Category Archives: Logs

E-Begging Again

Please help me make it another month. I’m going to have a job by the first of the month, but I’ll need work pants and non-slip shoes. I still have bills I need to pay, and in all likelihood the start of the school year is going to be quite brutal.

My Paypal, Venmo, and Cashapp are all the same @ackasi

My Ko-Fi is still up and running, if you’re in the snail mail tier, I should have things sent out by the end of the month.

Every dollar that I get goes to paying my rent and utilities first, then goes into my debt or purchasing necessities I cannot purchase on EBT. Support from earlier this month let me buy shampoo and conditioner.

Intergrations and Updates: Log-06042024

A shorter write up, largely for the purpose of communication. I won’t be posting directly on Tumblr very often, as I intend to use my site to its full capacity, which includes integration status. Everything from live blogging wrestling, to my personal posts, to articles I write, etc will at some point come up. My sharing of posts on Tumblr is semi-automatic, with consideration for my larger and smaller posts, but keeping some of the smaller stuff, like visual updates and site updates at large within the actual site. The post sharer I’m using is pretty well designed, and will allow for appropriate tagging and markup with HTML elements.

On my personal site, you will find a much more active place of discussion for what I’m working on, what I’m interested in, and what I’m doing. In pretty much every case, I will communicate on my website, but less so on Tumblr itself.

If you’ve visited my site before, you know I also have a feed that shares my relogs and anything else I share, it should avoid my own posts, but if it does not, I’ll be editing that.

Last but not least, please take the time to check any of the resources I’ve shared both on my website and on my blog for donation and action you can take to help those around us, see Gaza Funds for underfunded and verified funds.

Cry For Changes: Log-03252024

Typically, I wouldn’t be public about the detailed aspects of the downturns for my mental health. While I open myself up and whittle away at the vast and complex state of my being under the current state of the world and my own unique health experiences. I’m turning 22 this year, and this is a cry for help.

Tomorrow, according to the publishing date, is my birthday. I’ll be officially older than my mother was when she had me. The fact that she was around my age when I came into being makes this entire experience, all things considered, even worse.

I’m sick. I continue to be sick. I am writing this partially because I took off of work today because I cannot tomorrow. I shouldn’t have taken the day off. I’m barely going to make my rent, I had to ask for help with my internet bill. Once I pay my bills, I will have almost no money in my bank account. At this point in my life, I am dependent on my diminishing scholarships and student loans to pay for my basic living expenses, the generosity of my retired father when he can afford to loan me a couple of hundred bucks. Every time I see my bank account balance drop, I feel like vomiting. Picking up medication, going to the store, feeding myself every day, asking for more needles for my HRT because I’m never given enough, begging for coverage because my heart is beating in my chest so hard my bedroom starts spinning and not getting an answer.

I keep asking myself what the point of this is.

I am filled with so much fucking love.

I’m in a time in my life where some of the most vital relationships I’ve ever had are the ones I hold now. Overwhelming love for my lover and the friends who have shaped my life in irreplaceable ways. Like hands that morph and shape wet clay. It is through these means of connection and love for the sheer volume of humanity I feel that I feel compelled to stay, to hold on, to let myself change and be changed.

I cannot ignore however the ever present violent throbbing in my chest. I break out in a sweat at the suggestion of movement. I rely on the likes of my mask and other sensory equipment in public to hide my discomfort and suffering. My constant, obsessive fear for at least the past few months that I will crack my head against the floor or counters in my apartment, and the only concern from the people who see me in real life is whether I’ll be showing up for my shift and turning my homework in. If I died, it would take until I didn’t pay the bills for anyone except the people miles away from me to notice. I am perpetually fearful of either letting myself slip away or losing control of my health and losing myself and the people I love in it.

I was supposed to graduate this year. I feel an eternal pressure to have things together, not because of the state cultural expectations on work and the typical adult life, but because of the sheer instability I’ve lived in all my life. One thing goes wrong, the balance shifts, and an entire system can collapse. I’ve seen collapses. I’m writing about collapses. I have borne witness to so many physical collapses on a personal scale. I have felt the shattering of everything I knew so distinctly in a moment of utter despair and especially medical collapse. I am 22 years old and my terror of dying is so exceptional I do not think I have looked towards the grander thrills of life in quite some time, outside the exceptional fantasy.

I want to live old. One of the few things I’m proud of, convincing my father to stop one of his last damaging vices with cigarettes. The woman who raised me died of a heart attack in 2017 after ignoring the signs of symptoms for several weeks, and I was one of the last people to spend personal time with her alive. I can barely remember the trip that we took, which initially showed the signs of her illness. I cannot remember her voice.

I am consistently pained by the state of the world. I am an angry person. I desperately hope to see better days. I am working with people and communities to support my own life, to make things better for not only myself, but the people I know and don’t know.

When I began writing this I was feeling an intense despair, I was tasked with seeking out my support systems in between finishing this now. I am fighting to change things. I will fight to make things better. I am turning 22, and I will keep living. I dream of a long life. I dream of a life free from the horrors of capital and the mechanisms of suffering we are all put through.

I love you.

All Things Left Behind: Log-03072024

For the last several years, when you entertain your interests in fields like video games, media, art, journalism; you’ve gotten used to seeing layoffs, haven’t you?

I’ve given a lot of my history with the web out in different contexts, though I find it important to give everyone just a little more. I was barely living, only a little over a year old when a few guys in a shitty apartment bedroom started their independent entertainment website. As of now, I’ll actively be outliving it.

I have a complex history with Rooster Teeth and the associated artwork and media the company released. Of course, I have a complex history with a lot of my presence online, as my access to the computer came very early in childhood, but Rooster Teeth may be the gold standard of complex feelings.

As of yesterday, announced by their CEO, Rooster Teeth is shutting down after 21 years of operation, and more than 150 extremely skilled people are now losing their jobs. I’ve had the joy of getting to interact, even if passively, with some of these people whether they worked at the company in the past or in the present, and I grieve for them deeply. I hope, above all else, that everyone is able to get back on their feet financially and creatively.

In reflection on this particular loss, I thought it would be nice, as one last goodbye to reflect on some of my earliest moments in online communities, fandom, and digital creation that led me to where I am now. I may reference people, not by name, who I interacted with at the time though I keep close to very few of the people I met in my time within the community.

A Place of Your Own

One of the earliest things I learned on the web in some part due to the early Rooster Teeth model was having your own place on the internet, that you control, is a must. I did not participate in any internet forums out of discomfort for a majority of my childhood, however where I was not speaking, I was reading. The Rooster Teeth site, when comments and forums were available were some of the first times I learned of people like me.

The foundation of online presence would drive me to other places, of course, but I took the standard of control and ownership to heart the older I got and the more corporate the web became. In reflecting on not only the community aspect and the corporate aspect of Rooster Teeth and the people within these spaces, I realize now that some of these spaces were incredibly insular, and cut people off from other systems of support and creative exploration for the sake of fitting in with the zeitgeist and culture established by the company and community. I noticed this primarily with artists, whether they were fan artists, hopeful but naive workers, or professionals who saw Rooster Teeth as a dream job.

When looking back, we of course see that the culture of adoration and idealization of Rooster Teeth’s work culture was not healthy, for both workers and fans. People across departments over two decades of the company’s existence have spoken out over poor treatment, crunch, and mismanagement. I believe in listening to workers, both past and present, who have expressed their own mix feelings and faced their darkest days while working for them. Solidarity to the workers, you deserved better. Solidarity to the contractors and freelancers. Solidarity to the unpaid members of moderation teams. Solidarity to all those, past and present, who were hurt in the process of Rooster Teeth’s continued existence.

In moving forward, learning from Rooster Teeth is a case in sustaining healthy spaces to harbor true creativity. Where management came out of a decade of internet and pre-internet culture left a clear grain of ignorant and harmful ideologies, especially for those in the company who left under duress of harassment and bigotry. It is on the surviving creatives to form new spaces truly meant for us, and meant for establishing communities where a longstanding silent tolerance for these legacies of toxic internet environments can no longer exist.

Inspiration

Rooster Teeth and its community gave me many things. My first bouts of digital artwork I was sincerely proud of came out of my last few years being around the community. Experimentation with color, line work and texture in my early work (such as the stained-glass inspired series) would be formative for what made my art mine. Though I did not share much of my work until far later, I taught myself editing software, audio editing, and basic video editing because I thought maybe, because of places like Rooster Teeth, that kind of work was an option for me. Because of the sheer number of projects you could see at one time at Rooster Teeth, for a budding creative mind, there was a lot to be curious about.

Digital art of a stained glass logo of 1551, a band led by Jeremy Dooley and Spencer Crewe. The image features bright textured greens, oranges and yellows.

I find the biggest inspiration effect Rooster Teeth had on me would come to their various forms of gaming news production, in particular, the work of Ashley Jenkins (Burns), Meg Turney, Kdin Jenzen, Brian Garr, Bruce Greene, Lawrence Sonntag, Autumn Farrell and many other people I am likely forgetting, for which I apologize.

My introduction to tech and games journalism through much of Ashley’s early work, Inside Gaming, The Know, and other analysis was likely the sparkle in my eye leading me down the path of journalism long before I ever worked in an sound booth, radio station, or newspaper.

While the state of the industries (games, journalism, news media) are frankly, a hellscape right now. I would not have the skills I have now without seeing Ashley roam the floors of an E3, or talking to Brian about journalism when my career was just starting. I do not know where my passions would have gone without this early love in reporting and research.

Community

To close, I center my thoughts on the people I met.

I tend to be a bit of a recluse online, interacting and vanishing out of fear of my own incompetence and struggle to communicate. I admire from afar, and I had plenty of admiring to do.

My first friend group I made in the RT community was also the first time I met another trans person my age. I was young, confused, angry with my body and existence, and through community, I found other queer people who enjoyed the same thing I did.

I took up positions, for a time, sustaining community spaces myself, moderating was one of the earliest community positions I took, and in that I forced myself from a young age to learn the complexities of what that took. While I owe it to Bria Davis and Blaseball for my interest in community management, communications and the advancement of my moderation skills, learning as a child to understand and care for the different people around me was because of the Rooster Teeth community, and is also why I left the community and stopped engaging with the company’s work when I felt their values did not meet mine.

I’ve lost connection with most of the people I found myself close to in the years I was in the community, some my choice, some by the nature of the internet. I’ve keep some of my online identifiers largely the same, I vaguely recognize people through memories, art, writing, and nicknames.

One of my best friends is still someone I know through RT, and ironically, in the wake of Rooster Teeth’s end, I’m learning that people I met far later in life have their own complex connections to it too.

I said goodbye in the social sense several years ago, not acknowledging the past years of engagement in favor of moving forward. Now, I think it’s nice to say goodbye, and hope that what blooms out of this loss is something better for every single person who was touched in some way by what was the industry juggernaut that was and is Rooster Teeth.

If you, like me, spent time in the community, now is a good time to seek out the people who created what you loved, especially those who may have been behind the camera, and find a way to support them.

Overheating: Log-02222024

I’ve always grown up somewhere hot. Every summer, the heat would climb until the swamp cooler’s effectiveness would be diminished by physics itself.

I don’t tan like my siblings or my grandparents, not as much. My grandparents both had and have beautiful, wrinkled tanned skin from years of outdoor work, spending their time outside. They used to talk about the garden they had, or the days they would hike canyons. I remember my grandmother taking me out to the desert a lot when I was younger, and sometimes she’d remember to slather me in sunblock, but I think I found my appreciation for the outdoors, regardless of the heat, because of the vast open space the rocks, cliffs, and dunes offered me then.

I have some distinct high heat memories, like the summer before my freshman year, when I surprised by family by also joining the marching band. Though I had covered myself in sunscreen, though my grandpa warned me to wear long sleeves instead (a sensible, logical, and effective way to protect your skin from the sun); I came home with my skin covered in reddish amber, and shoulders covered in blisters everywhere where my tank top straps could not protect. I distinctly remember the process of pain I went through during my first band camp, largely because for the most part, I was the only one to be trained in my position; the longer I worked, the more I embraced the pain, dealing with the blisters and accepting the friction as my arms and flag glided through the air and around my body. For me, heat meant pain, and heat meant action.

Another one of these memories was the move in process going into my freshman year of college. Down several family members compared to those summer days four years ago, it was understandable that my (grand)dad could not help me with the extensive move. I got help from a local friend I haven’t talked to in a long time, with the two of us laying out, appreciative of the broken AC that sent out air much cooler than it was supposed to. It was 113 degrees outside that day, and by the end I was shuddering and dripping with sweat, but it was the most free I had felt in months. I opened my blinds in the room I would be staying in, and accepted the sun in full.

I’m reflecting on heat, specially overheating, because of my ongoing illnesses and exhaustion. Where I am now, we were lucky to get a bit of cold in the early winter, and rain at the start of the year to reasonably drop the temp a bit, but this place, every part of it, isn’t exactly designed for safety in mind.

I’ve been feeling guilt about a particular issue I’ve been having. I got quite comfortable in environments by myself. Furthermore, I suspect that, in terms of my academics, a part of my unease in many of my classrooms is related to a lot of torment and harassment. When you are picked at and fucked with in a contained space, it turns you into something tense and always aware. Before I was on my recent medication, and while I was younger, I was often the one separated from the classroom, by choice, or by force because of my discomfort, instability, and outbursts. Sitting in a classroom desk, I feel myself get hotter and hotter, unable to focus on instruction. Every sound, noise, cough, squeak and scratch makes my skin crawl. If I get touched. I panic.

This was me in childhood. I recognize the patterns I took to keep myself stable in those environments, removing myself, extracurriculars that kept me out of the traditional classroom, the lunches I spent hiding. Those were sensible coping mechanisms I manipulated and begged for to my teachers and peers, and because I was a child who could not receive mental health support, that was the best they could do for me.

So I find myself in college now, and I thought I’d have far more control over my stability within my existence and education.

This was, unfortunately, an ill planned thought.

When local cases of COVID-19 were located in my county, soon things shut down, my grades were okay enough for the most part as a senior in largely supplemental classes that I didn’t need to do much, and my college registration, instead of being a grueling trip for an elderly man and his disabled kid, was a simple few hours of online, direct communication and getting my classes situated.

Even though I was physically on campus in 2020, the campus was a dead zone. I lived alone at the end of my hall, and I loved it. My requirements for the day that saw me out in public were the essential matters, and my job. This was arguably the semester I had the best attendance in my entire academic career, following the intensification of my symptoms beginning in my sophomore year of high school. Whenever I go back to my camera roll from that time, around March 2020 to May 2021, I see a person who’s entirely different from the person writing this, even though for the most part we’re the same. He was on testosterone, seeing changes, taking classes he enjoyed, spending time alone.

I differed in the summer of 2022, I don’t need to talk much about the in between time, because it’s a period I’m still examining for my own wellness, issues, and trauma.

I’m writing now, I am on testosterone, but I am not seeing changes other than the way I sweat and getting dizzy in the heat. Not only that, but I’m taking classes I am far more passionate about, but struggle to attend consistently, and instead of enjoying my time alone, I am fucking desperate for it.

There’s at least several things I could pinpoint. I mentioned before my anxiety and unease in physical classrooms full of people, though I think this is only a part of the problem. COVID-19 isolation was such a vital part of keeping my family safe due to a number of reasons, I continue to keep myself as educated as I can on the ongoing pandemic concerns due to my months of reporting local, county, and reservation case and death numbers. Once I started having in person classes, mask mandates did exist at first, but that did not solve the classrooms with horrible ventilation and heating. In numerous classes, since returning, I have sat, unfocused, vibrating, trying desperately to not vomit back into my mask.

Any precautions my university once had for respiratory illnesses and infections is now gone. I have and continue to wear my masks. I have classes in a small window of time to accommodate for my mobility and my transportation schedule. Likewise, I changed my degree, so I wouldn’t be forced into classes with attendance policies so strict you’d have to hope someone in the class had gotten seriously ill and drop out in order to get off the wait list.

I’m not succeeding. The classes I sit in, their ventilation is worse, unless you’re able to maybe open a window. There is no restraint on disgusting behavior, getting coughed on out in the open from behind because no one covers their mouth anymore. Coming into a room, being the only one in a mask, where it’s already presumed I’m a student who’s sick and troublesome because of my accommodations submitted from the DRC two weeks in and the click of my cane (or eventually, I suspect soon, my walker.) I’m a student who will sit in your in person class praying the entire time I don’t catch a respiratory virus, or measles. While my professor lectures, I’m doing the math on the safest time to take my migraine medication, since I’m not sure the seed pain has grown enough yet for me to “justify” it.

I get stars in my vision, blinking hazy spots surrounded by blackish gray haze. There is a distinct tingle to the body, where you can feel the chill of your own sweat and electric stings firing off your nerves, my breath gets heavy, long, and slow.

I had to leave class again, and I’m skipping my second one too. I’ll go back to my job in a few hours, where the airflow, and the occasional ability to take a break outside, will keep me going till closing.

I want to be seen as a good student, as a good person. It’s not terror anymore, I haven’t felt driven by terror in a long time. I feel deliberately distant, like the exact kind of student the advisors and mentors and professors and administrators identity as lazy, uncaring, and wasting everyone’s time.

I think the way universities and schools often treat their students as a part of larger money making systems, and the way it is encouraged to dehumanize the student so that the most efficient teaching and grading can take place. Receiving an education, regardless of whether it’s post secondary education or vocational focused, still feels like my only way out, even though the demands of labor in this country continue to shrink in favor of capitalist gain at the cost of the people who commit the labor. Because I am not, and never will be, an optimal student for the system I’m in, and other systems I look at with a lot of melancholy, my ill-preparedness for the future is just more point of pain, stress, and obsession for me.

I want to love being in a classroom, I want to love school and the work I do. Instead, all I feel is heat. I feel invisible blisters and wounds in the places old scars lay, unstable hands taking minutes to type what takes an instant to come to my mind.

I am burning, and I am begging to be put out.



Introduction: Log-1282024

Changes

In an effort to be truthful, I am an inconsistent person. I struggle with consistency in every aspect of life. For every routine I set, and every list I make, things will fall by the wayside. I struggle in day to day basics, everything from the necessary to live to the things I am forced to do to survive in the state we live in.

Dead Signals, a namesake I’ve adopted over the last year is rooted in connection to my work in radio and analogue tech, and the long running social and cultural connections I have to death. I don’t really think of it as a grim thing, because the signals still exist, as long as people can recieve them.

I hope you’ll recieve my signals.

As for my other alieses online, I think I’ll be lovingly retiring the 15 year old namesake I’ve gone by since I started being somewhat social online. Ackasi was truly, just leters put together I like, and some shuffling of a namesake we hold, I made it when I was nine, I love it, but expect some effort of retirement. Tumblr is the only piece of social media I go by a different name (along with Discord) they are both blaseball references, I haven’t decided what I’ll do with those yet, if anything I’ll just intergrate my tumblr feed to my site as a permaqueue.

Over the next few months I inted to make this the place for my online presence.

What it means/Creativity

A part of my ongoing undergradute (and potentially graduate) research projects has been the inspection and understanding of online presence, communial accessibility and technological intergration with the arts. This is a formal way of saying I like being online, using tech, and creating things, and I want to help people learn to love these things.

I have experimented with a lot of options and intergrations with different apps, systems and formats, those familar with my work understand that I started actually quite young with the coding of HTML and theme intergration across blogging sites, Tumblr being the one I was most present on in social circles, with that.

I got really passionate about the aspect of retaining ownership and control over the data you create and presence you have at a young age, largely due to engagement online simply not being congruent with my ethical standards, and fearing retaliation both online and in real life, due to things like bullying, sexual harassment and invasions of privacy.

Later in social “fandom” spaces, where the engagement changed to being more about passing interests, creating interest works, staying long enough to see social complexities in tight knit groups, and witnessing a lot of uncomfortable things, I’ve been known to go “ghost” or wipe the slate clean in a sense, while I still hold friends from old friend groups, fandom spaces, creative projects, and connections, I use the word friend in a uh, probably unfair sense of the word, I don’t talk to a lot of people day after day, i have a tight knit group of friends and my partner, I think of people I care about in the online presence as people I do care for, or people who did effect me sincerely, and I want to understand how to connect to them.

People who know me more recently, since the Pandemic began and continues on, you know me because I was in Blaseball spaces, the enthralling pull of sports and horror, chance and creativity did not escape me and it most certainly spawned a greater interest in both archival, social curration, moderation, and again, online presence. This is not a place to dictate the experiences I went through, nor the ones I witnessed or heard second hand, though it certainly influenced my degree, ironically enough.

Since the Blaseball times, I also took on the depth of my facination of web design, notably intrigued by the Web Revival and Indie Web scene, I’ve coded my own Neocities site since Apr 22, 2022, and It’s time I announce I’m putting it to bed. The site, as it stands, will likely go offline sometime within the next month or so, though I will retain a hard copy on my harddrive I will save. The creative work on the site will survive, it will be ported over to this site in segmented subpages dedicated to hosting my writing, art, and various creative projects.

I am glad I took the leap into web design, I’m glad I was inspired by the Indie Web scene, though I cannot go without highlighting things from the insustainability communities like the Yesterweb faced, nor the considerable accessibility concerns Web-1.0 and early 2.0 revival culture brings to the internet. I undoubtedly contributed to that with early renditions (which no longer exist except for still screenshots, I’d have to search for) of my site, and my goal towards the end of life of my Neocities site, and the establishment of this one, has been accessibility. A part of the shift away from Neocities, is frankly, I’m not skilled enough yet at raw HTML, CSS, and Javascript to implement best practicies behind the scenes. There are things I am skilled at, like captioning and providing alternate text according to standards, and keeping my essentric taste in color to WCAG standards, but using WordPress, and having access to a greater bank of resources to facilitate making sure my work is accessible helps me. The interface I’m working in now allows me not only to port the work I do have easier than before, but it will make creating new work, both for personal and academic purposes, that much easier.

I will note, I did try utalizing a direct publishing tool in Obsidian Publish, and while that served a nice inbetween purpose for things I was writing between the mid point of last year and now, I simply want a consistent system for everything in one place. The Obsidian Publish site will also depreciate (though I will note that is the first place I’ve used the phrase Dead Signals) sometime in the next month or so, and the blog posts will be added to this site.

This experimentation, passioned by the creative in me, inspired by things like streamers, video makers, essayiests, tutorial makers, artists, musicians, programmers, game developers, poets, authors-far to many people to count, brings me to the point of wanting to document that inspiration and experimentation, my life and my art, first hand. I’ve been doing this for some time now, I want to make it mine.

With making a place for consistency, and presence, there is also the relevence of the academic and professional existence which is asked of us. I have complex feelings on art and labour, and the systems in which creatives are tasked with essentially marketing themselves, utalizing language principles, social, cultural, and contextual clues in different enviornments to appeal to whatever entity they are interfacing with. We do this, not so we can engage in the things we aspire for, we do this so we can follow a scheme set for us, fufilling labour requirements to contribute to a greater entity’s earnings. We recieve a fraction of those earnings as a result of our labour, though these greater entities could not survive without us.

In creating this site, I am committing myself to the terrifying act of unmasking myself. I imagine, through exploring this site, my ethics and principles, though they may be varied, inconsistent, and ever changing, are clear. A world without capitalism would see to it that the lives of people who struggle and suffer under the weight of these forces masks would be able to survive. I believe in striving for that world, I have the ability to demonstrate how that can be done.

What it means/Professionally

My first job was a florists assistant.

It’s true.

I would join my grandmother, age 12-13-14, and I’d slip in the back door of the corner store tourist shop that also served as the town and surrounding reservations’ premier flower and gift shop.

In the back of the building was where she worked, the helium station for the latex balloon station she hated, the rows of Halmark cards on the wall, the lounge area that sat the house plants reserved for the more conservative botanical gifts, the books of predesigned arrangements she rarely followed. Solid in the middle of the space was the walk in freezer, you could see the premade, slightly cheaper options, like prepped roses, nice vased tulips, and whatever was the relevant holiday pick. This time of year, summer rolling into fall, I remember the flowers being pink and warm. Inside the solid steel door, that’s where the work began, rows of different cooled flowers, prepped or wating to be prepped, sitting on standby, and on the rare occasion, an arrangement that hadn’t made it’s way to it’s destination.

After standing in the freezer for far to long according to her, I’d bring the bulk of our workload, white carnations and babies breath, for the sake of my favorite tedious project. She’d teach me how to make corrsages and butiners for one of the high school’s homecoming festivites; but not before informing me of the color scheme, blue and silver.

We would come home those nights with our fingers; I picked up bad habits from her withered hands, covered in blue dye, fine silver glitter, and fragments of tuul stuck to our clothes.

At the end of those few days, I’d get slipped 150, maybe $200 at most as an “under the table affair.” Ironically the first time I was likely underpaid for a creative job.

I tell this story first because I fall into a lot of my work by knowledge of others and happenstance, or an often annoying refusal to not ask the adults questions.

I started using the computer around the age of seven or eight, my mother was a web developer working in the music industry, my grandmother was writing a book using the desktop and got familar with publishing among many of her other creative persuits. I had a strong foundation of technical knowledge because when I was young, I wanted to learn what they were doing. I soon learned the word processor and paint tool when a few years before that I was writing and drawing comic books with my mom’s stolen art supplies. I consider my early time on the internet a little understated compared to my time offline. I loved writing things, and not saving them, playing with the computer interface and learning how each of the buttons worked. I was taught how to use a file system because the computer software we were running was one era behind what was in the school computer lab, and my god, did I use the school computer lab.

Along with personal access to technology, I was a student placed in classes that encouraged more hands on, technical based learning, and I had a fantastic teacher early on who introduced me to the world of robotics, which I participated in through high school. I mentioned I was a stubborn and often annoying child, I wanted to learn how things worked. If things could not function how they needed to, and in the expected way, I would get, to put it lightly, irate. I learned how to use the equipment my teachers were, to be honest, not trained to use. Arizona, where I live, is not exactly a leader in education across the United States, however I find that a largely ignored facet of this is how the education system here fails to provide technical based education that continues to build on a learners understanding. From the teachers, to the students, both through economic and instructional means, we are not given the tools to succeed.

I formed my path through this system in ways I was privleged to have, and ways that I had to fight for. In recognition of my own disiblities and struggles, there are things, within the current academic and professional systems I contribute to, which I struggle with greatly, I do not, at this time, feel like I have the tools to succeed.

In documenting my job history, I often took on shorter roles, spots of work as an editor for both video and audio, serving as the house sound and light controller for several local performances and events, a tutor here, a writer there. In school early on, you figure out that your skills are less something value as a service, but it’s something they view as an asset you owe them. For as many things I’ve been paid to do, I did a lot of unpaid labour from the ages of 12 to 18 that left varying effects on my mental, and in one case, physical health.

The most consistent, enjoyable, and well paying job I’ve held, which I will likely continue to contribute to on and off for a long time, is the job I held at my local radio station. I continue to go back and support the station either as a guest host, writer, editor, or educator, but I count my time there six years. I picked up my passion for journalism and my hate for local fiscal government action. I wrote and read daily live news reports for many mornings, afternoons, and evenings, and at one time I held the position of Communications Director. Since I started working at the station, every person who has worked there since has been trained by me. It’s a job I had a lot of love in with the routine, though it had it’s difficult moments. I’ve read obituries for family, loved ones, friends, and classmates. I, more often than not, was one of the first to know of a death besides the local hospital, mortitian, and family. I covered instances of mass death at the start of the pandemic, and the way the government failed my communities. I saw first a lot of local corruption and racism that I documented. Covering the news, that being the cycle of events relevant, important, timley, and interesting to your intended audience; is a nonstop job.

I fell out of love with journalism largely due to the moralizing of the industry within the United States despite interests of the industry going against the needs of the public, the consistent presence of ethical abandonment for monitary and disinformative gains along with a lack of care, and instances of disregard for my mental state and disibilites within my college’s Journalism school.

To capture the panorama of my work experience, I’ll be archiving segments of written work, such as articles, blog posts, news articles, production credits, and media. This work will be archives as original as dictated on the documentation date. This archival process will take place under fair use standards, with the archival materials including commentary along with context on what I provided to the given project.

Currently, I work in a job unrelated to any of the prior areas of interest I just demonstrated. I am fine with this. Though I continue to be interested in sustainable, supportive, long term creative work, the conditions of employment will continue to be complex, I again, intend to use this site to bridge the connections between my presense, form, creativity, and survival. If you want to employ me for a project, email me. If you want to support me as an individual, you can tip me. I am currently investigating and applying for grants and programs to continue my research and artistic endeavors.

A version of my resume in more tradional terms, along with a PDF copy of my condensed portfolio is avaliable upon email request.

For commission and self employment work, I continue to develop these offerings as they come, reach out to me at avery@deadsignals.love for more information.

A note on upkeep costs: As covered earlier, the depreciation of both Neocities and Obsidian Publish will save me some money, however everyting I create with DeadSignals is paid for my job earnings, academic funds, and generous support from peers, friends, loved ones, and family.

To close, as the year continues to march forward, so to will the way I engage online, and the way I commit to labour, the way I create and the way I intend to survive. I hope you will join me on this march.

If you recieved this signal, thank you.

2023-07-19-Moving Blog

2023-07-19

In the time it took for me to write this blog post, Blaseball permanently ended, I faced (and am still kind of facing) a rental scam, and I’ve setting into a somewhat permeant place to stay.

Now, that’s a lot, lol.

To be frank, I’m in a weird state, things are okay to the extent that through support from folks, as well as receiving some of my money back from the scam. I start work in August formally for the University, and then I’m applying for work near my place. Things are okay, at least it feels like they should be.

There’s the lingering anxiety of financial stability of course, but I find myself actually managing my anxiety easier! I still have to pay rent at the end of the day, so I may be working on some things soon along with finishing up existing work. I feel the buzz of creative energy in me, but there is an unending exhaustion, and unending urge to move. Now that I’m settled, I have to manage the way I use my energy.

I don’t really owe anyone the private details, but managing the fear of complete collapse is my goal.

A certain six-year anniversary passed this last Sunday, one that feels harder and stranger to reckon with every year.

I find that the distance makes the ache hurt less.

One last small joy, I have a system to request maintenance from my apartment’s property manager and the mechanics? They’re lesbians. Lesbian wives too, they’ll be coming over to replace my oven hood next week.

In the meantime between blog posts and updates, my Ko-fi is the primary way to support me, or you can ask for something else via a DM, I’ll get together a page in the next few days that houses the support list.

It’s that time of year again, and it feels sort of like bittersweet chocolate. I’ve been craving creative outlets beyond my school work, of course, and Blaseball is a familiar house. It’s also one that’s gone now.

I don’t think I’ve really grasped what the end of Blaseball means in an artistic sense yet. In the practical sense it means the “community” will divide further, based on interests and preexisting divisions; the developers and moderators will, hopefully, all find new work in the future [in some cases, it looks like a few already have], it means people will move on.

Moving on is a weird way to put it, at least for me, I find Blaseball overall to be something really valuable to me, in the memories, peers, friends, and knowledge I found. I also know, that like most typical “fandom” spaces, the toxicity and genuine faults across all levels of the game and the network surrounding caused me and the people I loved a lot of harm and grief. In that sense, saying goodbye feels okay to me.

Back to the point of artistic meaning, I know I’m not done developing or depicting my thoughts on Blaseball. While I’m sure, like other previous creative endeavors in my life, I’ll fade it out of my creative lexicon, I still have stories I’d like to tell.

The Blaseball Zine Jam this year is going to give me a much-needed artistic reset I need, and while I’m sure I’ll have a lot of pieces released for it, expect some original work too!

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed During All Of This

I got turned on to non-alcoholic hops drinks by one of my mom’s best friends, he had us over, and he helped me move, but that might be my most pretentious moment yet. Also enjoyed Strawberry Basil Soda.

A new Mountain Goats song came out today. I need to know more about miss Jenny from Thebes

https://youtube.com/watch?v=VuO2gbeUzb0%3Fsi%3DhaXTqy9a9fWSHGS6

Ada made me this playlist that I’ve really been enjoying, especially tracks 9, 12, and 16

Here’s what news from the future looks like.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Q85l1Fenc5w%3Fsi%3D2LDDvtnKcgzNLIw6

I cannot tell you how often Fuel occupies my brain, I am SO relieved someone like Jacob Geller covered it because it has lived with me as a title since childhood.

If you’re a wrestling fan, keep an eye on Exploding Cage! I may have a piece in the works, now that I’m recovering from my moving disaster.

Lastly, I really found solace in coding again recently, hense the varity of changes across my site. I think, in all of things that happened to me over the course of the last blog post to now. I ached for structure and stability while absolutely not having that, and during the time I was couch surfing and waiting for all the professional agencies to do things on their end so that I could get to where I am now, I coded. I’m happy with this set up as of late, and I’m sure more updates will come down the pipe.

Thank you for reading, thank you to everyone who has continued to keep me afloat, thank you to the people who have been patient with me.

Take care of yourselves out there.

2023-05-22-Back-Log

This edition of the blog is painfully overdue. There’s a draft where I started writing about my (still ongoing) computer issues, & the melancholy that came with March & it being my birthday. That has since past, in fact it’s been a month since I turned 21, so I think I will allow myself a little bit of freedom as a I write this post. What is there to say about the state of the world itself right now? I could easily focus on a lot of the not so
great, especially given the last two months I had, but I want to cut to the chase a bit & talk about things I enjoy.

We deserve that, don’t we?

I’ve been collecting the things that give me joy for a long time no matter if I can’t physically keep it. Between the tracking systems of my journals, the way I save every scrap piece of paper, the endless list of links & artwork & books & essays & creativity I have the slightest chance to touch means the world to me.

Right now, I am in personal stress, & I’m working on getting myself in a stabler place. I’m sure I’ll have some updates

Without further delay, here’s some things I enjoyed. https://www.youtube.com/embed/E-3JxcPBQlE

Krow’s animatic for the new era of
blaseball was AMAZING, and I was totally blown away.
I really have to compliment the way you’ve developed your lighting skills
for one thing, fire is such a challenge and you managed to
capture the horrors of incineration all in several terrifying
and unique flashes.

I found that the other iconography you chose
to use just fit so well with the whole intro to the era too.

Putting the disk on, saying goodbye to those you love, the cycle goes on and on and on. I remember seeing your Anastasia when you had just started this project, and wow, the entire project did not disappoint, totally emotionally wrecking in an incredible way.

We started the Wild Wings Fic Archive over on the forum. I’m currently working on getting my own
pieces up, but in the meantime go appreciate all of the
stunning fics from all of our buddies on the team, it’s
nearly impossible to suggest just one.

That is to say, theres some fantastic old fics from early on in Beta that absolutely deserve more

This fic suggestion is one of absolute bia.
Teasing each other good-naturedly, [Burke + The Watsons.] is the prompt, and this is easily be one of my favorite depictions of the trio.

Nel & I talked frequently about Burke Gonzales & the Watsons as they got closer & closer, & this short prompt fill he wrote captures the essence of what makes their dynamic so engaging to me.

Really! Just read it! Read it & think about these old men. Joshua Watson is a menace, to his husband, his boyfriend, & his poor poor step son.

the valor I have won is one of Blink’s masterpiece fics.

I was reminded of it because of the ongoing Blaseball ship bracket, because of just how distinct Don’s narrative is.

I watched what happened to Don Mitchell live, I remember the ache I felt of course, but that didn’t begin to cut into the narrative potential that Blink
expertly dissected.

Where the ache and longing tangle up with love & just constant tragedy.

This is a quintessential fic for fans of the Lovers, Fridays, & people who love to feel heartache about the Expansion Era.

Cedar shared Crits/Cell with us the other day & this is where I shout GO READ ABOUT THEM.

This is truly just a joy to see niche
prehistory guys get lore as a guy with niche prehistory lore. Go read what if i asked you to stay

Sharing Joy

CW for Character Death

Six Cats Under is a quick supernatural rescue mission.
I had fun with this! You are a ghostly grandma trying to save her cats with limited
spiritual abilities. Exploring her apartment makes for a fun little romp before you figure everything out, & getting to learn about your beloved cats before you let them out into the worldwas really sweet.

Give this game a quick play, it will take
maybe 15 minutes if you really explore & read through
everything, but I love this a lot!

I ordered some stickers from
CURSEDLUVER again recently, a perfect excuse to came up because of setting letters to my partner. https://www.youtube.com/embed/YAV96XSdMQo

We Are Dead Stars is a 2016 TEDx
Talk from Dr. Michelle Thaller. She’s most known for her work in astronomy & working with NASA, but to me, her work is poetry.

I totally get the corniness of the whole stardust connection, though there is the root peace & connection I feel when I recognize that the matter that made me has always existed since the universe began.

There’s a beauty in what I extract out of
Thaller’s words in the wake of exclusion & isolation. There’s warmth in the inherent connection Thaller acknowledges we have, no matter how distant.

That means something

While not a joy
itself, I also deeply appreciated her talk with Big Think this
year, about the healing power of physics, & survival after your
soulmate has died. https://www.youtube.com/embed/Oh6EEskE-xA

It is both an aching and hopeful approach, and as someone who is both fascinated and terrified of death, this was the first piece
on grief I found that was really impactful to me.

Music

Listen to the new Softwire album!!!

https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/2rnOwK1DJz0ZqUuCwPlbtV?utm_source=generator

I’m taking the time to stop here, There’s never enough time or space to share everything I want to do

Please take care.