In case I have not actually come out and said it, I want to generate an income by telling my stories and sharing them with a wide ranging audience. To do this, I believe I need to be able to keep to a regular, or at least semi-regular release schedule, even if the releases are just story snippets and/or images of renders that are works in progress. You know, things to show followers, patrons on Patreon and fans that I am actually working towards completing a project.
As you can probably guess by the title of this post, I have at least a few issues in trying to achieve that. Issues such as not enough time to work on the projects, having a computer capable of completing complex renders in a "reasonable" amount of time, and the ability to maintain enough focus to work on a project. The first two can be dealt with by having a sufficient income generated via Patreon and a presence on Youtube (yes, I am considering a Youtube channel). My issue in maintaining my focus can be partially mitigated with having enough time to work on the projects, but my biggest hurdle with that, is how I deal with frustration at the projects, when something does not go the way I planned.
In general, the frustration can be dealt with by just "taking a step back", and doing work on something else for a short period, or researching why what went wrong, did go wrong. Unfortunately, I am diagnosed as Clinically Depressed and flare-ups can be triggered by quite a number of things, or they can even make an occurrence even worse.
This past weekend was an example of this, having run into some repeated programme crashing with Daz Studios, while trying to complete a render of one of the last two Player Characters from the superhero table-top game I was running back in 2017 - 1018. I made a few attempts to complete the render over Friday night and part of Saturday, but each one resulted in a CTD (crash to desktop). I ended up spending an inordinate amount of time playing Dead Space and "surfing the 'Net". By Saturday night, my lack of progress led me to questioning my ability to actually make a living at sharing my stories, and that set of a nasty bout of depression, which I am still dealing with as I type.
I have improved, but I am aware of some signs that I am still dealing with this bout. Having taken some time to think about the situation, and having chatted with a few friends about this particular issue, I realize that this is going to happen, but it does not have to keep me from working on my projects and sharing them. I also realize that I still have a lot to learn with the Daz Studio programme. It is a very complex and comprehensive programme, with a rather steep learning curve. I can learn quite a bit, if I put some time into researching parts of the programme that I am unfamiliar with, or just having some trouble with at the time.
These obstacles will keep getting in my way, but I am learning how to overcome them, and for any followers that consider themselves "fans" will most likely understand the issues and still be supportive of what I am trying to accomplish. I am basing that upon the support I had when I was originally working on The Phoenix Imperative, over ten years ago now.
I can hope, right?
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