Blog Update - Sept 26th, 2013

Hey everyone.

This post is more of a personal rant and me whining than a fun update, so sorry about that.

I know I haven't been posting stuff I find cool from the land of video games and I'm still trying to make it in that crazy world, but I've had some set backs.

My lady-folk and I had a (very) rough patch and frankly, things are still shaky from time to time. When that all started, I moved into a spare room at my sisters house... that was used by their massive pot-bellied pig. It is a nice room actually, especially since it got brand new flooring when I moved in and my own AC unit for the hot summer days. The down side was that I was now 90 minutes out from the city, horrible reception, and internet with some band-width issues. Thus, no real way of getting consistent work. I figured it'd be okay and I'll rest on my savings for a bit, work on myself and my portfolio and let things cool off.

My career counselor from ITT Tech called me one day right after I had finished helping around the house/ranch/post-apocalyptic-compound and told me he sent off my resume to this one place and they want to have an interview with me. After setting up the meet, I made myself a little less sweaty and began my trek into the city.

Everything went great and after about a week, I started staying in town again and had a new job as a Digital Media Specialist. Now, as far as I can tell, that was a nice way of saying web-dev who can do some trouble shooting and graphic stuff. Some of you may know about me, I'm not the strongest programmer, but I can do it and do it fast, so if my great, new employers want to give me money to hammer away at HTML and little issues, than I'll gladly take it. Yeah, it's not my dream of being a producer/writer/illustrator/all-around-indie-dev, but it's in the same general direction, so on ward I go.

Everything was going pretty well; I got a couple pay checks under my belt, things were looking up with the lady-friend, and I bought some tools to help me work, and started paying off some bills.

Then, Yesterday happened.

I woke up Wednesday morning creaking a little since I had been sick for the first couple days of the week with horrible body aches and other nasty feels, but I was determined to get back to my cozy cubical and working on all kindsa fun stuff.

After loading my bag with cough-drops and day-time meds, I was out the door and greeted by the crisp morning air. As I turned the corner to my car, I notice something odd. My passenger window was gone and little cubes of blue-hued glass littered the driveway.

First thought, "fuck."

Since this was a less friendly part of town and not the country home of my sister and her family, I wasn't too shocked.

I called in to work and let them know what had happened. I reported it in with the police and the insurance; the insurance companies have a better response time in my city as I found out. I caught up with my neighbors and found that they were hit, too. Still, the cops didn't show and not even a call back after 5 fucking housed had cars broken into in less than a week.
(side note: My city also announced on the news last year that they had so little money, that they weren't going to stop petty theft. So, good job guys! Keep pushing for a bigger budget while doing less work!)

And then I started going through everything in my car....

This person(s) must of been some kid looking for something to pawn since some cheap hand-tools and a pair of Chucks were taken, but they also didn't know how to break into a car very well.

See, this mental-giant used some sort of pry-bar to pry on the window frame, pressing their greasy head into the glass and leaving tons of prints and evidence. Significant body damage aside, the window ended up being smashed anyway, probably from them trying to pry open the window frame I'm guessing.

Now, I'm not some jack-ass that leaves valuables in their car. If I weren't scared of some crack-head using it as a bed/toilet, I would have probably left it unlocked.

That's when it hit me; I had left my sketch books in my car.

I had maybe the last 15 years of my sketch books in my car in 3 over-stuffed bags.

My heart began to sink and my throat began to tighten. Sketch books I had in high school were gone. Yeah, some books and some tools and other stupid shit was missing, but none of that shit held as much value to me as those sketch books.

Doodles and illustrations and ideas from half of my life were gone.

Immediately I began to patrol around the area, checking dumpsters; hoping that they were just tossed once they found them. After 3 empty ones, I realized it was the day dumpsters were picked up and I had probably lost them forever.

Then it fucking rained.

...

After getting home from my heart-breaking journey, I took my now damp and glass filled car to the body shop my insurance lined up and went about my day; pretending to be a laid back and nice guy; hiding that inside I was nothing more than a devastated child who was bullied by a complete stranger that had nothing to gain.

Today I found out that the repairs to my car will come to $815 and some change because there was some serious bending to the door and all that.

Basically, this criminal master-mind was thinking "Dur, me need use big metal bar open lock, not just break clear hard stuff! DUR!" as he attempted to not swallow his own tongue and enter my car.
It all cost me real money and real emotional pain just for maybe $25 worth of shit from me.

Sad thing is, this is the thing that prompted me to write another post.
I've been procrastinating over what I should do online with this blog or on YouTube or work on a game or anything for months. I've been in this slump for a while now where I make excuses of my personal life being rough, then being in the middle of no-where, and then my hours being long at work as a reason to not do something.

Now, I'm going to do something.

I'm going to down-grade my car to something I don't mind getting a little...ugly.

I'm going to dooms-day out a Jeep Cherokee (not a "Grand" cause I don't like 'em).
Reinforced endo-skeleton. Metal plates one the doors. Rusty hooks on the bumper. Steel mesh on the windows. Bear traps around the door handles. Spikes and shit all over.

I want people to fear walking near my car, let alone touch it.
I want people to bleed if they look at it too long.

Anywho, I'll keep you guys updated on the progress!

Later,
Dave