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s-tick · 4 years

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Break-in

New non-fiction by Rachael Ikins

It was all my fault, the nervous breakdown, the tossed salad of diagnoses and medications that followed and left me a confused stumbling mess for ten years. My family made that clear to me by abandoning me to my elderly ailing husband “because he is a doctor,” and of course, he would know why I was so angry and knew what to do about it.

“We didn’t know what to do” was a later refrain. Furious at my behavior, my obesity and my drug-induced allegiance to the therapist who was treating me they raged at me. Rather than band together to reach out to my husband to help, they abandoned me. I was truly alone.

My husband had no idea what to do. He was a surgeon–act and cut–not a psychiatrist. All he knew was that the “treatment plan” was making me sicker and sicker as relatives got drunk at cocktail parties without us. Because some of the medications acted adversely on the parts of my brain that create inhibitions and control, I couldn’t stop spending money. I couldn’t stop eating. I was in a constant state of fight-or-flight, wanting to hit the road with my cat in a carrier running away from…something.

Instead, a new psychiatrist and the original therapist’s retirement resulted in my getting off the stew of drugs. I almost died. What I was left with was a combination of side effects and adverse reactions that the doctor had no experience with. My mind, however, was suddenly clear. I looked around me one day, and I sobbed. Memories long suppressed by chemicals flooded back.

I shambled stubbornly behind the vacuum cleaner to learn to walk again, and waved long chef’s knives around as I relearned to cook. Nutrition and the order of recipes, therapy for a healing brain.

My former sister-in-law said, “I told your brother that therapist is not doing your sister any favors.”

When my mother and I finally reunited, her comment, “Oh, they did you dirty.”

Did me dirty? They almost killed me. I had seizures and heart rhythm disruptions the night of that last dose and was unconscious as my husband lay beside me making a decision not to call an ambulance because, “They would’ve just put you back on all that shit. I knew you would make it.”

Six months later, the one cat I could not live without, the cat I’d wanted to run away with, died unexpectedly. I had insomnia. An hour of sleep a week was about it. She used to sleep with me and without her, the bed was a black hole. My only emotions were rage and grief. Truly I had much to feel that way about.

A year after my cat’s death, because my husband lied every time I asked him, “Are we going to lose our house? Are we going to lose our house?” I found myself alone in his investment counselor’s office where a busy-body assistant bustled out to tell me our money was gone. Her predatory grin and twinkling eyes kept me upright on the couch even though my vision went black for a minute.

When I stumbled to the car, I screamed so loudly my vocal cords were injured. Phillip’s unbelievable solution was to ask my mother for money. Within eight months we sold our house and lost the majority of the contents. We ended up in a small, poorly made camp halfway up the side of a mountain, a forty-five minute drive from where we began married life.

According to my family, all of this was my fault and my husband, the innocent victim. It is not self-pity or unwillingness to own my mistakes that I write this. It suited them to blame me. Only one person apologized years later and with the rest there is no relationship.

It’s a wonder how a thirty-five year old woman who wanted to get pregnant, was instead, drugged and used by a professional who planned to become the second “Sybil’s” shrink, did not die.

My life spiraled into a decade of darkness. At forty-five I “woke up” only to take two of the worst hits since my dad’s death, Nestlé’s loss and the house we were married in over twenty years ago. To be told by those who should have had an ounce of common sense, that I was responsible. Hurt, shame, anger set in. I would have given anything to go back in time, for just one person who said they loved me to have stood up for me.

The new house was surrounded by woods and fields. Since we’d lived in the city not far from the hospital complex when my husband was working, I had not been surrounded by wilderness like that of my childhood family camp for many decades.

It was a hard life. Not quite poor enough for food stamps, but poor enough to run out of food one March, I cut firewood from dead trees for heat. Raided piggy banks to pay for my husband’s heart medicine.

One bitter winter evening, I went to the barn for wood. As I grabbed some logs I thought, “I’m having a nervous breakdown.”

I ran into the trees and fell in the snow. I was so angry. So much had happened, life literally turned upside down, faster than my damaged nervous system could absorb it. I lay in the snow looking up at uncaring stars and thought, “Go ahead. Have your breakdown. Nobody gives a shit. No shrink, no relative. You have lives in the house that need you. So, get it over with and pick up that wood.”

My former therapist had a way of triggering anger in me. Then she’d tell me how awful my anger was. The more she abused me with chemicals and her training, the angrier I became, unable to defend myself, lost in a sea of drug interactions. This moment in the snow, after all that had happened, was the first time I realized: anger is not bad—mine was justified. Anger also is a flame that sustains. I got up and went in to stoke the stove.

The next day our nearest neighbor’s son was going to install a new door for us. I remember how cold the day was. He let me help with the nail gun, but my bare fingers quickly numbed. The next morning he finished which brings me to this moment:

“Lunch is ready.” Phillip’s voice floats from below me. The back door slams behind him. I stare into the horizontal snow pecking at my face. Last night ice dammed on the flat living room roof. A lagoon blossomed as heat leaked through. Water poured in at 10:00 p.m. I am on the roof, hammer in hand to pound the ice.

I’ve been hammering awhile now: my shoulders cramp, right hand aches with lactic acid buildup. Each time the head of the tool connects with the thick ice, pain jolts up into my shoulder, neck and head.

Hot and sweaty despite the weather. A two inch channel is all I’ve created, but enough for water to sluice to the ground. If only it would stop snowing. Phillip worries I will fall.

I imagine my relatives clustered around my casket. Their polite murmurs of, “What a shame it was, she never amounted to anything. That silly poetry stuff.”

I don’t disown my part in our circumstance, but I did not deserve that abuse. My fantasy encourages me to be careful if only for spite.

I move crab-wise across the ice, my half-frozen sweatpants chafe my skin. Only a tee-shirt on top, sopping with sweat and melting snow. I scrub snow out of my eyes with my right fist, hammer stuck to my hand. I roll onto my belly, feel for the ladder with numb feet.

I ease down one rung at a time. My husband puts his arm around me as we head for the back door. I’m glad we’ve just replaced the old one.

The knob won’t turn. Maybe my hand is just weak. No, it is locked.

“Phillip, you have the key?”

He pats his cotton shirt pockets and his jeans.

“No. I forgot.”

My husband has had 3 heart attacks, stents and quadruple bypass. He is slender and frail. It didn’t occur to him to prop the door, that it would automatically lock.

My first thought: 20 degrees out, a northwest wind blasting horizontal snow, have to get him inside. I race to the barn, our car. Locked, too. Keys, cell phone in kitchen.

We can see our breath in the dimness of the barn.

“I’m going to have to go for help.”

“Look inside these boxes, maybe there is an old jacket or something.”

I root through the packing boxes piled there from last September’s move. Paper, pots, no jackets, nothing but a ripped, stained beach towel. He insists I take it.

“Stay in here.” He shivers in his cotton shirtsleeves.

I trudge down the driveway towel around my shoulders. I can barely. I slip and fall, skin my elbows raw. I sob out loud, “FUCK!” drag myself out of the drift as I yank the damp towel on my shoulders. If I am bleeding, I can’t feel it. I hate everyone in this moment.

Should I go up the hill or down? The nearest neighbor lives over a quarter of a mile away. I head uphill into the blizzard. Every third step I slide, my sneakers full of slush. Frozen hair icicles clink against my glasses, lenses so covered I can’t see much. I wonder if I will die of exposure. Fuck that. I have to save Phillip.

I pray no snow plow hurtles out of the squall. No jump to safety; drop-off on one side of the road, a head-high drift on the other.

A surge of anger heats my middle. Really, God?

Just then I think I hear the sound of an engine over the howling wind. I stand still.

Yeah, it is a vehicle. I step out onto where I think the crown of the road is, snow up to my thighs. Behind me, woods. Ahead, state forest.

A dirty white Jeep coalesces from a cloud. Oh. It’s the letter carrier! Shit! She acts like she doesn’t see me. I step right in front of her. I look bizarre, a ghost in a blue and green beach towel. She grinds to a halt.

I lean in a window.

“We’re locked out of our house. My husband has heart disease. He’ ll die. Can you help us?” I point down the road.

She digs her cell phone out of a pile of mail in a box on the passenger floor. My heart leaps. Our eyes meet as she punches 911. Her eyes widen.

“Battery’s dead. I’m so sorry!”

Oh. I drop my head. “Thanks.”

I face the wind. “It’s you or me, fucker.” The storm swallows the sound of her engine in seconds. The wind whistles, tugs away my body heat. Our closest neighbor lives on the left side of the road. Must be halfway.

Bowing my head I pull the towel to shield my face, and slog on. Out of the gloom I make out the shape of a maple tree. Leaves were brilliant red last fall. Roy’s house is close. Wonder if Julie is home. They introduced themselves last October.

I stumble and stagger toward the house like a drunk. Her vehicle is parked in front of the garage. I lift one foot up the porch stairs. My fingers slip off the railing ice. I raise a hand to knock or press the doorbell when the door opens inward, and I fall into the heat of their house with the momentum.

Soon we are bundled in her truck, skidding down the hill to rescue Phillip. She drives us back to her house. Hot coffee and wood stove heat brings roses to his cheeks. Julie phones a friend to see if he can help. His name is John, a retired fire fighter. She lends me parka, boots, hat and gloves for the journey back down the hill. We crunch around the yard’s perimeter. Even the upstairs bedroom windows are locked. We could’ve maybe gotten the ladder from the barn and climbed up there to open one. John doesn’t shame me, simply assesses the situation. It occurs to me that maybe everything is not my fault. Maybe others feel guilt for their behavior. Maybe sometimes shit just happens.

Finally John grabs a screw driver from his truck, pries the storm door out of its track and kicks in the front door, the shreds of my notion of security blasted open by a single blow.

Later hunched over a hot chocolate in front of the fire, my husband safe and bundled up with a book, I feel gratitude for the rage that stoked me and kept my feet hiking up that hill into an unknown. Anger can consume the user, no doubt, but as a tool used with care, like fire, it can save your life.

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violetsystems · 5 years

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#personal

I’ve been stylishly cold most of the week. Yesterday was below freezing and many of my coworkers were not feeling it. For whatever reason, Friday was a little low staffed and very tight corners as far as the eye could see. I didn’t feel overwhelmed but that’s just because everything else in my life has been so tumultuous. Ever since I got back from New York, things have significantly changed in the way I view things. Everything is not so simple for me but I require myself to stay positive about things. Mostly because I’ve learned that I am the one with the answers most of the time. I make decisions and I make sacrifices. More than anyone could know over the years to stay positive. I’ve been hurt a lot. Sometimes after a long day walking home in the bitter cold, it hits me. And I retreat back to my apartment, shut the door and yell out loud at how bullshit it all is. My neighbors probably hear me. I don’t really think it’s a good thing to give people the impression it’s all good with me. I’ve been thinking a lot about how the conservative side of America always demands niceness. I’ve had my share of people passively aggressively confronting me in the past. Most of the talk I know to be true behind my back is how aggressive I am. And yet here I am completely invisible year after year known only by a url at this point named after a Tekken character. There’s a whole story to that. Lost in Seoul with a bunch of Tekken referees one long vacation from work. I used to take three weeks off of work at a time and run away to Korea and Japan. That time of my life is largely a mystery to people only because I travelled alone. I’ve talked openly about things here for years. You would think controlling the narrative that people would understand you’ve been through some shit. But people don’t generally care. Or even worse. They are afraid to risk being taken advantage of and mistrust anything that gives them anxiety. Anxiety is a tricky thing. People have been projecting their fears onto me for longer than I can imagine. There comes a point when common knowledge is pretty simple. I’m a good person. Last night one of my employees texted me out of nowhere to tell me I was a good boss. A bunch of my coworkers gave me an egg at the end of the day. I had knocked it against the trash can to peel the shell. They thought I threw it away. I said I never turned down a chance to eat. I’m always hungry. It wasn’t until much later after I cleared my head that I understood what any of this means.

People push things often out of fear. They want clear and concise answers. They want reassurance and validation. They break things that way. Sharing things with people sometimes can give people the wrong idea. Especially when those people take things out of context. You don’t know how many years people have talked behind my back telling others my life story. Their interpretation of events. To a certain extent I believe community is about sharing power. And I believe community is also about showing that you are accountable for your actions within it. But inter sectionalism requires trust and belief that you are in good faith. We also live in very reactionary times. The boundaries I have set up in my life are not always self serving. Sometimes it’s out of respect for other people’s careers and privacy. I have no protection other than my own actions these days. I have a long history here in this city. I was helping a student with some software on Friday. The software is fairly new and windows specific. I designed the initiative that paved the way to bring windows to campus. Last week I set up a meeting with a major Linux distribution to show us new technologies on campus. I’ve been doing this for almost two decades as a job. With technology, art, fashion or architecture there is always something new to learn. People invest in their futures in education with fears if they’ll find a job when they graduate. That’s wherever you go in academia. My job is to maximize that in my own way. I’ve been looking at that quote from Samuel Ross about Virgil Abloh for a minute now. Kanye was indeed three floors below me in my building at one point talking about fashion. The environment that I work in is very progressive. But everybody has to have boundaries. Working all the time requires an equal amount of slack. For myself I’ve had to rigidly approach the harsh realities of what’s real. I have a job, benefits, and responsibilities that have grown and branched out in impossible ways. I have opportunities and I also have climbed over enough walls and jumped through enough hoops to know better. People want to get the best deal possible with you sometimes. In a city that has often negatively projected their ideas of my social value, the price isn’t always right. It often has felt like I’ve had a bounty on my head. Which is why I work so hard. At a certain point there’s nothing much more to be said about me. It’s what isn’t said. It’s where I fill in the blanks, float between the gaps and phase in and out of reality. Jump on a bus in Chicago and end up in Queens New York. I must be the Baba Yaga or something. I am part Croatian.

I’m also Swedish and a little Bohemian German. I speak moderate amounts of Korean and Chinese. I work in an environment where that’s an asset to the people I service. It’s not meant to impress anyone. Largely for years nobody has ever commented on what is written on my whiteboard. Academia from Chinese Universities have asked to take pictures of it. I often forget what’s on it or just assume nobody cares about how I feel. I spent a lot of my own money trying to explore both Korea and Japan. I even made it into mainland China by myself. I didn’t do much. I ended up on the same plane with people from my work. It’s a small world after all they say. Sometimes too small. Other times a fact of life. What I’ve always been good at is genuinely connecting people and things together. I always thought if you spent enough time building a community of people who care it would repay the favor one day. The last week has been a slap in the face in more ways than I care to elaborate on. I can’t ignore the fact that it feels like I’m disrespected often. What do you do about that? There’s so many layers to it. I could have recovered Friday night from a bad mood if the mail carrier left my Amazon package. The screen printing material got here just fine on Wednesday. My six dollar Yu-Gi-Oh game was unable to be delivered because the mailbox was obstructed. Presumably because there was snow on the ground that I didn’t shovel. I pay the price for everybody’s feelings. The USPS is exempt from the government shutdown for the record. People are so reactionary to everything. They lash out. They want to teach you a lesson. I’m holding onto my emotions by a taut thread these days. I have three weeks until I’m back in New York. The government is back open until my birthday exactly. Which is also the day after Valentine’s day. My job is stable and I feel like I contribute something. I’ve spent years trying to communicate this only to be silenced by white male edgelord bullshit that nobody resists. I just shut the door on all of it. I know where the future is. I know where the support comes from. Women are the future to me. I think I’ve communicated that for years unapologetically. I’ve been judged for it for years too. And yet women are who I most rely on to understand why I do the things I do. I can say it week after week on here like a broken record. And the wrong people repeat it back in the wrong order. Maybe they don’t even know this exists. Women do. And that’s the easter egg I care the most about at the end of the day. Because I care about all of you. And you know who I care about the most. It’s all love. But let’s be transparent about this for the sake of posterity. I’m saving all of it for you. <3 Tim

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symbianosgames · 7 years

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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

The following is a shortened version of an article from the RetroNeo Games blog page.

As I write, it's February 28th, 2017. Last day of the month, second day of GDC and our Greenlight campaign for Sons of Sol is 15 days old, but was born prematurely. The original due date was approximately February 26th.

Author's note: Despite the title and opening paragraph, this blog post isn't a gripe! Valve have every right (and it's been long overdue) to make changes to their submission process. We just happen to be caught out by the situation and are sharing our findings.

Red Light for Greenlight

As I'm sure we all know, on Friday February 10th, Valve announced that it would be shutting down Steam Greenlight forever "this Spring" and replacing it with Steam Direct, a system that does away with the community involvement in favour of a verification process "similar to setting up a bank account" and then a recoupable fee for each game submitted. We all also know that this process involves an as-yet-unknown fee that could be "as high as $5,000".

Given that Greenlight costs only $100 to get on, any small studio who had hoped to get on Greenlight any time soon is now rushing onto the platform - usually underprepared!

Our game

Briefly, Sons of Sol is a 2D space combat sim where you decide how and when to fight. Essentially we're taking the controls of Asteroids, and building a 90s-style space combat sim (think Wing Commander or TIE Fighter) on it. The progression is systems-driven with a light story. Think of the strategy layer of an XCOM game, with story dotted here and there.

You can get the demo for yourself here.

We're a very small team. I'm the lead developer, and Steve Gregan and Fred Mangan are part timers on the art and audio, respectively.

How this all affects RetroNeo Games

Our plan was to launch the game's Greenlight campaign to coincide with our new 'vertical slice' demo that would show off our home carrier, some characters, new sound design and music, and a bit more gameplay. This same demo would be ready for GDC for any publisher or press meetings we might stir up.

But with Valve's announcement that Greenlight would be gone during Spring (when I was in school in Ireland, I was taught that Spring was Feb - Apr, so we were already in it by my count) the team had a quick emergency meeting over Skype on Saturday and decided to shift focus to doing a Greenlight trailer and page, sprucing up the website, and launching by Monday. The trailer would basically now just be the one we'd released just weeks before but with a Greenlight logo at the end. Previously the plan had been to shoot new footage from a playthrough of a newer demo and put that on the trailer.

We chose to move up our timeline because we knew that hundreds of other developers would be thinking the same way as us, and that the Greenlight servers would be absolutely flooded in a matter of days. We were only a few weeks from our intended launch anyway, so we figured we had an advantage in terms of the quality of the submission that we could make.

It's a pity because I've done a lot of research in the past year (one 2016 Gamasutra blog stood out in particular) as to how to maximise your launch on Greenlight, and I was eager to put it all to use. This included having a playable demo ready, having YouTubers play said demo, try to get press to talk about it, translate the page into multiple languages, and hook up Google Analytics.

Now, just two weeks shy of accomplishing all of this, we had to go off half-cocked. Seeing the green light turning red, we basically had to rev the engine to try and make the amber, because the red might be too expensive to... eh.. this metaphor is falling apart, sorry!

So, without translations, a press mailing list, a MailChimp campaign, or a demo, we launched. About the only thing we did get from our list (because it was the quickest thing to set up) was the ability to take some preorders on the site to prove to certain legal bodies that we're "in commerce". They're still available at the time of writing, discounted, but limited in quantity.

How have we done so far?

In the first week we got about 300 votes and made it 18% of the way to the top 100. There's no specific target to meet, but thousands of votes and being in the top 100 is certainly desirable (and normal for games getting through in the past).

The problem is that now, after a second week, we've gotten almost no further!

The reason we wanted all our ducks in a row was to maximise the 'yes' votes while Steam's algorithms were still sending natural traffic to our site. Just by launching, you'll get a certain number of referrals from normal Greenlight users browsing, but after that you're on your own to generate your voting traffic. In normal circumstances, the Steam algorithms send people your way for a few days.

Our natural traffic died off in under 12 hours!! That's a measure of just how many other new Greenlight games were going up just 3 days after Valve's announcement. At that stage we were closer to 200 votes. The next 100 votes we got during the first week were basically from friends and colleagues through Facebook and Twitter shares.

I've heard similar stories from many developers who are struggling with the campaign because they were forced to launch early and are just drowned out by the noise. The Steam algorithms just aren't sending people to your game's site for as long right now, and that's a big deal!

Below are our results from the first 24 hours.

What did we try?

Since the launch I've been working every day for at (the very) least 12 hours, but not so much on the Greenlight campaign. Getting the demo ready for GDC to wow press and publishers was still a better priority - after all, nobody knows how many Greenlight votes you really need anyway, nobody knows when Greenlight is actually shutting down, and we had appointments scheduled with people who wanted to see a new build of the game. So, after launch and until yesterday, a new demo was priority number one!

I suspect that once Valve stops taking new submissions for Greenlight, they'll probably let through a lot of what remains in the following weeks, though they have kept their options open by declaring that anyone who has paid the $100 Greenlight fee and who doesn't get through will be reimbursed. So, who knows?..

That doesn't mean that I've ignored Greenlight either, though. Not at all! Over the coming days I ran a tentative €5 Facebook and €5 Twitter ad campaign (well targeted, with video) to see what happened. We got about a dozen clicks total and about 2 new votes. So, probably not worth investing too heavily there, then. Not for votes, anyway.

One issue is that you have to log in to Steam (assuming the ad-clicker even has an account) and often have to be emailed a security code for a 'new device' (so sick of doing that!), so anyone clicking a mobile or browser link would not likely be logged into Steam, and probably wouldn't bother doing so.

I got the Greenlight page translated into Russian, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese and German. Even though the algorithms had stopped sending us traffic, I hoped that a new language detected might send us users from those territories. It didn't. Absolutely nothing! So I decided not to proceed with French, Spanish and Italian.

I also contacted about two dozen Greenlight Collections groups. I especially targeted groups interested in space games. We did get included in five collections, but I saw no corresponding increase in traffic to us, unfortunately.

What now?

Well, with the GDC demo complete, I now get to turn my attention to contacting proper press outlets and YouTubers. I'm a big fan of grassroots marketing and using your own networks, but having tapped the social circles and developers that I know already we seem to have reached the limits of what that can offer us - namely, 320 votes. Note: On Feb 28th, a batch of games must have been put through, as for virtually the same amount of votes we have now jumped to 25% of the way towards the top 100.

Contacting press and YouTubers is a fairly low probability activity, but one good bit of coverage can do wonders! That's now the stage that we're at to try and get more votes. You're commercially dead if you aren't doing this anyway.

I have confidence in our game, our trailer, our demo, and our team, but we're fighting in an oversaturated market, most definitely. Add to that that this is the week of GDC and the press (including Gamasutra) have even less column inches than normal to spare for Greenlight and indie demo stories.

To Conclude

This has felt like a bit of a weird blog to write. I often write about the industry somewhat abstractly, but I'm right in the middle of this one, and it's an incomplete story. Greenlight isn't gone yet, we haven't yet been accepted for or refused press coverage, and nobody, including Valve, knows much about Steam Direct yet.

I do hope I can do a positive follow-up to this blog in the near future. Until then, I can just thank you for reading, ask that you vote for us if you haven't yet, and consider sharing our Greenlight campaign with anyone that you think might be interested.

Thank you! Don't forget to try our free demo. You can download it from the Sons of Sol page.

Until next time..

#IFTTT #Blogger

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