State of the Blog
It's getting close to three months since I started this blog, and I thought this would be a nice chance to step back, see what I've done, and think about where I'm going from here. Besides, I need more posts with the #randombullshit tag to justify its existence, so this'll be like killing two birds with one stone.
Recalling my state of mind when I started this whole thing, I really wasn't too sure of where I was going to go with it. I suppose a big part of my motivation was that I always found it annoying to have to check out multiple sources of reviews (whether for books, games, cars, or whatever else) in order to get a good idea of how much of what's being said were genuine reactions and how much was tied up with other interests, like not wanting to offend sponsors or wanting to be especially harsh on rivals of sponsors. Now, I can't take credit for this as an original thought, because it was inspired by the site Scathing Accuracy, but regardless, I thought it'd be cool to have a place where I could put out my thoughts as an amateur who's unaffiliated with anyone of the products being reviewed.
Of course, the problem with that is needing to have a pile of stuff to actually write reviews about, since much like the two* people behind Scathing Accuracy, I want to put enough time into whatever I'm talking about to actually be able to give an informed opinion about it instead of just spewing generic bullshit based on half an hour of experience. That doesn't mean that I've got to sink 100+ hours into everything that I review (case in point, I'll be reviewing Hollow Knight once I can finish playing it as something to give me a break from working towards unlocking chaos mode in Star Ocean 4, and I'm sure I'll have less than 20 hours invested in that game by then), but it was always obvious that I'd run out of a review backlog at some point.
(*obligatory "fuck Climpa/Wiggy")
Most of the point of having other posts like recipes or weekly workout recaps was to fill in some of those content gaps. The rest of it was that I thought putting up those posts might serve as a source of inspiration for people to do some cooking or exercising on their own. I don't mean that in a prideful way, either. I'm as much of an amateur in the kitchen as I am behind a keyboard, and by no means do I consider myself to be anything remarkable in an athletic sense, so if even I can get good results in such endeavors (largely from a combination of keeping things simple and being persistent), almost anyone should be able to, too.
Along the way, it so happened that I stumbled across a new hobby, and that's just about taken over my blog for the last few weeks. Honestly, the amount of pleasure that I've been able to get out of painting little people/brains came as a complete surprise. I'd never thought of myself as having any sort of artistic gifts when it comes to forms like painting, sculpting, and so forth. Even just basic neat penmanship is beyond my freehand ability, let alone drawing something that looks good, and anyone who's seen me in person won't find it the least bit surprising that I don't care about appearances in general. Nevertheless, painting some graffiti on miniature models gives me an illogical sense of enjoyment, and other people seem to like the results, so hey, a hobby is born. It's taken things in a direction that I never would've envisioned just a couple of months ago, but I'm enjoying it.
I mean, I've still got a lot to learn and improve on, and I'm sure at least some of the good feedback I've gotten is based on being open about how little experience I've got with any sort of painting, but just because I'm awful compared to people who've been doing that sort of thing for 20+ years and probably won tons of awards for it doesn't mean that I can't have fun with it in my own way.
So, that all having been said, what's next? Well, I've got a couple of more recipes that I want to share, I'll have a review of Hollow Knight sometime in the near future (pending sudden death or disability, as is the case with any talk of future plans), and I should be finished with my current book in the next week, too, so you can expect a review for that, too. Obviously, the weekends will warrant more workout recaps, for whatever those are worth. I'll also keep on painting miniatures, too, and now that I'm done working through the second of Reaper's tutorial kits (which I'll talk about more once I get around to uploading the pictures to go with that post), it'll be back to doing more of the detailed "Process of Painting" posts since I'll be making my own decisions on colors plans and all of that shit again.
Anyway, in short, there's still plenty of content to come, so keep coming by, friends and anonymous Internet browsers. I hope you'll stick around because you're enjoying it, but let's be real, I'm not so proud as to reject Bile Fascination traffic.
