Posting is making a comeback
This is a post that is more for me than for anyone else, though I suppose it’s good to say it to everyone for the sake of saying that I’ve spent the last several months trying to audit my own habits, my own life, and get into a zone that helps with my overall productivity while also recognizing that I need healthy breaks and healthy habits to go alongside all of these things. Part of that, I think, is recognizing that I love to blog. I hate the word, but I love to do it. Writing is a better way of putting it? Let’s call it writing instead! I’ve kept a journal since I was five years old (!!!) and in the last several years its a habit I’ve fallen out of step with, if only because life has gotten so busy that I literally put myself aside to address the rest of everything that needed to be done. It wasn’t until recently that I felt the need to actually bust out the old journal again and start “couching” some of the noise in my head, if only to live a better life. What spurned all of this change on? Well, to be perfectly honest, the passing of my (basically) 20-year old cat Gabby back in November. I knew it would be a rough one, but she’s lived through so many phases of my life with me that her passing felt like an actual chapter closing. A large chapter. It also felt like a recognition, and acceptance, of how much time had passed, and that I have, indeed, gone through a lot of things, and changed in the face of all of it. Not drastically, and not for the worse. But change has occurred, and acknowledging that if only for a healthier way to move forward was required. I needed to put a little more time into self-care, simply put, and I think that’s what the real motivation is. Part of this journaling isn’t always personal though, and a lot of it can be about the things I usually talk about during a stream, which includes games, movies, music, books, technology, and lifestyle things. You know, influencer shit. Another word I hate! I’ll use it here though, because it applies.
What’s been up with me otherwise since the last post… *checks notes*… two years ago!? Oh boy, a LOT. Though, I suppose if you’re reading this, you are likely a participant in my stream, and already know what’s been going on. Needless to say, here are some of the highlights.
Over the last year in our home, I’ve been working tirelessly on backing up our old physical media and spinning up our own internal Plex/Jellyfin server – I include both, because while we predominantly use Plex, Jellyfin is the backup in case Plex’s ongoing dubious moves to further ostracize any good will in the userbase they once had happen to go over a personal line, I’ll be ready to pull the trigger on a great alternative. I did this not just because I have an extensive collection of DVDs that I’ve had for well over twenty years that I wanted to finally bring into the new world in some way, I also wanted to cut costs on streaming services that are seemingly going up and up and up every month. I wanted us to still feel like we had things to watch without sacrificing all of the modern conveniences we were used to. I found we were often paying a monthly subscription fee to watch old shows and movies we had already seen hundreds of times that were considered comfort shows, and knowing that we also had those in physical media just lying around, it made no sense to continue to pay some big tech company for the “privilege” of modern convenience. This isn’t to say we have abandoned using those services altogether, I just wanted to have a more sensible and intentional approach to our usage. While doing all of this early last year, I infamously tripped over a large stack of these DVDs and fell into a space heater, lacerating my earlobe and resulting in seven stitches one fateful night in February. I won’t live that one down for a while, but hey! I can now say I’ve bled for this effort, and it’s much more important now. In conjunction with Plex/Jellyfin, we’re using a little side program called ErsatzTV to spin up faux “channels” using the content we own on our server that simulate the feeling of having live television, with a guide, that we can just peruse at any moment we want. This might seem somewhat antiquated to a newer generation, but older people who had to endure legacy broadcast media understand entirely where this is coming from. I can’t recommend either of these things enough, not only has it been a really fun thing to set up and maintain, it’s brought out some extra creativity from both Trav and myself on what we can do with these new tools. It didn’t end there though, because I recently pulled the trigger on extending this into more of a full homelab, with self-hosting for a LOT of things and… woo boy, what a rabbit hole. It’s been fun. I’ll likely bring up some of that on this blog in the near future, if only to, once again, “couch” the thoughts somewhere.
The kittens have become larger cats now, and are doing very well. About a month after Gabby left us, we discovered Lily had a fairly large wound on her abdomen that she required stitches for. We’re not sure if her and one of the boys got into it or if she did it herself, but it’s likely something caused by a scuffle with the boys because there’s been a lot of animosity since. Only recently has that calmed down from where it was, and everyone gets along a little more peacefully now. It’s taken a lot of work, helicopter cat-parenting, and establishing new routines for playtime and bedtime that keep everyone fairly happy and healthy. I think that’s been the bulk of my focus outside of general home maintenance things, which there has been a LOT of as well. A new roof, new siding, a new water heater. Life is, indeed, doing its thing.
Streams have always had their ups and downs, but I feel like things are in a great place with it lately. I have a lot of weird ideas I’m working on, and a lot of weird ideas I’ve already deployed. There’s always something cooking in the lab at the church of skinnedteen, I just have to organize my thoughts to approach it. That’s part of the process with this writing, actually! Also, over the last two years, we as a community have managed to raise an estimated $20,000 for various charities, including St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, The American Heart Association, and Hope For The Day while doing various things like cooking, playing Magic: The Gathering, working together toward a common goal in Minecraft, or sewing chaos in all of the above. I’m grateful to have been able to spread some good into the world in this way, and I can’t thank the community enough for the opportunities presented!
I’m currently working on a couple of blog posts to document the last year in gaming, the current announcements at Summer Game Fest, and the actively ongoing Steam Next Fest, so that’s on the table. I also have some things I want to work on about horror games, and most of this will fan out into videos that I’m working on as well. If all goes well, at least half of that should be available in the next week for reading, so I guess that’s cool?
More or less, what I’m saying is that I came from the Livejournal generation, and I’m here to make blogging great again in my own brain. I hope I can stick with it, and I hope you enjoy it when I do stick to it!
To close out this messy recounting of what’s been going on since 2024, I might as well list out a few things that I’ve been reading, listening to, watching, and enjoying. You know, like you would on a Livejournal post 🙂
Reading
I’ve been working on re-developing a healthy habit for reading, and will often pick up something at the beginning of the day or at the end of the day. It’s a constant, almost like exercise, that I try to stick to a few times a week, if only because it’s the time that I have. I try to prioritize it though, because like exercise I view it as a healthy one for my brain. So far I’ve finished The Invention of Sound by Chuck Palahniuk, Those Across The River by Christopher Buehlman, Doll Parts by Penny Zang, and Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu and Karl Wurf. I’m currently working on re-reading The Yard by Alex Grecian so I can hit up the whole series, and The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories by Joan Aiken. I have a big stack of things to get to, and I really want to start up Dungeon Crawler Carl and have another journey into the Anne Rice universe.
Music
I’ve mostly been into Pendulum by Twin Tribes and the Nine Inch Noize release from Nine Inch Nails and Boys Noize, as well as listening to a lot of Travelyan’s newer stuff (his albums Comfort and Aerospeed I can’t recommend enough!). I also found Gesaffelstein was great leveling music for Diablo IV, which I suppose brings me to the next category..
Gaming
Most everyone already knows what I’ve been playing if they watch my stream, but I’ll touch on it briefly anyways. I intend to, hopefully soon, breakdown a list of some of my favorite stuff from last year, but as of lately I’ve been really jamming on Diablo IV and Graveyard Keeper during my daytime streams. I started working on playing through the whole Fatal Frame series back in March, and am looking to get back into that really soon. At night, I’ve been tackling my infamous backlog by following a pretty meticulous list of games selected by the chat during my March Madness support-a-thon, and have put away a couple of great games like Cloudpunk, The Drifter, and The Thaumaturge. Soon I’m hoping to dig into Legend of Grimrock.
Movies and TV
Trav and I recently devoured the final season of Euphoria, which is always an exercise in patience to try and process in the afterglow. The show is beautiful on its face, and relatable because of the character performances, but reflecting upon its messaging and its pacing and the all of it leaves you asking more than you can answer, which is frustrating. I started up the new season of Interview With The Vampire, otherwise known as The Vampire Lestat, which is probably why I’m wanting to read that series again. We have also been watching a lot of older movie anthologies, like Final Destination, 28 Days Later (and so on), and Scream. I think the thing that left the biggest impression on me as of late here was probably Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen, however, because I’ve watched it twice already and I just found it to be really good.