A Quiet February
I procrastinated so much that I wrote this the night before I’m supposed to publish it!
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Well, let’s just say I wasn’t expecting to write this blog post the night before it’s supposed to go up. I know I could’ve put more time and effort into something interesting, but I’m going to be honest — I’ve been feeling pretty burned out. Instead of coming up with a set topic to write about for this month, I’ve decided just to write about the things going on this year that I’m both excited and allowed (without breaching NDAs or making secrets known) to talk about.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been gradually introducing some new things to my website and social media accounts. Just today — or yesterday, rather, by the time you get this post — I redid my social media profile picture (which is actually from a couple years ago now, I just really liked the photo), GIF, and headers. I also redid my logo slightly, which also changes colors based on whatever profile you’re looking at. I even converted it over to a new file format that let’s me optimize it for mobile devices much faster than before.
You may have noticed that my website gained a facelift, too. It’s slight and you may not initially notice that anything changed at first — but trust me, something indeed changed. Styling and HTML stuff has been optimized much better for mobile devices. Things have the correct padding, margins are configured properly, and sizing is also responsive. Everything works as intended and the backend has been strengthened (over time) with some help from friends.
It certainly should not have taken over ten months for this to occur. That’s completely on me. At the time that I made the original iteration of what would become the current site’s backend, I had only been maintaining websites. I had no experience with what was “new” or “trendy” in the space. I had little interest in creating my own from scratch. All because I was “out of the game” for nearly three and a half years. I’m excusing my mistakes, for sure, but what I’m trying to say is that they were expected.
An idea I played around with for a while was potentially moving my blog over to my website. While I’ve certainly been testing it, both with my own backend and with Publii, I don’t think it’s ready for the public just yet. I originally announced on my homepage that I’d be moving things over, but I’ve run into a problem, so I’m delaying that indefinitely. I may fix it — I might not — but either way, it’s not something I’m worried about right this second.
I’ve been writing a lot of ideas down. Just ideas, nothing major that I can report out on. I’ve spent a lot of nights with the Notes app open on my phone or Word on my computer. Just adding to an ever-growing list of ideas, of which I hope to work on I’m feeling less burned out. Or at the very least entertain. I can’t reveal much about the contents of the list, but let me just say, the ideas are getting me excited. I just don’t as much time or energy to dive into one of them as I’d like. Once I’m able to do so, you bet I’ll jump at the chance.
I’m still easing myself back into social media. I recognize that I’ve been at this for a few months now, but coming back online in some capacity after many years of staying offline is a difficult thing to do. It really does affect you mentally in a way, and it drains me when it’s in strong amounts. Finding the balance between relaxation and social media is quite the challenge, but I’m totally up for it, even if it means I need to be patient with myself.
There are so many cool things happening this year. I’ve truly never been more excited to share news with you. But as you can probably understand, there’s still more work that needs to be done, and I’m not quite ready to share these projects with you yet. I promise you will see at least one of them by the end of this year (2021), and that this will be worth the wait. I just need more time to make it perfect. I hope you’ll understand.
If you haven’t taken time to care for yourself today (or recently), by the way, you really should. I personally like to sprinkle in mindfulness activities during my day, whenever it’s convenient. As much as I can, I try meditating, drawing random shapes, or what have you just to keep myself in the moment. I breathe, I stretch, I make sure I drink water. Sometimes I’ll eat something small. I just do whatever I can to make sure I’m ready to go before I worry about anything else that might be pressing at that moment. Sure, there are days where I’m just overwhelmed. The times we live in certainly don’t help at all… but I’ve found that every little thing helps. Perhaps it’ll help you as well.
In my free time these past few weeks, I’ve spent some time binging Lucifer with my best friend by way of Teleparty (formerly Netflix Party). One half of a “binge night” a couple weeks ago found us speeding through a few iCarly episodes before we eventually swapped over to Lucifer. We’ve even “accidentally” stayed up until 4am a couple times because we weren’t paying attention to the time and decided to talk about plants we might get. Did I mention we might be roommates in the future? We’re considering some additional shows to watch in place of Lucifer as we wait for season 5B and season 6 to release, so we’ll see what happens there.
I’ve taken a bit of a break from video games. I played a bit last week over my winter break, but story-driven games are on hold for me for a bit. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has been pretty much merc mission after merc mission (because yay Blades!) so that doesn’t really count. But I’m currently playing through Super Mario 3D World’s Switch port. I haven’t played Bowser’s Fury yet, but I’ve heard it’s a good side-adventure so I’m excited! I’ve seen a few minutes of gameplay that looked cool. I’m also playing Animal Crossing whenever I can, but nothing much has been added recently. I’m excited for that Mario-themed update that’s coming, so perhaps I will return to Wayside to see that, as well as for the one-year anniversary of my island. We’ll see.
I start taking part weekly in a D&D campaign this weekend so I’m about to get a lot of story thrown at me. Other than that, there’s really not much going on. It’s wild that we’re now well over 11 months into “quarantine,” but time flies I suppose. I have no idea what’s going to happen these next few weeks, but I’m ready for whatever is thrown my way, I’m excited for what the future holds.
Even though this blog post didn’t have a topic, I think it was able to provide some entertainment. I was distracted by my dog and random noises that my phones decided to make while writing it. I wanted to keep my promise of one blog post per month for a year, so as I mentioned before, I wrote this to fill the gap while I regain my energy from burnout. Let’s just hope I’m feeling a bit more energetic when it comes time to write another blog post — as this is around the time where I start working on the one for the next month.
Anyways… if anything happens, you’ll hear from me with it, of course. If there’s any exciting news, I’ll share it with you first thing. But for now, that’s it for me for February. I’ll see you next month.
