the tattered journal

WHOOF... well!!! i have had one hell of a year so far.
so, the long-short of it is that i am doing better...ish.

psychologically i am in a better place, anyway. back at work at taco bell, unfortunately, but at least i have been managing to keep my health issues at bay for a little while. the rheumatologist appointment fell through, predictably.

chip and i are doing lovely, we talk every day and i get to see him about twice a month. he day dreams about us affording an apartment, but honestly, i worry about my mom a lot. she tells me not to, but she's a widow now...

additionally, not long after that last post i made here, her sister-in-law passed away, within days of the anniversary of my dad's passing. a month later, her brother nearly killed himself by driving drunk in the middle of the night.

thankfully, my uncle is doing shockingly well for a man that broke his spine and had to have emergency surgery in houston for it. but because of his circumstances, his granddaughter, kimber, that had been living with him has moved in with my mom and i. her grandmother had been a buffer between my uncle and second cousin, but since she's not there, kimber had been subject to his emotional abuse.

kimber recently turned 18, but she is in an online school course that has the possibilty of helping her get a college scholarship. since her grandmother's death, she had not been able to keep up with her class work until she moved in with us. if my mom wasn't so abrasive some times, i would feel better moving out with chip and letting kimber keep my room, but she's quite sensitive.

otherwise, i have still been having long periods of art block, then get obsessed with a few images. i made another new design to represent myself with, but i still feel guilty cause that's most of what i end up drawing lol...

in general, i still feeling pretty aimless most of the time, but i try to make ends meet and be kind of my loved ones. mik emailed me again recently, and i hope that we might be able to be friends again!

i tell ya what, i HATE posting online these days. i don't trust anyone to be honest with others or themselves but i am trying to get through that feeling and start getting ready to start advertising commissions. i suppose i need to start doing fan art to get that initial traction but man...
i drew chip's au'ra girl, her armor is so densely detailed that it took me like 3 months to finish. it was fun though, i liked challanging myself to get it as close to the in-game model as i could. check out the render on my tumblr art tag!

he and i have been going through a bunch of games together. we played warframe for a lil while, minecraft, palworld and now stardew valley. he brought up a star trek show on netflix that he found and now we're both obsessed with the entire franchise lmao. i grew up watching TNG with my dad, and even though chip didn't really watch any star trek before this, he's thoroughly enjoying it!!

honestly though, real life has been crushing my spirits. aside from holidays and outtings with chip, i have been suffering so much. i am still at this point where i tear up when anything reminds me of my dad too much, and keeping a job is near impossible with what ever is going on with my health. i still don't have any answers for what's wrong with me either, but i know that as soon as i finish an antibiotic prescription, another infection somewhere else crops up. my GP is (supposedly) going to put in a referal to a rheumatologist for me, but it will likely take several months.
but hey... i am trying to be grateful for things that are going well for me. i have never liked how often i complain when i think about what's going on in my day-to-day, it just feels like aside from art, games and my boyfriend, i'm always overcome with stress and fatigue.

haha!! chip and i beat baldur's gate 3 this weekend and it was. fun. i still wouldnt recommend the game to anyone until they patch the shit out of the last quarter of it, because. none of those glitches and preformance issues were even slightly amusing.
now he and i are likely getting back in to XIV again soon, what with the new content patch releasing soon.

i hope there's more housing items added.

here's a lil screenshot of my lalafell dwarf

well this is my first proper venture in to actually setting up my own site for blogging!

i have made previous attempts but i usually just end up going back to tumblr for both serious life updates and shitposts.
it's just so simple to use... but too exposed. i prefer being a recluse that's hard to find lol.

that said, i don't really know what i will do with this site yet. i will likely try to set up a gallery page...?
i considered using pillowfort but like, it's not great for displaying multiple thumbnails or images at once.
really, i'm just fiddling with all this to express myself without having to struggle with my art tablet for a bit. i keep going through phases with my art where i spit out several rendered pieces and then just use the xp-pen as a second monitor for like a year and a half. meh.