sullen sunday evenings

hello bloggery bloggnesstification, what the devil brings you here today?

getting on 2 weeks since i visited this place and figured it was time for an update--

so it's past mid-way thru June 2009, that's a little remarkable. If you'd asked my brain where it was, or when rather, it would have sworn there's no way it was later than the 12th. It's a little remarkable, in a bad way, how time is passing quite quickly. I feel like I am somehow in a sort of suspended animation, or whatever sounds like that -

Late mid-June means it is time to think about coughing up for rent and bills, didn't I just do that already? As I am out of work for several months now it is getting harder and harder to manage that. I have some prospects to get some money down the road, I hope, but not sure when or exactly how it'll float since jobs aren't exactly banging down my door. The sad reality is that i must seriously think about moving out of my apartment soon, since it's just getting too expensive to maintain this status of lifestyle on merely an unemployment-funded income (and that money source is due to expire in the not-too-distant future as well). Few things rattle me more than considering giving up my apartment, it's definitely one of the few status symbols I have to show for my decade of killing myself working in this truly godforsaken industry - but hey, that's the way the cookie crumbles. I will have to decide this stuff soon.

Despite my somber tone, things aren't too bad - the economy and job market are ripped to shreds of course, but I am doing the best I can not to take it personally. Still working quite hard and lining up whatever business I can get my hands on, when it's sensible. That's actually a tall order, as there's a lot of BS business that one can so easily get wrapped up in as well. Still, trying to point straight and proper to get myself a little better situated. One thing I am devoting much time to is organizing this whole iPhone thing, it's a burgeoning new(er) market than what's typically been for videogames but it's also right stupid - I mean - there's a dearth of quality software on there, but what there is, is mucking around at "something for almost literally nothing" prices. It's basically likea lottery system these days, and I can't say for sure whether or not that's a bad thing considering. Anyway, it's all I have got right now, so get on it.

I have been spending uber-amounts of time not only designing and arting for apps, but setting up much of the administrative backend as well. Part of the whole iPhone market scheme is the actual new market itself, and all the rules and tools that involves. I am a pretty grassroots guy in this, meaning I haven't any money (at all) to invest in marketing dollars, so in order to get any kind of eyeballs on my product it's gotta be a whole bunch of DIY and guerilla marketing, no small feat in that. Basically I have spent umpteen hours grazing around on social networking sites like myspace, twitter, and youtube, just digging around and trying to get my shots in where I can, and this with nothing to even show yet, really. It's absolutely been an experience, and a strange one at that. I feel like the cybernetic equivalent of an indie-band manager or something. It's getting a little momentum, for whatever it's worth - by the time the apps are ready to roll out, I will hopefully have the possibility of a good couple thousand connections in some degree or other, maybe twice that, maybe 1/3 of that, it's hard to tell - but with just time invested, not a fat wad of cash. So we will see, it's an interesting experiment and a lot of upkeep to be sure. Every step is crucial.

In all of that, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time sitting right here in front of my PC, I would say even more than normal - even after all these years, it's having a dramatic effect on me, I can feel myself subhumanizing in some ways, it is getting kinda gross. Thankfully my mood's not in the crapper, but I do feel less like a "normal person" when most of my activities get relegated to just dealing with sending I/O back and forth over the screen. Is that all the future holds for us really?

Anyway, bottom line is that, as expected, 2009 was obviously gonna be a strange yeara dn right here, at just about the halfway point of the year, it's damned true...!

As the next couple of months roll by, I remain hopeful that things will lighten up a little, come to fruition, what-have-you. I a not the sort who believes in karma or divine retribution or some such, so it's all just luck really with a degree of taking care of the backend support from my side. We will see what happens.