400 Days

No I never watched that movie

It's been- More than an entire year since I started this blog and It's around about time for me to start on my fifth 'Dear Diary' blog. And if you've just happened upon this an am wondering if that's what it sounds like; yes, it is. There's nothing of value to be learned here regarding the video game industry, the world of storytelling and entertainment, or really anything at all. I just have need of an outlet to rant to and there's no better space than the empty void of the Internet, I guess. So check back again next week or something, I don't know. (Also, yes this is technically the 402nd blog, or something, but I'm really into splitting hairs about these diary posts, I get around to them when I get around.) So without further ado let me address the topic from the last diary entry, which was decidedly downbeat if I remember correctly. Yes, I was certainly not in the happiest of moods and I suppose the question is whether or not I'm still there. No, kinda, it's complicated.

Ever since I started this blog I didn't think that the days could go by any quicker than they already were in my perception, but this past month has been insane. I'm literally feeling every single minute of the day go by and it tears at my very soul. Something about my new policy of not doing every blog at 12:00 in the morning has utterly wrecked my perception of free time and now I feel like I'm rationing out down time. I didn't even feel this way when I was in work, it's truly surreal. And what's more than that, I feel like whenever I stop to close my eyes half the day passes in a literal blink. I never quite understood what folk meant when they said that the act of sleeping was robbing them of their life but, man do I feel it in this state! It's hard enough to get all these blogs done everyday ontop of looking for work, on top of writing a novel, on top of penning whatever script draft that has swum into my mind on that particular day.

So with all of that going on I suppose you could say that I've just plain been too busy to lament about any of the crappy feelings that I'm usually subject to; there's just not enough hours in the day. Now I suppose that's a good thing in a way but it's bought with it a whole new sense of existential dread where I'm terrified to let myself just stop and process my thoughts and self for longer than a few minutes. I'm constantly looking a the hours tick by on the clock and feeling like I'm racing against the day. That hasn't quite ballooned to a full blown anxiety complex but I've had similar situations evolve from less so I know it's only a matter of time. But even then will I have the time to have an anxiety attack? I should really find out if there's something I can do to train my body how to sleep less, that'll really soothe my mind in such respects, I think.

My saving grace over the past couple of weeks has been the state of the summer gaming industry, that is to say that there have been constant game reveals to talk about all this month which has given me an out from referencing all the drama and to actually take a break from a lot of things. (Like the Resident Evil blogs, which are close to the end and I will get back to) Covering a new game every single day is so much more laid-back and refreshing than my usual content cycle and I can imagine myself really settling into this rhythm of things for a while; unfortunately that does mean I'm behind on a lot of gaming news and haven't even gotten the chance to look at any of the Baldur's Gate 3 stuff despite being so initially excited for it. Though I'd argue the benefits of this style outweigh the negatives. Also, do you think there'll ever be a point where I can relax the 'one blog a day' policy? I'd love to do so but I feel like I'd need someone else to tell me to because I can't bring myself to do it.

As for the state of the blog in general, it's only been thirty five days since my last diary and all of those days have been spent covering this faux-E3, so it's kinda like I haven't given myself space for any bigger project; but I do have a few waiting in the wings to eventually cover. In this flurry I've had difficulty keeping up reviews, which also means I haven;t got a chance to finish Kingdom Hearts 2, because I like to write my reviews when i'm fresh off having dealt with the game. Everything's just in the state of limbo right now and I'm not entirely sure if that's healthy or not. Bear in mind, of course, that when I refer to healthy I'm talking about completely arbitrary statistics anyway because literally noone reads this blog. I don't have figures that I need to play towards because I'm quite honestly writing these for myself, so what I consider to be healthy has absolutely no metric to measure, making it little more than white noise in truth. Yet it's still something that haunts me because just that sort of self-torturing weirdo, I guess.

In terms of entertainment I've gotten the opportunity to catch up with a lot more shows and movies that I would have missed if this were a normal year. I finally tuned into Detective Pikachu, several years too late, and was honestly surprised at how solid of a movie that was, alongside how surreal it was for a modern day movie, based on a popular franchise, not to sequel bait. (How incredible!) I got around to watching the Henry Cavill-lead Witcher show which I thought was honestly great in it's initial episodes. I thought the characters were great, I honestly grew to see ever cast member embody my favourite fictional personas and the action was great, if almost entirely lacking in peril due to Geralt being just that bit too good, if you get what I'm saying. (The fight choreography could have used a little more grounded back and forth to match the very gritty grounded, yet fantastical, setting. Think the first and third series' of Daredevil for comparison.) My only real complaint would be the final fight against the mages which just really turned out looking like a slightly higher budget CW-grade fight scene. It was a bunch of attractive people in expensive clothes waving their hands and screwing up their faces, honestly that made it a little hard to watch and impossible to take seriously. But overall I'd give the show a B+, room to improve but a solid foundation. (Because this is a TV review blog now, apparently.)

Were I to pull back and take a look at my personal life and situations, that's where things are a little more grim; but I won't bore any of you with details. Needless to say that i'm largely exactly where I was last blog with the added stress of my anxiety and stress actually starting to get to me in really bizarre ways. I go through periods where I think I'm going blind because my eyes refuse to focus, only to sit back and rest for a few hours and realise that I was wound up so tight for so long that I couldn't even feel it anymore. It makes me feel like I'm on the verge of a some kind of huge drop at any point where something really bad could happen to me and I wouldn't even know it was occurring, if that makes any sense whatsoever. The quarantine at least gives me an excuse to stay inside and mange these symptoms, but I wonder at how long that can last, and how much it feels like I'm whittling down my own life.

In a couple of weeks I'm going to be attending another family get together (somehow, in spite of ongoing restrictions) and if you're read any of my other blogs you'll know how I typically feel about those. But I'll be making an active effort, this time, not to fall into the traps that I usually do and maybe even try to get something out of this rare moment of interaction. Who knows, maybe I'll even remember how to socialise for one night. They say it's important to have things to look forward to, and If I squint my eyes I can turn this event into one of those. Maybe that can be the start of me turning the next 100 days of this blog into something more positive for myself- I dunno. I've run out of steam with this entry, I'll be honest. I leave you with all the spelling and grammatical errors that these posts usually have and a reminder to talk to the people in your life every once in a while, else you wind up like me, realising that you have none of them.