It’s Been How Long Since I Posted?!
Wow, time sure is a flying flat circle or whatever. I didn't intend to wait more than two months to post another blog. It's been a rough time, a bubbling mix of depression and overwork has left me exhausted. I’ve got nothing else to write about at the moment, so let’s take a quick look at my life the last couple of months. Is this an excuse for me to complain? No, but also yes.
Birthday Blues and Graduation Grays
My birthday is June 3, and its always a difficult time of the year for me. You’re not my therapist, nobody is, men would literally rather write a blog than spend thousands of dollars to talk to a stranger in a country that doesn't have universal healthcare and stigmatizes mental health services. Birthdays remind how short my time is, and how little I’ve accomplished. This year saw a huge plot twist: my niece’s high school graduation was on the same day. So here I am, feeling sorry for myself while also being happy for her. It was a strange sensation.
I also couldn’t help but think about how far apart we are in terms of our careers. She’s already on her way to university, she has a job in the field she wants a career in, and is actually making more money than I am. From two jobs, but still. She’s so far ahead of where I was at 18 it’s ridiculous. Hell, she’s far ahead of me now at 34. That's not a great feeling.
Cam’s Health
Cam’s health has steadily gone down in the last two months. He’s struggled with arthritis for a year or two now, but I fear it’s reaching a critical point. No matter how good a boy you are, time catches up. He does not like stairs, it’s often a five minute struggle to get him to go up or down. He’ll find a spot on the floor and lie there pretty much all day. Some days he’ll move around a little and play, some days I can’t get him to move an inch. We’ve tried a host of medicines and none of them seem to have much effect.
What hurts the most is that I don’t know when that time will come. Will he drift on peacefully in his sleep? Will I have to make that choice for him? Will I get a new dog after? I don’t know, and not knowing is always worse than knowing. I’ve had Cam longer than any other dog, almost 13 years. I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.
A Weird Anniversary
Late June marked one year since I quit my YouTube channel. I’m not dredging up that disaster again, but realizing it has been this long has me further in my feels. I don’t think about what could have been in terms of the channel, but what could have been if I continued following my writing career instead of abandoning it for YouTube for six years.
Dental Deviants
I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with my teeth. They love to hate me, and I love to hate them. I could rip my teeth out of my head and still get cavities. This time was worse. Within two weeks of each other, I lost a filling and suffered a cracked tooth. The first trip to the dentist addressed the cracked tooth, the cause of which was a bad cavity I was unaware of. After three hours in the chair they told me to come back in late August to deal with the filling. Yes, late August. This appointment was in the middle of June.
Working on My Parents House
My parents are looking to sell their house within the next year and move to Georgia to be closer to my sister. I’m not sure if I’m going with them, but in the meantime, they’re doing major work on their house before selling, and I’ve been helping. It’s been a… frustrating experience. Much more time-consuming and emotionally draining than I anticipated. That’s all I’ll say about that.
Failed Pitches and Looking for a Job
One reason I say my niece is so far ahead of me career-wise is that I’ve struggled to land a writing gig. I used to be a somewhat prolific freelance writer, but I gave that up to focus on YouTube. Now that I’ve left that behind, I’ve been trying to get back into freelancing. It's not gone well. Every pitch I've made in the last three months has been rejected. Or, more accurately, ignored. You can blame the slow death of the internet, the reliance by websites on AI slop, my own rust, or a combination of all three. I'm wondering now if it's worth continuing to pitch articles knowing that the chances of getting published anywhere are almost zero.
Meanwhile, my day job is becoming more untenable. More hours, more work, same pay. I’ve been looking for another job, something that pays a little more and has more stable hours. I’ll settle for a simple change of scenery at this point. I’ve had no luck on that front, either. I had one interview at a place, but it was too far away for me to consider. Between my thrice rejected short story, failing to find a freelance gig, and being unable to land a new day job, I’m facing triple rejection. Let me tell you, that does wonders for your mental health!
No Writing
I have written nothing in the last two months. The longer I go without working on any of my projects, the more upset I get about their progress, which makes me not want to work on them. It’s a vicious cycle. I haven’t touched my book in two months. Or this blog. I wrote about 1,000 words of a short story one night a few weeks ago, but I tossed it because it wasn’t any good. Those freelance pitches have been the most writing I’ve done lately.
It’s hard to muster the desire to write when nobody wants to read what you write. I’m trying to remind myself that I’ve only been writing again for a year, but then I remember that before I started my YouTube channel in 2019 I had been writing for almost a decade and had a successful(ish) writing career.
Decision to Leave (My Old Computer)
I finally decided what to do with my old computer. I knew fixing it wasn’t on the table. I don’t play video games anymore, so my laptop is doing everything I need. There was no reason to keep the old desktop anymore. So I sold the CPU, RAM, PSU, and CPU cooler. I didn’t get as much money as I would have liked, but it was several hundred dollars I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
I kept the memory, obviously, and the motherboard, for reasons I can’t explain. I kept the case too. Just in case! It’s too big to bother shipping, and it was pretty cheap when new. Maybe I’ll keep it. Maybe I’ll dump it off at Goodwill. It felt good to get rid of the computer, like I was letting go of a rough part of my life and allowing myself to move on.
Movies I’ve Read and Books I’ve Watched
With (some) of the money I got from that, I’ve enjoyed some good old-fashioned consumerism! I bought a few movies from the Barnes & Noble’s Criterion sale (High and Low, Boat People, and The Heroic Trio/Executioners (so much for that New Year’s resolution)). The Heroic Trio was, I am very sorry to say, not very good. A good bad movie, sure, but not Criterion-worthy. I also gone all-in on collecting and reading DAW Books. I’ll save that for another blog, though.
Most of my free time these days is spent reading or watching films. I haven’t touched a video game in months, and I haven’t written much, as I've said. I’ve largely avoided the internet, only occasionally checking out Mastodon and writing simple reviews on NeoDB, which I switched to recently after reading that Letterboxd wants to enshittify itself.
That’s all I Have to Say about That
I wanted to write a simple update. I’m growing increasingly hesitant sharing personal details with strangers on the internet. This post is about getting stuff off my chest as much as it is an update for you lovely folks. I’m also hoping that writing this blog will relight that fire under me, get me to write regularly again. I’m already thinking about new blog topics, I’m looking at my folder of short story ideas, and I worked on the book a little last night after writing a draft of this blog, so I guess it’s working.
Thing of the Whenever
I’ve also had time to watch more table pong/ping tennis. While everyone was watching the most corrupt sporting event in human history, I was having a blast watching the US Smash.
There were some surprising upsets this year. World #17 Hitomi Sato smoked my favorite player, #2 Wang Manyu, which cleared the way for Kuai Man to make her first Finals. Unfortunately, she went up against #1 Sun Yingsha who herself was upset in last year’s US Smash and was out for revenge. Wang and Man made up for it by winning the Women’s Doubles event against Harimoto Miwa (another favorite of mine) and Hayata Hina in an exciting 3-1 match. Oh, and I guess some men played, too.
I wanted to get back into skateboarding too, and my newfound interest in table tennis inspired me to get back into it. I watched a stream of the SLS Sydney event from back in February. Rayssa Leal put on a great show, clawing victory from the jaws of defeat with some sweet tricks. I don’t know all the skateboarding lingo, I admit. Front back forward 180 ollie nosedivegrind into 360 no scope heel turn. I don’t know, I’m coasting on vibes. I saw 11-year-old Mia Kretzer win gold in one event. Oh, and some men competed too.
I watched a whole bunch more skateboarding since then, including SLS, XGames, and World Skate. I’m still not picking up the lingo, it might as well be a foreign language to me. I’m having fun though, you can see these women are improving with each event. I’m not happy about the crypto sponsorship XGames has going on. I can’t fault the skaters for that. I look forward to the event in New Orleans in a few days. Here’s hoping the fascists don’t blow them all up.
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