Nuclear & peace in Journal of life stuff

It’s done. The development phase of my Factorio mod is finally done. That is to say, the part of making the mod where I actually define the in-game items, their properties, their orders in menus, etc. The only thing left to do is the artwork. …I hate making art. I’m a great engineer, but I hate making art for my mods. It’s one of those times I wish I had an artistically inclined girlfriend or wife so that I could ask them to make the art for me. As for what needs to be made: Around 65 icons for various bits of nuclear reactors (turbine blades, turbine shafts, reactor pressure vessels, etc). Also, three in-game models for the reactor complexes themselves.

I can make my own art, I just find no pleasure in the hours it will take me to sit in front of Blender and tweak the same item over and over until I get it just perfect, take a screenshot within Blender, and then move on to the next piece. Oh, and the icons, they are only 32x32px, so the hardest part is making a shape that is identifiable at such a tiny size. I can make the most perfect turbine blade in Blender, but by the time it’s shrunk down to that size, I may end up just color-coding the same turbine blade three different colors for each of the different levels of turbine it operates within.

Still, progress on the mod is good. I look forward to all the cries about how OP, unfair, unbalanced, and otherwise ‘wrong’ my mod is. I have citations already in the readme file which reference peer-reviewed articles from actual nuclear scientists as my sources for all but a few pieces of my data (I did have to guess about a couple things). People’s minds will melt when they realize how much power is actually in 1kg of uranium. The in-game version of uranium currently has around 1/1000th the power that uranium actually actually contains. The other thing is the land density savings. Nuclear sites are actually quite small, especially when compared to solar power (both IRL and in game).

And in case anyone raises pitchforks to say ‘nuclear bad!’ I made light water reactors the worst option available. Partly because they actually are (as in, in reality), and partly because I wanted to have players understand that there were other ways to build a reactor that are far, far, safer.

Factorio aside, I had an interview this week. It was an on-site interview. The thing that shocked me was how much I don’t want to go back to working. I got laid off in May and I’ve mostly spent my time since tooling around my apartment not doing much beyond playing video games, making Factorio mods, and volunteering. But I’m actually totally happy. Happy in a self-actualized way? No. Happy in a “Hiding from responsibility” way? Kinda.

Would I be happier with friends I saw frequently or a girlfriend whose company I enjoyed? Absolutely. Do I want that enough to actively pursue it? No. Why not? Because…what’s the point? I do have some friends I could see weekly, but seeing them means going out to dinner. Going out to dinner means either fasting during the day so I can eat, or not eating with them. No. Neither of those would make me happier than just not seeing those friends. It’s a hundred stories like that one, where involving other people in my life is a trade off and the results of the trade off are worse than just keeping what I have now. Another part of why I don’t pursue anything is practical. I am moving at least 600 miles away come April 2020, so it doesn’t make much sense to create new friends right now.

But I also realize that what I’m doing right now is absolutely wasting my life. On one hand, I’ll look back on this time and say “I finally managed to calm down. I finally managed to be at peace with myself.” but I will also be able to say “But I did that by doing nothing. By accomplishing no meaningful goals, not developing myself, not striving. I let years go by where I didn’t even try to make myself actually happy.” Make no mistake reader, where I am is not a good place, it’s just a less-bad place. And for now, I’ll take less-bad. Less bad is a decent place for me right this second.

For once I don’t feel a crushing loneliness. For once I don’t feel like my world will only ever be tolerable if I’m not alone. I have found a way to enjoy eating foods I love without gaining weight. In many ways, I’m in a better place than I ever have been, the only ‘cost’ is that I have given up on the people outside of my apartment (which is to say, everyone other than myself). I’m more likely to listen to / trust / talk to an internet stranger than the person working at my local grocery store. I got rejected from a job yesterday that I would have been excellent at. They had the gall to tell me that they had better candidates than me. Lmao. That’s a fucking joke. But, whereas in previous years or months I would have eaten myself into happiness, I did no such thing. I just ate my 3 meals, did my walking, and played video games.

The constant fear that my bitcoin investing might not turn out and I might not be able to retire and I might need to find another job is a quiet, constant, fear in my mind. Logically I know it’s unfounded. But I have a saying “You haven’t won until you’ve won.” No battle is ever won before the first round is fired in anger. The battle must play out before one side can be declared the victor. And I remind myself of that fact constantly because I have been creeping ever closer, over the past decade or so, to believing I’ve won battles before they happen.

Still. I’ve run the numbers a dozen times. I can live for no less than 2 years on the savings I have barring major unplanned expense (appendicitis, car getting totaled, etc). And in 2 years, even if bitcoin only doubles, my investments should be worth no less than 10x what I have in the bank right now in savings. It wouldn’t be the retirement I wanted, but it would still mean I didn’t have to go to a job and work for a shitty boss for a living. Besides, there’s no harm in networking once I get to a new city. Talking to people, chatting about bosses, and maybe finding one who values a truly talented engineer who just wants to help. That’s a pipe dream, but I have the space to finally do that. To say no to shitty opportunity after shitty opportunity. I finally have the power over my own destiny, or at least I feel like I do, and I think that’s why I have felt so at peace being alone these past 6 months. I always wanted to be in a place where nobody held power over me, and I finally got there.

And I think that’s why I look at relationships with such disdain. I only want a relationship where we make each other better, not fight for dominance and control. It’s so incredibly hard to find someone, at least from what I can see, who is interested in lifting other people up rather than tearing them down. Who says “How can I make today good?” rather than “Yesterday sucked!”. Perhaps I’m being a HUGE hypocrite right now. I’ll think about that. Sigh. Anytime I write about this stuff it sounds way more like rhetoric and rage than I actually feel internally. My happiest memories are sitting on a couch next to a person I liked watching something with them. Helping them solve a problem. Cooking with them. Just…being a cog in their machine. I am a tool. I just want to be of use. But I also want to be respected for being a damn good tool. Not carelessly tossed into a bin other other tools, not put away wet and dirty.

I really wish there was an alternative to Reddit. I miss the days when internet forums were the only thing there was, and people interacted with each other in a more civil way. I liked the internet before everyone got on it. I know, I’m a fucking hipster. :(