Well, to probably no one’s surprise, I didn’t accomplish nearly as much as I wanted to during my week off from work. Ultimately that really comes down to procrastination rearing its ugly head again, which has been the bane of my existence for practically all my life. It’s crazy that I know damn well that being proactive will give me a lot less stress than procrastinating, yet something inside of me still feels the need to put things off, just like I did back in my days of homework and school projects. Not only with things I need to do, but even with things that I actively want to do like play a video game or watch an episode of a tv show, I’ll somehow convince myself that I don’t have time to play a game for a couple of hours and then I’ll just mess around on YouTube for a few hours instead, accomplishing even less. It makes no sense, and I know it, but I continue to do it anyway.

This ties into that idea of “keeping busy” again, because having all of this time on my hands for the past week has really brought me back to my school days. I had a couple of really productive days but then I’ve also had plenty of time where I accomplished nothing but wasting time on the internet. Those days are tough for me because in the moment I know I’ll regret accomplishing nothing but then I do it anyway and just feel worse about it afterword. I think it’s all connected to my mental health as well because once I am more where I want to be in life then I know I’ll have a much easier time being productive. So I really just have to suck it up and get everything done so that I can get to that point where it’s easier and I am happier overall.

That being said, I did have a couple of really fun days with some friends and family this past week, so I am definitely still appreciative of that and I will always be grateful for people wasting their free time on me. We also recorded a cool Tarqaron video that I’m excited to edit and post next week. I mentioned in the last blog that I fully intended to film some videos for my solo channel and while I did film one, I was noticeably really sad throughout the whole video and I kind of talked in circles for 15 minutes. So I’ll have to give that one another shot and make some adjustments to my setup before I stockpile any more videos than that.

Regardless, I have a lot of fun ideas and plans in the pipeline for both YouTube channels, so I really appreciate anyone who cares to check them out. I’d also like to come up with more interesting things to talk about for these blogs among other creative projects. While the blog is primarily based on topics of mental health and life in general, I would like to have a little more fun with them as well. Maybe I’ll get a little wacky, you never know. Now that I think of it, I haven’t done any creative writing since college either… Something to think about. Alright, I think I’ve covered all I need to cover for now. But I’ll be back again next week! Gonna try out this new way to top off each week’s blog post, so let me know what you think. I’m thinking I’ll post any videos I posted during each week, as well as any games/music/shows/movies/etc. that I enjoyed as well.

Videos I Posted This Week:

Survivor: All-Stars – Episodes 11 & 12 (Betrayal) | Tarqaron Discussion

WandaVision | Tarqaron Review (w/ Spoilers)

Raya and the Last Dragon | Tarqaron Review (w/ Spoilers)

Games I Enjoyed This Week:

Stardew Valley – PS4
Gnosia – Switch
Wheel of Fortune – N64

Music I Enjoyed This Week:

Blackpink – Blackpink: The Album
Grace VanderWaal – Letters, Vol. I
Ninja Sex Party – Under the Covers, Vol. II

Life has an interesting way of piling on challenges and additional obstacles to navigate, huh? On top of everything going on, my laptop recently wouldn’t start up at all so I had to drop it off for repair and learned that unfortunately my hard drive was toast and all the files which we thought could be recovered were in fact either missing or corrupted. So not only did I lose five Tarqaron videos that were soon to be edited, but I also lost all of my assets that I had accumulated including logos for different series and thumbnail templates that I had fine-tuned. So that’s a bummer, yet another setback. But hey, it’s not the worst thing to happen to me this year. Since my hard drive has been replaced, I at least have a functioning laptop to work with now. So while it definitely sucks to lose some great videos and all those assets, I can still bounce back from this pretty quickly I think.

There’s not much of a “bright side” to this since I’m $150 poorer and all I have to show for it is the same laptop minus some important files. Ha, lesson learned, I guess. I don’t know why I was an idiot and didn’t have this stuff on my external hard drive to begin with, though. A bright side is that I’m off from work for the next eight days, so I’ll be able to focus all of my efforts on getting myself to where I want to be. I have a lot that I want to get done over this next week, so I’m going to use this blog to hopefully hold myself to it. I want to get my resume/portfolio properly put together, get my damn car fixed, work on more Tarqaron videos despite the lost ones, and start filming videos for my solo channel again. And hopefully take some time to actually relax and enjoy time with friends as well (though I do really enjoy making videos, the amount of time they consume tends to make them resemble “work” in some ways – minus the income).

Overall, I don’t feel like I’m doing too bad mentally, though. I have these pockets of sadness that really bum me out when I think of fun times with former friends, but I have to take solace in the fact that there are a lot of truly good, authentic people in my life now. I’m more grateful now than ever for everyone who brings positivity to my life and everyone who is really there for me. God, I have such a greater appreciation for just simple kindness these days. It’s not too much to ask and yet there are still so many who choose to not be kind. This year I feel like I’ve already experienced both how cruel people can be and how kind people can be. It’s just really refreshing to be experiencing more of the latter than the former recently. Here’s to the bright side.