Okay so as of right now I am at 28.5% to my goal for St Jude PLAYLIVE. I am looking to raise $1000 for St Jude in 2015. I have never done this much for charity before, so that goal is MASSIVE. So, I am putting something on the line that I hope will encourage it. My girlfriend loves my hair, she especially loves when I have nice looking hair. She has pretty much veto'd the idea of me just shaving my own head for 4 years now. So why does this matter? Well, maybe it is because once I hit 100% to goal, I am going to arrange a 24 hour livestream, and during that livestream I will be shaving my head on camera. Now to clarify, this is actually a buzz cut, because I am not taking the time it would take to do a proper razor shave on a stream, but after that stream, within 24 hours of it ending, I will stream again w/ a COMPLETELY shaved head. I may be risking my future wife for this, but its worth it, and I think she'll be supportive. If not, she knows I love her, and we'll get through it together. :D
To donate: http://fundraising.stjude.org/site/TR/PlayLive/PlayLive?px=3150958&pg=personal&fr_id=20860
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Saturday, March 7, 2015
The Constant Weight
Hello everyone, thank you for taking the time to click on here and read this. I am going to be upfront with you, this is going to be a bit "much" about me, but I believe it is something I need to put out there in order to feel like I can move anything forward. So we're just going to dive in.
I have been dealing with depression for many years now. I am not clinically diagnosed but I also am capable of understanding what is going on in my own body to identify the obvious. Depression isn't so much this state of being sad all the time, it feels more like the inability to be happy. Basically no matter what successes you find, you don't get any sort of reward from it. I'd say the last time I felt the trigger of success truly was when I was playing poker online and winning tournaments. After that shut down is about the time where I believe my depression kicked in or took root.
We are nearing 4 years since the US Gov't kicked its laws into effect that banned online poker in the US. It was brought about in a totally bs way, its reasoning was terrible, and its about the most absurd thing I have had to deal w/ concerning our government. That being said, people are fighting it still and I hope that someday the nonsense is lifted and I can return to something that I showed the potential to rank in nearly the top 0.5% level of players. The couple years after that I struggled some but, its because I was "growing" and learning different aspects of the game. Once I returned to my fundamentals and with my new learnt style I was back in top 5% playing at higher levels(better opponents). Not too bad I'd say. April 11, 2011, we called that Black Friday... At the time I didn't register the impact of that day apparently, but now nearing 4 years removed from it, I realize how much that changed my life's trajectory. I have a good buddy that is a professional player who is able to travel the world, plays poker, and is doing all the stuff I want. This is a buddy who still thinks today I am at the same skill level as him, or at least he says that for the very least to be kind. So yeah, that is actually the second career option I've excelled at that fell out from beneath me when I didn't expect it, and that may have broken my legs metaphorically as I am still fighting to get back up.
Moving from there I found my girlfriend not long after. I got very lucky there, because she's become a huge aspect of my life and my ability to heal. I don't want to get into huge detail here as I don't want to tie her into this, but let's just understand how important and impactful she has been in my life through my darkest of times.
A year later I started to get in shape, again. Seriously, technology is so awesome, but it keeps wrecking my health. I was doing cardio, strength, hitting tennis courts. Dropped weight, became stronger than ever before, and felt great. Then, came Minecraft. I found videos online of Yogscast guys, Sips/Sjin at first. And I'll tell you, their series that I watched, because I didn't know Minecraft, had me confused if these bad guys they referred to were real or not. But we both enjoyed watching and that was fine, it was a TV supplemental. Then we got into the Tekkit stuff which REALLY grabbed my attention and of course I then found Shadow of Israphel. I was just locked in. One night that summer of 2012 I stumbled across Zisteau's lens build at like Ep 44ish. Was amazed. I then proceeded to avoid sleeping and ingesting his entire Mindcrack work there. I was officially hooked. I had lost my grandfather the previous winter and he left an inheritance. I had wanted to build a custom PC for nearly a decade+ but had no money or support. Now I had the chance, and I did. That is when I built a high end custom gaming PC, for Minecraft. I know, right? lol. Anyway I love my custom PC(I've upgrade much since.) and that's when things began. I'll skip some details, but basically Vibecraft was born for me and a couple IRL friends in Sept, but it basically was a dead corpse until the official setting around Nov 12, 2012. I started doing YT, I started bringing some friends over from a Tekkit server that switched from to Vanilla(After fucking us out of 200+man hours to an intentional crash and doing nothing to punish them) which was amusing because it isn't vanilla to me. It was a vanilla game play but w/ plugins to stupid proof it all(needed, but not what I wanted to play on). BTW, after I got my new PC, I basically stopped being active... Stupidly bad idea.
From there YT documents a lot of what happened and how things changed. YT and running a server gave me a way to escape my depression and be focused on building things positively. But it was still there, lurking, punching me in the crotch every change it got. I hadn't recovered, I was simply refocusing to ignore the pain. 2013 had a lot of things happen that I won't go into on this post, it doesn't really pertain to the depression. But new faces, new direction, new map in Nov 2013 after Minecon 2013.
Going into 2014 Contingency was going strong, got support from ZipKrowd/JL2579, things were amazing. A few of us were W/Led on ZipKrowd to help with things as special guests. 2014 was the first inkling of feeling like there was success, it wasn't a full feeling but it started to feel like things took the right turn finally. YT has this time period pretty well documented so I don't want to extend too much more... But 2014 was the first year where I was receiving financial support for what we were doing(I had basically funded the servers/minecraft stuff purely by myself up to that point, and it was not cheap, at all.) and that took a lot of weight off my shoulders. I would like to say I'd never like to profit for myself doing this, but that's just a lie. Doing what I do is a MASSIVE consumption of time and energy. That comes at the cost of my personal life and my health, a big cost. This is where amazing girlfriend turns out to be a MASSIVE trump card in my life. While this is a hobby, fun, and I enjoy it, I push the line of hobby into part time job a lot more than I probably should. So yes, I'd like to eventually earn money from what I do. I have no interest in getting rich/becoming popular as hell. But I wouldn't hate the potential idea of maybe, just maybe, considering what I do as a living that could replace my job. It'd take quite a bit to feel that comfortable, but I'd declare that as maybe the big picture of it all. I personally don't believe in aimlessly moving around, I like big goals to keep me guided with smaller goals to hit along the way. There are also unquantifiables(I don't care if its not a word, it is now a Vibism) like the awesome work I have seen done by players, graphic artists, acts of kindness, generosity, and just... Well lets consider it life value, and I've found a TON of it doing this... I believe that is another key thing that has helped me combat my depression. Financially and quality of life both ticked up VERY positively in 2014 and my depression finally felt like it was on the retreat. Still there, but now things felt like they were mending. What I did in 2014 felt like it had purpose, meaning, and value. I hadn't felt that success feeling in 2014, but I see it staring at me over that hill.
2015 has started out on a HUGE up tick. Killanyone has been massively supporting of me and my St Jude drive, and I cannot tell you how much all the support for St Jude means to me. 2015 I made a goal that I wanted to improve my charity in the world, and I have found my viewers/community, lets just go with community really, have been very generous in helping with this cause. The idea I am ahead of goal on the St Jude drive, which is the most money I've ever raised for anything planned, just that really makes me unbelievably, happy... Yes, there it is, I actually have been feeling happiness lately. The funny part about this, when I feel happy, it kind of creates a Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde situation where I go from like a Manic Depression to more Bipolar. I also experienced this with the huge gift LadyM gave me w/ the Chester plushy for my birthday. People keep doing these AWESOME things that are making me HAPPY. FUCKING HAPPY. 2015, I haven't felt that success, but holy crap I've been happy. Unfortunately that means I've had some of my roughest lows/bipolar flips. Nuke knows, he's the guy who gets to hear it all. Which leads me to the fight of the last week.
Last Fri Kill tossed a lot of funding to get a 24 hour stream, along w/ others, and the Twitch pooped itself like 1/3 the way in. Screw it, I'll do it next week! Then I can even prepare. Well this last week I basically didn't stream between feeling sick, YT stuff(ghrrrrrr), and needing to stress relief. Wasn't happy about it, but great news outta PAX East where Klei has special edition Beefalos that LadyM would pick me up one and all that, OMG again the happy/excited feeling. Followed by a quite harsh down later that afternoon. I napped, I started the stream up... Then CS:GO and losing. Now, I suck at it, I know I suck at it. I want to mostly play this game w/ my friends... But this isn't the first time CS:GO has been something to discuss for me... But I hate losing, hate it! Its a pet peeve, its irritating, its frustrating, it makes me all kinds of not Vibely. This also seems to be a trigger for my bipolar effect, a VERY bad one. Two times now after rough situations w/ CS:GO I have basically immediately shut down and walked away and basically told Nuke I am just done w/ everything and I will likely never return to any of it. Yes, it makes me that upset, between losing then the trigger of my depression, it all just comes smashing down on my head. Then as I went to sleep, I felt like I failed because two weeks now I haven't done a damn 24 hour stream. I am disservicing my viewers and supporters, and that is REALLY upsetting me a ton. Its entirely on me, I'm making mistakes, I'm doing poorly, and for once I have reasoning instead of just being confused and unaware of what is going on! This is progress, even if its ugly and embarrassing and unfortunately quite public given my position. I can handle embarrassment, have for a long time in many situations, its apart of life. But this is my giving you a back story leading up to what is going on.
Good, positive, logical, and reasonable things are occurring. Endorphin's are actually being released! This is also leading to a huge shift in how I feel things. That means I am having a roller coaster of a life right now instead of being stuck on some flat plane going nowhere. Now my objective is to smooth out the ride, because the harsh ups and downs are just going to fatigue everyone. So, I am trying to stabilize, and to some degree learn how to embrace being happy again. So if I seem like I am going off the deep end, take into consideration I am basically in a process of relearning my own emotions to a degree, and I'm a human who makes mistakes.
I still owe time added for my streams from #DrunkCraft, I *will* get that sorted out! I will no longer play CS:GO on a stream, at all. If I even play it offline, I'll be shocked. I identify it as a trigger that is unhealthy for me, I think its best I don't indulge in it. I am going to be successful again, I just don't know when. Until that happens, seriously, thank you so much for everyone's support on every level.
I haven't forgotten the messages I got a year ago from people like leon where they let me know I am inspiration(Yes, I still have this message), these are still huge to me. I've had many conversations w/ many people in private, and it amazes me that I even have this influence at all. Knowing that, I know I must be better and fight harder to be better. I promise you all, I am working unbelievably hard to be the best I can be, and I love you guys so much. This has changed my life, and if you read everything, thank you for your time, you are quite generous. If you understood it, props to you. I'm not proof reading this one, raw content, sending now!
I have been dealing with depression for many years now. I am not clinically diagnosed but I also am capable of understanding what is going on in my own body to identify the obvious. Depression isn't so much this state of being sad all the time, it feels more like the inability to be happy. Basically no matter what successes you find, you don't get any sort of reward from it. I'd say the last time I felt the trigger of success truly was when I was playing poker online and winning tournaments. After that shut down is about the time where I believe my depression kicked in or took root.
We are nearing 4 years since the US Gov't kicked its laws into effect that banned online poker in the US. It was brought about in a totally bs way, its reasoning was terrible, and its about the most absurd thing I have had to deal w/ concerning our government. That being said, people are fighting it still and I hope that someday the nonsense is lifted and I can return to something that I showed the potential to rank in nearly the top 0.5% level of players. The couple years after that I struggled some but, its because I was "growing" and learning different aspects of the game. Once I returned to my fundamentals and with my new learnt style I was back in top 5% playing at higher levels(better opponents). Not too bad I'd say. April 11, 2011, we called that Black Friday... At the time I didn't register the impact of that day apparently, but now nearing 4 years removed from it, I realize how much that changed my life's trajectory. I have a good buddy that is a professional player who is able to travel the world, plays poker, and is doing all the stuff I want. This is a buddy who still thinks today I am at the same skill level as him, or at least he says that for the very least to be kind. So yeah, that is actually the second career option I've excelled at that fell out from beneath me when I didn't expect it, and that may have broken my legs metaphorically as I am still fighting to get back up.
Moving from there I found my girlfriend not long after. I got very lucky there, because she's become a huge aspect of my life and my ability to heal. I don't want to get into huge detail here as I don't want to tie her into this, but let's just understand how important and impactful she has been in my life through my darkest of times.
A year later I started to get in shape, again. Seriously, technology is so awesome, but it keeps wrecking my health. I was doing cardio, strength, hitting tennis courts. Dropped weight, became stronger than ever before, and felt great. Then, came Minecraft. I found videos online of Yogscast guys, Sips/Sjin at first. And I'll tell you, their series that I watched, because I didn't know Minecraft, had me confused if these bad guys they referred to were real or not. But we both enjoyed watching and that was fine, it was a TV supplemental. Then we got into the Tekkit stuff which REALLY grabbed my attention and of course I then found Shadow of Israphel. I was just locked in. One night that summer of 2012 I stumbled across Zisteau's lens build at like Ep 44ish. Was amazed. I then proceeded to avoid sleeping and ingesting his entire Mindcrack work there. I was officially hooked. I had lost my grandfather the previous winter and he left an inheritance. I had wanted to build a custom PC for nearly a decade+ but had no money or support. Now I had the chance, and I did. That is when I built a high end custom gaming PC, for Minecraft. I know, right? lol. Anyway I love my custom PC(I've upgrade much since.) and that's when things began. I'll skip some details, but basically Vibecraft was born for me and a couple IRL friends in Sept, but it basically was a dead corpse until the official setting around Nov 12, 2012. I started doing YT, I started bringing some friends over from a Tekkit server that switched from to Vanilla(After fucking us out of 200+man hours to an intentional crash and doing nothing to punish them) which was amusing because it isn't vanilla to me. It was a vanilla game play but w/ plugins to stupid proof it all(needed, but not what I wanted to play on). BTW, after I got my new PC, I basically stopped being active... Stupidly bad idea.
From there YT documents a lot of what happened and how things changed. YT and running a server gave me a way to escape my depression and be focused on building things positively. But it was still there, lurking, punching me in the crotch every change it got. I hadn't recovered, I was simply refocusing to ignore the pain. 2013 had a lot of things happen that I won't go into on this post, it doesn't really pertain to the depression. But new faces, new direction, new map in Nov 2013 after Minecon 2013.
Going into 2014 Contingency was going strong, got support from ZipKrowd/JL2579, things were amazing. A few of us were W/Led on ZipKrowd to help with things as special guests. 2014 was the first inkling of feeling like there was success, it wasn't a full feeling but it started to feel like things took the right turn finally. YT has this time period pretty well documented so I don't want to extend too much more... But 2014 was the first year where I was receiving financial support for what we were doing(I had basically funded the servers/minecraft stuff purely by myself up to that point, and it was not cheap, at all.) and that took a lot of weight off my shoulders. I would like to say I'd never like to profit for myself doing this, but that's just a lie. Doing what I do is a MASSIVE consumption of time and energy. That comes at the cost of my personal life and my health, a big cost. This is where amazing girlfriend turns out to be a MASSIVE trump card in my life. While this is a hobby, fun, and I enjoy it, I push the line of hobby into part time job a lot more than I probably should. So yes, I'd like to eventually earn money from what I do. I have no interest in getting rich/becoming popular as hell. But I wouldn't hate the potential idea of maybe, just maybe, considering what I do as a living that could replace my job. It'd take quite a bit to feel that comfortable, but I'd declare that as maybe the big picture of it all. I personally don't believe in aimlessly moving around, I like big goals to keep me guided with smaller goals to hit along the way. There are also unquantifiables(I don't care if its not a word, it is now a Vibism) like the awesome work I have seen done by players, graphic artists, acts of kindness, generosity, and just... Well lets consider it life value, and I've found a TON of it doing this... I believe that is another key thing that has helped me combat my depression. Financially and quality of life both ticked up VERY positively in 2014 and my depression finally felt like it was on the retreat. Still there, but now things felt like they were mending. What I did in 2014 felt like it had purpose, meaning, and value. I hadn't felt that success feeling in 2014, but I see it staring at me over that hill.
2015 has started out on a HUGE up tick. Killanyone has been massively supporting of me and my St Jude drive, and I cannot tell you how much all the support for St Jude means to me. 2015 I made a goal that I wanted to improve my charity in the world, and I have found my viewers/community, lets just go with community really, have been very generous in helping with this cause. The idea I am ahead of goal on the St Jude drive, which is the most money I've ever raised for anything planned, just that really makes me unbelievably, happy... Yes, there it is, I actually have been feeling happiness lately. The funny part about this, when I feel happy, it kind of creates a Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde situation where I go from like a Manic Depression to more Bipolar. I also experienced this with the huge gift LadyM gave me w/ the Chester plushy for my birthday. People keep doing these AWESOME things that are making me HAPPY. FUCKING HAPPY. 2015, I haven't felt that success, but holy crap I've been happy. Unfortunately that means I've had some of my roughest lows/bipolar flips. Nuke knows, he's the guy who gets to hear it all. Which leads me to the fight of the last week.
Last Fri Kill tossed a lot of funding to get a 24 hour stream, along w/ others, and the Twitch pooped itself like 1/3 the way in. Screw it, I'll do it next week! Then I can even prepare. Well this last week I basically didn't stream between feeling sick, YT stuff(ghrrrrrr), and needing to stress relief. Wasn't happy about it, but great news outta PAX East where Klei has special edition Beefalos that LadyM would pick me up one and all that, OMG again the happy/excited feeling. Followed by a quite harsh down later that afternoon. I napped, I started the stream up... Then CS:GO and losing. Now, I suck at it, I know I suck at it. I want to mostly play this game w/ my friends... But this isn't the first time CS:GO has been something to discuss for me... But I hate losing, hate it! Its a pet peeve, its irritating, its frustrating, it makes me all kinds of not Vibely. This also seems to be a trigger for my bipolar effect, a VERY bad one. Two times now after rough situations w/ CS:GO I have basically immediately shut down and walked away and basically told Nuke I am just done w/ everything and I will likely never return to any of it. Yes, it makes me that upset, between losing then the trigger of my depression, it all just comes smashing down on my head. Then as I went to sleep, I felt like I failed because two weeks now I haven't done a damn 24 hour stream. I am disservicing my viewers and supporters, and that is REALLY upsetting me a ton. Its entirely on me, I'm making mistakes, I'm doing poorly, and for once I have reasoning instead of just being confused and unaware of what is going on! This is progress, even if its ugly and embarrassing and unfortunately quite public given my position. I can handle embarrassment, have for a long time in many situations, its apart of life. But this is my giving you a back story leading up to what is going on.
Good, positive, logical, and reasonable things are occurring. Endorphin's are actually being released! This is also leading to a huge shift in how I feel things. That means I am having a roller coaster of a life right now instead of being stuck on some flat plane going nowhere. Now my objective is to smooth out the ride, because the harsh ups and downs are just going to fatigue everyone. So, I am trying to stabilize, and to some degree learn how to embrace being happy again. So if I seem like I am going off the deep end, take into consideration I am basically in a process of relearning my own emotions to a degree, and I'm a human who makes mistakes.
I still owe time added for my streams from #DrunkCraft, I *will* get that sorted out! I will no longer play CS:GO on a stream, at all. If I even play it offline, I'll be shocked. I identify it as a trigger that is unhealthy for me, I think its best I don't indulge in it. I am going to be successful again, I just don't know when. Until that happens, seriously, thank you so much for everyone's support on every level.
I haven't forgotten the messages I got a year ago from people like leon where they let me know I am inspiration(Yes, I still have this message), these are still huge to me. I've had many conversations w/ many people in private, and it amazes me that I even have this influence at all. Knowing that, I know I must be better and fight harder to be better. I promise you all, I am working unbelievably hard to be the best I can be, and I love you guys so much. This has changed my life, and if you read everything, thank you for your time, you are quite generous. If you understood it, props to you. I'm not proof reading this one, raw content, sending now!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)