Shelving Nothing & Nowhere, Last, and Ozempic

I suck at making promises to keep up with this so from now on I will blog when I feel like doing it, I guess I should talk about how next week I will be at 8 months sober. Its pretty exciting but also scary, this will be the longest I have been sober. It honestly feels weird, like I remember how it was before but actually being there now just feels unnatural probably because I haven't been sober for a long time. I've been going to a meeting here in town that I like, have a sponsor as well which is new for me. I've made progress but I still have a long way to go, sobriety is work in progress. I ain't perfect but I am doing the best I can.

I've been having issues writing my next album which was originally suppose to be called "Nothing and Nowhere" and was suppose to be a continuation of my "Remnants" album. I feel like I put way too much pressure on myself to make something that was big and crazy and I just don't want to do any of that shit, I want to just relax and let whatever comes out of me come out of me. I have for the time being shelved the songs that I wrote for N&N so maybe I will return to them down the road but right now doesn't feel like the right time for them. I also feel after I created songs like Perfect and One which are now my biggest songs I have ever released I feel some pressure to make something just as good or mainstream. I started this album trying to create music that I feel would do well and fits with that vibe, but that isn't how I feel right now. I had to sit down and remember why I do music in the first place, and it took me sometime to actually remember. I make music as a way to process things. Its therapy for me and I can express how I am feeling and get things out that I don't want to talk about otherwise because I feel like no one would understand or no one would care. I can take something ugly or traumatic and create something beautiful out of that pain, that is initially why I started to create music and I am happy I was able to create upbeat songs like Perfect and One but right now with where I am and the state of the world its hard to be happy so I need to write from my heart. I will be releasing the first single from my yet untitled seventh album which I am not going to rush but I will try to meet a deadline of at the end of the year.

The first single is called 'Last' which I wrote during my first month of sobriety, I wanted to capture where I was in that moment, feeling lost and confused being pulled back and forth between a part of me that wanted to go back to using and a part of me that wanted to stop. In those early days it felt like I was going crazy, some days it still feels like I am going back and forth but I am much more in control of myself now and I have things in place to help me. 'Last' will also be my directorial debut and the first music video I do for Void of Axis, I tried to do the same with Perfect but it never happened and I still plan to do a music video for Perfect down the road. But the ideas I have for Last involve almost a being in a nightmare, seeing places and things past, present and future within my addiction and I want to showcase that in the video.

God, thats a lot about my past with addiction. Well lets talk about some other stuff, I started taking Ozempic about 10 weeks ago. Its been making me nauseous as hell, no idea why but hope it tapers off. If not then we will have to try something different, I haven't really felt well enough to do any work sadly and I've wanted to keep streaming since that was doing really well but then I was too sick to do it. Gonna try to stream for a little bit today and see how that goes. I've been up all night working on music and creative projects so I will probably crash soon. Guess i'll end this here. Till next time.

Goodbye Facebook, New Single "Left-Right" & Elden Ring Network Test

I've finally exorcised myself of Facebook, after Mark Zuckerberg gave money to Trump's campaign as well as changing the terms of service to hurt minorities and transgendered people I felt it was time to leave. On top of that all I ever see on there now is unending feeds about what Trump is doing, I appreciate people wanting to be aware and let people know whats going on but as I said in my previous post since the election I have been physically ill to the point of having anxiety and panic attacks whenever I think about it. I have distanced myself from a lot of it and its made me feel better so I am not having panic attacks as much anymore but I still do feel a great deal of anxiety. I have been approached by a few people who feel I should stay and just deactivate my account but I don't want to do that because that pulls my morals in to question and it also makes me feel like a hypocrite and I refuse to put my morals aside and be hypocritical. Its wrong, period. To stay there now is like hating Elon Musk and but staying on Twitter/X, its completely hypocritical. This is why I consolidated my online presence to just Bluesky, YouTube and Discord, and right now I am very pissed off with Google over the Gulf of Mexico change. All these companies that are bowing down to Trump and kissing his ass, I hope most people remember this, don't support these companies that are basically telling us to go fuck ourselves because they want to align with Trump mission just so they don't get attacked by him. Yea no fuck that, I hope companies like Coke, Meta, Amazon go under, I don't want to support any of them again because of them choosing to bow down to Trump.

Because of all of this, I have put the 20 songs I have written for Nothing and Nowhere on the backburner for now. I am writing very political tracks right now, one of which is a song I wrote back in 2007 for an album called The Endless Hole that I never released. Too many guys heard the title name and thought I was talking about a super bottom that wants to take every dick he can get. NO!!! It was meant to be my attempt at an Downward Spiral album. That would come later in Remnants, and now Nothing and Nowhere. But anyways the track is called Left-Right, its very antimilitarism and where our country is heading if we continue down the path we are heading right now. It is available now on Bandcamp but will be everywhere else on February 21st, 2025. Its available here: https://voidofaxis.bandcamp.com/track/left-right

I feel like I haven't been in the mood to make videos for my channel, I feel like I should do it when I am feeling like putting something up, despite this I know people want new stuff so yesterday I filmed a few new episodes of Questionable Questions with Jacob and we need to film some new Burning Down the House with Jacob episodes this weekend. I also plan on streaming Elden Ring: Nightreign Network Test (if I can) which should be awesome. I am currently playing Bloodborne with Jacob and Ben, also playing Dark Souls 3 between Minecraft and FFXIV so I've been pretty busy with a lot of different games. I feel I should stream more but my anxiety has always got in the way of that and I only do it when I physically and mentally feel like I can handle it.

Lost and Broken

 I haven't felt like writing anything because my thoughts are everywhere right now. I am just beside myself right now, our country is in the worst state its ever been and people are just acting like its the best time ever. I can't understand and trying to make sense of it makes me physically ill, maybe this is what our country needs, a cleansing, a revolution, lots of blood and deaths on the hands of the idiotic. I have no idea, I don't have the answers.

I have been writing a lot of music, taking breaks in between because as I said before its been making me physically ill. I have been having panic attacks everyday and now I cry at least once a day when I freak out so guess thats gonna be the new normal for the next 4 years. Gonna talk to a friend of mine about seeing if I can see a therapist at the gay center here at least once a month. I can't afford to go more often but I need to see a therapist because I can't function like this for the next four years.

At the very least I got my 120 Day Chip from CMA, I am very happy I have remained sober but its been so hard with everything so broken and destroyed. But I know getting fucked up wouldn't fix anything, it would just make everything worse. Been distancing myself from social media and honestly that has helped so maybe I need to remove social media from my phone because its only making me feel worse.

I am sorry I don't have more to say, I just feel so lost and broken with how things have become. I hope things will get better.

Relapse Dream, 4 Years of Hell & Uploads for Dustin Studios

Just woke up and I had a pretty vivid "using dream" last night, I went to some guys house in the dream, he wasn't really attractive but I went because he had Meth and thats the real reason I went in the dream. I have done that in real life where I would go to have sex with some guys only because they had Meth and I didn't feel any attraction to them once so ever. He said we would have an hour to play and such so he handed me a shard and everytime I went to snort it something fucked up would happen like I wouldn't have the card to crush it up, I didn't have a straw to snort it, it would fall off the table. At some point I got annoyed and yelled at the guy and I grabbed a shard and went to the bathroom to do it, I was able to get that one done and I felt it a little bit but at the same time I was like "I want more" so I left the bathroom and the police were there and so were some people, it was fucking weird. But at that point I also realized it was a dream and that no matter how much I did of it I would never be satiated. It reminded me of the last time I used where I got an 8 ball but I believe he gave me way more than that, I ended up using for a week and half straight and that is very unusual for me because usually after 3 days I am over it and want to come down, not last time. I just wanted to keep going and needed more and was never satisfied. That scared me, thats why recovery is so important to me now. I'm glad that I was able to realize what the dream was, just my brain trying to get me to go back and I can't. I just can't anymore.

Since the election and the holidays I haven't felt like filming new Bears On The Coast material, since its a vlog about our lives I just don't feel like sharing our lives because well why? We are about to enter Hell and who knows how bad its going to be, also if you are different in any way shape or form basically the people who voted for Trump want you dead and it disturbs me that this is where we are in our country. I don't feel safe, I am scared for my life, for the life of my partner and my roommate, my friends and family. I am just scared and everyone else is acting like Question Hound right now, I have a very bad feeling about the next 4 years and I hope we can all make it through it.

Despite how I am feeling I have pushed myself to do a walkthrough of Dark Souls 1 Remastered, the first walkthrough I have ever done on my channel, I have also started to back up any live streams or old videos I have to my channel. I want the Dustin Studios channel to also be an archive for my previous work over the years, I plan to even put up some of my old Dustin Studios Volumes which were video tapes I made when I was a kid. I only have a few of them now and I've lost the rest over the years. For a long time I was embarrassed by them because people would say "oh your movies suck, you need to come back to reality, you'll never make a living doing videos or anything creative" but I realize now those people were wrong, sure the videos aren't professional but its the first time I started to stretch my creative wings and I can see from my old videos some of my humor and ideas that I would refine over the years and make them work in a more professional space. Its a part of my past and part of my journey to where I am now and I am not embarrassed by them. Also I have been told that I need to make separate channels for everything that is different from each other on YouTube and I just feel like thats too much for me to do, if thats how the algorithm works then fuck the algorithm. As I said before I want my channel to be the space where all of my creative work is in one place:

• Void of Axis
• Bears On The Coast
• A Word From Dustin
• Questionable Questions
• Burning Down the House with Jacob
• Chicken Chat
• VOAGamerCub Gaming
• Dustin Studios Classics

I want to make videos because I enjoy making them, not because I want to be rich or famous or anything. Its because it what I love to do and I feel like a lot of people on YouTube just do things just for money and I understand people need to make a living but at the same time I feel you also need to do things just because you love doing them. I have watched over the years as my work becomes more refined and more progress has been made to make my work more professional and I am learning as I am working on my creative projects so that makes me happy. This is my lifes work and this is what I intend to do till the day I die, this is how I want to spend my life.

Seasonal Depression, Close Call and starting the 12 Steps

 

Its been a little while since I last posted, been dealing with Seasonal Depression. When it gets cold like this I start to remember traumatic experiences from my past living in NY and it just pulls me down in to a swamp of despair that I can't escape from, sometimes after New Years it will go away but sometimes it can stay as long as the cold does. I'm not sure why cold triggers it, I think its because when I became homeless all those years ago I associate the cold with death and loneliness which I was feeling deeply during the two years I was homeless. Also I find it extremely fake that people put on a smile for the holidays like giving presents and "holiday cheer" fix deep rooted issues you've had with said people for years, so yea I prefer to just ignore the holiday and go about my business.

I had a Friend with Benefits come over and I think he was on Meth, he has done it with me before but he knows I don't do it anymore. I was extremely uncomfortable the entire time he was over here, I should have woken Jacob up and told him to leave, also he could have offered me to do it as well but he didn't so I guess thats why I didn't wake Jacob up but next time I know when something like that happens I need to listen to my gut and just get them out of the house because I don't want to screw up my sobriety. Since that happened that has only added to my Seasonal Depression, I have been sleeping a lot. I also missed my meeting so I will make sure on Wednesday I can make the New Years Day meeting.

Not sure if I mentioned this here but I decided maybe like two weeks ago that I finally feel like I am ready to sit down in my 12 Step Meeting and allow someone to sponsor me because I feel like I am flying without a parachute right now and as of next Wednesday I will be 90 Days Sober. The reason I needed time was because of how burned I was by my previous 12 step group, I feel comfortable in CMA so I feel I can now sit down and listen to someone help me through the 12 steps so I can work through this once and for all and get my life back without Meth in it. I talked with someone who I was nervous would say no about being my sponsor but they said yes. I am very excited to start working on things and seeing how my life can change once I start implementing these things in my life.

Void of Axis: Building the Seventh Studio Album (Beginnings)

I'd like to talk about my new album I am working on and really open up about my thought process working on it as well as what lead up to the decisions to make this record in the first place.

"Continue" was based off music I started in a side project to Void of Axis that I called Null Index probably back in 2015 so a lot of it is quite old. Not all of it was written during that time, Throw Me Away and Perfect came much later but tracks like "Everlasting Nothing, Love is a Sickness and Negativity" were made in 2015. The whole working idea I had behind Null Index was I would challenge myself to write a song, lyrics and record everything within a day and a lot of that stuff was born from those sessions. I could see myself in the future trying that approach again maybe for a sequel to "Continue" if I want to explore that 80's synthpop space again. "Continue" was a question to myself, at this time I was trying to get sober but also at the same time not being on top of myself about actually getting sober. So it was a question about whether I wanted to or if it was even possible for me to make music anymore. I was very scared to write music at the time and I didn't feel like I was ready to really open up about where I was so I took the pressure off of me and went in to my backlog and tried to find something that spoke to me in that moment and I had always wanted to release a lot of that music because I feel its really good but it just was never the right time when I would start to work on it. So taking the pressure off of me to write entirely new music I started to retool and finish up what I had made prior and that ended up becoming "Continue" and I am very happy that those tracks are not out in the world. I feel like I answered the question of whether or not I could continue to make music by releasing that album.

After "Continue" I took a break, I was still very scared of writing new music and part of that was because the last few songs I had released were "Perfect" and "One" which are some of the most upbeat and happiest songs I have ever made. Where I am currently is anything but that, and after much introspection I decided that if my audience truly enjoys my work they would want me to be honest with myself and write what experiences I am currently having. Void of Axis has always been a collection of experiences I have taken whether they been happy, traumatic, sad or angry, I take moments and use music as a form of therapy to get things off my chest. Right now the material I am writing has been some of the darkest I have ever written and when I first started I felt fans would dislike that since "Perfect" and "One" have shown I can make happier music and in the future I will make happier music but right now is not that time.

Since it has been years since I've written any new material I wasn't sure how to even start this time around, normally when I make an album I usually write a bunch of music first, then I go ahead and pick what I like best and write lyrics for those tracks. This time around its been completely different, I wasn't comfortable writing music because my past work would influence whatever would comes out and this time around I felt lyrics needed to be written. I challenged myself to write lyrics first without any music in mind just writing whatever I was feeling in that moment and the words just flowed. I have even found that I dropped a rule I had where words needed to rhyme in all my lyrics instead focusing on getting out exactly how was feeling in that moment completely. This has resulted in a lot of the lyrics feeling very confessional, deep and personal. It may be too personal for some honestly for some but this feels right to me and I am just going with my gut on this.

When I first created Void of Axis I had envisioned it to be an "audio/visual" project and the visual aspect of the project has been non-existent, I hope to change that going forward starting with this album as I have promised myself that I will not release the album until I feel like I have satisfied that part of the projects identity. In the past once I finish an album I just want people to hear it and throw it out there, this is a behavior I will change going forward. When I write albums I always have a visual in mind normally, when I created "Forest of Memories" I visualized myself in a forest surrounded by all of my memories and it being an ancient place of power that is home because all of who you are is there, our memories make us who we are.

When I finished about three songs I started to visualize where the album lives, I see depths that no light can reach where everything is cold, dark, dilapidated and desecrated. A place where all of my hopes and dreams have been thrown in to and now having sat in those depths for the last ten years they have become twisted and deformed amalgamations of there former selves to the point where I can't even recognize what they used to be in the first place. This is a place I willing threw myself in to ten years ago and only now ten years later am trying to climb out of. As I climb and see all I've done to myself, my hope and dreams, anger fills my heart, telling me to keep climbing. The closer I get to the top the more I can see the light but also I start to make out something else at the top, something dark, something sinister, something evil. I can see myself at the top looking down at me, hoping I fall.

That is when I figured out the title for the album, "Nothing and Nowhere". The title came from the idea that this place I am trapped in now is like a limbo, it feels like I am lost, unable to escape and I am trying my best but it all feels in vain, but I am not sad, I am just angry at this point. I want to get better, I want to have a good life, and I am tired of being in this place I will climb out of here and I won't let myself stop me. Let me be more direct if you want that, I am trying to escape my addiction which has completely destroyed who I was and my life, I am only now starting to get back in to finding who I am as well as that dark side of myself that wants to go back to it all but I know where that path leads, I have explored those depths and I don't want to die there. This album will be my climb to freedom.

People are Good?

So I am taking another social media break. I will still be posting blog entries here, but I am done with the fuckery that is the internet and the country that I live in which is the United States. We are anything but United.

I was already depressed because people decided to show how horrible they are by voting for Trump for a second term, but since the election, people have been going out and just being shitty as fuck. I mean they were shitty as fuck before that, but now they are advertising it, acting like everyone around them is an NPC, they don't have feelings or things going on in their lives to these people so they treat everyone who isn't them like garbage and its so stupid. I don't fucking get it, like a few weeks ago I went out with my friend Michael Livote who was visiting during Thanksgiving, we stopped at a Sonic and me and Jacob ordered our food and then Michael wanted to order his, he pushed the button literally right after we finished and they told him to wait...

And we waited...

And we waited...

And the our food came out and someone else pulled up behind us and he pushed the button and someone answered immediately. The excuse that was given was that they were busy, okay well your argument goes out the window when you literally answer in 0.5 seconds the guy who just pulled up when he pushed the button. What happened really was they forgot about Michael and didn't want to own their shit, instead they wanted to blame us so I asked for a manager and told her to refund my money. First of all, I ain't gonna sit there and eat food in front of my friend while he doesn't eat anything, that's just not right. Also its just on principle, she gave me an attitude and said she couldn't refund my money unless there's something with the food. Jacob stepped in at that point which I am glad for because I was about to go the fuck off, sorry but don't hold my money hostage when literally its not my fault that you won't own that you forgot he pressed the button. Sonic doesn't need my money that much, I highly doubt my 23 dollars is gonna make them go out of business. Another example is just this past weekend, Me and Jacob went to TJ Maxx so I could get some sweat pants and literally people were throwing things around, dropping shit all over the floor and not picking it up and just generally acting like uncivilized animals. On top of that this past week a man shot a CEO and the reasoning for it was because this CEO was basically denying thousands of people coverage and many people end up dying because they can't get the care they need. Now I want to say this, I am a pacifist, I don't believe war or violence solves anything. All it does is add a death toll to a problem, with that said, this company/CEO has murdered thousands by denying health coverage to people who needed it and couldn't get it, the shooter kills one person and the news media goes on a witch hunt along with a bunch of people who are also rich and in positions of power calling anyone who sympathizes with the shooter to be "sick"...

Okay, well when protesting and fighting for your rights in a non-violent doesn't work and it hasn't worked for a very very long time then what do you expect is going to happen? People are suffering and they are hurting and dying. Instead of being a human race that lifts each other up no matter what sex, gender, race or creed, physical, emotion or mental disabilities we put those with enough money front and center and those are the people who shape our world because only their voices are heard because they are the ones with the money to do that. If you look at social media lately the people who are front and center are people who have money and also don't care about who they have to put down as long as they can make money. Money is god, everything else is secondary, including human lives, if it gets in the way of you making money, so be it, guess some people need to die...

So with that said I don't condone what he did BUT I understand why he did it.

Because of all of that I am distancing myself from social media and I only plan to go outside to go for a walk or get groceries, besides that fuck the outside world right now. I'm sorry but I do not want to see people acting like apes flinging shit at each other. I have no idea if its better in other countries but I just know America is basically acting like a small child in the corner of the room at a birthday party where every other kid is being normal but America is playing with its own shit, painting on the walls, screaming and flinging it everywhere while talking about how great it is. That's America right now and its disgusting, we are a joke to the rest of the world.

I'm seriously considering if things get really bad here that maybe we need to leave America. I would hate to leave but if this place because Nazi Germany then we need to leave.

Literally as I finish this blog entry "People are Good" comes on by Depeche Mode, a perfect song representation of how I feel. Are people good? I don't know, I want to believe we can be, but until I see that I need to do what is best for me and my family and protect those I love.