Lou Roth
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devlog #34, the great yonder smacked me in the face like a wet trout
🕑 Added 2025-01-07 17:54:28 +0000 UTCIn manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum. It was my very symbolic thought as I turned the key to my new apartment. Nothing but the final words of Mary Queen of Scotts, before her execution, felt fitting enough to ease this transition. It translates to into thy hands, o Lord, I commend my spirit.
And that's basically how these past weeks have been. I tossed myself into the riptide of life, and let it take me. There was the whole ordeal of getting stuff for the apartment: ex was atrocious at sharing the things we've spent over a decade accumulating, my lawyers brow quirked; I am still living with just a mattress on the floor, but I thankfully have a temporary desk and my old computer back, along with some knick-knacks, which translates to returning the new computer and getting more money to buy some actual furniture as soon as I find what I want and as cheap as it gets. Christmas came and went with sparkles and fizz, and I had a great time, and as soon as I could, I read through the entirety of ouro (at the end of a binge of comforting classics, hah!), and then sat down for my very first writing session as a free woman.
It went to hell. Comparison, inadequacy, the cringe, the joy, the memories. I went through it all.
I spent hours blinking tears away for how... strange... I had felt about writing when with my ex, especially at the end. When I reached the end of book one, it felt like the end of all things. Even before that, the slow, whimpering end of an era. How it was based in a sort of existential dread that only bred more and more of the same. How I turmoiled with writers block when all I really needed was to shake my own shoulders and point at the fire I had contained (but raging) around me. I had a hard time shaking the feeling, or brushing off the soot, as it were, and ended up being very cross with the whole thing. I had a short bout of let's just chuck this whole thing into the sea and go into hiding. Again. Thankfully, again, I did not do that. I celebrated new years instead. And then, I tried, again. And again, after crying and crying and thinking it was all lost because the past had its grimy prints all over it. I so desperately wanted to start fresh. With everything.
...Is that not familiar? Is it not the entirety of the pathfinders underlying ethos, to want it all gone, to crave the blank slate?
The rush of monstrosities beyond the faraway trees is starting to dwindle; a few hours ago it was loud and right here, the howling and growling and barking tearing through every muffling barrier it meets.
When I channeled that feeling, oh. The words shot out of me like a fire-hydrant gone rogue. For one night. I haven't been able to recreate it, but the effort is ever ongoing. I have moments of inspiration, of deep work, and then endless stretches of nothing. Thing is, I am entirely unmoored. Call me Ishmael. Some days all I have energy for is to walk my sweet little nana and stare at the horizon, while this pit of dread churns and churns in my gut until it explodes with the centrifugal force, spewing grief like a pulsar. What the hell have I gotten myself into. I have upended my entire life, without any secured job, or secured future. I have a dog with intense separation anxiety (and a me, also with intense separation anxiety) which makes just going to the shops a whole ordeal. I have so little money left in my savings that I wake in the middle of the night, hyperventilating. I have enrolled in a new bachelors in university and while I am super excited for that, I have chosen a field that is very competitive (museeums, to shorten it. Archivist, worst come to worst.), and living on a student budget when I turn THIRTY FUCKING TWO just now, this friday, I--------
My hands are shaking just bringing this all up. I am taking it step by step, but when all those steps seem to be happening on the wobbly, unsecured tightrope of life, you can surely imagine the cadence of them. Scrambling. On all fours. I'm shaky and devastatingly insecure. I don't know when it'll pass. Some days I wake with such optimism it takes my breath away. I take a bath, I hang out with friends, I talk to the dev that is almost finished (oh, right. These devlogs are supposed to be about ouro... bear with me. It and me, work in tandem) with the UI and I weep with joy. Three years of hardship have amounted to something I am proud of, although there is MUCH left to do, it truly feels like the endgame for book one. How insane is that. I wish I could just squeeze my eyes shut real tight and wish upon a star, and the finished product would just lay itself in my awaiting palms like a leaf twirling from a tree. Alas, it won't, no matter of how much I pout about "it's just this little thing I have left to do" because the little thing I have left to do is a massive undertaking of not only editing words, but coding it and making it accessible and writing missing paths and testing it and redoing the stats and BLEH. SO MUCH!!!! I try not to think too much about the scope of it. I don't even know what to say in these devlogs sometimes, it all feels so repetitive (yes I am still working on the same thing, in the same way, life is lifing around me, yada yada ya).
My writing sessions consist of me just calming myself for twenty minutes, before going, literally: sentence by sentence copy, pasting; rewriting, adding, subtracting. Working paragraph by paragraph into the new software. Some days, I have worked on entirely new sections. Some other days, I go word by word, leaning on what is already written.
Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast.
And so, it unfurls. I'm currently at the point of rewriting the first meeting with Id + trying out another branching path where the meeting at the hedge instead happens in your now scuffed cabin. This path plays out if you refuse Id, and conquer the blades that attempt to murder your house and take you with them. All the other paths are still staying (And. I have finished another path that is entirely secret, owing to the namesake of the story. Wink.), because I truly enjoy the richness of branching paths right at the start of the story, and how they color your pathfinder for the story to come. Here's some fragments of the intrusion path:
There is a sharpness in the air from the aftermath of yesterday, resting at the back of your neck with the weight of an executioners blade. You bow to it, head in your hands. Despite the passage of years, there are always debts that come due. What is the endgame? Where is the marker? Your fingers curl around your scalp before you summon the urge to rise— and when you do, it is with a slow stretch of bones aching under the weight of centuries lived. Centuries lost.
[...]
The forest outside stirs—a languid, distant sigh, like the breath of a dying god. For a moment, you seize it, cradling it in your chest and willing it to still, and it does: a second, taught.
A breath, held.
The moment passes before you can savor it. The world rushes back into its restless motion, the water in the river beside your cabin resumes its eternal movement, its ever rippling onward.
What is the endgame? Where is the marker?
[...]
Idhe hums. You know idhe will come through your door, not the window. idhe's not a creature, but a idman. A point of pride.
A familiar dance.
[...]
The world was supposed to stay still.
It had promised you that peace.
You growl.
"Oh," titters idren from the kitchen. "Impressive. Sent a few dragonflies from your porch."
[...]
They’re here. [idren] stands.
And you—well, you stand there in the middle of the hall, stern, as the light catches the edges of your thoughts, splintering them into a chaotic kaleidoscope of unwillingness. Somewhere amongst them, in prismatic splendor, you find shards of something different, beautiful for the way they resist the conformity of the rest: Inevitability. Hope. Too bright to look at directly; easy to ignore.
It knocks on the door. You return to reality, to the cool metal of the handle as you twist it open. The river outside ripples, indifferent. As it always does.
See you soon! xx
Comments
honeylou
woah, I 🥹 I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you, for saying that, for the support... I will be clinging to your words when the day is dark. Thank you so much 💖
honeylou
🥹 squeezing you back so ardently!!!!! Thank you so much for your always kind and heartfelt words 💖💖 putting them in my heart locket.
d
Although I am a virtual (literal + figurative) stranger, I am so proud of you. You are grabbing on with both hands! What more could one ask of themselves? It is so hard to begin that process and you’re already there baby. Come what may, you have crossed the threshold and all that stretches before you is the rest of YOUR life. For you, by you, made with your own two hands (and the help of a few paws I’d imagine). I have been so deeply touched by your writing since the first time I read Ouro and somehow am even more touched by your heart and everything you’ve articulated here!! Truly willing incredible, wonderful things for you MWah 🫶🏻
Wilvarin_nz
Lou! Have I told you how proud I am of you??.... Well I *am* so, so incredibly proud of you - not just for the absolutely amazing progress you're making with Ouro but even more so for how brave you are in forging ahead, step by unsteady step, despite the uncertainty! You're taking the storms life's throwing at you and turning it into something absolutely incredible for yourself. (thought I'm going for the lemons and lemonade here, didn't you? HA!) It's ok to feel unsure, to doubt and stumble - call it the growing pains. What's important, you're doing it! Step by step - you're making things happen. For yourself - no one else! And this is amazing! All my love and squeezy hugs for you!
