2020 has been an odd year so far. I won't go into all the juicy personal details
because they're juicy and personal.

I had big plans for this year and, hey, the year's not even half over yet, so
there's still time to do some of the things I wanted to do, but as I move along
the calendar, I start to wonder if I really still want to do those things at
all.

I spent a lot of time and money at the tail end of last year getting some
accoutrements for making YouTube videos. I made a couple, and then I had to put
that on the back burner while I moved to a new house. The move didn't go off as
well as I had hoped, and the studio is still mostly packed away after six
months. That's basically a death sentence to a YouTube channel that demands
frequent updates for success.

But then I start to think, do I want that kind of success? Do I want to be
chained to producing things on the YouTube schedule, in the YouTube style?

Intro: "Hey guys", Premise, Pause for sponsorship: "Brought to you by
Manscaped!", A few points about <topic>, Conclusion, Call to action: "Like,
share, subscribe, notification bell, patreon, paypal, leave a comment below,
please validate me"

The more I think about it, the more I'm not sure. I'll still probably put things
up there, most likely it's going to be stuff that I want to create, and it's
going to be in my own style, amateurish and 'wrong', but it's not going to be my
career. It's going to be my hobby. I've long given up the idea that my hobby is
going to generate me any notoriety or income, and I'm okay with that.

Around a month ago I picked up a personal voice recorder and started a kind of
an audioblog on my other site (wyrm.org if you're interested). I didn't really
have much of a plan for it other than I would talk about video game-adjacent
stuff on my commute to work most days. As of this writing I've made 42 entries,
and my goal is 50. Once I hit that milestone, I'll reevaluate it. Partly because
I'm running out of stuff to talk about, and partly because the entries are kind
of rambly (because I'm talking to myself off the top of my head without a
script, so that's a given). I kind of want to do more scripted stuff, but with
time constraints, that might not be as doable as I'd like.

I've also been seriously re-evaluating my relationship with media. I mentioned
in a few other phlog entries how I was kicking Google and advertisements out of
my life. That didn't go as well as I had hoped it would. After writing those
things, I didn't make that much more progress on either of those fronts.

I installed a Pi-Hole, and that helped out a lot. I used it to block things like
Disqus and Facebook so that I don't get sucked down the rabbit holes of
mindlessly scrolling through comment sections, but I think I need to go further
than that. I think that comment sections are just about the worst thing that
could have happened to websites, and I need to take steps to block them if not
entirely, than mostly. Comment sections can be useful, sure, but generally
they're really not. They're just there to drive engagement and clicks and ad
revenue, and the fact that they're so successful at those things (people spend
literally their entire workday slacking off and reading/posting to Reddit, for
example) is kind of disheartening.

I mean, hey, if that's the kind of thing you want to do, then far be it from me
to stop you, but I value my time more than that (at least now I do. There was a
time (a few months ago, if I'm being honest) where I didn't, and I'm making an
effort to change that), and it's about time I showed it.

Not all comment sections are bad, I admit, but most are at best unnecessary, and
I know me well enough that I will spend time just sifting through them wasting
time until I wander off to do something else, and I'm tired of that.

I haven't really addressed the elephant in the room, which is the ongoing health
issue. Not that much has changed for me since I'm an essential employee in an
essential business, so I've been going to work every day and my schedule hasn't
appreciably changed. I'll admit that I'm kind of jealous (as ridiculous as this
sounds) of the people who are either working from home or have been able to stay
home (with a percentage of their pay) for the last several weeks. There's all
this talk about how they're taking online classes or doing projects that they've
been neglecting and so on, but I can't do any of that. Not any more than I could
before, at any rate. I don't really talk about it all that much because it seems
absolutely insane to me that I should be jealous of people who have to stay at
home during a global pandemic, and the rational part of my brain knows that
that's ridiculous, but there's a part that's there that looks at this stuff and
wonders what's in it for me. That part of my brain and the rational part of my
brain argue about this a lot, and hopefully when this whole mess is behind us,
those two parts of my brain will start getting along again, but I suspect that
that part of my brain will find something else to complain about. It's good at
that.

It's kind of ironic (even if it's not at all ironic) that getting busier kind of
crystallizes how much time I waste doing things that I know are time wasters. I
wrote somewhere more than once that most people who lament that they just
plain don't have time to do the things that they want to do really do have the
time to do those things, if they would only limit the time that they spent doing
the things that they know aren't productive. I mostly made those posts as a pep
talk to myself, but, like almost everyone I know, I'm bad at following my own
advice, and I can't promise myself that that will change any time soon.

But I do know that to affect change in yourself, that you have to want to
change. Not in the way that someone might want, say, a million dollars. You have
to really actually want the thing in the depths of your soul and in a way that
you will do whatever it is you have to do to get it. That's where I'm feeling I
al right now, and it's incredibly frustrating to find yourself in a situation
where you know what needs to be done to achieve whatever goal it is that you
have, you have the tools and you're ready to do it, but you're stymied by forces
outside of your control.

But if the thing is important enough to you, you will find a way. You will find
a way around the obstacles, around the limitations, and you will figure out some
way to make the thing you want to happen happen. It might involve making some
tough decisions, and it might mean questioning things that you've always done.
But if you can do the thing, in the face of and in spite of the adversity
standing in your way, then that's the real test of whether or not you really
want the thing in the depths of your soul, and not just in a dreamy sort of
wouldn't-it-be-nice kind of way.

That's one of the reasons I'm writing this phlog entry today. One of the goals I
have is to be a better writer, and I'm realizing that by writing things as
frequently as I can. Most of the stuff doesn't get published, but I figured that
I should put my money where my mouth is (or, more accurately, where my fingers
are?) and put these words out there on the off chance that someone might stumble
on them and realize that they're not alone. That if they have the same or
similar kinds of feelings and apprehensions, and they're taking a real,
objective look at themselves, then they're not alone.

I'm tossing these words out into the void in the hopes that they offer you some
small comfort. And, if not, well, I thank you for reading them this far.

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