Hi!

So apparently I've been on this site for over 17 years and not even once written a journal entry. I decided it's time to change that.
I don't know if I should introduce myself or if that's a bit too late. Perhaps I should. I've spoken to many here but I doubt any actually know much about me.

I'm Erty. What is there to say about me? I love swimming. Back when I was in high school and uni people called me a "crazy scientist" because I built a lot of cool tech and high voltage stuff, like tesla coils and ion thrusters, and owned a piece of fluorescent uranium ore sample. I'm bisexual and a mess. I'm 30 years old as of writing. I used to draw and paint a lot but haven't done much of that the last years (unless you count making textures). I think bananas are pretty cool. I started my goldsrc mapping adventure about 20 years ago, messing around with an early version of HLSDK and finding Worldcraft.

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I guess part of why I haven't written any journal entries, or contributed more than a handful of things for most of that time comes from having been afraid of getting too invested in mapping, or any creative process at all. I've been pretty good at starting projects, but terrible at finishing them. I've only published a handful of vault items, and later removed them. So why bother trying being a part of a community I won't contribute to? I'm just here with nothing to share. I had many such thoughts back then.

Well, a lot of shit happened during those years, the first two decades of the new millenium, an entire third of my entire life just full of chaos.
Looking back I understand better than to blame myself for not being as "productive as I could have been". Maybe participating more in the community could have helped encourage me to finish more projects instead of giving up when I felt like nothing mattered. Hell, perhaps the community here or elsewhere could have helped reminding me that some things do matter.

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But all of that is in the past. My life is better now. I have a great partner. We've bought our first apartment together and moving in a week. We're packing like hell for that. There's also much to do at work. While a lot of things are happening right now, it's in a good way. I still have depression and PTSD, and it still gets in the way sometimes, but it's a lot less than it used to and things are stable enough for me to actually finish my projects. I participated in a SC mapping collab (Ragemap) two years in a row and currently participating in this year's collab as well. I've become more active on this site and various other communities. You might even have seen me around in the TWHL or SC discord servers.

Apart from Ragemap I have some other projects I'm working on. There's another unannounced mapping collab, and a pirate-themed map series I've been working on (perhaps I will tell more about it later on, after I finish moving). This week I began working on a program for converting .obj files exported from Jack to .smd files along with a .qc, all ready for compiling. Today I sent out an alpha version of it to a select few members of the mapping communities to help me test it. I hope it works well enough to fully release it soon and hope that at least some people find it useful. I'm planning on adding rmf/jmf support to it after the release of the first full version (thanks to Captain P for showing me the parser from MESS!)

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Well there we go. My first journal entry. A bit about myself, a bit about the past, and a bit about the now.
Maybe the "bit" is an understatement. Heh.