MPR #2 - Stuck In My Head

When I signed off of my previous article, I made a note that I’d like to write an opinion piece about a game, maybe even a proper review, if that would inspire the braincells enough. I had intended to release new writings here roughly weekly, and I wanted to explore a wider variety of topics than just, “the music I was working on at the moment.” When I created this page, I was deeply motivated and particularly excited to speak at length on… well, whatever was on my mind at the time.

These intentions, for the most part, remain true! Just, I wasn’t expecting my mental health to take a severe dive, just in time for Mental Health Awareness month: recognized in the United States every May since 1949.

These lows in my mental health oftentimes follow the highs, and this pattern is consistent enough that I wrote a whole song about it (previewed in MPR #1). It’s an issue I’ve struggled with since I was fairly young, further exacerbated by bullying, undiagnosed mental illness, and a habit of avoiding my problems rather than addressing them. You could argue I was further complicating these issues by not being physically active, or not spending more time out in the sun; two problems that I’ve spent just about the last year making a monumental effort to address.

Since July 15, 2024, I’ve lost just under 90 pounds to date, from a starting weight of 313 pounds to today’s 224. For a lot of my friends and family, this is an astonishing amount of weight to have lost, even with regard to an average loss of two pounds per week. It has been a grueling and oft-times cruel-feeling endeavor, requiring me to summon willpower to resist cravings and commit to my exercise routine, even after the latter has become habit. Cravings aside, my diet is relatively easy- and weirdly fun- to manage, thanks to an app I’ve been using called MacroFactor (not sponsored). I credit MacroFactor for a huge amount of my success; I even went so far as to participate in their first-ever transformation challenge, losing 30 pounds between January 4th to April 20th this year.

I wasn’t selected one of their winning entrants, but I’m proud of the progress I made!

I’ve still got a long way to go before I reach my initial goal of 150-175 pounds (the number shifts as I get new data from my scale), but I’m well on the way to losing 100 pounds by my birthday, July 11th, which is when I made the choice to begin this effort last year. After I reach my goal- whether that is in another year or two- I’ll then be taking a bodybuilding approach to my diet and exercise to get as close to my online persona as possible.

However, while the increased activity and exposure to sunlight have improved my average mood, and the lost weight has lifted some of the physical pain I used to experience, I still struggle to self-motivate on a daily basis. I still have days where I’d rather lie in bed and do nothing, rather than do anything at all; where it just costs too much energy to do basic self-care; where my personal insecurity is just too much to bear, leaving me wondering if any of the effort I’m making is worth it. None of that is good, of course- I don’t want to give any impression that I’m okay with the way things are- but coping when the going gets tough is a struggle all on its own.

I am very, very lucky to have multiple social circles I can enjoy the company of when it feels like too much.

Admittedly, I’m not perfect at being a friend to my friends. I get awkward, I tend to either talk too much or too little, I tend to make conversations about myself, I tend to talk over people when I get excited, etc. That said, I try to be self-aware of how my behavior makes other people feel, and I try to make up for those shortcomings as they occur.

Sometimes I hurt my friends’ feelings.

I try really hard to make up for those moments.

Despite my shortcomings in friendships and other sorts of platonic relationships, I’ve somehow managed to come into more than one space where I feel like I fit in. Whether I’m with one group wandering through space stations, aquariums, and convenience stores in VRChat, with another group trying to overcome our opponents in Marvel Rivals, or with yet another group simply farming for loot in Warframe, all of these groups have one thing in common: we try to be there for each other, and I try to be there for them. That’s not even to mention my friends in the local area, who I’m lucky to be able to occasionally spend time with going to restaurants, concerts, and more.

Oh, and Dungeons and Dragons! Every couple of weeks eight of us now hop into a Discord channel and pretend to be adventurers, heroes, and masters of craft in a little world of our own for a few hours. It’s a lovely time, and Nikolas wouldn’t exist without it as a creative outlet. I’m excited to see where our adventure goes- it’s getting pretty spicy, and one of Nikolas’s secrets is basically in plain sight, now!

I’d like to take a moment to be grateful to all of my friends, you know who you are: thank you all so much for being so good to me, even when I don’t always deserve it. You make life worth living, even at its hardest, and I’m very, very lucky to have you by my side, supporting me. I will do my best to do the same for you.

Despite the generally poor mental health outlook of the month, I do actually have some music-progress to share. Some of this I’ve just completed or started working on within the month, and some will be a bit older than that, but all of it is for public preview for the first (or second) time.

Please bear in mind that the final audio may change upon proper release.

For Let There Be An Ocean, “I Dream of Mending” was one of the first songs I wrote for the project back in 2020. As time passed, my equipment and skills developed, and it began to show its age. As I’m hoping to release the album this year, I figured it was high time I went back in and gave it a proper refresh to bring it up to date, re-recording vocals and polishing the arrangement and mix to my current standards. I also updated some of the lyrics to make it just a tad less abstract, and a tad more personal to me- but don’t let those changes stop you from interpreting the meaning as you wish!

You can grab the full mp3 of this song on my Patreon, if you don’t want to wait for Let There Be An Ocean to drop.

For Let There Be An Ocean, “People Like You” was written to cope with the aftermath of a specific event, where I discovered a previous acquaintance had treated me rather poorly behind my back for years. In the immediate moment, it hadn’t hurt all that much- I was a little high, mind you- but as I began writing, that anger and frustration festered. The way I had been treated reminded me of the bullying I experienced when I was younger, which ultimately led to self-loathing, among other things.

The thing is, despite this recognition, that “people like [them] made me hate myself,” I don’t actually wish them any harm in return. I just won’t be there to help when they need it anymore.

For Let There Be An Ocean, “Losing Patience” is a letter-to-self, addressing frustrations with executive dysfunction, in particular. The inability to self-motivate, or stay motivated, within a variety of tasks is deeply frustrating to me, as it is to many others. Whether it’s from untreated ADHD, depression, what-have-you, there has to be a better solution than just bashing your face in a wall, right? So, this is the part of me that wants to get stuff done, appealing to the part of me that keeps getting in the way.

I would really like to get out of my own way. Believe me.

For Silverwind (working title), “Bite” is (or will be) Nikolas’s “Theme of Darkness”, and is intended to present as a scary story he’s telling in response to a rumor. This story quickly becomes a direct warning along the lines of, “don’t go looking into things you’re not prepared to handle,” which is perhaps an appropriate warning, given Nikolas’s role as a Blood Hunter, but there’s a secret beneath the surface that he’s actively pushing the listener back from.

To make up for the lack of vocals here, here’s a sample of lyrics from the bridge:

I must confess
I don't care for your pressing
But each little step
Is a leap for the desperate

And I'm but a man
Doing all that I can
So just make this easy for me...

Why is he pushing you away? Or perhaps, why do you keep pushing closer?

On May 15th, my dog, Ellie, was diagnosed with cancer- or at the very least, having a tumor. I had noticed a bump, then later what I thought was a blood boil, forming on her abdomen since earlier this year, and it took a biopsy to confirm it when it became concerning. She had surgery a week later, and has been in recovery since then. She’s doing well now, but it was scary for a moment.

I’ve also applied to, like, 20 jobs in the past week or two. Most of these applications have not received any acknowledgement, but those that did, the workplaces were… MLM-sketchy, upon assessment. On top of that, I’m in a weird gray area for disability in my state: technically, I’m not legally blind, but also technically, I’m blind, or light-sensitive, enough that the DMV doesn’t trust me to drive a car. Since both of my parents have their own work to attend to, the more locally I can find work, the less it gets in the way.

Which leaves me looking for remote work, or very, very local work, and I’m quickly running out of options. Opening commissions again is not an option with my current backlog, so the only other option is… make more money?

…yeah. So, before anyone gets too worried, I’m not opening a premium subscription thing on this Substack. I’m just not- I have nothing new or unique to offer on this platform at the current time; but I am going to heavily plug my Patreon for your consideration. For a minimum of $1 a month, you get HQ downloads of basically every song I work on, early access to works-in-progress and non-music projects via. Discord, so on and so forth. It is cheaper than subscriptions to most services (though they also provide a larger variety of material), and it supports me, a relatively small creator looking to pay bills and make more stuff. You’ll also get a discount code for Let There Be An Ocean if you become a patron before its release.

If a Patreon subscription is not your thing, or you’re already a patron and you have extra spare change, you can also throw a one-time donation to me over on Ko-Fi. In the past I have entertained doing some audio recording for non-commercial use in return for these donations- if you have any requests, you can feel free to slip them in to your comment and I can make a best-effort attempt to satisfy them, up to two minutes in length.

Speaking of comments, feel free to leave a comment as usual on this post with any thoughts you might have about everything. I appreciate reading and responding to them a lot.

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I can’t tell you what I’ll have in store for next post- but I do hope it will be sooner than a whole month for now. I’ve been playing classic Mega Man games and GNOSIA recently- maybe I’ll yap about those? But for now, I hope you all have a lovely rest of your day- and until next time, take care!

PS: I’ve allocated some B-stock from the “specters” Standard Edition for sale at a slight discount. These copies have minor cosmetic defects, so I’m selling them for $5 cheaper!