Why do I even bother? I'm getting to the point where I'm asking myself that more often than I care to admit these days since the start of the New Year.
Much like majority of my content on here, I know that most people aren't going to read this anyway, so I'm going to take the opportunity to rant and ramble about a few things. In that regard, forgive me if this isn't organized or jumping around a bit between topics.
I gave Discord a fair chance the past few weeks and I still don't see what's the big fascination with it. The same 3-5 people talk to me on it that were around the first time around and no much else. I don't see the point in joining any servers when people know how to find me. If I have to join server X, Y, and Z to talk to specific people then it's not worth my time. It's the same as all of the other social media outlets I'm on. I know people who wouldn't give me the time of their day IRL but look for me to add them on Facebook, Twitter, Xbox Live, PSN, or any other social platform under the sun. Fuck that noise. I'm not here to contribute to your friend count and continue feeding your ego.
“Social media is so dangerous to those of us with mental health conditions and I know in the media and our everyday lives now people are being hired and fired by their social media followings or the amount of information they post or how popular they are. I think it’s a disease, so out of that situation with my colleague I am no longer on social media, I will never get back on social media”. - Mauro Ranallo
I can see why Mauro Ranallo calls social media a "disease", especially to your mental health. I gave Discord another chance because I got sick of getting shit from tons of people I know that say, "You need to be more social!" "Discord will really make your communities grow on both your blogs and streaming!" "Discord is what connecting everyone now. You gotta get with the times, man." I hate feeling like whenever I message people, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Discord, etc. whatever, and it's like I'm disturbing, bothering, or hindering them from something much more important in their lives. I get it. A lot of my friends now have families, kids to watch, jobs to work, and whatever the fuck else. You don't want to be disturbed? Cool. Put one of those fancy away/busy messages up, but don't expect me NOT to drop you message at all hours of the day when you ignore mine. That's one primary reason why I show up invisible across a ton of social media platforms. If I'm not visible then you don't know when the fuck I'm going to respond to you out of respect.
(Shrugs) I dunno. Maybe I'm thinking too much into this. After the first 1-2 times, I give people a break that they are busy as I'm not the fastest person to respond either, but when it's a regular thing it makes me not even want to even talk to you out of constantly feeling like I'm a nuisance to whatever you're doing. Call it fucking paranoid or whatever you want, but that's just how I feel. Last time I checked this is my blog and I can express how I feel on it. I went into enough detail on my mental health a while ago, so that's out in the open too.
I wish I could turn that part of my brain off but I can't... It's like one of my favorite scenes from the short-lived Beware the Batman animated series where Bruce Wayne is out for dinner with Tatsu and tests her eye for spotting criminal activity. Tatsu asks him how does he turn it off and he simply replies with, "I can't..."
I find something I really like with Monster Hunter World and occasionally I still get people who go "You're still playing that shit?" or "That's all you play, bro?" Now it's getting to the point where I'm even getting disgusted with the game after the last few sessions. It's not the game itself - it's the fucking people I deal with sometimes. The Monster Hunter community are one of the best gaming communities that I have been glad to be apart of in recent years but boy, this community has been trying my patience since Safi'jiiva dropped. The only thing I want to do is help folks out like I've been doing since post-game but nope, you got people still playing like it's week 1 of the base game in Master Rank. Call me an elitist if you want at this point, but I get fed up with this crap where people who have CLEARLY been carried from the base game and throughout the expansion's main quest line only to play like dog shit when push comes to shove in post-game content. Why should I have to baby you when you don't know basic survival skills or are extremely ignorant to the people trying to help you. It got so bad last night that I actually started booting people from my hunts and session. Something I haven't done AT ALL in this game to this date. Almost pained me to do so, but I just got sick of that shit. People are trying to help this fool during the Safi'jiiva siege and he's just carting over and over talking shit over the mic, clearly ignoring the rest of the team. I know that I keep saying it but I'm definitely done with this game after the festival/appreciation fest is over on the 13th. I'll take a two month hiatus until whatever the new content is over in April from the roll out calendar that Capcom released.
I got so fed up with how people were playing the last few days on multiplayer hunts that I wrote a four-page tutorial guide on how to approach the Safi'jiiva siege, only to delete it when I got home from work that evening. I just need to stop pouring my heart into this game to the extent that I have been lately. Grinding the Arena quests (for the coins to craft/upgrade the Guild Palace weapons and armor) isn't helping in the least. That was arguably the worst portion of content in the base game before the Iceborne expansion and it STILL remains to be loathed after the fact. I can understand that they want players to try out all of the various weapon types per hunt, but limiting the choices down to a mere five out of the 18 weapon types is fucking moronic. It's the most limiting mode in the game, especially when the game encourages so much player freedom in terms of gameplay otherwise.
I dunno what I'm going to have to do to get out of this funk I'm in where I'm just flat out disgusted with the thought of working on specific content or trying out different avenues/angles for attracting potentially new readers to this blog. Like I know what my followers/readers on the wrestling fandom end of things want. I can jokingly and seriously comment on modern wrestling until the cows come home. That part is easy. When it comes to the gaming/nerd culture spectrum of things, I just don't know what the actual fuck people want from me. That thought alone is frustrating all on it's own. I pour my heart and soul into stuff like those series retrospectives on Virtual-ON or Jem and the Holograms, only to get crickets. On the other hand, my review on the Lastman TV series was my pride and joy for 2019, especially with the creators themselves taking a moment to comment on my work. That meant a lot. Is it too much to ask for a small validity that what I do matters? I like to think that I'm not a selfish person. A few of my readers on here can testify that the only reason I continued streaming was to keep making content that their kids enjoyed watching on my channel. I wasn't doing that for anyone else but them at that point. I'm not getting paid to stream. I'm not sponsored. I'm lucky to even have a someone watching period during most of my streams, hence why I got rid of the active chat sidebar from my PS4 streams. I was lucky to get my YouTube channel back in that regard - well for the most part it's "majority" there, sans a few missing videos.
I mentioned it before about how much I hate doing themes on this blog because life always finds a way to derail me from focusing extensively on them. It paid without warning that I was considering one for Black History Month, even though I wasted my time doing one about two years ago over on Facebook, that I would have a family emergency to deal with at the start of the week. Nah, I'm scrapping that idea. I have one thing I'm considering covering for this month that posted about Discord that I'm sure NO ONE saw anyway, so that will remain a secret until I get that side project done. I have another project in mind too, but it would be fine if that spills over into the rest of the year if I don't get to it this month, so I'm not even going to mention it.
Truth be told, my on/off wrestling collaborator, Serena, and I have discussed doing a podcast of sorts before since she has experience doing radio in her country. I honestly hate how my own voice sounds, hence why I don't like recording commentary on my own streams. On top of that, we barely have time for the efeds that we're apart of together to even put time aside for recording a show weekly. Hell, I'm working on a show for my fed right now that should have been done about a week and a half ago. We go on weeks on end without even talking about wrestling with each other until something "big" pops up into the news or we want to recommend something to each other. That being said, I love talking to her about wrestling at times since she's younger than me and I get to pass my knowledge and/or perspective down to her youthful mind. In exchange, she gives me how she feels about the modern take on wrestling as she's not bothered by the overkill of "flippy shit" like I am at times. It's a give-take bond that I cherish when it comes to looking at and commenting on wrestling. Plus it's hilarious when we can come from both ends of the spectrum and agree when something is REALLY fucking stupid across the board.
One of my friends mentioned that I should share more of my artwork on Facebook and I'm skeptical and reluctant to do that. I posted samples of what I'm currently working on from the last few years on my personal Facebook account and got crickets for the most part. I have a DeviantArt account where I share majority of that content on too, but it's lukewarm reception at best. I gave Wattpad a shot too at the start of the year and really haven't gotten any bites there. I'm optimistic in that regard as it took a while before my FictionPress account to garner some traction when I was doing that back in high school and while I was in undergrad courses in college. Like I told myself after Stan Lee died, I'm doing that project ENTIRELY for me, even if I'm the only one who sees it to the bitter end. I don't have anyone storyboarding and/or penciling and inking my work for me. I'm still fumbling my way through photo-editing programs and can't fully grasp the lighting and shading/shadows. I'm sure the latter is evident in my renders from Daz3D. What little I know in Daz Studio is from my own trial and error. There's like a handful of fellow 3D artists on dA that offer some pointers and tips but I find it hard to believe that they would provide any concrete help that would diminished their own source of income from their artwork that they sell on and off that site. Content creation on there is even more frustrating as it's not going to garner much interest unless it's NSFW work or erotic fan fiction. Trust me, I know. I ran a few tests with a few "mature content" renders and got a ton more views/hits on those than anything else I posted. Ugh... I get it, sex sells but I would like not to whore my characters out to get exposure. Once you go down that route, there's really no coming back from it. My B3 story has some mature/adult content in it, but nothing much more than what you would see in one of the MCU Netflix shows.
“Create. Not for the money. Not for the fame. Not for the recognition. But for the pure joy of creating something and sharing it.”
― Ernest Barbaric
I honestly started writing this article about a week ago and by the time that I finished writing this and actually posting it, I got some rather good vibes from people from different ends of the spectrum. On one scope, I got a religious answer to my question that I'm not going to get into. I'm not an overly religious person, but I'm not ever going to shove my religious beliefs down my readers throats on here. That's the one thing I will draw the line on as I do the same with my friends. I don't fuck with anyone about politics and religion. That's my two venues where I don't converse with people about. In that regard, I got the answer I needed to hear. As for the quote above, that added to the answer I wanted and more importantly needed to hear.
I think my problem is that I want to create things to share on here and on different avenues of the Internet but when push comes to shove I haven't actually enjoyed doing any of it. The rare exceptions were streams of playthroughs of some of my favorite games, even when I know not a goddamn soul but me was paying attention or the past two weeks when I got some random as hell ideas for artwork involving some of my renders from Daz Studio. It's shit like that, such as outlining and mapping out my B3 (Bullets, Blades, and Blood) story and cooking up character bios, something that I keep entirely to myself for the most part outside of a select few people and don't actually share on here or anywhere for that matter that I truly love doing.
To the people who encourage me to put those negative thoughts behind me and just continue doing you (me), THANK YOU. To the folks who tell me to stop whining and just get over it, simply put, FUCK YOU.
This blog will continue being my creative outlet - a space to call my own. I honestly still don't know what's the long-term theme/focus will be, but I'll keep writing and working on something that I enjoy. Maybe you'll find something that you like. Maybe you won't, but I can be content that I enjoyed doing it.
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