So if you're not on any of my social media pages or on the Discord, I've tried to make a point to keep up with the traffic from the
recent interview and I wanted to take a moment to sorta collect my thoughts and give a more extended and somewhat personal thank you here. The reception, support, feedback, and participation from the community has been staggering and that's because so many of you took time out of your busy lives to go check this thing out. It's a friggen hour... of me... that's a lot for anybody, lmao. So seriously: thank you.
It seems that nowadays it's harder to avoid negativity. Much of the internet and social media or the news just seems to be so saturated with bad news, hatred, bigotry, violence, or people too busy to use empathy when interacting with others that sometimes it's hard to distance yourself from that; to not have it slowly seep into you even though you're trying your best to ignore it, confront it, or stand up for what you believe in. It's all so very loud. Time and time again, this community has proven to be strong and supportive of this project. Time and time again you've proven to be a positive force even when some forces around many of us are bleak and cold and dark. A place where people from all over the world can come together and just get behind something and I can't express how truly grateful I continue to feel to be part of that with you.
Many of you have checked out some of
Davey and Mitch's other broadcasts and followed them on their various socials and honestly you've just done a kickass job representing the community, the project, the characters, and honestly humanity. They're good dudes and they're really trying to push a spotlight on other indie projects and they need all the help they can get. So thanks for checking them out, following, liking, and just giving them more traffic.
Personal Stuff
I stated before that I was pretty nervous about this interview. I really struggle to narrow down the flurry of thoughts that are in my head sometimes. When interacting on here, through typing or writing, that's much easier to minimize because I can reread things multiple times before I send them. My writing drafts go through dozens and dozens of revisions before I share them just to try to filter most of that out. I was worried how much of the raw me was going to come out during a live interview. How I could be passionate about something for years now and have that fire behind me but not be able to articulate all of those feelings and stories into an answer to a simple question. It's no secret that I don't really like being in the spotlight and I'd rather the story or the characters take the center stage. But Davey and Mitch had some really fair questions and some of those answers are fun. Some of the behind-the-scenes stories are fun to tell and share and they make me happy-- how it started, why it started, some of the problems along the way, who's helped me and what they contributed, and how after all these years I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing, lol. Those can be fun to talk and laugh about. It was nostalgic to go back to the beginning. To remember my roots and how things started and how far they've come and honestly it was fun to walk that road and to try my best to tell it in the most honest way possible: raw unfiltered me.
Many of you felt the interview was articulate and for that I'm grateful. If you didn't feel it was articulate: now you know why I write the story rather than have a fucking talk show, lmao. Honestly, it was a good day for me so hopefully many of you got something out of it. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it and may even be open to doing something like that again.
Uncut (No this isn't what you think)
So for those that enjoyed the interview, the published one clocked in at 55 minutes.
That was the edited copy. I recently learned that Davey had an
uncut copy and I reached out because I wanted to drop it in my secret motivation folder. The uncut version clocks in just under 69 minutes (yeah... I said 69 and uncut in the same paragraph) and is
audio only-- no video. Davey already has it published on their
Patreon page in the $5 tier. The link is for the BQN, their podcast network which features their show as well as some others and a ton of sci-fi content if you like that kinda stuff. I've been given permission to share it with all of you as well but I'm going to give them a head start-- afterall, they did all the editing work and I pretty much just rambled and played with fidget toys and the metal straw on my water bottle (which you can clearly hear on the audio at times).
If you want to get the Uncut copy of the interview now, you can snag it from their patreon right now or I'll be releasing it over here on Saturday at the $5 tier to match their's.
One More Thanks
So once again, thank you. I'm blessed and I'm grateful and my heart is full. Thank you for continuing to stand behind the project and thank you for reaching out and supporting others who've supported this thing-- I know Davey and Mitch certainly appreciated you all.
All the best... to the very end
-Aaryn