy to do.

...it sounds like a lot and that I'm not taking my coming back thing slowly at all when it comes to making music, but the only things that aren't mostly and/or completely done are the indie games, the collabs and the album. I've actually started a habit of making a to-do list of everything that I could possibly do, and I actually put a hard cap on taking anything more in until I get some more items done. I want to get into the habit of being a little more time-wise with my online actions, even if I am taking things slow.

I want to look out for myself a little more, but I don't want to be selfish. Truth be told, part of why I haven't really been active across the larger NG community has just been fear of being seen as selfish - I don't want my actions to come across that way if I can help it. I'm still finding that balance, and I know that's an eternal battle, but it's one I should - and honestly want to - face.

I still value what people say to me, and I still value hearing from others. I think keeping in touch with others is important, since it helps us learn something we didn't know before. I'm not saying I don't care about other people, because I should hope that I do, but I recognize I need to also care about myself as equally as others - no more, no less.

I'll end by saying this: the Collabinator's a thing, and if you're ever looking for help on something or if you ever want to hop into some projects (paid or unpaid), look on there. I found some good projects, including Whittle Me This, on the Collabinator - so if you wanna know if it works or not, there's some proof that it does, in fact, work.