Mr Rex Plan, Plum’s Road trip and Visiting Family – 7th August 2021

Hey. It’s Saturday the 7th. It’s actually the end of the day. So I will talk about yesterday and today. Not a huge amount happened to be honest. I’m feeling pretty burned out and I have a bit of a headache.

Yesterday was a bit stressful. I’ve started working on Mr Rex’s SAGE page. The pressure is really setting in. I NEED to create something great within the next two weeks, I’ve had a lot of setbacks this year. At the absolute minimum I want to upgrade all the 3 previous episodes and ideally create 3 more episodes but I doubt I’ll even have time for one. It’s touch but sacrifices may need to be made. I’m quite happy with Episode 1 right now. I think I’d like to make Umeko a new design, I want her to be cuter and less “goth” I guess.

Episode 2 basically needs 1 cutscene and some backgrounds and tiles textured. Episode 3 needs tiling and combining possibly. Dunno if I’ll bother. Which reminds me, I need to create a checkpoint object so on the larger maps Mr Rex won’t spawn at the start of the level but at some good middle points. Episode 4 needs tiling and the later half completely done. There’s also another cutscene that happens at the end of episode 3, it’s a big one re: Umeko. It’s a scene I’m pretty anxious to make. It’s strange making a comedy type thing to make people laugh and then to switch gears and make a more serious and dark show that may actually hurt the feelings of the audience. It is what it is though, stress is a part of life and I’ve never been a fan of these fake feel-good shows that isn’t super challenging or interesting.

I wrote a bunch of notes for things I need to fix including small things . There’s a lot of cut scenes. The previous interations of Mr Rex’s Zealous Adventure (the game specifically) were a bit barebones when it came to story. Mr Rex is basically an Anime adapted in a video game format. Only now am I filling the gaps, I had anxiety about it but now it’s in there. It feels better and more true to what I set out to do. I don’t think I’ll be taking shortcuts like this again, I want to 100% complete each episode and NEVER have to go back to them. I probably will anyways for minor things but the mindset is key. I’ll see how I got for Episode 4 once I finally catch upto it. If I can I want to be fully caught up by the end of next week (e.g. in 1 week, 1,2,3 episodes are done and 4 is beginning). Episode 4 is a pretty technical and spectacular episode and I don’t want to half ass it. I hope I can make it as good as I envision it. I’ll need to get creative, do more impressive things with less. Simplify.

Anyways, I was stressing today also because Saturday I was travelling to see family for the weekend or at least for a bit of the weekend. I wanted to bring My budgie Plum with me, It’ll be a first of me and Plum leaving the house together. I went to the pet store to find a budgie cage that was small enough to fit in my car but big enough that it wasn’t a travel cage. I’ve already got a travel cage for plum and picked out a medium sized cage that I could use as a temporary home for Plum once I reached my destination. I also saw a girl working at the pet store, I thought I recognised her from school or something. I wanted to talk to her but didn’t get the chance. I’ll try talk to her next time I find an excuse to go to the pet store. Maybe I’ll ask her out, she was very beautiful. I really should, even if I get a no it would at least be good for me and my own sense of confidence. Also My Lord, a friend of mine I should say has been pressuring me to get a girlfriend. I kind of gave up on women for the past couple of years. It seemed to difficult and felt I was stressing about it too much. I hope I can frame things more carefully for myself so that I actually do more and think less.

After I got home from the pet store. That’s when I made the list. The next morning I prepared my car to go, Plum was very cooperative. However there was a strange smell in my car that made me anxious and panicy for Plum’s health. After a pep talk with some family I cleaned the car and ended up driving to see family with Plum. While I was tidying my car the delivery man came so I managed to get my delivery which I would’ve otherwise missed, so there’s a positive I can look to. I played some budgie sound ambience so Plum would be less stressed. Plum was actually really chatty during the car drive which was good. I felt very comfortable despite the traffic on the first half of the trip.

We stopped at services where I took Plum away from the roads and to a forest area away from everyone else. I gave him some millet and water and then I put him back in the car and went to pee and then the rest of the car journey was way smoother.

When I arrived, it was nice to be there but my family was a lot less interested in meeting Plum than I had anticipated. They seemed scared and concerned about various things. I find it a bit strange but I guess poos and biting is not what cat and dog owners typically consider. Plum was very clingy but also pretty relaxed. Some of my family got to stroke Plum which was nice. Plum would largely stick to me as I’m the only familiar thing to him, I’m his big friendly tree. Even his new cage he was reluctant to get into. My father is going to give me some newspaper, that I can use for Plum’s tray. I’ve been running low on it for a while. Ate food, talked, usual family stuff. Nothing too interesting.

Had a headache. I’m a bit clearer now but today I’ve been very tired. At this place my family is always in the room watching TV. Everything on TV is rubbish, the only times I ever watched TV was for Discovery Channel and Phineas and Ferb (most of the stuff on Disney Channel was rubbish anyway). Oddly enough,while I went to internet video my sister seems to have stuck to TV with similar habits to my father. Maybe it’s “normal” to watch TV all the time. I guess I have heard the self help gurus talk about cutting down on watching TV that I could never relate to. I don’t watch TV, Youtube is nearly as curated as TV now. I don’t watch Youtube nearly as much as I used to. I’d watch videos on Newgrounds a lot more if it wasn’t so full of porn.

I managed to get my journal done this evening. It’s 2100 on Saturday. I hope I can get me and Plum safe home tomorrow. The only thing left today is to read, meditation and go to sleep. I did do some rough sketches of some characters for Mr Rex, not a lot of progress but it’s better than nothing. I really need to revive my line of action clone project, that was good.