A Long Overdue Announcement

Hello everyone (all three of you)! Prior to the COVID-19 post it had been a while since this site had seen any new content. At the tail end of the OMAD post, my laptop’s keyboard was nearing the end of its life. Many of the keys: ‘6, 7, 8, 9, 0, i, o,’ and ‘backspace’ (wow it feels good to be able to type those things again) just to name a few were not working properly if at all. During its writing Katie would get embarrassed while sitting with me in coffee shops while I quite literally pounded on my keyboard to type an open parenthesis.

A New Development

I now have a fancy MSI gaming laptop with functioning keys and I plan to put it to use. With such a large break I’ve had time to think about where I want to go with this blog. I am very interested to continue doing scientific looks at topics that interest me, but I want to expand into other areas as well.

Research posts take a hefty amount of work to complete and science is not all that interests me. Going forward I plan to make posts which may explore anything from lifestyle, life updates, video game reviews, album reviews, movie and TV show reviews, philosophy, or anything else that interests me. I am not the authority by any means for anything I will write or have written, but I think I would benefit from exposing my perspective on things. There will now be new categories on this website for Research, Life/Lifestyle, and Review posts, as well as photography (this category will be very limited until I get my own camera).

I’ve Come Back

This blog is something very good for me and I like to think that it may help some of you. Back when I wrote the minimalism post, my coworkers in my college’s advising office who are all at least a generation older than I am stood around telling me about how the post made them examine what they had in their lives that may be excess and they had a genuine conversation about strategies for clearing out the waste. It made me feel great, like I had really found something positive for anyone and made some degree of difference for other people.

Further on, my friend Mya read the OMAD post and decided to try it for herself. I checked in with her recently and while she doesn’t stick strictly to black coffee and water only until 5PM anymore, she experimented with her eating windows and found that something approximating pure OMAD is what works for her.

One of the most impactful things for me was when I checked the blog’s email a few months back and saw an email from someone named Kaye who I had never met before explaining how she was an OMAD eater and had enjoyed my post. She even recommended some sources that I look at for further reading on the topic. My heart sank.

Some stranger had seen my content and cared enough to reach out. She had emailed me in June and I didn’t see it until January because my laptop and motivation had been out of commission. It reminded me why I started this blog in the first place. I wanted to learn for myself and share whatever I found that was interesting or useful.

Where To?

I’m happy to be back. I’m honestly quite nervous to make posts that stray from my normal format, but I figure it being scary is evidence that it is worth doing. I know that my reviews-to-come of media will not be the most competent at first but documenting my impressions of things will help me consume more intentionally and hopefully invite those of you reading it to tell me where I’ve misconstrued anything.

As I’ve discussed before, I do eventually plan on experimenting with some of this content in video format on YouTube to reach a broader audience and learn something about video editing. About a year ago I tried to adapt the Social Media and Depression post to video format using my friend Sarah’s camera so I could enter it in a video competition for psych-based research.

Due to using free video-editing software, my entire project got corrupted about 75% of the way through and the deadline was only a week away, plus Katie and I were about to leave on a trip to Asheville, North Carolina (photos of which taken with Sarah’s camera can be found here), so I abandoned it.

All that said, a post about climate change has been in the works on-and-off for the past few months. I’m nearly done researching it, but I’m going to try out a review before the climate change post is released. I’ve made a total of five (now six) posts on this website, and only one (now two) of them has not been research-focused, so I’m itching to try something new. As of writing this, we’re still quarantined due to COVID-19, giving me a good deal of free time to look in depth at some media.

And the First Review I’m doing is…

…

“Hey, Listen!”

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64! I think that this is a good starting point for my reviews of games. I played this game when I was only eight or nine years old and it shaped my expectations from games to the point that I’d say that it is the game that has impacted my taste most, despite not being my favorite game. In reviews, particularly with games, I will review many older releases in retrospective critique fashion. As I’m writing this, I’ve only just begun the game again, and taking notes as I progress it makes it a much slower process than I’d anticipated. When I review games, I’ll be thorough with trying to see most of their content, but I’m bound to miss some things, be it from ignorance, time, or interest.

So that’s where we are now. Thank you to everyone that reads my posts here, though this blog is mostly for me, the few readers I have’s enjoyment of the content is really important to me. I don’t know where this shift in direction will lead, but I hope I create some value for you guys. To ensure I am working consistently on these projects I’m going to set release dates. You can expect the Ocarina of Time Review on April 24^th and the Climate Change post on May 1^st.

Thanks for reading and stay healthy!