Late January and February are always a bit of a zombie period for me. A big part of it is tax season combined with the weather.
This year it also had to do with the fact that I was finally finishing up a month long translation project with hat was supposed to be a week long translation project and have been trying to promote my first EP release. I also got a new computer and have been looking for an adapter I need to record music with my existing equipment.
I’ve been trying to maintain social relationships which have deteriorated, not because my lack of care but because of my lack of time and ability to focus on them. No one has cut me out but I seem to have given the impression that I don’t care and so I am trying to mend that.
I don’t want to just promote my music to old friends and then disappear for another year or two so promotion means rebuilding these relationships, not out of desire for personal gain but because I don’t want them to become one way and exploitative. I want to earn their interest, even if I already deserve it, especially if they are people I love.
So I haven’t really been hiding, it’s just been that my attention is so scattered it feels as if I no longer exist.
And honestly a big part of that is also that a lot of my free time these past two weeks has gone to Assassins Creed Odyssey. Aside from Nier Automata, it was the number one game I wanted to play on PS4 when I came back to gaming a year and a half ago. It’s beautiful and immersive and feels like 3 games in one, the main story, the high quality and story relevant side quests and the DLC. I will save the DLC for later this year, I can’t continue playing like this for much longer, it’s taken over my life completely for two weeks
I needed this, not as an escape but for the feeling of winning. Real life success sometimes feels like a slow drip. You don’t always know you are winning, and the leveling up isn’t as straightforward as in games.
I managed to get 105 streams on Spotify in about 5 days…but after that it dropped off to 0-3 streams a day.
Where do I go from here? Make more friends? Bother existing friends more? I’m not ready to play shows and likely won’t be til March or April. I want to make new music right now but I am not in the most creative mode after a very creative 2024.
The point of my art is to challenge myself to become more of what I want to see in the world, but it isn’t the season for that just yet. I want to defrag first.
And so I got sucked into a beautiful fantasy while also reminding myself while I stopped playing games in the first place. The dopamine hits are far too pleasurable in gaming. I can only justify it for short periods of time and these games are long and there are too many interesting ones.
After this I want to take a break from any new narratives and any new addictions and get back into expressive mode.
The balance between different modes that are all required of us to survive in the modern world has always been my biggest challenge. When I am creating, I have no desire to promote, and when I am promoting I have no desire to create. When I’m connecting I have no inclination to work towards a goal, and when I work towards a goal, other people cease to exist.
I’m glad February is the shortest month because it feels like an invitation to March and April, which always seems to be when things get interesting.
I hope I will have more to say next post. I was hoping that writing would spark some kind of passion or movement in me but all it got me thinking was that I should finish this game as soon as possible and find that damn adaptor!