Hey everyone! (All three of you who read my blog, at least.) I've been agonizing over trying to find something interesting to write on my blog for a while, and there hasn't been anything that's felt worth writing a whole blog post about. I still wanna get my current thoughts and feelings out into the world, though, so I think I'll just talk a little bit about everything that's been going on in my life as of late. We can consider this a kind of short little life update, and I would like to write one of these up every month or so. Finding a calm point at the end of a month to log all my major feelings and experiences, like saving my game at a checkpoint... Yeah, a checkpoint. That's what I'll call these.
Emotional Ups and Downs
I figure I'll start with talking about my internal experiences. I originally started the blog to serve as a form of journal, and a major use for a journal for me is an emotional outlet. Things have been... weird for me recently, on an emotional front. I've felt like I have really stagnated creatively, and that's been driving me crazy. I keep having ideas for cool creative projects to work on, but whenever I have the time and energy, I just can't. Something is stopping me, some unknown force in the back of my mind just prevents me from starting or making substantial progress on creative things I want to do. It's kind of infuriating, actually. It makes me so mad that I just lost access to hobbies, for no reason, and I can't figure out anything to do to help with it.
I've been less financially secure recently than I have been for a while, but not like dangerously poor. It's still added to the stress, though. Work is inconsistent, and searching for another job has been so hard, it feels impossible. But I'm surrounded by good people, and I think I have more active friendships and I spend more time interacting with people now than I have in a very long time. I spend less of my days doing nothing and feeling sad and lonely, which is an improvement.
This was actually supposed to be out a week ago, but there was a long and annoying family reunion that got in the way of that. That took a log of energy out of me, and I'm still recovering from that. I really don't like most people on that side of the family. There's an entire stratum of my mother's family who don't know anything about other people. There's no asking anything, there's just saying what it "should" be. There's no room for subtlety, if you're not immediately decisive in an instant you're stupid or a coward. You can't be genuine, if you actually say what's on your mind instead of some quippy one-liner in response to everything, then you're some kind of problem. I don't understand it, and I was around them for like 4 whole days. It was so taxing. I'm still not even entirely comfortable with myself after that, and I've been home for several days since.
What I've Been Up To
As far as what I've been up to recently... Not much. As I said, I've been having trouble being active creatively. I've been trying to draw, trying to write, and not getting super far with either pursuit. I have been working on a tabletop project to run with a small group, but development on that has slowed thanks to this creative block. So, I've been reading and playing video games instead.
As I'm writing this, the most recent things I've been playing have been Yakuza 0 and Donkey Kong Bananza, which I've recently finished. I really liked Donkey Kong Bananza, and the transformation system and destructible environments resulted in a very enjoyable and unique take on 3D collect-a-thon platformers. Yakuza 0 has been good, technically it's my second time playing it, but I remember so little from my first experience with the game that a lot of it feels like I'm experiencing it for the first time. It's really cool, and has extremely good pacing as far as gameplay is concerned. A lot of the newer Like a Dragon games are super easy, until the point where they hit you with one random brick-wall boss fight that takes forever for no reason. I've also been playing a bit of Mario Kart: Double Dash on the Gamecube. It's been fun to go through and gold-trophy all the circuits to unlock everything myself, but technically it's my roommate's game.
I have been trying to break into the shmup genre, and I started grinding out runs of Ikaruga. I picked that one as the first serious one I'd play, because it's one of those games you just hear a lot about. I wasn't expecting it to be AS difficult as it was though. After doing some research, I learned that most people do not consider it an approachable game at all. So, that's been put back on the shelf and I'm gonna start on another similar game soon enough.
I've also been really into Record of Lodoss War as a franchise, as of recently. I was introduced to it by one of my partners, being shown a metroidvania game starring the elf fighter Deedlit. Doing a bit of research, I've discovered that the franchise originated as a series of magazine columns that were transcripts of actual Beginner/Expert D&D play from the 80's. I found English translations of the first and second campaigns, and I'm currently in the middle of reading the second campaign. I never really liked consuming video or audio APs; I never understood the hype for stuff like Dimension 20 or Critical Role. These written APs, though, they speak to me! I think they've been really fun, and I would really like people to send anything else like that I would love for that to be sent my way.
What's Next?
Ideally, I'd get the ball rolling on that tabletop project I've been working on. It's so close to being in a playable state, but for some reason that makes working on it way more difficult.
I'm currently trying to thin out the amount of media I'm consuming, going to my shelf and picking out things that are already in progress. That means I need to finish Y0, the second Lodoss AP, the Lodoss OVA, and the Mario Kart unlocks I'm currently working on.
As far as things I'd like to start on next, I think I want to play some kind of JRPG. I've been trying to decide between the HD port of Etrian Odyssey, the first Hyperdimention Neptunia, or the Gamecube copy of Tales of Symphonia I own. I also need to figure out another lower-tier shmup to dip my toes into. I want to read more of the DanMachi books, it's been a while since I read one of those and I think they're really fun even if they're not super "deep" or "moving" traditionally.
I want to write more, write something more interesting and creative than a simple catch-up blog post. I just don't know what to write. I get a bunch of ideas, but none of them go anywhere. If you know me, and you have ideas for things I could write or write about, please reach out to me. I like writing essays and fiction, but I'm not opposed to going out of my comfort zone and working on something like poetry.