I both laughed and was embarrassed when I saw the date of my last upload to this blog. It basically is a precise cutoff of when I had my love for this smacked out of me. Metaphorically speaking of course.
My goodness where to start?
I've started and stopped and deleted this post so many times and not always out of self consciousness. I don't need to tell anyone of the complexities and anxities of existing in the modern world. It often means that you have to put a pause on doing those things you love to do in order to survive.
It would be one thing if contending with the brain worms that makes writing and posting near untenable was the only thing I had to contend with. I want to give my readers and otherwise a rough timeline of what the last year and change has been like on my end. If i've said it before it hasn't been enough times: I truly appreciate my audience so much. They've always understood and been respectful of the fact that I do this for free on my own time. I don't always show up on time or at all but when I do I really do give it my all.
Anyway!
This timeline starts with my laptop dying. And this was my main 'writing' laptop so needless to say my motivation was pretty well shot for a good while off that alone. But can't feel too sorry for yourself so I order a refurbished computer and use my old unit from high school in the meantime. This thing has Windows 8 on it so that should age both me and the computer well enough. The keyboard is also fairly beat up so not much writing was done here.
It may have been a month after I get my new computer that my car poops out. Anyone who's owned a vehicle knows this feeling. Truth be told a full outright breakdown would have been easier to stomach than my usual mechanic telling me it's drivable until it isn't and then you're talking about real money. So no car for a bit for me. This can be...a bit challenging in my region where everything is about a 10-20 minute car ride away. I feel like I don't need to go into how absurdly scuffed America's public transit infrastructure is so let's move on. I have a good support system so this experience was more annoying than traumatic.
And then there's this little lady.
Internet, this is GiGi. She had technically been in the family for years but the house that kept her no longer had a place for her. So the choices were to let her get taken to the shelter, likely to be dealt with, or go pick her up and bring her home. Not much of a choice, yeah?
We bought her a bed and bowls for her that day. It was touch and go for the first month. She seemed lifeless and it wasn't hard to imagine why. How do you explain to an animal why their surrounding are so different and that they can't go back to their home? I don't need to get into why cause it doesn't matter but it was a struggle emotionally for everyone.
There was a myriad of health issues to navigate and the wonderful veteranarians who guided me through the process were super patient and understanding. For my part, I didn't care about doing what I had to in order to ease her pain. I was more upset that she had to live with it for so long. So many years of neglect that compounded. I honestly can't talk about it for too long or I risk getting upset again.
If I hadn't been so useless the past year, I would have introduced you all to GiGi when we took her in. Because I am and was a complete drip with no discipline to speak of I'm doing the next best thing and leaving this up in tribute to her and her fighting spirit. She didn't look like much; wasn't physically impressive at all, but she's the best little dog I ever knew and I learned more about life from her than I have from most people. My life is better for having spent time with her even if my life did briefly become a comedy of errors.
That's the last year and a half for me. For those waiting on a response from me via DM or email of otherwise rest assured I feel bad enough for both of us. I have several people I've left hanging and I feel awful. One of those people is a reader who very politely asked about the Shingeki no Kyojin recaps and if they would continue. For you dear reader, I have an answer.
The answer is yes. Both to Eren and you, friend. I've been wanting to close the loop on this for years now. And I can't think of a better time than after the anime has ended when we can really get a true retrospective from all forms of media. Not even mentioning how my views and appreciation of this story have evolved in the years of life I've lived. So yes, we're doing AoT, but that's not all.
Oh yeah! We're doing the Magic Sword Manga. Or do we call it Anime Oppenheimer? Either way, this is the first manga in a long time (maybe since Attack on Titan) that I came in on the ground floor. A chapter 1 reader here. As I'll get into later, I was not aware of any of the memes surrounding its release. I wasn't aware of it at all until I opened the Manga Plus app and saw it there. I can't give you a good explanation for why I clicked the first chapter besides that it seemed to be incredibly my shit. I'm thrilled to say that it's quickly gone from a light weekly read to my favorite series in Shonen Jump. I'm still deciding on what my posting schedule on this will be. Unlike Attack on Titan, which dropped montly, this is a weekly series and it's safe to say I don't have it in me to do weekly breakdowns to the level of detail I like. We'll figure that out when we get there. Speaking of breakdowns, however...
I'm introducing a new series of sorts. Inspired by my love/hate and lifelong relationship with pro wrestling, I'll be breaking down in painful detail my favorite fight scenes and action sequences. I have such a great love and respect for the art of physicality and choreography and how the two are married in the realm of entertainment. I've only seen a few "creators" covering this topic so I thought I'd throw my blog into the ring. I'm really looking forward to this.
And last but not least I haven't dropped The Batman. It's more like The Batman temporarily dropped me, as I had to recover a not small amount of my work when my laptop died. Lessons learned etc but I haven't dropped it. In fact it may be tough sledding this late year into next as I have many ideas that have been kicking around in my head.
I don't have any better way to end this post so I'll end it with a thank you. I don't remember at this point if I've already said it and likely won't edit this too closely to find out but thank you. I've written before about how fortunate and blessed I am to have the readership that I have who are so intelligent and patient and understanding of the fact that I have obligations outside of this little pocket of the Internet. I love you all, really I do. I've been getting better online and IRL at letting people know I'm still alive. Sadly, it seems that'll be more necessary going forward.
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