[Patron-Only Feed] Stuff & Things and Things & Stuff

This was a slower week, so it seems like there's another Patron-Only Feed post so soon after the last one. I'm pretty tired though, so I don't know how much more I'm getting done this week. There were some additional things posted through the Dropbox, so don't forget to check that out if you've got access to it.

What's goin' on and stuff?

General Stuff:

As of recently, I've been maintaining a sleep schedule. I'll lie down around 3am and wake up around noon later that day. It's pretty nice to sleep when it's actually still dark, and I hope I can keep this schedule consistent. If I can keep my daily responsibilities simple, I'm sure that this setup will be agreeable.

I still haven't been able to keep myself out of "work mode" though. At least, not without feeling as though I'm doing something terrible by not working all the time. I simultaneously feel as though I'm working too hard and like I'm not doing enough. I should probably be cautious, because that sounds like burnout... 

I've yet to subscribe to Amazon Fresh, but I should get on that soon. I gotta clean up my porch a bit more and get my wake-up time reliably consistent so I can securely schedule deliveries. But I am still worried about money too.

This Wednesday's Stream:

I didn't do my Wednesday Commission stream this week because I was asked to do something that I'd have needed to interrupt my stream for. I don't like interrupting it. I might need to find a way to deal with this, however, as this has happened twice now. I should expect it to happen again.

Perhaps I could simply just accept that my streams are going to be interrupted, or consider streaming more than once throughout the week. 

How I feel:

I really wanted to draw a lot of nice seasonal art for the month, but I've only drawn a few things thus far and I feel pretty bad. We're nearly halfway through this month.

Perhaps I expect too much from myself, as art DOES take time. Maybe I'm not giving myself enough time. Perhaps I could be doing more, but I'm too tired to do any more. Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough. I don't feel creatively fulfilled, as I've said on more than one occasion. I want to create better art and I'm letting myself down. I don't know what exactly I'm going to do to fix all of this.

It's very discouraging. Perhaps my burnout hasn't resolved quite as I thought it had.

Started playing Dark Souls:

Again. I'm not any further on the critical path than I was in previous attempts, but I plan to stick with it this time. 

I am feeling much more comfortable on this play-through, however. Rather than playing as a Knight, I've chosen the starting class of Cleric and selected the Master Key gift (which lets me open up locked doors before I'm technically supposed to access those areas). While exploring the ruins of New Londo, I found my way to the Valley of Drakes, and got a hold of the Astoria Short Sword -- which really removes the grind from the early combat, allowing me to be more aggressive. I wonder if that's cheap though... Additionally, as a cleric, I didn't start with heavy armor, and being able to roll fast makes a WORLD of difference in making me feel more comfortable.

Anyway, here is the stream recording of that. One of my most boring streams though.

Topical Thoughts - Video Games 

Fallout 76:

Bethesda's new multiplayer Fallout game looks cool. I do not know that I'm going to jump on it on release day yet, however.

I really like the idea of a multiplayer Bethesda RPG but PR people showed the game off at 4K so the game-play had a lot of frame drops, which is not something you want from an online game especially. I do hope it works though; I'd like to see multiplayer appear in future games of theirs (but maybe more like 2-3 friends joining your Elder Scrolls quest).

Gopher has a pretty good head on his shoulders. He's pretty critical without being an ass about his thoughts, which is good because that would be tiring. Plus he's a long-time modder of Bethesda's games, so he's very technically informed about their games.

Assassin's Creed - Odyssey: 

I'm enjoying it. There's admittedly a little buggy-ness here and there, but that is to be expected with massive open world games (unless you're Breath of the Wild). 

I've found combat really fun & engaging, with a good balance between offense & defense. The shield from Origins has been removed and replaced with parrying (for counters) and armor slots (for armor value & aesthetics), so there's a really good flow to combat.

This patron-only feed post was pretty long, huh? I wish I could get paid to just write my thoughts and stuff all the time.