Hello everybody.
First off, please let me apologize (again) for my latest absence. I did not intend for it to be so long, but life threw a great many terrible things my direction that I had to keep dealing with. I won't get into most of it, but I will touch on one briefly as it does tie in to my time as a creator on Milovana. Fair warning - This may get a bit personal, but if that's okay with you then it's okay with me.
Basically a few months ago I was disowned by my mother, who's the only family I ever really had any contact with. This ultimately led to the discovery that she suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and my upbringing was all kinds of fucked up as a result - mainly in terms of how I was prepared to handled adult life (Spoiler Alert: I wasn't). I know this sounds like the beginning of a sad story, but that's not what I want to get into here. For what it's worth, without my mother's immediate influence in my life, I've actually been doing better than I ever have before so no worries there.
As an adult child of a narcissist, I never even realized the extent of the baggage I was carrying. I've come to realize that some of my biggest issues stem from that baggage, and a lot of it affected me during my time working on Tease AI. When you have an Nparent, you learn to take care of their needs and wants at a moment's notice, as any hesitation invites a verbal onslaught of just how worthless you are. In the process, you take your own needs and push them aside until you lose sight of them altogether. Before you know it, you're an adult and you're running yourself ragged trying to see to everyone else's needs, putting an insanely high priority on them that nobody but a narcissist would ever actually expect.
In the early days of Tease AI, bug reports would fly in and I would be all over them. A lot of people made comments about how insanely fast I addressed bugs and how much work I put out in such a short amount of time. As much as I'd like to attribute that to an awesome work ethic, the truth is that just knowing something wasn't working right for someone - or even just that somebody wanted a feature that wasn't there - put me into a panic. Everything had to be addressed immediately, and I couldn't slow down or say that I needed a break. That kind of talk was dangerous growing up, and as an adult I just never realized it was something I could identify and confront.
If you've been involved in Tease AI in any capacity, you've already seen the end result of that a couple times. I start getting overwhelmed, but I can't allow myself to "fail" anyone expecting things of me. So I push and I push until the bottom comes out. Then I can't even bring myself to even come online anymore. So a week or two passes, and I try to tell myself that it hasn't been that long, I can still come back and say "Damn sorry, I just needed that break. Welp, back to work!
". But nope, my upbringing rears its ugly head again and I can't feel anything but this fear that everyone is going to be pissed at me and unforgiving. And it's certainly not because of the way anyone's ever acted. I've felt nothing but encouraged and supported by the Milovana community, but the fear has always been so deep in my psyche that it didn't make a difference.
Well, identifying the root cause of that fear (and a therapist who actually gives a fuck)
does make a difference. Ever since being no contact with my mother, I've been able to see that just because she was a monster doesn't mean the world is filled with them. I can see the source of the ridiculous expectations I've put on myself, and now I can see the path out from under them. I can realize that people don't expect anything from me except to work on my own terms, regardless of how much (or little) work that actually entails.
So what's the point of all this? Well, I guess this is my declaration that with Milovana itself now poised to come back from the brink stronger than ever, I intend to do the same. I miss working, I miss creating and I feel that I'm especially suited for it on Milovana. There's some people I need to reach out to here, and I need to get my bearings again with everything. But once I get settled there's some things I would like to start doing again:
- Figure out the state of Tease AI itself and facilitate continued development (including making it easier to set up initially)
- Work on actually getting Total Brat to a releasable state
- Finish the Secrets webtease (I've always wanted to do this, I just felt like I was obligated to only ever work on Tease AI since it wasn't completely stable or 100% accessible)
- Become more socially involved with the Milovana community again instead of just work, work, work
- Relax
So yeah. For those who are still interested in Tease AI, I just want to say I'm back. I'm finally in a place where I can get fulfillment out of the work I do instead of constant anxiety, and since I can recognize the source of those fears now, I feel confident in saying I'm not going to disappear again. I may not be a machine about it anymore, but I'll be here and doing what I do.
If anyone has any questions about getting Tease AI set up, or anything I can help them with in general, please let me know. If there's anything you want to advise or suggest about the current state of the program, please let me know as well. I know several people have been working on it in my absence, and I want to thank them for everything they've done to keep it going. I'll have to touch base with everyone to see how I can fit back into development, as they've been responsible for a majority of it for a good while now.
Thanks again to everybody who's been with me on this ride. I'm back and I'm ready to keep it going.
