Feeling good.

Hello interwebbers,

I want to talk about 'feeling good about yourself' today.
For the past year, since I arrived in this world,
I have been feeling lost, out of sync with this world,
and therefore, not as happy as I could've been.

Yes, I had my moments of pure happiness and my moments of depression,
but I believe everyone has those, not just me.
So I've found a trick to keep me from falling into the pit of sadness.

It's simple really, and it's something I have been using for a long time now but still,
I want you guys to know.

Dress your best.

It's that easy. When I'm sitting in my room playing video games, I wear a tie.
When I'm playing accordion -or attempting to-, I wear a blazer.
When I'm painting, I wear a double-cuffed shirt.

When I go on a three-hour train ride and start writing, I wear a fancy vest.

When I'm playing newly-transformed zombie and attack Spider man,
I wear fancy clothes.

I get good comments sometimes, on the street or in a group of friends, and it makes me happy.  I hope this trick will keep you happy as well. 'cuz it works for me.

Carcans.

I have been talking about the Carcans a bit,
dropping some clues here and there,
so I want you people to understand them a bit more.

Carcans are groups of nomads from my original world.
They travel the world outside the domed cities
in search of useful materials in ruins of the world before the meteorite impacts.
They worship the meteorites. Not as a creator, but as a catalyst of their abilities.
Because of their exposure to the chemicals in the sky made by the meteorites,
the Carcans were able to... mutate... in a way, and gain mystical powers.
Along with the 'weaving of the wind' as they call their abilities,
Carcans are also highly skilled in weaponry made from parts of dead animals,
wood and metal, along with other materials  they find, and old firearms.

Using the limited skills I have at this point in time, I have tried recreating
some of the different weapon users I saw on my voyage.
There are a lot more, but I can't possibly make all of them.

Also, Carcans are not all male, and they are definitely not all me.

On job hunting.

Hello my dear whoever you are.

I had another job interview yesterday.
It was part of a selecting process, there were two available jobs,
and guess how many people came for it?
A HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE.

That's right. My chances of getting the job were 1/125.
So colour me surprised when they called me and said I passed the written test,
and wanted to meet me in person. They are meeting with fourty-five people who passed the test
however, so it's still a slim chance I get the job.
Add to that the fact that they were not convinced I 'fitted' in the job,
because they had a feeling I 'did not know what I wanted in my life'.

Excuse me, but..

I learned to take care of animals.
There's not a lot of work in that branche,
so I tried going to school for antiques.
Antiques class was cancelled the entire year because there were
only two students and they felt like it was not worth it.
So I tried going to college.
Everyone said I shouldn't even attempt it because I wanted to learn
one of the hardest things there is to learn, and 'I am not too bright'.
So I tried woodworking.
I succeeded in learning those basics but I can't find a job there either.

What I want to do in my life, is not what I can make money with,
and what I can make money with is not what people want me to do,
the bosses don't want to employ me, or things like that.

This society sucks, I want to go back to Dircalis.

Costume madness and Artifakt.

The twentieth and twenty-first of april are going to be amazing,
I know that. I am meeting up with some people to go to the event called
'Elf Fantasy Fair' in The Netherlands, and I'm gonna spend two days there
to see some knights fighting, goblins teasing people, mermaids being lazy in the water,
it's gonna be great. I might even drink my first mead, knowing the people I'm gonna hang out with.

Also, as part of the Steampunk Objective, I am going to hang out with the team too,
amazingly creative people who are a blast to hang out with.
I might get some new recruits for Artifakt, the Belgian division of the Objective,
or I might get to talk to the other international spokesmen.

So these days are preparation days. And I just did a costume check,
an adventurous take on Dorian in the wastes between domes in his world of origin.
So far, I have come up with this.

A pretty accurate remake of one of the outfits in my world,
if I may say so myself.

I'm gonna go to sleep now because it's almost midnight and I have to be up at six.

With the tiny amount of sleep I get these weeks, it's really necessary for me

to get into my bed and get some shuteye.

Dead. Worth it.

I feel as tired as I have never felt in a long time.

Yesterday, two friends of mine came over from some faraway place
(a trip that takes an hour and a half with a car is considered 'faraway'. Deal with it.)
and entered the world of Abberantia, also known as, my room.
I had not seen those two people a lot before tonight.
One of them did come over once, to deliver something,
and stayed for a while to teach me html and css basics.
The other, a faery creature know as Elvya Dulcimer
(If you don't know her, you should check out her epic musical skills right here.)
I had only met in a flash once, a fast ticking couple of seconds on Phantasium.

The multi-talented people lightened my room with their epic painting skills
of my Warhammer 40k Tyranids, their vast pools of knowledge and stories,
and their friendly smiles. Nobody had set foot in my room in a long time,
mainly because I live in a city nobody visits,
but it felt good to finally be able to show my room to some friends
who are becoming more dear to me by the day,
and to laugh the time away. God I needed a laugh,
things are mentally exhausting nowadays.

Miss Dulcimer even drew me like it was nothing! #multiskill

I love this picture. Seriously.

We had a lot of good times with Wilfred, my Magikarp. He's such a funnyman.

 

I gained a lot of hugs last night too.
Really, tons. And I am not complaining, I needed hugs. I still need hugs.
I might have an addiction for hugs.

The moment my guests were gone, I fell in my bed, exhausted, but with a smile.
A smile that lasted throughout the entire night.
I might have slept as little as two hours, and I'm so dead tired today,
but it was worth every single minute.
Keep being awesome guys! :3

Upgrade.

Some weird evening I had, yesterday.
I have talked to a bunch of people who made me realise
I have spent way too much time in the 'I don't belong here' version of me,
instead of focussing on survival in this world.

I woke up today, feeling like I have to become better at everything.
I have let myself go for far too long, and I have become a couch-potato.
Not anymore. I am going to work on myself untill I become a radiant star in the galaxy.

I have big plans for the future,
which you will find being talked about right here.
and I thank you guys for your support up untill now.

Huhwhat? :3

Today I got asked by one of the creators of a group
from The Netherlands called 'The Steampunk Objective'
to become a 'Distinguished Member'.
Basically, they want me to become the number one spokesman for steampunk
in Belgium, and that's pretty amazing.

I have been following The Objective for some time now,
have met them on Phantasium,
and I am a good friend of some of the members of the team.
Their creativity is pretty amazing.
They make vehicles and contraptions,
have original characters in their group
(not just seventy airship pirates. I don't like seventy airship pirates.)
and they are a tight group of friends.

I really think you should check them out here,
as well as their official site listed on top.

And, of course, I will keep you guys up to date
with developments on the DM-case :)

More extradimensional artefacts!

How this is happening is beyond me,

but I find myself in the posession of more and more artefacts of my own world

everyday, as if they pop into this dimension because of my thoughts.

I have recently found weaponry from my own world
(like the 'smoke pole', a Carcan Rifle mentioned here)
and wednesday, I got into posession of a Carcan jewelry box,
made from (what I assume, I am not a biologist) a Naroon's hoof.



Furthermore, I have been to a bellydance open-stage event yesterday,
and found myself staring into the culture of Carcans,
instead of this world's hobbyists.
It was a strange feeling, like I was 'home' after all.
Some of the performers looked like they came right out of the wastelands themselves,
and the magic in the air was indescribable. Also, I found a store from The Netherlands,
that sold jewelry pieces that are incredibly reminiscent of the Carcan culture.
{I also met a girl who looked exactly like Rox.
I did not say more than a few words to her, for I was in shock.}

So I am very much wondering where this is going.
Am I going to find the way home through the portals the artefacts use?
Or am I just going to keep on collecting pieces of my world?
But how are they able to find me? And why am I the only living thing
that made the dimensional jump? Or am I not?

Questions are keeping me up at night.

Dat motivation.

Finding a job is hard.
I know that. You know that.
I have told you seventeen-or-something times already,
but still, I want you guys to focus on one thing:
motivation.

Here's what I mean, through my own experience.
I have sold things before, in Dircalis, and thought I could easily handle
the same job in this world. Wrong. This world has a lot in common with my own,
but there's also a lot that changed. For example, a few days ago I applied
for a job in a store that sold cellphones. But they did not hire me because
'my skills did not fit the profile of the man they were looking for'.
In other words, I do not know enough of this world to be able to sell stuff easily.

Yet I feel that that is my calling, and I will aspire to become a salesman,
even if I keep getting rejected. I will look for another job first,
to make sure I have an income.
And after that I will look into the sales-branch of work.

Now I'm getting to the point I was trying to make;
I came up with an idea when I stood up this morning
(it's ten in the evening as I write this)
and I feel like it's the best job I would ever love to have.

I want to sell things.
In space.
Like planets and meteorites.

I want to be known as 'Dorian Leamy, the man who sold the universe.'
And I feel like I can do exactly that, if you give me the time.

Evenings in this world.

Evenings are when melancholy hits me the hardest,
and it does so almost like clockwork.
I miss the times I had in Dircalis, the days I spent as a salesman,
and the social interaction I had with the people that lived there.
I miss the feeling of going on an important mission,
and I feel like this world doesn't offer me the same thrills.

Furthermore, I seem to be incapable of finding a job in this world,
for I cannot walk up to companies and say 'I have experience in sales,
but it was in another dimension.'
No, the companies here base their decision of hiring me on the experience I had,
here, in this world. And that's a pretty sad amount of experience.

I am missing a piece of my heart, which I left in the outlands of the old world,
and that makes me feel sad and downtrodden.

But it hits me hardest during the evenings, because I'm living passively in those moments.
I'm sitting, hanging, laying down. And I feeling like I have nothing to do.
Yet I should read more often. I try to read a lot of books, but I just..don't.
I try to learn how to dance, and play the accordion, but I ...don't.

Then there is music. Music on my head during sad times makes me even sadder,
but I need music to make me feel like I am back in my world,
when I close my eyes and listen to the tunes of some very special people.

Tl;DR version: I need a power hug.

Reliving my past.

I don't know if you have heard it or not,
probably not,
but I am busy writing the story about my past.
It's about how I ended up here, and the last experiences I had in Dircalis,
my home town, located where Mechlin stands in this world in Belgium.

But the point is not that I am writing this story.
I've been working on it for two months now,
but something just changed when I was writing ten minutes ago,
and I felt like I had to ask you people if you had the same thing once.

You see, I was not just writing anymore,
I was living. In another location. While writing.
I could relive those moments I stood in the big hangar of the Emtrains again,
I smelled the oil, saw the blinding flashes of welding, and heard the
rhythmic sounds of hammers colliding with metal.

I saw the four trains, preparing to leave the city,
and it felt intense. I had to stop for a moment and breathe.

Have you guys ever..experienced something like this?
I am anxious to find out.

Gun Salesman of Dircalis.

Have I told you about the portals?
Portals are places where dimensions get so close
to each other that fysical things can pass through,
like, myself, for example.

I thought I was the only thing that fell through,
but once in a while I find things, relics of my own world
that made it here. I never saw a portal but I know it's from
Dircalis, the aesthetics are different than objects from this world.

For example, the day before yesterday I was at an event in The Netherlands,
where there was a shop selling antiques, and hanging on the wall,
I saw Farrin, also known as 'The Smoke Pole',
a Carcan firearm.



Price was not an issue, I must have it, seeing as how it was a relic of my old world,
and so I took it home.

This means things can pass through, and, maybe, more humans made it here.
And what if a Titan creature gets to this world?
I'm stressed out now,
I have so many questions.

Reconstruction Pt. 2

I have reconstructed a bit of my outfit I used in my dimension,

when I travelled through the sandy wastes of Zakara, Mexico.

(a visual project to go along with 'the unplanned voyage', see also: snowshoot.)

Gas masks are required when travelling outside the domed cities
due to the chemicals in the sky that leak from the meteorite.

Why I talk english.

It's a strange thing, actually, because it's not
about getting as broad an audience as possible on this blog,
it's not my native language, no, it's just something that came automatically.

You see, before I came to this dimension I lived in the city of Dircalis in Belgium,
the geographical equivalent of where Mechlin stands in this world.
As you could've guessed, I grew up speaking Dutch,
but English started growing on me when trading with other cities out of the country,
when I travelled along with a group of collectors.
It's become so natural to me that my thoughts are in English,
even though I speak Dutch at home.
It goes so far as to dream in English about people who talk Dutch in the real world.

So yeah I might have grammatical faults.
I might produce weird sentences.
But I can't help but talk English automatically.

Good day.

Today was pretty fun.

I got to meet one of my internet friends in person,

one who lives quite a ways from here but was willing to drive
all the way here, from Limburg (still Belgium though).
The reason he came was because he had something for me,
and it didn't matter for him that it was a long drive
because he wanted to see me.

'I am a fan of you, he said. You always make me happy on the internet.'
-Wait whut? I have FANS ?

I felt quite weird and did not really know how to respond to that.
Some part of me is happy because there is at least one person
that thinks I'm 'cool', or funny, or whatever.
But the other part of me is like
'No, you don't deserve a fan, you're not interesting at all!'

But hey, let's not fill my brain to the top with that one dilemma,
I have other stuff to attend to.
For example, the stuff he brought me today:

RPG MAKER. VX. ACE. LOOK @ MAH HAPPY FACE.

Yeah I'm an amateur Pc game maker,
and when I say amateur, I mean amateur.
I know zero scripting code (rpg maker runs on ruby {rgss3} )
and I have no experience in story-telling.
Allright I do write some stories. I have one that's exactly 100 pages long,
but then I got a writer's block, and I have it for MONTHS now.
The other stories I wrote never got past the twenty page mark.

So here's the deal, I'm going to make a game,
without a time limit, but I AM going to make it for certain,
and I am going to make it commercially available when it's finished.
I am going to set a goal for myself to earn as much money as I put into it.

That's.. ten bucks at the moment. That can probably be done.

Return to Dreamland

Ok, new dream.

Tonight I found myself in my old school,
where we were doing an exam for mathematics.
Not a problem at all, except I found myself working on the exam when every
other student was already finished, and so I was alone in the class.
Alone, except for my teacher
-who thought me chemistry and economics in real life-
And my best friend from before the time-travelling madness,
Sander, who was next to me, doing his own exam.
Suddenly he started yelling at me for some unknown reason.

Look, there's this thing you need to know about me.
I HATE when people yell at me and get mad at me for some reason.
I seriously do, and when they do get mad, I act in two ways:

1) I defend myself, yell back, but I know I am really bad at that so
    I lose the argument more often than not.
2) I try to avoid conflict, get away from that person, and cry from the inside.

Those two things are what I did in my dream,
in the right order. I have no idea why my best friend suddenly got mad at me,
but it was a scary sight to behold,
like, he wanted to throw a table at my head or something.
I tried to defend myself for a minute, but then I decided it was best
for me to just... put my chair in the corner away from him, and finish the exam there.

Hell, even my teacher went to the building next door,
and I saw her peeking through the window.