Categories
life music

Ode to a Rabbit

There are very few things I know for certain in this world after nearly 40 years here: love is rare and should be cherished where you find it. Sleep is just as lovely as it is dangerous. The right songs can not only bring us to tears, but help keep us alive.

And that’s why I’m writing this, after multiple days of difficult mental health: when I’m having trouble, one of my go-to artists helps me to both cry out some energy and remind me that the world isn’t as bad as my brain chemistry is telling me it is. Even if the music that saved me makes me sad.

Even if the music couldn’t save its creator.

Categories
life new year

2022: Starting Again

2022 sucked. Stand Tall friends, you survived it!

Oh wait, we should probably expand on that.

Categories
life news

Greetings from Quarantine: College Life

Like a lot of kids, I started college the semester after I graduated from high school. And, like many kids, I went to a community college instead of aspiring towards Ivy League life; I didn’t long for the “college life” of dorm rooms and living out of state, massive loans and being away from everything and everyone I’d ever known. I didn’t even know what I wanted to get out of more school… I mostly coasted through high school as it was, and didn’t know what I wanted to be when I “grew up”.

Now, I’m a 37-year-old man. And on my 37th birthday, after having dropped out a few times, I logged in one last time to my final online course. I finished my Associate of Arts degree in English (technically two degrees, also English for Transfer) almost exactly 18 years after I started it.

But why go back at all? Let’s talk about it.

Categories
life

Finished Business

The world’s got pretty weird over the last year and a half or so, hasn’t it?

I wanted to write something before now, but I honestly had no clue where to ever start, and the longer I waited, the more I felt like I had nothing to say. Much like the end of 45’s presidency, every week felt like something new… a new announcement from the CDC, new mask mandates (or lack thereof, goddammit Florida), new virus strains. Being perfectly honest, trying to keep up with reality as it is… it’s exhausting.

And that’s not even taking into account all the regular struggles of humanity since this pandemic began.

But even without a global pandemic that brought the world to its knees,, all the normal and abnormal of 2020 and 2021, this has been some of the most wonderful, painful, satisfying times of my life. And it’s time I shared a little bit.

Hello, internet. It’s been too long since we caught up.

Categories
games life tech

Game Boy: A Retrospective

One of the best-selling consoles of all time, the Nintendo Game Boy is a unique beast in the gaming landscape. It wasn’t nearly as powerful as its competitors, the screen was about as awful as a screen could be (even in its heyday), and the games… there was a lot of garbage developed for it. Yet with nearly 119 million units sold in the Game Boy line, from the original gray brick in 1989 until the final Game Boy Color rolled off the assembly line in 2003, the 8-bit juggernaut was a console that couldn’t be ignored, even when it was being absolutely overlooked.