Completion, Halting, and an Uncertain Future

Well, it's done.

After spending weeks upon weeks updating, tweaking, and changing every single piece of work I have made...

It is done. For the moment, Encyclopedia Wormwood is ready for print. I mean it. I have universalized and tweaked every single aspect of my reports to make them ready for publishing, and if I wanted to, I now could do so without having to touch them again...at least not until the next games come out.

Which now leaves me with an uncertain future...for more than a few reasons.

First, I have some bad news OOC. I've had to take a medical leave from Graduate School.

I don't take the time to say much about my life outside of DeviantArt, but I think an explanation is required for this. For those of you who do not know, I am technically still a Graduate Student in Paleontology on my first year...or at least was. The work was not so difficult to handle it; hell, I think I put up a pretty good face here, but it pales in comparison to what I do in my professional life. But there was a problem...

Grant writing.

For those of you who don't know (and to blatantly honest, that is probably most of you), getting funding for one's thesis work is not easy. Mine, after accounting for all expenses, would have required over $2,200, and I don't have that kind of pocket chance. So, in order to actually conduct my thesis, I have to apply for grants that can provide me money provided I demonstrate to them my skills as a professional scientist. Unfortunately, there is one particular grant, the Mark Diamond Research Fund, which could have provided up to $1,500 for my research, which is a lot more than any other...at the expense of a TON of paperwork. And I don't know about you, but I don't like paperwork. I like work...but not paperwork. You know what I mean.

During the course of trying to prepare all of the materials needed for this grant, I got bogged down with it and so much other university work that I just...well, I became utterly miserable and suffered a slight psychotic break.

So now, I've been spending the last few weeks at home, tirelessly working at my material here just to bury the feeling of utter failure on my medical leave...but now I am stuck with a conundrum because...well, as I said before, I am finished. There is nothing left for me to tweak or adjust.

So now, I pose to you, my friends and allies, a pondering question: Where do I go from here?

I am still going to complete Graduate School, one way or another...but I might have to go somewhere else to do it. I trusted some people at my university with some confidential information that I shared with them in my grief, hoping that they might be able to help me...and instead they betrayed me. I can't express how much that fills me with hate and loathing. I am not exactly the most trusting of individuals when it comes to my personal thoughts, but I thought at this level of education, I could trust another professional with information that I feel is inappropriate to discuss with a shrink (don't get me wrong; I great respect psychiatrists, but nor with really personal thoughts)...and now...

.......Sigh.......I won't say anything further; I don't need to bog you guys down with my problems. I guess I just needed to say that I have been having some problems lately and am trying to find ways of dealing with them...

So, to move on to more relevant topics of discussion here, where do I go with my work now? Right now, I have two main thoughts, but I'm not sure that I have the manpower, technology or funds for either one of them.

The first option is to create a digital copy of my work and maybe try to sell it as something like an e-book. I have been told by several people already that they would love to be able to have a print form of Encyclopedia Wormwood, which in the digital age, actually makes me feel a bit intrigued and proud of my work (and said friends, in the most pleasing way possible). This option sort of means that they would have to waste money to print it all out on their own, but from what I can discern, this has an advantage in that the material can be updated periodically as needed without having to print out another ENTIRE volume set (just the reports that are changed), which is what effectively killed the print version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. But I have no idea how to go about doing this, and would really need some personal help to do it right.

The other option...brace yourselves...is YouTube. I have already discussed this with at least one other person, and I know that it would really be hard to get myself established on YouTube, especially with so many other Pokemon-dedicated specialists out there (namely TamashiiHiroka and TheJWittz), but I think that it would be nice to be able to talk to people about the Pokemon world from the perspective of someone INSIDE of it, not on the outside in the real world. I haven't decided what kinds of things I would do, but right now my biggest ideas are discussing and talking about some of the more controversial topics in the Pokemon world, namely the abuse of Pokemon and extraterrestrial Pokemon (since anyone that has spend a lot of time around me knows I LOVE Kyurem). Unfortunately, while there are plenty of videos out there describing how to make YouTube videos, I really, REALLY do not have the money to afford expensive cameras and whatnot to record videos on. So if this becomes the path to take, it might be really hard for me to even get started...

So, those are the options I have right now. If you all have any other suggestions, I am open to them all.

Things have been depressing for me lately, but I am trying to hang in there; if it were not for everything here at DeviantArt, I don't think I would be able to keep myself together. I think I care too much about all the strife going on in the world, and it creates so much damaging background noise in addition to the stress I am always putting myself under...but at least I have all of you. I know I have said it many times before, but again, thank you all for supporting me all of these years.

The floor is open to discussion; let all suggestions flow freely, for there are no bad ideas here. Let's get started on something new, and who knows; maybe it will finally be my time...out time...to step in the spotlight of some other world and show the Pokemon fandom what we can create from inside the plastic bubble, if you get my drift.