Year 4: Quarter 1
- Branden Singletary
- Jul 15, 2021
- 10 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
How long has it been?
It's that time again. Apparently, it's been three months! Time is simultaneously fast, slow, and ultimately, convoluted. You know how it is. With it being the start of a new year, it's time for a reevaluation to ensure that we stay on track! So, without further ado, let's us review!
Goals of the Previous Quarter
[✓] Finish groundwork for Becoming.
By far the easiest step after realizing the scope of this! I initially planned for it to be larger than Desire, but I realized that such a thing isn't necessarily possible. I reduced the scope down to something that can be done quickly with "minimal" effort (and I say "minimal" because it would've still taken a lot of effort). Here are links to the posts detailing the structure of Becoming, as well as a convenient GIF of how it was going to progress (thanks to a commissioner of mine who was probably baffled as to why there wasn't a GIF):
The Becoming of Becoming
Hooowever, this work is not going to be used in any recognizable form. Becoming is going to go in a completely different direction -- one that I actually didn't see coming. I do think that this "different direction" is for the best, however, and that's because...!
[~] Work to understand "the new medium."
I touched on Blender, and, well, turns out I don't actually want to learn how to use it! Blender is a complex program and my desire to learn it was pretty absent from the start. If anything, it was only idle curiosity. Particle systems, fluids, all of those would've been useful! I just don't have it in me anymore to figure out how a different program works, especially when (I personally think) the ideal is conceptually simple!
So, I looked towards what I didn't have to learn, which was 2D animation and that was also a bust. My desire to work through that was absent, too, and it felt like a repeat of trying to complete the comic I wanted to complete last year, only this time, the act of forcing myself to do it lasted for a much shorter length of time.
In the meantime! I was chipping away and obsessing over a book that I've been writing. It was related to the work I've completed up until this point, but I treated it as a separate, standalone thing. A silly decision, which I will briefly detail later, but ultimately, this is what Becoming is going to be. It's not necessarily a "new medium," but it is a different means of expression.
It's a reduction of how the world and all of its functions appear to be, from a myriad of perspectives that mainly draws upon the entire field of knowledge that we've acquired from the time we've spent on this small speck that we call home. I don't expect the final product to be particularly verbose and heavy, instead, rather compact and dense.
[~] Expand the reach of "Nexumorphic."
Not as simple as I was expecting it to be. In fact, it was horrendously misguided in its approach! There is a significant amount of work that went into "expansion" and all I have to say is that I'm definitely not ready for it. We'll revisit this sometime in the future, take more pragmatic steps to gather resources, connections and different strategies, and see where we stand at some other point.
An Overview
This year has been a blur, and to be honest, I don't recall most of what happened. Locked in temporal stasis for the entire time, followed by a rapid shift in living circumstances, and back to being locked in temporal stasis again -- it's something I can barely comment on.
Goals have been reached (more specifically, the first part of this project has been completed), but they don't necessarily feel significant. I suppose I'm used to having immediate impact on what has been completed over the course of my life, and for the past year, just about all of the work that has been completed is proving that the impact is going to be delayed, which is a very jarring experience for me. Imagine trying to imprint your hand in the sand, only to have the handprint appear slowly over the course of several months or years! More proof that time is convoluted.
Nonetheless, there has been a handful of struggles in regards to trying to force an impact to happen, but it was all mostly in vain. What more could be done in this regard beyond just continuing to work and develop strategies? I'm not sure, but that's what I intend to do.
Revelations
Purpose
The completion of Desire in its entirety has removed, albeit, temporarily, the requirement for creating illustrations and visual art for personal projects. Sure, there are commissions and the large number of refinements when it comes to how my work is presented, but generally, there is a lack of desire to produce anything that has come to characterize my work -- namely, in regards to visual art.
I've come to realize that it is truly a means to an end -- a means of manifesting what I imagine into the world itself in a format that others can interact with. This leads to a potential understanding of my work, and thus, the potential for them to come to understand me and all that I have experienced. Creation for me is not for enjoyment, but a reaction (and subsequent manifestative action) to attain what it is that I desire: to be understood.
The desire to be understood is something that may be done without illustration. There are many modes of creation, or rather, expression, and there are many that I have some degree of interest in. I'm curious about dabbling in music, among other things, but that's currently out of my reach and will likely have to wait. Reaching more into writing has been a good break away from the work that is illustration and is certainly something that I've come to prefer for the time being.
However, there still lies a problem -- a rather deep problem that I'm continuing to see. Before reaching this conclusion, I was, and likely still very much am, bound to something that continues to cause a repeating pattern of issues in my life, especially when it comes to pursuing some goal.
Hubris
There have been far too many instances where I would get an idea, become increasingly convinced that it's the best idea that the world will ever see and push to actualize the idea to prove that it's the best idea in the world. This started in the middle of high school, carried onto college (which was cut short), and persists today, but in slightly less noticeable ways, which makes it all the more sinister. In high school, it manifested as pinpointing people, determining them (or rather, their skill level) to be "obstacles" and pushing myself to overcome them, ultimately, to prove a point. In college, this was the same, but it came back to bite me on account of the sheer number of things I needed to do in order to "prove my point." It realized it wasn't worth it (to that degree) and I dialed it back until I was forced to move away from college.
It flared up every now and again between jobs, but throughout this period, I was beginning to brew up The Astral Triptych. At the time, hubris surrounding this was absent and it was more of an idle curiosity. Of course, this changed as time went on, especially when I had more time to think about the basis of the project itself, where it originates from at a fundamental level and how I would present this deep self-reflection upon the world itself. I would then go on to compare this with the work others are doing, become astonished that no one else was doing it (or "seeing what I'm seeing") and hyperfocusing on the opportunity that could arise from no one else "seeing it." Naturally, hubris ramped up. It crashed when I tried pushing the project in front of others with advertising and failed attempts at marketing. And that crash slammed straight into my soul. No one could understand the creation, and thus, no one would understand me. How very tragic.
However, it didn't stop there! Working on Becoming led me to question why I was working on Becoming in the first place. I came to the following, surface-level conclusions: 1) I didn't want to understand Blender and 2) I don't have it in me to animate complex things anymore, even if it's 2D animation. Why was that the case? Why was I trying to push myself to do these things for so long, while greatly anticipating the act of doing all of that in the first place? Well, ultimately, it was all hubris. At the time of conceptualizing Becoming years ago, I got it in my head that I would singlehandedly pull everything together with all of the skills I've acquired over the course of my life up until that point, and so, that notion stuck around... until I was confronted with the reality of having to do it. A lot of work. A lot of time. Minimal payoff.
Combine this with writing and thinking that I could make a full, comprehensive philosophical framework that "answers many/all problems in multiple fields of study" despite not having all of the technical details and specificities of each field of study (nor wanting all of them in the first place) and well...!
You get a recipe for disaster.
So, I dialed it back significantly after this reality check (and one I may have to constantly remind myself of). I can't solve those problems. And after my deep dive into philosophy, I'm not even convinced that they are problems! It's just how things are and how they're evolving over the course of time, with others able to be convinced that they are, indeed, problems. One thing for certain is that these technical, highly specific, intellectual problems are not my problems. I'm not even apart of the academic conversation, nor can I breach into it on account of not spending profound amounts of time pouring over hundreds of texts and cross-referencing them to ensure the integrity of the several-millennia-long conversation that is philosophy! At best, I can only pester the academics with my bastardized use of language, which sounds hilarious, but is ultimately a waste of time and energy.
Silence
After reflection upon this, I've reached the conclusion that I'm just an observer. I will likely remain an observer, too. I will detail all that I observe in this period of time and will construct a system based on these observations. I struggle to complete this design on account of it legitimately, at the point of writing this, "being good enough," since I am that one that understands it, but of course, the overall desire is to be understood, and so, I must bring it to completion and cohesion. I will cast away Becoming, in the form that it was going to be, in favor of its new form: the form of a condensed system of world design.
Once it is done, I will have no more to say about the fundamental floor of the world itself (which is the height of my interest in all aspects of the world) and this revelation momentarily caused a small amount of panic. "What would it mean for me to have nothing more to observe, and thus, nothing more to say? All that will follow this work would effectively be redundant! All of Transcendent and whatever else beyond would be redundant! What more could I possibly do, even across different mediums if it is all essentially the same?!"
Again, this was short-lived. Nothing but absurdity spouted from the death throes of hubris.
I will still have more to demonstrate to the world and the form it takes would depend on whatever future-me decides. In due time, we shall see what that could be -- none of us can claim to know what that would be, however, there is a hint as to what it could be.
Looking Forward
The theme of "overhauling long term goals" persists! The core difference here is that I'm going to be focusing on things that are definitively attainable over slightly shorter periods of time, while also defining a new set of things to reach on account of reaching a majority of goals already.
[✓] Complete the foundation (Desire). The foundational work for the project. An exploration of themes and interests before its analysis and convergence.
[~] Complete the convergence (Becoming). The consolidation of what the world is in relation to this project, providing a basis for the next and final part, Transcendence.
[ ] Complete the expansion (Transcendent). Extending from the point is a new world that mirrors the basis detailed in Becoming, coming to mirror the world we all persist within.
The core of Transcendent is going to be a new worldbuilding project and/or a tabletop RPG system (yes, this has actually come back around)! The tabletop system is in its infancy, but close enough to having all of the core mechanics fully detailed enough to dive straight into making actual content for it. I say "worldbuilding project," because I have a mental image as to how all of it is going to look, but I'm not going to say with certainty that that's what I'm going to do. Not only that, I have a feeling I'm going to run into some problems trying to present the obscene amount of information that Transcendent would have. So, we'll see what my options are the closer I get to it.
Goals of the New Quarter
Work on "Becoming."
A singular goal for three months that is actually more multifaceted than it may appear. I have to think about how it's going to be published, who I'm going to be marketing this to, how detailed I really want this to be and how this is going to affect the business model I have going on at the moment. I do have a significant amount of time to work on this, but I cannot say that I have forever. I must reach 'Transcendent' in a reasonable time frame.
Given that I was able to go through one of the more complex parts of the work reasonably quickly within two weeks, it leads me to think that I'll be able to get through the rest rather quickly, too. Again, I plan for it to be rather short, but I still want this to be accurate, so I'm going to be taking the time to research and compress what is discerned, while also not having it sound like complete gibberish!
So begins the fourth year of work, growth and reflection! The pace is going to be shifting for the next while, but I'm certain that it'll be worth it! Thanks for reading, as well as your ongoing support! Though the "beginning" as essentially passed, the middle and end will certainly be something to witness!
Until the next one,
October 15th!