It has been (almost exactly) three years since I started posting to this blog again. The first post officially went up on August 4th, 2021, but I’d begun writing posts the week prior, setting up my “write the posts one week ahead of them going up” plan so I could focus on my editing skills and the delayed gratification of working ahead of my deadline rather than right up to it. Now, it is three years later and though I’ve down to five posts a week and am not posting any more creative writing work (poems, stories, etc) on my WordPress .com page since those fuckers are still willing to sell my data without compensating me (using a setting that is on by default, the absolute worst way they could put in a setting for this shit), I’m still going strong. I’ll admit I’m struggling to keep these posts written a week ahead of time, but I can mostly keep it up and the days I fall behind aren’t really a big deal since that’s usually a result of me being so busy that my brain was too tired to actually participate in writing something. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to write moderately interesting blog posts without using your brain, but nothing good has ever come from it for me. Better to take breaks and rest without recrimination than to try and fail to produce something even modestly interesting. Which is a lesson I’ve only just learned over the course of these past three years, actually, so clearly this version of the whole blogging thing is working out pretty well for me.

Other than that, not a lot of lessons really jump out at me when I look back over the past few years of maintaining this website. Well, none that directly pertain to writing my blog posts and maintaining this blog. I did learn in those three years that I need to keep a steady supply of new media flowing in since I get really bored, anxious, and frustrated without something new to think about in my quiet moments. Genuinely, one of the biggest tricks that got me over my insomnia hurdle in 2022 was making sure that I had enough new stories (from video games, books, movies, TV shows, and so on) to think about as I was falling asleep. Sure, I still had anxiety problems and this wasn’t a silver bullet solution to any one thing, but it helped more than anything else did since my main issue at that point in my insomnia resurgence (starting in 2021 and still on-going) was just how worked up I’d get over whether or not I was going to be able to fall asleep at all. I still try to keep a steady diet of new media in my day-to-day life, but it doesn’t always work out. Sometimes, I just really want to play Baldur’s Gate 3 again instead of finishing most of Dragon’s Dogma 1 and then playing Dragon’s Dogma 2. Or a rerelease of a game I used to love comes out so I play that instead of something new (And I regret nothing, Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door). You’d think I have more reviews to post, given how I tend to play video games or watch shows most nights after work, but I haven’t actually finished anything other than The Acolyte in maybe a month because I keep getting pulled away from games I’m playing by yet other games. Really makes it difficult to write about something if I never actually finish it (though, to be fair, that’s never stopped me from writing about Final Fantasy 7).

Another only tangentially related lesson I’ve learned is that I love streaming video games but I just don’t have the time for it or any of the networking/”watching other people at my level” that goes into making it rewarding (aka, giving me people to hang out and chat with whenever I launch a stream). I had a great time streaming The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in the month leading up to the release of Tears of the Kingdom and while I never did make my Death Compilation video, I had a lot of fun doing the thing and still think there were a lot of good clips from those streams (shoutout to my sister who not only moderated those streams but also made pretty much all of the clips). I’ll admit I’m a little biased about those clips since I think I’m funny. I mean, I’d have to think I’m funny to do something like talk in public to anyone who wanders in to hear me. Which I guess is an actual lesson from this blog. I used to struggle with the feeling that nothing I had to say mattered or that no one cared about what I have to say. Getting into the practice of maintaining a blog for three years without a strict posting regimen detailing the types of posts has done a lot to overcome that, even if I still don’t think most people care about what I’ve got to say (which is fine since I’ve got you, reader, and that’s enough for me). I don’t ever write a post and wonder if anyone gives a shit now. I’m also much more likely to speak to strangers, share my opinions at work, and voice my thoughts in general now, as a result of all this practice. All of which started with me getting over the idea that nobody cares about what I think, feel, or have to say.

Which, coincidentally, has been a key part of a lot of my emotional growth and healing from trauma over the same time period as this blog has been going, so I’d say the amount of effort required to do this thing is more than equaled by the benefits I’ve gotten from it. I, personally, have benefited greatly from this blog. It didn’t magically fix anything, but it has been a constant source of personal fulfilment for years now and while I still struggle with my mental health (and will for my entire life, of course, since that’s how this stuff goes), having the blog to work on will continue to help with that struggle. I doubt that will ever change, not unless I or the world change drastically. Not even having all of my work scraped off the internet by shitty plagiarism machines has stopped me, even though that thought still fills me with despair. I will keep on keeping-on!

Unless this somehow winds up being incredibly unhealthy for me. I’m not sure how that could happen, but given how easily I throw myself into endless projects that don’t really do anything but give me work to do so I can feel accomplished for the day, I can see a potential future in which the blog becomes just that and I stop rather than continue to spend time and effort on something free of substance. I don’t think that’ll happen any time soon, but we live in unprecedented times and I’ve learned to stop ruling out unlikely things on the basis that they are merely unlikely. I mean, statistically speaking, it is incredibly unlikely someone will win the lottery and yet someone wins it every single time. Not every draw, but they eventually win every pot. Unlikely things happen all the time. Still, I have more control over whether or not this blog is a healthy outlet and activity for me, so I’m fairly certain that I’m not in any danger of needing to stop anytime soon.

All that aside, here’s to another year of posts, more episodes of “I’m Tired and Sad,” eventually posting poetry again, and someday returning to Infrared Isolation. Either I’ll get a new host for my blog, there’ll be some kind of legislation to prevent corporations and individuals from stealing my copyrighted work from the internet, or society will collapse and I’ll be writing this on the walls of the local community center/stockpile cavern. One of those three is bound to happen, I’m sure. Definitely at least one of those three, but maybe all of them. Time is long and who knows what is going to happen a year from now, let alone ten. Anything is possible, good and bad.