Ye Olde Update

Well, it’s been a hot minute. It’s 2026 and the last time I wrote was in 2024! I’ve always had trouble coming up with stuff to write about in here, but since it’s been so long, I should probably start with an update on what’s been going on in my life.

I didn’t get an agent. It’s not surprising (just disheartening) as it’s very difficult when you’re sending out cold queries. I hadn’t really networked in the writing space (the curse of the introvert) so that’s what they were: cold queries sent to agents who had no idea who I was. I haven’t given up on the book. I’m really proud of Keystone and would love to get it out there one day. While I was kind of against self-publishing previously as I wanted to get it published through traditional channels, I might end up self-publishing Keystone eventually if it feels right to do so. We shall see!

So what HAS been going on? For awhile, a lot of nothing. Querying agents took a lot out of me and I spent the latter half of 2024 just trying to be a human. My days weren’t very productive and my ADHD was rearing its belligerent head. I just COULD NOT seem to do anything and the days would bleed together. Thus, I tried to find a kind of rhythm. I’d been working from home for so long that I wasn’t doing the “normal human stuff” like getting dressed, cleaning the cat litter, or making the bed. I took up bullet journalling again and I was working on habit stacking (shoutout to Atomic Habits): adding additional habits to something I already did. Example: I always go pee before bed, so why not brush my teeth right after that? It kind of worked. I was making strides, at least.

Then the big problem entered the picture: I was running out of money. I did have some savings and I’d cashed out my stocks from my previous job, but I was going to need a job eventually. I was dipping my toes into looking at normal jobs again, but I needed something to do in the mean time.

I started streaming on Twitch in February 2025. I was already playing a lot of video games in my spare time and I thought that maybe if I worked hard at it, I could eventually become a Twitch Affiliate and get money from ads and subscriptions. I mostly streamed RPGs (Xenoblade and Expedition 33) and “cosy” stuff (Story of Seasons and Fields of Mistria) and I kept a pretty strict schedule of streaming every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 3pm to 7pm. Sometimes I would stream for longer and on Fridays, I usually started at 2pm instead. I did eventually get to Affiliate in June 2025 (my streamer-versary was on June 5th!) and started running ads and taking subscriptions. I even did a sponsored stream for a game I was already playing, which was super cool! I ended up transitioning to a PNG model (an animated character who talked when my microphone activated) in July 2025 because getting ready for stream every day had started to become tedious (I’m terribad with makeup and it took a billion years to put on). I also didn’t want to cancel my streams if I wasn’t feeling well (migraines or general colds) and this was a nice way to still have a character people could interact with when I didn’t want my camera on.

One of the unintentional benefits of streaming is that it gave me a lot of structure to work around. It was an immoveable commitment: I had to get up at a certain time, I had to get dressed, and be presentable. It was a great way to organize my day and get me on a schedule again. I’d say it’s thanks to streaming that I’m doing better with sticking to my habits than I ever have before. I’m way more consistent with my chores and even my sleeping schedule is loads better than it used to be (I REALLY didn’t want to stay up until 5am, it just kind of kept happening).

Sadly, streaming wasn’t sustainable for me. I enjoyed it a lot but it took so much energy to be on and engaged with an audience, even for only 12-15 hours a week. I had managed to find some paid contract work, but I just didn’t have the energy to do both streaming and the paid work, so I had to make a choice. In March of this year, I had to stop streaming because I just couldn’t keep at it consistently. I had a lot of fun and met a bunch of cool people, so I hope one day I might have space for it in my life again.

If you’ve visited the site at all in the last year, you’ll have noticed a couple of changes here and there. There were a few solid months where the main page hosted my video editing portfolio. Since I was editing my stream broadcasts to put up on YouTube, I realised that I really enjoyed video editing. I thought that maybe I could start doing some freelance video editing as a sort of side hustle, but it proved incredibly difficult to even break into that field. I’ve since taken my portfolio down, though I might put it up on a subpage some day. For now, I’m just hosting my blog normally again.

On the personal level, I’m trying to be a lot more organized and intentional with my time. Since I’ve started using a bullet journal to track my habits and tasks again, things have actually been getting done! I’ve been scheduling time in my day to work on certain chores or important things like exercise, house improvements, and actual WEBSITE STUFF (I’m currently writing this entry in said scheduled time. Awww yeah). I’ve also been studying programming (specifically C#) in my spare time which has been pretty fun. Some of the concepts are finally clicking into place and most of the time it feels like I’m just trying to solve a giant logic puzzle if I can wrap my brain around it.

Now… the website. What’s going to happen with the website? It was originally meant to be a blog about my writing journey (it was always supposed to be a blog and website about my writing since I bought it back in *checks notes* oh my god, 2014!?) but I think it sort of needs to evolve.

Recently, I realised that I kind of hate the current state of the internet. I have tried REALLY hard to get into social media, but… I just don’t care? (￣▽￣*)ゞ I hate how bite-sized everything has become. It makes me think of quicksilver - and I mean this in a bad way - it’s super shiny and glossy, but it moves so quickly. (Does this metaphor work? I don’t know. Not really.) Websites are husks of content: they are just articles shaped by AI, all saying the same thing in slightly different ways or just tell you blatantly wrong information. It feels like there’s no reason to go and seek out knowledge anymore and that makes me sad. I miss when blogs and journals were more of a thing - when you could go to someone’s site and read about what was going on in their lives and what they were passionate about. You could comment and actually have a conversation and maybe even genuine connections. I really want to capture that feeling again and also keep a place on the internet for myself!

I stumbled onto some slivers of hope in the last few years. I’ve found active blogs run by developers or designers who write about what they’re working on or changes in their field. I’ve found D&D blogs that discuss monsters and mythology and have articles about building new game systems. I even stumbled upon Bear Blog recently, a blogging platform that seems to embody what I mean: these websites have long, interesting posts, written by people with passion. There are real conversations and ideas exchanged and that honestly just gives me so much hope. I want to build the foundation for a website where I can talk about stuff that is important and relevant to me. I want to recapture what I used to love about the internet.

So! I have been working behind the scenes on getting this blog/website back into shape! Mostly it’s been some cleanup and maintenance, but the actual site might look different soon as I’m working on a new theme from scratch. YES! Me, myself! I will be building it all myself. I’ve wanted to do this for ages (maybe sort of reclaim my web design roots from when I was a teenager) and build something that looks exactly (or pretty close) to what I want instead of trying to hack something together from an existing theme. I have a pretty good HANDLE on things (hur hur this is only funny if you know that Ghost themes are built on the handlebars templating language… but I guess it loses its zing if I have to explain that. ¯\(ツ)/¯) but it will definitely take some time. I didn’t want to wait around to use my website until I’d finished the theme, so this current one will have to do for now!

I have some other plans on the horizon too, like updating my About page (or maybe just turn it into a Now page instead) and building a Blog Archives page, but all things in due time. Ultimately, the MAIN point is that I want to write in here more often! I feel like I always say that… but it feels a tiny bit different this time when I’m actually scheduling part of my day to write posts or work on the site. I look forward to sharing my journey with you folks! See you soon~ (I promise it won’t take me two years to write another post. *knocks on wood*)