So I don't believe I've mentioned anything on my blog about this yet, but I've been really struggling with my emotions and my self lately. Earlier in the year I decided to work on a new creative project after shooting the shit with ChatGPT. I was telling the AI that when I lived in Lake Isabella, CA I wanted to open my own radio station. There were only two in the valley when I was growing up: oldies and country. So if you weren't into either of those, you were fucked unless you drove an hour to Bakersfield or were one of select few who had internet. ChatGPT mentioned I should start my own radio show, and shortly after OwO Radio was born. The goal of this show was me talking about things in my life, and curating music that I thought went with the theme or story that I enjoyed. It was a great mix of music and life. However shortly after getting started the show grew its own identity and quickly became a deep dive into my psychology. But not by telling you about it, but by showing you.
I knew right off the bat I wanted to do the show in seasons. This would allow me to set a goal line for myself so it didn't feel like a permanent commitment. I was trying to beat my ADHD here. With the idea that there would be a season came the idea that Season One would be kinda an introductory season but also cover my experience in the year 2024. The year 2024 was a difficult year for me. I didn't know the why at the time, but I was struggling with autistic burnout episodes as I kept trying to force myself to accommodate time and energy for friends. Not a fault of theirs, but not one of mine either. I also came to several realizations about myself that forced me to keep a secret. Something I hate doing and that secret became a rift between me and my friends as I couldn't say anything about it, and because of this I felt like I couldn't connect with any of them.
So Season 1 of OwO Radio was an intense ride. It started out with me talking about things like Hiraeth, a feeling like I would never find home, Pride and how I came to find it, The Holy Trinity (what I call the months of October, November, and December) and then it dove into my brain. It became clear in the show that I (Mikel) was using my fursona as a mask in the story and over the course of the season I started to let myself have and use my own voice and let my character, Ebb, have his own. It became a showcase of id versus ego as I dived deeper and deeper into the parts of myself I really didn't want to talk about. Those things, I let Ebb do the talking for me. I even went as far as to use my secret alt fursona that I never told anyone about to go even deeper in what was the darkest episode I'd done called Bruno. That episode killed me to make. I went on to talk about things I just don't talk in earnest about with people like being molested, being a bit of a pervert, and why I feel the need to reset. Reset is what I call this stupid thing I do when I delete all of my online presence and then go off the map. Sometimes it's for days, sometimes weeks, sometimes even longer. In the final episode Mikel had to deal with the aftermath of the reset where he's deleted Ebb and is all alone. Ebb had become his best friend at this point in the show, not just the tool to dive into the brain, and this was to simulate how alone I really feel in this reset process after I push friends away and isolate myself away from family.
I guess I wanted to showcase the fact that since I always feel so alone in life, sometimes I go through this reset just to prove to myself that I am alone.
Anyways, I had David listening to the show as I was creating the episodes and he was into it. He would laugh and roll his eyes at the jokes (since I often use very crass humor as contrast if I'm about to go into dark territory) and he would cry at the episodes. It felt amazing. I felt seen watching him listen to them, and I'll be honest, there was something about seeing him react to my stories that always had me choking back tears. Something I don't get to feel too often.
So after I conquered my ADHD and finished season one I made a little teaser for him and snuck it into the middle of a song to let him know that I was already well in progress working on a season two. This time I wanted to let Ebb be completely unleashed. No more masking. He was still me, but he was his own character. Like his own slice of me, to the point where he even has different beliefs and values (something I struggle with where I have competing beliefs and ideas). In the teaser Ebb was making a crass joke about enjoying a knotsicle but it had to be green. He thinks red is overrated since everyone loves red rockets, etc. His own member is green so it was a self-inflating comment.
So I wanted to get artwork of Ebb enjoying nothing else but a green knotsicle. So I commissioned an artist on FurAffinity and got my artwork. It's amazing.
