Hey.

This is not the standard "I'm not dead, even though I haven't posted in a few
months" post that you see on blogs that haven't updated in a few months, but
it's probably going to look that way.

As I write this, it's February 25, 2020. We're on the cusp of March and most of
my personal projects (my other websites, my YouTube channel, even the offline
version of my blog/journal) have been in stasis since before Christmas last
year. 

Unfortunately, this is all due to some personal happenings that I won't go into
here, but it doesn't look like the situation is going to be resolved any time
soon, which is unfortunate. 

For a long time I had this idea that I could have a successful website, and I
tried and tried to make something that made me enough money that I could live
off of it. I was never able to make that work, and I eventually all but shut
down all of my creative outlets and focused on garbage like Twitter and Facebook
instead for a few years.

I say 'focused' on social media, but it was more like I was addicted to them. I
didn't realize at the time, but the constant checking and refreshing dopamine
cycle was what was really preventing me from engaging in the creative pursuits
that I wanted to do. I've written at length about this in other blog postings,
both published and not, so I won't go through all that again.

I eventually realized two things: that social media was killing my creativity
and that I didn't want my hobby to become my job. So, I cut ties with social
media and started creating again.

It wasn't easy, but I started making real headway. I started writing more, I
started making videos more. I even started checking Twitter again to promote the
stuff I was working on (going cold turkey for nine months really dulled the
allure for me), and that was about it. 

I was starting to get some traction and things were looking good. 

But then life threw me a curveball. 

Again, I won't go into details, because they don't matter for this narrative.
Suffice it to say, I'm in temporary lodgings, and I'm not sure when I'll be able
to make the transition to full-time lodgings. My gear is mostly packed away, and
I could pull it out again to make something, but I just haven't.

That's why I'm making this phlog entry. I need to break the dam. I need to do
*something* other than sitting around here doing nothing. I can sit here and
blame circumstances here all day long, but, in the end, I should be able to make
*something*, even if most of my tools are packed away.

In fact, that sounds like an interesting challenge.