I’ve been working on my game Repatriate Me! Here’s a funny video of a glitch.

Here’s another video of my game when there’s a working health system and health meter in it, unfortunately the bat kills him too quickly!

Anyway it’s been fun to work on. I clearly need to add more health points, or make the health bears vanish/change incrementally. But I was working on it at the end of the day yesterday before I went to the train station. So I didn’t have time to dig in and figure out how to alter it. But I feel if I divide the bears into quarters, I might have enough health points to actually get somewhere in the game. I also want to animate the bat so it’s wings are moving. I think it would look better, and the rat is animated already. It has it’s little running pattern. I need to ultimately add more bats and rats and extend the scene so there’s more places to see. Also his animations aren’t playing through properly still, so that needs fine tuning.

I’m doing good although I did a bunch of ridiculous things today so far. Went to a class talk a week early. Went to my doctor’s office two hours early. Ended up on a broken streetcar and had to walk from Yonge street. I am in a good mood though, I did my STI tests and got a medication upped and my doctor sent a request for an MRI again. My liver is doing a thing and I guess they need to see what it is doing. I also am happier that more things are working in my game. I want to have something working of this level so that people can play it. I need to make a couple title card scenes. Like an opening credit and an end credit.

I really want an animation of the player falling into a box, but I’m not sure how to do that. I might have to make a scene where he’s just falling. I don’t know! I just need a few seconds to tell that part of the story.

My solo show is still on at the Doris McCarthy Gallery at University of Toronto Scarborough Campus. So if you are in the GTA you should go see it, it’s over on March 29th, when Wanda Nanibush and I do a talk at 2pm.

So yeah what else is going on? I am traveling next month to a festival I’ve wanted to show in for a long time. So that’s exciting. I got a few days in another city I have never spent time in except for being in the airport. And I have tickets to do things there so that’s fun too. I’m happy to know there are still places to show that aren’t in the United States.

I get a lot of work in the United States. So there’s been some ramifications from the Trump administration to some work things down there. Not being able to go is one (even before they started talking about banning trans people from getting Visas, I had already decided not to travel to the USA just based on seeing where things are going), but also an org doing an event in Washington at the Kennedy Center had to find a new venue. I’m showing Indigiqueer Youth videos there, and there were some drag performances. So yeah, that sucks. Technically it was not cancelled, but we were told we couldn’t present what we wanted to, which is the same thing. Anyway yeah that was an issue. The org is Crushing Colonialism and they could use donations if you are inclined to support Indigiqueer/2S artists and thinkers etc.

I’m also just constantly working on multiple projects, teaching a class on Decolonial Indie Video Games, busy busy.

I’ve got a new theory about intrusive thoughts. I was talking about it with my therapist, that I think there are energies that have information. Like there are ideas and memories and feelings kind of floating around on their own, and more sensitive people pick up on them. Because I know some of the stuff going on in my head is not coming from me. It’s like, something else out there, or multiple things really. I know I have picked up feelings of other people who had something terrible happen to them in the location I was at. It makes me wonder a lot about mental health and how much is really just being too sensitive and not having blocking or shielding on some of this outside stuff. Not like “OH she’s manic because she’s possessed” or something like that. I just think there are disembodied thoughts and feelings and memories. And some of it is really old. But when I was talking to my therapist about intrusive thoughts I said it was like there was a current of trauma out there. Like, just this weird shitty awful stuff that people connect to once in a while by accident. Not that they do those things, just that those energies float around all the time as thoughts and feelings. I think trauma makes a huge impact on energy like that.

But I also think love impacts energies. It’s just I guess when love energies are around no one complains about them, because an intrusive thought about love is like, happy sexy daydreams, or feeling happy, or any number of pleasant feelings. Why would you complain about feeling good?

Unless you are me and complain about being worried happiness is mania. Oh god that’s the worst, to be suspicious of my own happiness.