September was an incredibly difficult month, and October has been no walk in the park either. Just the other night I had a very long and drawn out dream about a financial advisor (dreams are weird) trying to convince us to get rid of Coral. She’s very much still on my mind, and if I’m being honest I don’t think she’ll ever truly leave. I don’t think I’d want her to. That being said, I believe the rawest part of grief is behind us; I no longer think about days in terms of how tough they’ve been, or actively avoid content that’s overly sad.
In fact, about a little over a month after saying goodbye to Coral, we welcomed two new furry friends into our lives – Bert and Earnie! To be immediately clear, these are my parents cats; I’m enamoured with them for sure, but I’m not going to grow too personally attached to them, to save myself some heartache as I move onwards in my own direction through life. But they adopted them from a couple who are moving countries soon, and while they’re already nine years old, they’re both happy and healthy. Bert can be nervous at times, but she’s already shown us her playful and cuddly sides on multiple occasions. Earnie can be grumpy and reclusive at times, but he can also be very vocal and affectionate in his own prideful way. I’ll admit that I had my reservations about adopting cats who had spent nine years with another family, but they’ve settled down and accepted us amicably.
In less fuzz-related news, this month saw some disastrous news emerge about a content creator I’ve been following for almost a decade. James Ryan Haywood – who I will refer to by name, so as not to grant the mercy of anonymity – threw his co-workers at Achievement Hunter into turmoil when it was revealed that for years now, he’s been having affairs with multiple young women in the community. Not only is this a blatant abuse of power, it’s also a pretty diabolical thing to put your family through.
The reason I bring it up here is because I’ve been watching Achievement Hunter almost since its inception, and I’d be lying if I said this didn’t affect me. Like, I wasn’t personally torn apart by what Ryan had done, because it’s not something which has personally affected me, but it certainly hurt to watch people who have brought nothing but joy to my life for years be so deeply wounded by this betrayal of trust. It also hurt to see members of the community taken advantage of by this insidious bastard in the first place. It’s just been a shitty time all round.
I very much believe in giving back to creators, not out of a sense of duty or necessity, but just as a way of putting positivity into the world. If somebody makes you laugh every day, maybe send them a tweet letting them know, thanking them. Doesn’t matter if they don’t reply; doesn’t matter if they might not even see it. There’s this mindset that it’s embarrassing to send a message to someone and have them not respond, even if they’re someone who receives thousands of messages a day. It’s a pointless way of thinking, especially when it apparently doesn’t apply to the many trolls sending hateful thoughts to people for the most insignificant of reasons. The majority of people are happy or content, and because of that we don’t tend to let creators know this; someone with hateful thoughts is more likely to have a desire for the creator to know of them. That’s why I think it’s important to support creators in this way, especially new ones who are integrating into an established group for the first time; they get the most hate.
Anyways… this month I’ve also been losing myself in nerdy worlds, having a grand old time in World of Warcraft, Pokémon and Doctor Who. I also watched through the genuinely fantastic Avatar: The Legend of Korra, began outlining a new creative project (ohp), and got myself trained up on a department I was slightly anxious about at work to get more overtime! Turns out I am as functional on it as any other human being with two brain cells. Go me!
By the way, I just realised that this month marks a year of monthly updates!! Woo! I think I can safely say that I much prefer monthly updates to weekly ones. I actually have stuff to talk about! Most of the time. And because I feel much less pressured to write blog posts constantly, more passion is put into them as a result. I hope you agree that this format is better. And if you’ve been reading them: Thank you!
Here’s what I was up to last year.
Perpetually Perturbed 