The new life is coming together!
I sit here in a laundromat (for the first time in my life), finding myself grateful for something which I dreaded. Our new home is twenty minutes from anywhere useful, including from the nearest washer and dryer. I fully dreaded having to utilize a laundromat, partially because I never have before, partially because it creates a non-zero amount of anxiety in me, and partially because it’s another thing I have to leave my house for, which in turn creates concerns about productivity.
But it hit me today: bring your laptop! Write or edit or update one of your sites while the laundry spins, and this time you thought might turn into lost time will actually become a predictable, structured part of your life!
So it is that I sit here, gratefully writing a life update in a storefront I previously dreaded entering. The plan is for this to be a recurring weekly chore, promoting more consistent updates. I know it’s been a while, so let’s crack in.
We moved to Vermont! It’s genuinely hard to believe that it’s already been a month since we left Delaware, but the calendar doesn’t lie. If you have the opportunity to move yourself into a new home slowly, I strongly encourage you to take it. The process of arduously unpacking all of your belongings in the space they’re going to occupy is grueling, and boxes have dominated our life for most of the last month.
It’s not that bad, though, in reality. I’ve talked before about the anxiety that an animated pile of infinite potatoes gave me as a child, and how freeing it was when in college I realized that such infinite work literally cannot exist in the real world. No matter how many potatoes are in that pile in real life, if you take one out, there is one fewer potato in the pile. So it was that I applied the potato philosophy to unpacking our new home: it’s not an endless task. Every single thing you do to get yourself more moved in will bring you tangibly closer to your goal of no more Home Depot boxes. Our downstairs area is pretty much done; it’s a very heartening thing.
In other news, we got another cat as well! His name is Poe, and he’s kind of an oaf, and we love him for it. It took Lumi some real adjustment time, and she’s still not totally sure about him, but he’s gotten comfortable and made himself at home, and we couldn’t be happier with him. He’s a tuxedo cat like Lumi, so it’s been a process to learn to tell them apart at a glance.
Creation is, as ever, my biggest motivation and greatest struggle. I got the restaurant job I need to keep the lights on, and my office is set up to be both useful to me when writing and editing AND visually appealing on stream, so come check it out! I’ve finally started my Jak II let’s play, and it’s been quite fun (though the game does have some questionable balance choices it’s been interesting to have to grapple with). Randomizers are, as ever, tricky mistresses, but they’ve not lost appeal for me one bit. I’m working through a truly maximum randomized Majora’s Mask seed on stream lately, and I’m bottlenecked at the more difficult archery challenges right at the beginning of the seed. I’m confident, though, that once I git gud, it’ll be smooth sailing from there for a good while.
Speaking of randomizers, we as a group have a bit of momentum with regards to making a new randomizer mod for Ratchet & Clank (2002). It’s very exciting to see something I’ve only ever dreamed of inching its way toward reality, and I’ve not fully set down the video essay on the topic I’ve been threatening to make. I have no video editing experience, so the prospect is daunting. I’m trapped in that “It’s gonna be so bad!” “Yeah, but the first one you make is always gonna be bad, so get over it, get it out of the way, and the next one will be better” kind of place. This is a forum in which I have to listen to my own advice…
Finally, we come back to To Save What’s Lost. I hope I don’t have to say that I haven’t set it down; you can assume I’ll be working on it until either it’s published or I’m dead (hopefully the first one, though). Worldbuilding tidbits and ideas have continued to proliferate in my mind, and like a sand dune or snowdrift, the little pieces pile steadily into an intricate landscape just waiting to be explored. I’m making the map to guide you, but it’s still slow going. As I continue to iron out how my life here needs to be organized, I will find more and more time to apply the work I’m doing on TSWL.
So I’ve enjoyed my time in the laundromat today. It’s nice to have a place to go where it’s almost difficult to waste time, and I look forward to next week when I do the same thing. I posted this on Patreon yesterday, and that will remain the modus operandi for these types of post going forward. Thank you for reading; know that your contributions keep me going more than anything else. They are the confirmation that this is worth it, that my art is worth making.
Thank you for reading; I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, I humbly ask you to consider tipping me or checking out my social media. Thank you again, and I hope you enjoy the next one!
Umbrella Terms 