Summer came and went in the blink of an eye and unfortunately, I wasted it pouting and feeling sorry for myself.
First update. I am no longer on Twitter. I actually took Twitter off my social media list a while back, intending on leaving whenever the implosion finally happened. Well, this weekend I got tired of waiting and said to hell with it and deleted my account. Whatever is happening over there, I refuse to be part of it.
I am on Mastodon but I’m finding its feed is harder to tune so the end-result is while I’m on Mastodon, I’m not active enough to make it worth it. To protect my mental health, I really don’t want to see political content of any sort. For now, I’m active on Tumblr. I’m finding that Tumblr suits my needs far better than Twitter ever did—despite having to squash porn-bots every so often.
I’m still on Instagram, and I’ve even started a Threads account but I’m not very active on Threads—yet.
Another social media account that might go the way of the dodo is my Pinterest account. This is more due to their shitty AI bot erroneously flagging content in my boards as “adult” content. Of course, they don’t tell you which pin is the offending one, and the “one-use” link that they send you doesn’t work.
Website Redesign Underway
It’s been three years since I updated the layout for Psy-dreamer.com. I have a redesign underway, along with a conversion to a block theme format to make style updates easier in the future.
Silent Shadow Status
I’ve paused the 3d work for now partially to focus on getting the rewrite of Hawk & Wolk finished, and to prevent the kind of burn-out that I’m going through with Fate Grand Order. That being said, when I’m not working on assets for the webcomic, I’m currently focusing on archvis so my characters have a proper backdrop.
I’ve been working on a set of shaders that mimic subsurface scattering to get around some of Eevee’s limitations that I’m hoping gets fixed in Blender 4.0. Some of those experiments haven’t been as successful as I would have hoped.
Burned Out on Fate Grand Order (under cut)
So this year’s FGO summer event turned out to be a slog. I thought I could finish the whole thing during my week off but no—I found other things to do, like redesigning the web-site and doing archvis in Blender.
However, a huge part of the burn-out is shitty gacha luck, the event was grindy as fuck, and I’m broke on top of all of that—the joys of owning a home. So I decided to be stubborn. I finished the event and got the event’s welfare, but afterwards I might as well go on hiatus until the fall events get here.
On a more serious note about FGO, I see why people end up getting frustrated and quitting the game. The gacha luck is horrible (only going on what I’ve heard—I haven’t played other gacha games to compare), and with the Lostbelts, story release has been slow since the release of Lostbelt 3. And well, I’m not particularly impressed with what the next year has in store for NA.
That being said, I see myself only participating in the Christmas event for farming materials since this year’s Christmas welfare doesn’t seem very interesting. I might participate in the Halloween event, but I’m not exactly a huge Liz fan so I may just sit that one out as well.
Since I’m on the subject of anything Fate-related now, I’m on the fence about buying Samurai Remnant when it comes out. I’m honestly burned out on Fate in general, not just FGO. I might change my mind sometime later in the winter, but probably not likely. Since I started working on Silent Shadow back at the end of 2021, my time has been gradually taken up by the creative writing projects I started as a means of getting to know the characters. More time has been taken up by learning Blender and bringing over my old content from Poser into Blender.
Next section has a content warning due to some discussion about mental health.
I Spent the Summer Feeling Sorry for Myself
I have been struggling with mental health issues for what seems like forever, but in reality, it started about five years ago—likely triggered by some things happening in my life during that time. Dealing with multiple job losses and a house-fire did not help, either.
Anyway, I started taking anti-anxiety and anti-depression meds to get a handle on the problem and even tried therapy—which on that subject, is a rant for another time. Anyway, the problem has been finding the right dosage. Sometimes, it works; sometimes, it doesn’t. I had been on 450mg bupropion (Wellbutrin) for almost two years now—two in the morning, one in the afternoon.
One particularly pernicious aspect of my depression has been seasonal affective disorder, which has been particularly bad the last two years. Normally, that depression clears up in March or April but lately, it hasn’t. This year (and to a lesser extent, last year), the depression lasted well into the summer.
Gummies + Buproprion = Bad Time
Well, a few things suddenly clicked as to why my depression doesn’t seem to be under control. I’m taking too much bupropion. I cut back to two a day (300mg) and most of my depression hasn’t been as bad. Another factor may also have been the THC gummies I was taking in the evening to help me sleep. I never once considered drug interactions, and it turns out that there are significant interactions between THC and bupropion. So, I stopped using the gummies.
Since then, it seems that my depression has gotten back under control. Part of me wonders how much of that was hormonal considering that the week I stopped was leading up to “that time of the month.”
As for this past winter, I suspect that another contributing factor to my depression was not taking Vitamin D like I normally do during the winter. It’s highly possible that it got lost in the shuffle with the move. Not making that mistake again this winter.
Basically, the warning here is if you’re on an antidepressant, research potential interactions with gummies before taking them.
That being said, I do have regrets about this past summer. Normally, the bf and I go on a summer road-trip around or after July 4th. That didn’t happen this year due to the house, some projects we both took on, and the cost of gas. That likely played a part in my mental health issues. What’s really weird is this year, I’m sort of anticipating winter. Why, I don’t know but there it is. Maybe it’s just the chance to “hibernate” and not be bothered by outside chores. Maybe I’ll find an answer; maybe I won’t. Does it really matter, though?
Till next time!