I guess you have noticed that I've been gone for a long while. Half a year, to be specific.

I was optimistic about moving to a different city, getting a new job, and stuff. I even tried to look at it from a brighter point of view.

Things didn't end up well.

We were lacking people, so I had to work more, mostly night shifts, and sometimes a morning shift right after that. While still trying to maintain my project with friends.

And it slowly drained me.

I started to stop going to the beach to look for shells or crabs, or just simply swim. I was tired all the time because I stayed up even after my shift to do things I hadn't finished. And it kept piling up.

And then my last friend from my childhood days was gone.

I cried while at work to the point that my boss gave me a day off.

That was the first break.

It's so simple when you're young. Gaming with friends.

I only have three friends online that I can count as close. Some for Minecraft, some for Killing Floor, and some almost play everything with me. Sometimes there's a single-player game we can't play together, but they still talk about it.

I could just listen to them talk about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. all day, or Warhammer, Zombie Army (Sniper Elite), BioShock, and CoD...

My first CoD was actually CoD 2, which fueled my love for the M1 Garand.

Knight used to say I'm the most gentle and naive person he knew. I'm not gentle nor naive. I'm just introverted and didn't talk much about , lol.

(Before you bonk me, at the time he said that, the youngest of us was... well, Knight was already 17.)

And time passed. We didn't play much anymore and only sometimes went, "There's an update, you on?" And things seemed good with them.

Rayden bought his first car, an old car that needs a lot of work done, but it's a process.

Knight broke up with his toxic girlfriend and started going to the gym again.

Shutnik continued with his life and was the one who kept in contact with me the most.

Then... both Rayden and Knight got mad at each other.

They lived in the same city—not close to each other, but we used to think it was a nice coincidence.

...It's no longer a NICE coincidence when Knight's new girlfriend at that point cheated and slept with another guy...

Who coincidentally was Rayden.

When both Knight and Rayden had never met IRL before that.

Even though Rayden wasn't the only guy she cheated with, they got into a big fight.

And Rayden's Skype account was never online again.

Knight told me about it afterward and said he was still going to be around.

What a lie, because both his Skype and Steam went dark.

And one day, Shutnik just said, "What if we made a game of our own?"

So we gathered a few other friends.

But now with Shutnik's death, we had to choose between hiring someone to replace him or keeping going and remaking everything.

We tried to be realistic about it. We tried.

So... I'm a solo developer now who has to learn parts that I didn't do before.

I started from scratch again, in a simpler direction that's more fitting for my skill level.

Because everyone's emotions were too heavy to continue, and we started to think this was just a desert's hallucinated oasis.

That was the second break.

Even with that, I still continued with my work.

Well, mostly because... sigh... we still lacked people.

I'm covering people's shifts when needed. There's also someone new coming in who... well, is in charge now.

And...

I feel like I'm in a courtroom.

I try not to make mistakes. I do. I double-check.

But I'm not perfect.

And all my tiny mistakes, like:

Not putting an item where it should be. (They didn't tell me about the new location beforehand.)

Drying something in the wrong place.

Putting something on the table on the left instead of the right.

(???)

It's not like I'm hiding it.

I got called out publicly and talked about in front of everyone who works there.

Yes, humans make mistakes.

When someone else makes a mistake, I tell them privately so they can fix it and report it later.

This person just made a long-ass speech because I put something in a different spot instead of the new spot that they had just optimized.

And I did tell my boss. I said I'm fine with that person as a person, but just try not to make us work together at the same time.

Our personalities will clash.

And they said my small mistakes were making that person frustrated and causing them to lose energy.

I need to understand that person's feelings...

So getting ranted at in the morning after a tiring night shift isn't costing MY ENERGY?

And then something happened, and I could have just left it.

But I didn't.

I stayed longer to finish my stuff.

The next morning, I got called out over a single mat.

So I quit.

Yay.

Time for heading home.

Also, my older brother came knocking on my door because I quit.

But what hurt me the most was when he said:

"You never changed."

I didn't change not because I'm a terrible person, but because my brothers never had much time to understand me and only heard biased things from my oldest brother.

Right...

I forgot to say that we don't share the same mother.

I feel like I'm in a cage.

My spouse would say, "Keep trying," even while knowing I'm overusing painkillers.

Outsiders would say, "No matter how your brother treats you, they love you. They just don't know how to act."

And people who look at my family would say, "You have a good family and a nice father."

No.

He's nice to other people, not us.

He would rather use my lunch to feed his dog, which did happen back when I was in high school.

He gave my mom money that barely covered raising a child, then cut that money in half when he needed to buy a motorcycle.

He was rarely home, but whenever he was, he always caused conflict.

...Man.

My life feels like a badly written AI slop story.

I'm oversharing again.

Okay.

Back to the main thing.

I'm busy with moving and... stuff.

But I'll be posting a bit more around Halloween.

Not because I have more time after quitting, but because most of them were pre-planned.

I still need to find myself again.

I don't feel like myself anymore.

My creativity is drained, and I've been having trouble finding words when I type.

For everyone who followed me:

I love you guys, even though I don't know who you are.

Knowing that there are more than 200 people who like my weird stuff means a lot to me.

And I'm sorry that I can't give you more.

You guys followed me, and I'm making you wait.

Thank you for waiting.

Mwahhh

Ja the Ghost picture is supposed to be use for a Ghost bot that I had quit.

Feel free to bonk me.

Gott my head still hurt.