Rounding up the summer

Been about two weeks and it’s been fairly busy. Firsty I’ve achieved something I’ve been wanting to do since I was a teen.

After over a decade, I finally dye my hair to a shade of purple. I’ve admire the hairstyles of a few people in passing, but this little modification was something I want to do to my mane. After talking to a few people I know and looking into it, I have to admit my wallet took a heavy hit and I wish I did this in July rather than waiting on August. A haircut and a 2 hour bleach and dye job in a salon chair later, it was like looking into a parallel universe where I ended up in a different path in life. From people who are close to me and myself, all positive reviews on the purple’y hair. Purple was the choice because that colour the represented the changes recently and over the past decade. Though my second choice was red and violet, something dark works well for my natural dark brown hair.

On the PC side of things, I’ve been kind of been trying to get back into recording gameplay and playthroughs. It’s kind of rough since most of the games I have on the back catalogue have been played over the summer. There are still some I’ll play while recording but at least some of these games will still be new to me. At the same time I’ve noticed my CPU cooler is overkill for my CPU so I might attempt an overclock at some point. I’ve been also considering a few minor upgrades once I get back to work. Yep, that would be the top news in my life – getting back to work. My part time jobs have all emailed me and I’ll be working shortly.

Upcoming things I want to do is upgrade my PC and get a photo box lighting set up in my room to sell some of my stuff on ebay. It’ll give me a platform to try product and stills photography. Priority I’m hoping is the stills work since it will free up space in my room.

So another trip to the salon before heading back to the buzzcut life I had because of the cleaner and efficient haircut. Might be a long time before I see purple again in my hair. Better enjoy it!

I deserve this.

This week is a mushy week. I’m trying to ignore it while I plan for a small trip.

Yup, I’m really committed to this. I’m thinking a few days out of town just to unwind and see new things. I just need to break the monotony of living. After a rough December and summer, I really need to feel I can feel care-free (or at least the closest to it.

So for the past week I’ve been looking into cheap lodging and things to do on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. I’m not a gambler and I don’t want to do the ultimately touristy things. I still want to see some museums and local nooks. At the moment, I just need to sort out of logistics of packing and whether I should bring along a laptop to store any photos.

I know it’s the middle of winter but I’m determined that even in winter, there is a warm moment in a cold season.

And….burnt

Well, I tried writing those fictional letters for about 9 weeks. I must admit I’m a bit burnt out. On the bright side looking back, I think I haven’t lost my touch in creative writing.

I’m going back to writing as per usual, blogging my own life is preferable than a fake one (No matter I wish it was real.) Since I started it, I’ve been heavily busy with a second job. Surprisingly both jobs are fairly steady but I have trouble to find free time since I get really fatigued after a day of work.

Looking ahead, I’m trying to start a small business. I’ll let you know how it turns out. At the moment, I want to pay off all the money I put into buying my DSLR and it may or may not succeed the way I would like it. At least I could have the potential to make back all the money I’ve lost.

Working On It

As I’m writing this, I realized I have a couple days of rain. Just cloudy and moist, it’s going to be a bit difficult to get stuff done since I want to be outside.

Looking through my collection of photos, I felt a bit prideful. I’ve been trying to organize it all for the latter half of the year. Then I wanted to publish them somewhere online and visible to the public, got that done in a few months. Now I’m trying to aggregate the best into something more tangible; dare I say, physical. The photo book I want create will be just a small gift either for myself or someone else to monument my hobby. The idea is about twenty pages and printed in a nice hardcover. I got an idea of what it will look like but now I’m trying to focus on arranging bits into pages. I don’t think I have a lot of good photos to fill the book, but I want to keep snapping until I have more.

I did a but of dumpster diving, not really. Someone threw out some books about guitars, which kind of sparked my creative side again. Seems like lately I’ve been on a creative streak. I started with poetry in high school, photography as of lately, perhaps guitar if I ever get the confidence to dust off the electric guitar I’ve kept since I was young. Hopefully it still’s all good; if not, I’ll pawn the set for an acoustic. Maybe. We’ll just see what the future holds.

I’m feeling pretty good, even though I’m working less and focusing on myself.

What To Do…

The past four years on WordPress, I have continually published a minimum once a week. However things are becoming a bit more complicated as we push onto summer and my schedule changes from almost doing nothing and too much to write about anything. I have the end of May to figure it all out before I leave for about a month or two.

Of course my loyal readers, you have stuck it out for the past year. Things have changed and yet stayed the same on my blog, but I still stay loyal to the base commitment to you. I kept writing even after a lot has happened in my life and this is no different.

As I see it, the last week will be the last bits of my Cities: Skylines gameplay on my YouTube channel. There may be more videos loaded up but I wouldn’t be around to published them until I get back around August. Therefore, I will be taking a hiatus doing videos and I may come back to do some other games if I can finish my Cities: Skylines series. Nothing in stone yet but I am hoping Space Engineers.

As for my WordPress, I will do my best to load on some pre-written material to be published on the weekly so I don’t lose my commitment to you guys. Some of you have been here since the inception and some have just joined us on our journey. Regardless, we will be travelling along the road together. If not together, then in spirit. Of course, you will be missed but when I return, I hope you folks can tell destroy my comment section with all the things you did.

Four weeks and counting.

Late Lifestyle Change

Summer’s ending which meant community pools are closing fairly soon. It’s unfortunate because recently I got into swimming again after half a decade avoiding it. I might have swam a few years back but never returned since. However recently though I’ve been feeling the need to exercise more. No pressure or anything, just thought about it and decided to do it. At first I did a bit of sit ups and push up and now I’m starting to take an interest in swimming. Likely not going to be competitive but more recreational for it’s health benefits.

After a week of swimming at the local pool, I already came to a few conclusions. First being I’m very out of shape. In my teens, I could swim a lap or two but now a lap is pretty much just out of reach at the moment. Regardless, I am definitely capitalize as much of the summer remaining to swim. Even on my “busy” recording schedule for my gameplay series on YouTube, I should find something outside and outdoors to do.

At the moment I’m still as hesitant as I was before with running and jogging. I think it’s more of a self esteem issue I want to confront but I haven’t gotten the gall to put up with it. Any advice to anyone with a friend with self esteem issues; if they want to confront their problems, help them at all cost. Seriously if I had a friend, I would want them to help me through some of these problems. In time, I’ll find my way through it; just will and the choice to do something about it will take me there.

On the video game front, I’ve been enjoying Kerbal Space Program a bit more. Maybe because I have a plan or a fixed time limit because of the series, but I’m really enjoying it. The career mode is pretty dull but combined with the let’s play series on my channel, I like it. I feel I can definitely share all the highs and lows. So far as of this post, I’ve been into orbit a few times, rescued a couple Kerbals, and set up two satellites around our fair planet. And of course since career has contracts, I’ve been working on testing parts for money and science to get the jobs I want done. For the moment in the future, big plans and construction plans are coming up. Mostly setting up a permanent presence in the Kerbol system. Maybe considering on some roleplay in career mode. Sky’s the limit, quite literally. Definitely a lot of plans for manned and unmanned missions. Hopefully go beyond what I already have done in the game in the past, which is travel to the two moons around Kerbin. With the ARM (Asteroid Redirect Mission) update, definitely want to showcase a bit of that content as well. Not sure when but definitely when I feel confident on orbital rendezvous.

Besides KSP, I’ve been approached by some Steam friends on playing some other games with them and maybe record some of those as one off videos. I did do a few videos in Insurgency but I found the content wasn’t that interesting. Who knows, I might record more Insurgency and maybe get working on an Unturned collaborative series. For now, my system can handle storing a regular gameplay series and some videos here and there. As far as having a parallel series in another game, that will require some help.

For now I have a good balance between KSP and swimming. I can upload while I swim, then coming back I can continue editing. That’s how life should be, balance.