It's been a while. Like a long while. Crap happened. Real life snuck up on me. Yeah. It snek.

I took a long break from Gaia (still debating changing its name, Hera and Ceres are on the table), and I came back to it and I'm sitting here like "what was I doing again?" Everyone should know by now about Salerno's new template system, and I keep saying that all it is is just rewriting the templates in the new language, I'm not even changing them that much, but that's kind of a lie. See, globals can't be called in templates anymore, so I can't just invoke the data I need by using the global line. Instead, I have to explicitly pass the data I want to be accessible in the template to it when I load it, and it's kind of a pain in the butt to do. What I ended up doing is setting Ananke to load first all the variables I want in it, and then triggering the templates and passing the globals to it. So basically how this works is that the globals are passed to every template that's rendered, and if you need information in it, use the $page global, because it'll instantly be available in the template that corresponds to the source file you're in.

So, let's say that for some reason it's not loading characters in a profile. We'll get into the source file (the one in /application/sources) for user profiles (profile.php), and then in the function that displays a profile, we'll write a code that will ping Hypnos for character information and bring it into $page. Then, that data is automatically available in the page variable in the template (profile.html), but since $page context is set up in the source files, it isn't instantly everywhere, just the template that's loaded in that source file. In this way, it should be very easy to add new things and get new stuff loading, so the hope is that as the software grows, it'll easily change and adapt to the new demands we have for it.

Since I'm having a hard time remembering what I was doing, though, I'm not terribly interested in doing it. I've been trying to get my writing career off the ground, and mostly it's just hard. I can write really well I think, but that's absolutely no guarantee that I'll do well as a writer, either, so I'm trying not to pigeonhole myself into just one thing, you know? Like, I want to publish books, but I'm also looking into writing for blogs, and taking writing commissions and ghostwriting work, and fanfiction, you know, just whatever I can find.

For those that don't know, ghostwriting is when someone hires someone else to write a book idea they have for them, it's common for like politicians that don't have a lot of time to spend writing, and then they publish it under their own name instead of the ghostwriter's. The moral quandary here is pretty obvious but it's kind of a big grey moral blob, because ultimately it's very beneficial to both parties - the writer doesn't have to fuss with publishers or waiting for royalty cheques, and can charge a lot more. And the client doesn't have to spend the time figuring out how to write it, and still get something good, and recognition for their ideas.

So that's what I've been doing, a lot of writing. My main idea is that I need a reader-base. A group of fans that like my work and might commission me for written pieces from time to time, that can tell their friends about me, and maybe eventually I'll get a network of potential clients. As for my books, I actually want to go through Inkitt. Inkitt publishes books on their own platform as e-books, and then books that perform well on the site with readers get actual publishing deals Every single book they've published has become a bestseller, in part thanks to their marketing skills. And this will also help me establish a readership!

It's really kind of a massive 180 from what I was pursuing, and no I won't give up on Gaia or anything, but the thing is that I've always known that I was put here on this earth to write. Some people wonder "what am I here for?" and other people just know, and I'm one of the ones that's always just known. I learned to read and write at a startlingly fast pace, and was one of the best readers in my state from the time I was 7 into high school. I've consistently read at a level far beyond my peers, my reading comprehension is beyond insane, and I've had universes constructing and deconstructing themselves in the back of my head for as long as I can remember. I was born to write. And I keep thinking that nothing else really works out for me, you know, I've had job after job and tried thing after thing and the only thing that ever seems to go well for me is writing (listen, I've consistently won NaNo in the first week of November, I can crank out novel-length pieces in a very scarily short amount of time if the inspiration is there). So it's like, maybe I should just give up and write, you know?

Idk. I know it doesn't always work out. But I guess I'll never know until I try. My friends always told me "If Stephanie Meyer can make it so can you," and you know I squint at them suspiciously but okay I guess. lol

Honestly though, it did make me start thinking about, you know, how the ridiculous circumstances of living tend to make us put our dreams on hold, sometimes for way, way too long, because we're too busy pursuing things we don't actually want to buy stuff we don't actually need. One of the biggest things that made me turn away from writing as a serious thing that I could go for, is how unsure it is. You know? Like, be a doctor you're basically guaranteed to get a job because there aren't enough of them, or get into IT because that industry is absolutely booming right now, go into something that will make you money, it's not important to be happy it's important to have money.  Screw your dreams, fuck the ecosystems, we need more money. And I hate to say it, but someday, maybe not in my lifetime but someday, that dependence on the almighty dollar is going to bring humanity to its knees. It already is. And the sad thing is that we either know it and can't do anything about it, or are blind to it, and both are just as sad.

I'll shut up now. I love how I always end up getting into long-winded rambles that try too hard to be philosophical in these. My bad. All I meant to do in this was ramble about how I forgot what I was doing with Gaia. Gosh. Lol

TL;DR I forgot what I was doing with Gaia and decided to ramble about stupid crap instead of figuring it out. orz