Thanks Glen and Toku. Sound advice from both of you. And pretty much I've been trying to do and have figured for a long time is the solution, but haven't actually done it much. Glen's idea of finding a film making group to join up and try to get involved in sounds good. Every time I try to get a short film going with friends, everyone flakes after the first few sessions and it never goes anywhere.
And yeah, I realize that I'm coming from a place of privilege to be unfulfilled in creative output. A lot of people are concentrating on just making it through the day with food on the table and a roof over their head. I'm definitely lucky and appreciate that I have a pretty stable life at this point. I also realize that if I got into a relationship again, my priorities would probably change, so this may just be a temporary depression I'm in as a result of being single for a while now.
One thing with writing and a lot of creative stuff is I need either another person or a group of people to throw ideas around with and group brainstorm, or I need direction. When I just try to write something without direction I get like one sentence every 10 mins in or something because it's just constant idea block. I think an online class that has me doing directed tasks for homework and stuff would be pretty helpful. I used to write a ton of creative writing and poetry from K-12 in my English classes and used to get good remarks on all my work. I just dropped creative writing entirely after high school.
Today I sat down with a tablet and a pen and put some music on and spent some time coming up with stuff. I wrote down a skeleton outline to give myself directions and said:
Platformer concept -
Rpg concept -
Adventure game concept -
Short film concept -
Full length film concept -
Haunted House Maze Concept -"
And tried to fill in as much as I could. I ended up coming up with a 2d action platformer that's a mix of Mario Maker x Super Meat Boy x Okami where you kill enemies to get materials to build platforms to get across and each mid-boss opens up a new type of platform that's used in the puzzle platforming for the 2nd half of the stage and during the stage boss fight. The Okami bit comes in with it being a black & white world and the enemies are color and the platforms you create are made with the colors. And the whole thing is a metaphor for MC's battle with the loss of their emotions because of the death of their mom and trying to regain them and feel alive again.
Also designed my haunted house horror maze where you go meet god (talking ball of light) in the center of the universe and then a tentacle monster from another dimension eats him and you have to escape the universe while running from the monster complete with spinning light tunnels with stars exploding/fading out and a finale on the moon.
Hoping to come up with a practical short film concept tomorrow. Definitely felt better about life after getting some ideas down on (digital) paper. Though my main problem is taking my ideas and turning them into something practical that can be done on a shoestring budget and without years of time and actually taking the steps to do them.
You sound a lot like me, Bebps. I’m 39 next month and my head is in the same place in many ways. Love you, brah.
Thanks TVC, love ya too. Hopefully you figure something out before me haha.
Do you have nephews or nieces? One way to really feel connected with the world again is to involve yourself in your family's lives and mentor them to greatness. Patriarch lifestyle
Nope. I could definitely use an activity friend to do stuff with. It's fun hanging with my group of friends once a week or two, but I miss having someone to go do stuff whenever with. One thing I've noticed is I'm pretty much the only one of my friends or family that lives alone. Everyone either still lives with their parents, lives with an SO, or is married, or has roomates. I kinda feel like my friends can't relate to sitting around all by yourself in an empty house most of the time, eating by yourself almost all the time, etc...and it's loneliness. There was a great piece of dialogue in the new Little Women about even when not falling in love towards anyone, wanting to feel loved, because after a while the weight of loneliness just gets too hard to bear. Resonated with me since I haven't really loved anyone (I've liked people and had infatuations rarely) in about 8 years but definitely want to feel loved myself and am pretty lonely.
Have you looked into ways to switch up work a little bit. You mentioned teaching - and is that not something You could get back into. Or on the flip becoming a mention to law students/undergrad
Or use your law degree/experience to consult on movies/freelance art stuff
I could get into teaching by getting a degree and teaching HS or something but I'm not really interested in that. Plus all my friends who teach K-12 have like 1 hour+ commutes to some school in the middle of nowhere. I'd only want to teach at college level, but that requires grad school and I don't have the energy for that and doing a multi-year thesis and everything. I could teach at a law school, but finding a job would be really tough and I don't find law interesting and would probably be bored teaching it.
I taught Japanese 1 which was fun and taught English in Japan which was fun. Language is pretty great to teach. I'd also like to teach a classes on giant robots, their history and influence on modern culture. I was thinking maybe I should just put up a website/blog on topics I want to teach instead. That's definitely less exciting than teaching people in discussions.
