There are technically good things happening in my life right now but they are very stressful things with so many decisions. I can't help but feel guilty for trying to find joy after such a fucked up event like losing my dad too. I flip back and forth so quickly from being ok to being blindly angry and I feel myself slipping backwards. It's no one's fault but somehow that almost makes it worse because there's no object for my anger and it kind of just gets directed at everyone around me instead.

I have a trip planned with my wife to find a new place to live and I have a second one after that planned to get a tattoo I was initially going to get for my birthday before everything happened. I can't stress enough how weird it is to just keep doing these things. Like I could technically choose not to but that causes other problems. I feel like I'm not really processing any of this correctly and like I'm constantly waiting for the moment it all feels real. Or I get worried that I'm grieving wrong despite knowing there's not a "right" way to do it.

My life has been in limbo for the past two years for various other reasons so I think moving (again) will be refreshing and uniquely terrible. I think finally having some space will give me more time to be alone with the feelings I'm having and it'll hurt worse then.

I keep opening up my notepad to write about something else and this is all that comes out. I've been looking forward to RE:9 and have been playing some other RE titles to distract myself as we get closer to that so that's a small bright spot. I want to teleport 9 months into the future when I'm settled and just make stuff unbothered again. I'd really like to sit down and have a week where I just optimize terrible parts of this site, mainly image sizes. I have a personal to-do list I keep of things I want to do for this site that I've considered adding on here but I think it might stress me out more than anything. I'm trying not to fall back into the pit of Too Many Projects. I probably need to keep focused on my Nuura anniversay stuff and then worry about changing major things over here.

Today I went downtown with my wife to work in her building for the day since I work remote currently and we had plans downtown later. It's been so long since I lived in a city with a good public transit system, let alone close enough to the city to actually use it, and taking the train was so nice. Despite it meaning more time on my feet, I feel so much less drained when traveling that way than I do by car at the end of the day.

I ended up spending way more than I wanted to at the cafe I was bumming around at, but I got to see Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie in a more or less empty theater and laugh for the first time in a while so I'll call it a net positive. I'm always grateful to experience things that are made with heart; I say that all the time but it's so important to me.

I'm sad that we have to move away from here so soon and I wish we could stay but it's just too expensive. I felt like I was just starting to get into a groove with this area and my daily routines after having a shaky foundation for the last year and half too. We have some places we're looking at but it seems like we will end up a couple hours from here and will have to start all over again. All I can do is take things day by day but it is all so exhausting. I'm trying to take everything one day at a time and refocus on personal projects. Disconnecting from social media means trying to curate an RSS feed reader for myself that just contains things I personally choose, rather than having an algorithm feed it to me. I had a large web based project I was working on for Nuura's 10th Anniversary I'm still going to try to make meaningful progress on this year and I want to create my own guestbook and "chat" feature on this site rather than relying on third party tools if I can. (If you're reading this and have recommendations for good places to start please email me; I'd love to learn more). Another small goal is to take more pictures so I can include them with daily blogs like this because today I only have this.

Overpriced (but very good) decaf americano and egg skillet with salmon.

Everyone's saying it but it's so hard to stay positive with the constant crises happening. I've decided to try and make a concerted effort to step away from one of my last remaining social media accounts because I think the toll it's taking on me can't be denied anymore. I don't want to put my head in the sand and ignore the atrocities but I know that algorithm feeds on misery and despair and that's what it's doing to me. I avoided leaving for so long because it's one of my last contacts with a couple of friends and I like having a hub of interaction like that were no one's forced to interact. We can kind of just passively exist around each other there, but I think it's time to move on. I can feel the addiction to it and I need to acknowledge that to stop it. It gets worse when I'm upset and that's been a constant feeling as of lately. I've tried so many other ways to limit my access by abandoning my account with a large following, by trying plugins that disable the algorithmic For You timelines, etc. etc. and it doesn't stop the problem. It just (sometimes) mitigates it and I don't think that's enough anymore.

I'm not sure how this is going to affect me in the long run. I feel very alone and having to move again so soon and redo my whole life is adding to that isolation. There's not a lot of hope for the future left in me yet despite not wanting to give into that feeling because I know it just furthers the agendas of evil. I hope that once we get settled* wherever we end up, I can indulge in hobbies again and pursue things I've been putting off. I want to experiment a little more with 3D modeling and I've been working really hard to push my art further and keep it in my life. These are the things I think that really matter in the end even if it's just something I do for me on my personal website.

I might be posting here more just to get these thoughts out of my mind even if its just in these directionless rambles. The changes to the internet and digital everything are weighing heavy on me as well and it seems like we have no privacy or anonymity left. I don't know how long it'll last here but I want to cherish it while I can.

My dad died on January 19th. He went hunting early that morning and didn't come home at the time he said which was odd because he was an extremely punctual person. We went looking for him in the area he said he would be and found his dog sitting by his body, trying to keep him warm. Apparently it was a sudden heart event and he went peacefully.

My wife and I have been living with my parents after a big move as we were getting back on our feet and it feels a bit like my world has crumbled. I've experienced death close to home before but never like this and it's so odd. It's weird knowing the stages of grief and then actually experiencing them. You feel like you should be better prepared to cope or something but it still drives you into the ground. I already had a shaky at best grip on my emotions before this and now I feel like I can't control myself at all. I'm bipolar and have had that sort of under control with medication but I feel like I'm right back at square one again.

That's all a very selfish way to look at it I suppose. I have been grieving my dad it just feels wrong to write personal things about him in a public way like this. I saw his body, wrote his eulogy, and spoke at his funeral and it still feels like he's just going to come home any day now. I know he's dead yet he doesn't "feel" gone. I'm trying to tell myself that's because he isn't and he is still existing in some capacity and I'll get to see him again. Though I think a good chunk of that feeling is me not being able to fully comprehend what his absence in my life will look like just yet.

I started writing this mainly as a way to vent those selfish feelings I discussed earlier. I think I'll grieve my dad forever but I wasn't prepared for how isolating it would feel. Not just because he's gone but because the world wants to move on from it so quickly. Even when people love you and have your best interests at heart, grief is uncomfortable and no one wants it to linger. You have to mask it in social settings because it sits too heavy on everyone if you don't and that's what's killing me right now. I want to be angry and I want to lash out because I don't want to be alone in the pain. But I still have to go to work and I still have to pay bills and I have to fill out paperwork talking about his death in between that and talk to debtors about him and and and. I also feel like when you're an adult people want you to handle it better but he was barely even 50. That feels so young I still can't really grasp it.

I'm not sure where how I wanted to end this. It is so hard to maintain hope in a world where it feels like nothing goes right. I know life isn't meant to be fun but I'm getting really tired of the constant pain and I miss my dad.

This was the last photo he ever took. I found it on his phone and it was time stamped within a couple minutes of when we think he died. I'm grateful he got to spend his last moments in such a peaceful place.

My wife and I attended the Halo World Championships in Seattle about 2 weeks ago on a whim and I really didn't know what to expect going into it. I've been to conventions in the past but I've never been all that into e-sports despite how long I've loved gaming (and FPS games). Felt like a bit of a poser going despite the teams not being my primary focus, but I think part of me has been missing the convention element and I was curious about the new game announcement as well as the props and cosplay show. Despite all that, we had a good time. I enjoyed seeing all the handiwork on display by other artists and it's refreshing to be an environment where everyone's passionate about the same thing. I'm not terribly excited about the new game announcement unfortunately, but it was exciting to be in the room I suppose. I am not a remake fan most of the time and tend to be overly skeptic in my approach. We'll see if I end up giving it a shot; no multiplayer is a huge letdown.

This was the first year in a while we've actually Done Something for Halloween. We decided to celebrate our 1 year marriage anniversary early since we unfortunately have other obligations over the weekend of the actual anniversary. We spent the weekend at a cute historic (potentially haunted) manor a la Resident Evil and had some fun weekend nights out. It's sad how quickly October ends as an adult. It's my favorite time of year and the atmosphere always feels like it's gone too soon but I'm trying to keep it alive in my heart.

A "spooky" sundae with pumpkin custard.

I've been revisiting Halo again recently because a good friend wanted to play them for the first time and it's amazing how powerful nostalgia can be. I originally played these games with my dad when I was around 5-6 years old (and revisiting them multiple times over the years) and I still feel like they have the same power over me that they did when I was small. The story and characters aren't anything groundbreaking by today's standards but I remember how much it all meant to me when I was younger. I still feel that childhood emotion come back when I just hear the soundtrack.

I've been so pumped up this time around that I've decided to attend the Halo WCS in October. It's silly and I haven't been to a convention in a long time now, but even if I just bum around for a few hours and take pictures of cosplayers I think it will have been worth it for me.

I've had some ideas for a Halo painting I've wanted to do for years so maybe now I'll finally feel inspired to finish it. I started working on some thumbnails this week, but my PC had to go in for repairs so I won't have access to my tablet for a while. Hopefully when I get it back I'll still have the spark.

My parents' dog, Master Chief, as a puppy.

A couple months ago I made it my mission to befriend some crows in my neighborhood. I intially expected that I would just feed these guys peanuts on my walks and maybe see the same ones occasionally, but to my surprise, after doing this maybe twice, a bonded pair of crows started to visit my house regularly. They had followed me home from my walks and would start showing up in my yard begging for food. Before long, they started to figure out my work schedule and would show up in the mornings right when I was leaving for work to beg for more food.

They started visiting so often I eventually started calling them Bauble and Trinket. I'm not sure if there's a way to tell a crow's gender from a distance, but I've been operating from under the assumption that Bauble is male because he's bigger and less flighty, while Trinket is probably female. I've had so much fun learning their preferences and seeing them each day. I started by feeding them only unshelled peanuts because they seemed to like the game that provided, but I started researching what other foods they might enjoy to keep it interesting for them. I've learned they also enjoy quality dog food and hard-boiled chicken eggs (these are probably their favorite).

Intially I would wait for them to show up, and then play games with them by tossing food near them. They liked this for a while, but the more they started to hang out, the more I felt like I should set up something more permanent. They recently graduated to a little feeder basket I was able to attach to a trellis in the yard which they now love.

Trinket and Bauble sitting at their new feeder