Updates both unexpected and not

I've been going back and forth on what to say in this development update. It's tricky to know what exactly to say sometimes. But, here we go.

For a long time, I've struggled with depression and anxiety. At the moment, I am officially diagnosed with persistent depressive disorder and social anxiety disorder. I suspect a few other things might be wrong, but confirmation on this would require going to an actual doctor and I'm having difficulty finding a provider that my insurance will accept.

Persistent depressive disorder is basically a fancy term for chronic depression. The symptoms are milder than that of major depressive disorder (which is probably the one you're more familiar with), but they're also longer-lasting. Social anxiety disorder is pretty self-explanatory; I get extremely anxious being around people and holding conversations, especially with people I don't know well. To make this even better, my day job is in customer service. It's hard sometimes, but I manage.

So the above problems, as well as a mixture of writer's block and good old-fashioned self-esteem issues, have really been getting me down lately. I feel like I haven't been doing enough. As far as Yumi-chan's Wonderful Cake Shop goes, I have essentially done all I can do until the artwork comes in, and it's not in yet and it won't be completed for a while. So I don't have a whole lot to offer right now, so I feel.

I thought I could fix the problem by focusing on writing other things, but ideas have been running slim. My output lately hasn't been at the level I want it at. And this only contributed to how badly I felt.

On the subject of Patreon: I know that I only have one Patron right now. But I take Patreon seriously and I want to treat it seriously, and so ideally I want to be continuously putting special things on there. But with the lack of content and the standstill I'm at in regards to Yumi-chan, I simply didn't have as much to give. And that, again, made me feel even worse. So I posed a question on Twitter, asking if perhaps I could start posting some other writings, like poems, as Patreon content in the meantime.

And here, everyone, is where the tone starts to lighten up, thanks to a couple of good people.

Naomi Norbez, my current Patron, answered the question by suggesting that since my Patreon is visual novel-focused rather than poetry-focused, that I could either change my Patreon characterization or make IF elements in the poems. And this got me thinking that maybe I should be trying to play to my strengths in poetry a bit more. So off I went to Twine to do some writing.

For the past couple days, I've been sitting in front of the computer, pretty much. Writing, thinking, writing. But today was a bit different. Today, the entries for IFComp 2015 were opened up for judging. I went through the list, and I started playing the game that sounded the most interesting to me: Nowhere Near Single by kaleidofish. I played it through, enjoyed it, and wrote a review of it just a few hours ago. And reading such a good story inspired me as well.

So I would like to happily announce that I'm putting the finishing touches on a Twine game called lucky me. I hope to have it completely ready within the next few days. It is not long and it is probably not a masterpiece. But goddamn it, it is a game and I am going to publish it. For all of you.

A million thanks to Naomi Norbez and kaleidofish for helping me. A million other thanks to everyone who's been following me so far. I hope to continue being of interest to everyone.