December – A Month of Ups and Downs

Well, I told myself I was going to be truthful in these monthly blog posts, and December kinda sucked. It’s not all bad news though, and I don’t have much interest in retreading every single thing that’s gone wrong this month. We’ll just touch on the highlights – the disastrous general election won with ignorance and misinformation, and complications with my new little nephew causing a lot of worry. He’ll be fine, but not without help from the NHS. Good thing we’re trusting the Tories with that again.

But I have a nephew now, which is fantastic news! Certainly not all doom and gloom this month. Christmas was a thing, which was enjoyable despite everything. We had my niece over, and it was fun to relive the magic of Christmas through a child’s eyes once again. I also went to see Star Wars Episode IX with my friend Reece, and had a blast. It’s unsurprisingly a divisive movie, and it does have a lot of flaws, but I enjoyed it for what it was. I was also reminded of the importance of sharing creative ideas, after a particularly motivating conversation about our respective story ideas shortly afterwards. I think my biggest flaw as a creative is that I let ideas play out in my head until I get bored of them, without any outside perspectives weighing on or encouraging me to actually make the stuff that’s in my head a reality.

Oh, also, Trump got impeached, which was delightful. For all the good that did.

Touching on the election quickly, as I’ve not said much about it since the results came in. It’s caused me to do a lot of thinking about the nature of people, as well as the dangers of existing in an echo chamber. I have attempted to follow and listen to right-wing people in the past, but I’ve always grown too frustrated by their lack of empathy or ignorance regarding the needs of the common individual. And yet, going into this election, I was actually cautiously optimistic that Labour would actually win, which was clearly not the prevailing sentiment. It was a painful but necessary reminder that no matter how things may look on the surface, there is truly only one way to take the temperature of the general public: the vote itself. And incredibly frustratingly, the majority of people seem to believe biased newspapers and listen to millionaires telling them that it’s a tough old life, but that the reward is muddling through it with what you’ve got. And never mind the climate change, best not to worry about that sort of thing.

Anyway. Political segment over. This month I’ve also finally had the chance to play a Halo game (and I love it), I enjoyed watching the first seasons of The Umbrella Academy and The Witcher, I bought nine (nine!) Switch games with a Christmas gift card, bought myself Planet Zoo and relished in finally returning to a Zoo Tycoon style game, and attempted vlogging again. It did not go well. Oh, and I discovered that I quite like turkish delight.

But hang on, there, Kristian. Never mind the end of the month, it’s the end of the year! Where’s your summary of 2019? It’s the end of the decade, too! Where’s your summary of that? Well, let’s save that for a second blog post. I’ll combine them, probably. And I’ll write it tomorrow, maybe. Last month I said that having all these deadlines was reminiscent of uni, so in true university fashion I’ll be handing in my work on the day of the deadline. What better way to round off the decade?

November – A Month of History and Impermanence

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.