We Don't Have Enough Time

 This is a personal story and some reflections I had about these events.

Your best friend calls you. You two haven't talked in two weeks, catching up has become less and less frequent. You normally place the blame on the fact you're both twenty-something.
You pick up the phone and greet her with the usual:

- Hey Trixie! - made up name for privacy's sake - How are you?
- Horrible. 
Usually this kind of dry and negative answer is paired with sarcasm or a pinch of hyperbole. But not this time. Over the last two weeks a lot happened, too much happened. Her cat died. As she is talking to you she is on the way to her grandfather's funeral. And her mother, the mother of your best friend, was diagnosed with cancer a few days prior.
She does not know what to do, and you don't know what to say. And in the dreadful silence that takes place after hearing these news, all you can think is:

How much time do we really have?

I have been on a hiatus since July, both creatively and socially. Since then I have gone back to therapy, and what began as a journey full of sadness and self isolation has now become a depression diagnosis and a battle against time to find who am I and what time do we have.
After the phone call I couldn't help but remember of a week in 2012, when a friend invited me to his uncle's country house. I was pretty nervous in the beginning but the following three days were some of the best of my life. But one thing I remember very clearly was his uncle, who was always drunk, but he is the kind of guy who gets funny when he drinks, and in one afternoon while he was watering his plants he looked at me and said:
- You... You look like a cowboy! - He sprays me with his garden hose - I'm gonna call you... Bill!
Ever since then my friend his whole family calls me Bill, I find it funny how such a random event became part of our little culture.

In 2023 this uncle said he was feeling too weak to take care of the garden in his country house. Not too long after he discovered he has stage 4 cancer. Now, he decided to enjoy whatever time he has left by doing what he loves with the people he loves by his side. The man who is such an integral part of such a fun memory of mine is fading.
 
And I don't know what to do.
 

She whispers.

However, that phone call was a wake up call, and it finally made me understand: For a moment in the beginning of this year (2023), there was the very real possibility that my father could die. He had a aneurysm that doctors could only describe as a "ticking time bomb".

Our whole family was immensely worried, people who hadn't called in ages reached out, prayed for us, and offered help afraid that the worse could happen.

Luckily, after two weeks and a twelve hour surgery, he was free. But, to me, it took more time than that to process what happened. We worried he could have died during the surgery, we worried he could have died during the two weeks of waiting, but never worried about any of that before discovering he had a problem.

I didn't know what to do, until it hit me:

One thing is knowing you're going to die.
But KNOWING you're going to die is a very different story.
Death is not obvious in our day to day lives. It doesn't hunt us down in the form a wolf, nor is it a grim reaper. Death whispers. And as gracefuly as things are created they are taken away, but we are too proud to accept that. We are too arrogant, thinking we always have one more day to live and too little time to reach out to a friend.
So call your loved ones.
Life goes by so quickly, and who knows how much more time do we have? If only I could protect the people I love in the realm of my dreams. But I can't, it's not up to me.
So care for those you have near you. Not in fear of death, but as a celebration of life.

And in a prayer that we both will have one more day... I finish by hoping to...

See ya in the near future!





Goodbye 3DS.

A trip down lonely lane:

You ever had the feeling you experienced something "the wrong way"? Or that you just saw something in a light that was so out of the ordinary you even consider that maybe everybody else is lying?

Today, March 27 of 2023, Nintendo officially closes the 3DS eShop and having revisited my console to grab some games before the end, I thought it would be nice to share a little story.

Setting the stage:

Picture this: You are twelve, facebook is still the cool place to be online, and you just discovered you love video games, more especifically, you love Zelda. You just played Ocarina of Time on an N64 emulator on your crappy family computer and the trailer of new Wind Waker HD is pure eye candy.

I want a piece of that Nintendo fun - You say to yourself. You start to browse online and you discover two things:
The first one is the value of money. With how devalued the currency of your country is, you simply cannot ask your parents to purchase a Wii U for you.
And the second is that the Nintendo 3DS is fucking cool (And a lot cheaper than a Wii U).

Does the 3D effect really work? - Your parents are concerned, your dad is a TV nerd, and every 3D television required glasses.
Of course! - You reply, confident in Nintendo's marketing - They wouldn't lie about that, it's Nintendo!

You never owned a Nintendo piece of hardware before other than an old (and very used) little Game Boy Advance your mom got you for your birthday because you are a retro nerd. But you are a dreamer! And a victim of aggressive marketing too, but most importantly, a dreamer.

After a long time insisting, they agree, and after waiting a few days it finally arrives right at your doorstep, an unassuming little box, containing what is going to be the ultimate gaming machine! Flame red, with a glossy finish, a work of art.

And does the 3D work? - Your dad wants to know, he is skeptical, you turn that slider up with caution and, my god, work it does, and it is incredible!

The first few days were pretty dull, if you analyzed them with the brain of a hardened gamer of course, but little me was more than happy to just play with the Miis, browse the internet, and download countless demos from the eShop to see what was out there to be discovered.

But the first pitfall arrives: The financial risk I took was calculated, but man, I was bad at math. I didn't realize how expensive games were in my country. Crap! I can't really say I have a gaming console if I can't game on it! After bargaining a while, I got to choose one game. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D.

The more you know...

The years went by, I had beaten Ocarina of Time more times than I can remember, I walked with my 3DS everywhere, here's some context for those who didn't have one, it has a fun little gimmick, it can count your steps and every 100 steps it gives you a coin that you can spend inside some Nintendo games. But that wasn't the only reason I turned it into my walking partner, what I was truly aiming for was the StreetPass, basically if you ever passed anywhere near another person with a 3DS the consoles would light a green LED and say hi to each other and we could add each other to our friends list.

Nintendo was all about the fun features, and I was a small salesman, desperate to persuade my friends into joining me so we could play together and borrow each other's games for maximum savings.

But I could never get trough. One of them bought a PC, other two got an Xbox One. Maybe it was Nintendo's fault, or maybe I was a terrible marketer, but I was the only one in that club.

And in 2016, things took a big turn, Nintendo was cooking! The so called NX, which we all now know as the Switch, was revealed, and from that point on I knew that my little portable was about to enter its last days.

A brazilian word named 'Saudade':

In 2020 I charged my 3DS again, the last time I used it was in 2017, and during this interval I got a thing called money, and I decided to purchase some games to make it up for younger me. I got Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Monster Hunter 3 and some other small titles that looked fun.

But truth be told I never experienced those great days of when the 3DS was at its peak, maybe it just wasn't all that popular where I lived. I never once saw the green light of StreetPass, never got to visit a friend on Animal Crossing, and gave up on the Mii games since there is only so much you can do on an empty plaza.

Since buying it in 2013 I didn't get a single friend on my 3DS. That list was, and still is today, empty.

And yet, despite everything, I love this console, and I hold my memories of it very dear. I cannot miss a friend I never had, but I can cherish a game I finished dozens of times, because it was the only one my parents could afford for me at the time.

Seeing people online show how fun it was to go for a walk with their 3DS and get home with a green light and many new friends, how many titles they have on their shelves is a peek at a life I never had with my Nintendo, but I refuse to call my experiences incomplete or unfullfilling.

I will be forever grateful for the fun I had and will never forget the joy it was unboxing that thing and jumping in excitement with how awesome the 3D effects were, making miis for me and my parents and in the end laughing at how goofy some of them ended up looking, and taking selfies with that weak camera with my friends. 

Gone but not forgotten:

So yeah, this console is oficially dead, but my memories of it will live on. Thank you Nintendo for making this fun little piece of hardware. I also want to thank my parents for giving me this gift and joining in on the fun with their not so geeky but very caring way.

And thank you for reading all this! I hope it all made sense, and I hope I didn't sound too gloomy, all is fine and I had my fun! But what about you? Did you also have a 3DS? Do you also have good memories of it? And, did you impusively grab any titles in 2023? I know I did, and I know my story ends here. Hope to...


See ya in the near future!

Thank you! Yes, you!

Hey ya, Heya here, Happy new year!

I want to start 2023's first blog post by saying: Thank you so much, really.

For what you may ask? Well, to put it very simply, for being around.
Last year, on March 13 I tweeted this image:

Every year I ask myself: Would I follow myself on Twitter? A question that might sound like something straight out of a marketing meeting where a bunch of boring men ask each other how they can "increase engagement" but to me this question is much, much more personal.

I make 100% of the things that are on my account, but do I like what I do?

Before I get to my point, allow me to go back in time and talk about how misguided I was when it came to understanding why I made art in the first place.

Story time:

A lot of times I would see artists saying they were "having fun" with the art they were making and giving advice like "oh don't care about the likes" while having thousands of followers. Younger me was so confused by these tips, I would just tell myself "of course they don't care about likes and engagement, because it's easy for them", and the only conclusion I could reach was that all they had was luck and found the right fandom.

My course of action? Only draw things people already know and want to see! Eventually things will work out. But this philosophy is what led me to feel like every post was a chore and in turn it got me feeling super burnt out when it came to drawing.

Now, don't get me wrong, I genuinely like the things I made art about, and I still make some fanart from time to time, but at that time only making fanart to feel more validated was the wrong answer to the wrong question, and it took me almost 4 years living online to finally understand that.

Art is not a chore. You don't have to be more marketable, more charismatic, more popular, you just need to do more of the damn thing you want to do, think that this art is being made by you to yourself, a bizarre love letter that only you can understand and once you post it, you can only hope someone else will like it too.
In the end, the artists I so relentelessly avoided every tip from... They were right, you really don't have to care about those cursed numbers, and you can in fact have fun creating your art.

So now what?

The wisdom I leave you with today is: No one owes you anything on the internet and this art you made already had its begining, middle and end by the time you finished creating it. Enjoy the process and move on.

So, now, at the beginning of 2023 I can finally say, I really like what I do, and yes, I would follow my own account.

So now I turn this question to you, my fellow artists, would you follow yourself?

If you found this little story somewhat relatable, remember that you are not alone, there is no secret formula to feeling better about your creations, but I hope this gave you some insight. Anyways, that's what I had to say, goodbye and...


See ya in the near future!