I used to hate winter. It’s dark and cold and wet and it stretches on forever. But a few years ago, a friend of mine changed my perspective on it; she was the first person I met to actively look forward to the season, enjoying its colder weather and shorter days. We don’t often talk nowadays, but that’s something I’ve taken away from our friendship.
Recently, Twitter came out with the news that they’re going to start deleting inactive accounts no matter how many tweets / followers they have, meaning that if you happened to have died in the last few years and hoped that your past stream of consciousness would live on via the internet, you’re shit out of luck. It’s depressing news, but it also immediately reminded me of my own Tombstone Project, the very reason why I’m doing all of this. You can’t trust a website or social network with your thoughts, or your content, as they may very well turn around and delete everything you’ve ever made, and you’ll have no say in the matter. I received another reminder of this when Youtube updated their terms of service this month, stating that they had the right to terminate your access to the service if they deemed that it was no longer profitable. It turns out that this is mostly legalese regarding their right to cancel services such as Youtube Red and Youtube Premium, if you’re inclined to believe that, but it sure did serve as a sore reminder that they’re free to remove all of my content on a damn whim. Hosting text is easy enough, but I’m afraid I don’t have a video hosting service to call my own.
Speaking of written thoughts and the perseverance thereof (ooh that sounded fancy didn’t it), I’ve spent this November getting back into history. I’ve written on this blog before about how history fascinates me for various reasons, but since finishing my A-Level in the subject I’ve had little reason to revisit it. Whilst trawling through podcast libraries, however, I came across You’re Dead to Me, a podcast by public historian Greg Jenner who worked as a consultant on the Horrible Histories books and shows. I’ve since spent many afternoons listening to tales about the Spartans or the Aztecs, or about historic figures like Napoleon and Joan of Arc, whilst grinding dungeons in WoW. Given how specific my education was in history, about very particular eras and literally nothing else, a lot of these topics are things I know precious little about and have subsequently been super interesting. They’re also hilarious in tone, which is fantastic given that one of the reasons I originally got into history was that we spent hours taking the piss out of historic events in class.
But that’s not all I did this month. Other exciting tales from my introverted life include the acquisition of my new wardrobe (physical wardrobe, not as in the way I dress or anything adventurous like that), my growing obsession with not spending more than I earn, falling in love with the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender (I’m a little late to the party), playing and completing the new Pokémon game, and starting to write odd strands of narrative down in an old book I found called Writer’s Block, which is disguised to look like a literal block of wood. My friend bought it for me years ago and I plain forgot about it. I’m using it now, though! Anyone who opens it up will be immediately confused as the first thing I wrote was in first person and I gave no indication that it was fiction.
Anyways, that was my November. We’re rapidly approaching not just the end of the year but the end of the decade! And as most bloggers will tell you, hey, it’s free real estate. I’m still undecided about whether I’ll make two retrospective posts, for the year and the decade, or just one for the decade. Either way, that’ll probably be my December post, so look forward to that. I’m also writing about the last decade in gaming over on my gaming blog, so keep an eye out for that, too! Goodness me, so many deadlines. It’s like uni all over again.
Perpetually Perturbed 