I Think About The Dirt That I'll Be Wearing For A Shirt

 "Says he's back and isn't back" is one of my best bits. Why would I ever stop it for you?

But anyway.

I'm making this post for me, just to kind of prove I can do it.

I'm still kickin', folks.

Lots (LOTS) of ups and downs. Shitty times have been had and will be had again, but I'm carefully neutral for now. Talking to my doctor about health problems and antidepressants and all that jazz. Appreciating the rush I get when my chud brother or my excessively British mother agrees with leftist politics by accident. The days of summer slip through my fingers like sunlight on the kitchen counter; a month's already gone by and I have nothing to show for it. I'm working on a few things, though.

I'm wispy recently, half-alive, caught in between ideas and, like, suicidal ideation. Did good in uni year 2, which I feel good about, but I already know next year's gonna fuck me up, and then is, uh... the rest of my life.

Yeesh.

I'm trying not to let it all get me down too much, but man oh man, it's a cold world out there.

I've been thinking recently about how god damn unfulfilled and lonely I really feel. Disconnected. Missing some important pieces. Did you know I don't know where Sweden is on a map?

I'm doing my best to get through this weird patch I've found myself in, but I really am deeply, deeply lonely and very very afraid to die. If I somehow ended up getting hit by a bus or whatever tomorrow I couldn't at all say I was happy. That's really scary. And no chemical or drug or behavioural therapy can fix that. Only I can fix that.

I'm working on it.

Things are moving, very slowly, but it still feels like right now life is just passing me by. Like I'm spending too much time worrying about my life to live it.

One day I'll blink and I'll be eighty-something, but I'm in my 20s right now. Still alive. 

I'm trying to tell myself that just because something will happen doesn't mean it's happened already.

(Thanks for that weird ass mentality, Catholic school. Well, at least it made me good at symbolism.)

Song of the day: I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die by They Might Be Giants

Alright, Who's Not Dead? Sound Off

oh god fuck im alive oh jesus christ

*pokes my head out shivering and whimpering like a kicked dog*

oh christ oh god oh jesus. guh

So anyway.

I've missed The Harve Blog. I need to get back to it. There's a lot of stuff I wanna post about.

My uni work is """done""" for now but I go back pretty soon.

I'm working on a new webseries which might not go anywhere because it's a lot, but the thought of finally learning Blender is good.

I'll write a little about it maybe -- I'm trying to do a lot in regards to how I convey my work's themes and getting a little weirder and more "cerebral", so this might be a good spot to talk about what I meant by certain stuff. jackofalltrades was very normal as far as that goes, and the work of Kane Pixels and pressedyes (Tony Petscop) has really inspired me lately. They're both kind of wacky with it and I'm very into that style.

Please watch People Still Live Here and read 3D WORKERS ISLAND respectively. They're very good.

I just need to say less stuff out loud, I think. I need to be very "[laughs] [does not answer]" about my art.

RIP David Lynch by the way, Christ. That fucked me up good. Art's gonna be a little worse each day without you, David. See you in the trees.

Point is, I'm kind of "back" in that I'll be posting here more, but there's no, like, schedule. I'm gonna be here whenever.

But I'm doing okay. I'm makin' stuff again.

It's nice.

Good to be back.

As a bonus, have this little Blender scene I did depicting an important image from this hypothetical new webseries.

"Meadow (With Windmill and Chairs)"

I haven't mastered photorealism yet as you can see and Blender in general is kicking my ass, but I'm having fun learning a new thing. Boy howdy, ain't that neat?

Song of the day: Eminence Front by The Who (i've been getting back into Severance lately and the needle drop at the end of 2x03 was fucking crazy. loved it)

Sometimes I’m Just Happy I’m Older (birthday thoughts)

I’ve been an adult for an undisclosed amount of time, but I keep reaching ages that feel like Real Adult Ones, and this is another one of those. It’s an age that makes me go “how old am i? oh yeah im— ohhh shit. oh shit. oh fuck” and start comically sweating or something to that effect.

I’m balding, I’ve got spots in weird places, my chest and back hurt, my mouth feels weird all the time, and I’ve got a whole other myriad of things wrong with me, but… I’m doing okay.

This hasn’t been my consistently happiest year but it’s been good. I’m goin’ up, y’know? I forgot what that was like for a while.

I feel like all the magic of birthdays has long drained and the joy has gone from me at the mere concept of Being The Birthday Boy, but it’s good to mark the fact that, like... I got here. I made it. It’s another year I kind of never thought I’d see. Time marches on.

Birthdays probably stopped being fun for me the day it was my birthday in my drama class and they stopped the whole lesson to sing to me really loudly and obnoxiously.

I was standing in front of the mirror, so all I could see was my own warped reflection and the reflections of the people behind me. I didn’t think anything profound, though I wish I did — I just wondered when the lesson would end so I could go out to lunch and not have to deal with these guys anymore.

That was kind of what did it for me.

I never really liked drama class. Acting with my friends was fun, though, which is why I make webseries now.

Things are going to continue to happen to me, but I’m doing alright about that fact. At least, I am right now. Maybe the breakdown just hasn’t hit yet. Maybe I’ll claw at my head screaming I’M SO OLD AND WRINKLY AUUUGH AGGAHUEHHH later.

I’m okay for now, though.

Even if I am balding.

Song of the day: Wilton, Clarkson, James by Graham Kartna https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0RyRCD97D0

He's Literally Babyraging (Being Burnt Out and Dealing With It)

I'm always hesitant to say that I'm "burnt out" because it doesn't sound like a real thing to me.

It's the same reason I'm hesitant to call myself "a video editor", even though all I do half the time is edit videos.

Being self aware enough to know it's not healthy to stay mad and sad but not self aware enough to be above it Buddhist monk style is a really bad position to be in. It makes me feel like a kid having one really really long temper tantrum. It's a physical feeling I get right below my heart somewhere in my stomach, like a bunch of rocks have settled there and for some reason the rocks really piss me off.

I haven't updated the blog for a while for a couple of reasons. One being I don't want to feel pressured to, because it's literally just me on here and I'm trying to do it more for myself than anybody else. The other reason, though, which is the relevant one for this, is that university has taken me out back and beaten the shit out of me for the past few months. Somehow, it's all been scheduled perfectly at the exact worst times, and people are just stressed enough to start being really rude and unpleasant, which makes me want to be shitty back. I don't understand why people are so fucking nasty sometimes. It can't feel good for them either.

The last week or so has been Fine, but even still the stress is creeping up and I can feel a great big crash on the horizon. The cliff edge is coming toward me and I can only scream comically down it like Tom of And Jerry fame.

I'm gonna try and take my time with it and pace myself as carefully as I can, but like I said, the scheduling of stuff disagrees. It's good that I have more and more Me Stuff coming up though and that I'm gradually getting freer time. Current plan is to try and get back into the ol' blog, do some work for various TTRPG thangs with friends, and maybe try and start setting up a little creepypasta-slash-digital-horror-themed writing project I'm thinking about. I also might finish some other stuff and maybe post it here like I've been wanting to.

I'm takin' it slow. It needs to be harve Relaxation Hour for like a couple days at least.

TLDR: me right now

yes including the receding hairline

Song of the day: Temptation by New Order https://youtu.be/xxDv_RTdLQo?si=tlt6-WtVU7CYi2Zx 

As The Days Change Over: A jackofalltrades Retrospective

A whole year.

Damn.

From the start -- at least from the start of the big 2020 rewrite of S1 -- I kind of always knew jackofalltrades was going to get a second season. I knew the story wouldn’t really be complete without it, and that I wouldn’t be finished with it as a writer. There was always going to be more to the story.

I had and still have my issues with it, many of them too numerous and extensive to put here in a way that’s fun for you to read or for me to write, but at its core it’s actually a thing I’ve made I can confidently call A Piece Of Art. It’s the first thing I made that I could do that for, I think.

It's my first take on webseries as a medium, and it felt good making something episodic. 25 per season is still too damn many episodes, but, hey -- 50 whole videos I wrote, directed and edited pretty much by myself isn't a bad thing to put in a portfolio.

When it comes to the editing, I know I still have a lot to learn before I reach my own standards of what "good editing" actually is, but the second season still has major steps up when you compare it to season one. A lot of the fuck-ups from the first season I learned how to counter here, especially regarding motion tracking or seamless transitions -- getting a better computer also helped. Who knew?

Some of my favourite stuff to do was the little edits. Even if there are a lot of mistakes, I'll have much more fun pointing out the things that weren't. For example: hey, did you know that another little piece of paper was added digitally onto the ground in "29. George" to make it so there were eight pages?

Eh? Eh?

Anyway.

In terms of the writing, I was really proud of a lot of the stuff I was able to do thematically and will definitely be coming back to that in other unfiction stuff. The Survivors are definitely the way I'd do a season three if I was ever gonna do it; they were all very thought out with the help of the kind folks that agreed to play them. Especially Olivia, played by my friend Evie, and Jan, played by my friend Karol. Working with other people to pepper stuff in to make things that much more real and give satisfying arcs to each of these characters is exactly the kind of thing I love whenever I direct, and I'd love to work with them again in other stuff I do even if it isn't jackofalltrades -- after all, one story is good, 'til another is told, and it seems like all my friends are really damn good at telling stories.

My buddy Milo, who played Daniel, was also phenomenal to work with and absolutely carried the season in his own way. Down for whatever, fucking great actor, incredibly funny guy (with a bunch of friends that were also cool with me dicking about on their property with a camera for a couple hours). Milo's contributions really made Daniel a real person and an understandable antagonist, and brought such an air of tragedy to the Jack-and-Daniel relationship; one of my favourite scenes of the season, the bit in "33. All Work and No Play" where the two talk about films they like together, was almost entirely his idea, and he blew it out of the fucking water when it came to filming it. Love that guy.

The themes of connection, reaching out, and healing -- or not healing at all, in some cases -- were integral, and as annoying as it was to schedule, the fact I got so many people involved made this season what it was. It wouldn't be complete without them. 

It's important to me in the way the Slenderverse is and, in a way, is a love letter to exactly that. All those references are in there for a reason, and while the monsters might be pretty derivative, I like to think there's a neat little corner of the 'verse somewhere for the humans of jackofalltrades to live. Found footage and the Slenderverse are made what they are by people -- anyone can and should be able to make art, and there are thousands of video series out there to prove it. Just grab a camera, press record, and make a world with your friends. You don't even need to write stuff.

Seriously. Try it. It's really fun.

I've been doing it on and off for eight years now and haven't gotten bored of it yet.

Despite all its pitfalls I’m genuinely really proud of jackofalltrades as a project. It feels really good to have something I can look at and say, yeah, that was me.

It wasn’t exactly original, it certainly wasn’t industry-standard, but it was mine.

It was a thing me and a couple friends put together and had fun making, and that’s what it’s about to me in terms of making art.

jackofalltrades is a show about people hurting each other, sure, but I had the time of my life making it, and I hope my buddies had fun too.

I sure did.

Tom, Ben, Ethan, Milo, Evie, Karol, everybody else over in the Discord and everyone everywhere who had any hand in it… thanks for makin’ stuff with me, friends. Thanks for helping me heal.

Here’s to making a bunch more stuff.

Somehow it got easy to laugh out loud.

Song of the day: you fuckin know exactly what it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G1KQRNJ_PQ

10:01 P.M.

Happy Halloween. I'm gonna talk about commercialism. Here's a question:

Who are ads for?

The amount of times I’ve had to sit and watch an unskippable, patronising, gaudy advert and thought Jesus Fucking God who is this for, who would possibly buy your thing because of this is beyond numbers at this point. It's getting a bunch of the same Deliveroo ad on Discord that provoked this little rant in particular.

I’ve gotten so frame-perfect at skipping adverts the moment it hits 5 seconds that I could speedrun YouTube. Me at the zoo%. I understand it’s probably just to make the product memorable like those John Lewis Christmas ads but the point still stands I think. It feels genuinely kind of insulting.

One of my favourite Umami shorts I’ve rediscovered recently thanks to my recommended, 10:01 P.M, goes into this in a really neat way. Adverts that just are fully, uncannily disconnected from the human experience almost become their own form of art in a way and you can make lots of good art out of them. They leave such a bad, horrible taste in your mouth, like licking rust.

I’ve linked the short here. I really like it. It explores the problems of modern day homelessness and how the marginalised are treated and how stupid and harmful these laws are. https://youtu.be/I2-shiwvIPo?si=PnB7NymngfSMCu83

The actual advert 10:01 P.M’s music is from is fucked up, too. Check it. https://youtu.be/q_HnUbNVygg?si=n1EWQjOSAMM87KNy

(There are people in the comments getting weirdly catholic and conspiracy theory-y about it, though, so watch out for that. I kind of get it, though; it does feel a little bit like watching a deal with the devil go down in real time.)

Point is, ads are weird and scary, and they’re only getting weirder and scarier. I should write a story about evil adverts or something.

Song of the day: I Love You For Psychological Reasons by They Might Be Giants https://youtube.com/watch?v=Oesgd0NL124

Actual Believer In Miasma (Germ Thoughts)

For the last few months, I’ve been opening the bathroom door with my foot. It feels weirdly shameful to admit that.

The handle is made of brass, I think, which I read somewhere is self-cleaning after a certain time, but I don’t think that’s true.

(Never mind, I just googled it while writing this, it’s called the oligodynamic effect! That’s fun. Here's a whole Wikipedia article about it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect)

My brother coughs with his mouth open like a toddler even though he’s a 28(?) year old adult man with things like wages and a beard and a Tinder profile. I wear gloves more often and use my shirt hem or cuffs to touch things like traffic lights or power buttons or the fridge. I use my elbows to turn taps on and off.

The world feels like it’s covered in germs.

 

There was this video they showed us in food tech about cross-contamination, all the way back in Year 7, when I first learned how easy it was to give up. The video showed this bright pink gross sludge that got on everything, into everything, all from touching one little bit of raw meat; it got onto faces, into mouths, onto countertops, onto utensils.

It started there I think. From then on, I realised how much I touch my face and how unhygienic the world is.

Especially traffic lights. Eugh.

(I found the video, if you’re curious. https://youtu.be/nkVY08aqC28?si=biQhrMLJThTAZUxX)

It also didn’t help that a little while ago there was a worms scare in my house -- worms as in pinworms/threadworms, the disease reserved for Victorian children and dogs. That’s what started the compulsive hand washing and the taps with the elbows thing.

I have this irrational fear that, for some reason, one particular bacteria is going to get very big and aggressive when I turn my back. Like a superbug except, you know, physically large. And angry. I have the same fear with actual bugs, like that movie Enemy with the spider, or Cloverfield with the things in the subway.

Grim.

I think I should get diagnosed with something, but I don’t know what exactly.

Wash your hands, folks. Not like I do, though, because I wash my hands so hard skin starts coming off.

Wash your hands the normal amount.

Song of the day: Strange Overtones by David Byrne https://youtube.com/watch?v=YdLvyzR0ihE