Life updates! We’re alive and kickin’
I haven’t been updating this, FOR SHAME! Most of you already know I’ve been live still, on a pretty consistent basis, so I don’t really have to explain. Needless to say, between raising cats and taking care of cats and nesting HARDCORE into our home, I’ve had a busy agenda. So what’s been going on lately?
Well, for starters… we’re halfway through 2024, and I can’t quite believe that. Next month I’ll be celebrating 10 years of streaming, which is utterly CRAZY to me. In a week or so I’ll have been doing this full-time for 8 years, which is also insane. I’m forever grateful to have been allowed this opportunity, and I will continue to strive to do what I can to make this as worth YOUR time as a viewer of my content. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for that.
I finally took on a project a few months ago that I’ve been long-pressed to do for quite sometime, which is getting my office/workspace cleaned out and decorated in a way that I actually enjoyed. When I moved into this house 10 years ago, I was set up in the basement and, while there was plenty of space, I didn’t know what to do with it. I had been using a desk that I fashioned out of a solid block of wood and two filing cabinets several years prior that fit perfectly into the space I had been living in at the time, but I was becoming somewhat unhappy with because of some of its limitations. For starters, the depth of the desk felt too shallow, and while the length of it was quite suitable to my needs… I often felt a push and pull with myself because of those dimensions. I loved the space the length offered me, but I felt suffocated by the perceived lack of space I had otherwise with the shortened depth (which I believe was around 23″). I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it, and spent several years trying to figure out how to tackle this. I brought in an old desk thinking that I could just jam the two together and create some kind of L-shaped amalgamation that I’d be satisfied with. This actually made things WORSE, and created more chaos in my brain. When Trav moved in, I gave him the basement and moved to another room entirely in the upstairs of the house. We originally had the old wood block desk brought up here along with a pre-existing L-shaped desk I purchased for my previous job, and within the confines of this much smaller room I couldn’t handle all of the furniture. Too small a space to work with all of that. I knew I had my work cut out for me.
I quietly ruminated for years on how I was going to tackle this problem, because I don’t consider myself a very adventurous decorator and, up until recently, I rarely took chances when it came to more permanent types of solutions like hanging shelving and whatnot. Something clicked in the last year, and I don’t know if it was just the wash of responsibility I was fully aware of or my YouTube algorithm somehow shoving home organization channels into my peripheral view, but I found I had suddenly become this symbiotic machine of organization, cleanliness, and design. Trav said I hit a flow state, and he was not wrong. I spent the back half of last year organizing the kitchen, the den, and several other rooms, while quietly still stewing about how I was going to handle my office. I had ideas, but I still wasn’t sure about them. I bought paint and some shelving thinking I was ready to tackle it last year, but it was not to be. And so I waited. Upon the precipice of this year’s March Madness, I finally found myself mentally and physically ready to take on this task of remodeling, and in April of this year, I finally did what I had previously been unprepared to do; I bought a new desk. I was ready to transform this room into something a little different.
A bit of a before and after
I wasn’t necessarily going for anything super drastic, and in terms of my decoration style, I’m kind of a lazy goth chick so I almost always go for the various shades of what would be referred to as “millennial gray” despite how apparently tacky it is. I DON’T CARE. I’m just so happy that it doesn’t look like an Olive Garden in here any more, or to be more apt, it’s not the same color as the bathroom across the hall. I waffled extensively on whether or not I wanted to get a new desk and ultimately landed on the change being good, so I purchased the Flexispot E7 Plus. Because I needed this to be as long as the desk I was replacing, I went with the 78″ x 30″ bamboo top, and I chose a lighter color just as a contrast to the darker gray of the walls. I honestly feel I could have gone darker, but I was a little worried about it being too dark initially. I also bought this paint last year, and at this point it was too late to turn back. Assembly for the desk was a bit annoying, but I’m ultimately very happy with the end result – much more space depth-wise, and it is a sit/stand so I have a lot more versatility in how I work or play at it. I bought it on a half-impulse because of a sale they were having, and eventually ended up buying a clamp-on adjustable keyboard tray (because Gabby and the kittens LOVE to lay around me while I’m streaming), as well as an under desk cable management tray from NODOCA to help with some of the de-tangling of the eldritch beast that once lay before me. I’d like to say the cable management is perfect, tidy, and sightless, but it is not. It’s still light years better than it was, as I tried to take the time to cinch everything together into neat velcro cable ties based on where it was going. Regardless, there was minimal else I needed to do except redecorate with some of the cool things I’ve acquired over time, and sink in to the new space.
Where the magic happens…?
In addition to this vast undertaking that I completed in April, I’ve been working on setting up a half-gym in our garage with equipment we’ve had for years, cleaning out and organizing our basement so that Trav can also have a freshly updated space that the kittens can feel safe and comfortable in (and more importantly, we feel safe about letting them in), cleaning out our shed and reorganizing it, laying new contact paper in some cabinets, hanging shelves in our bathrooms, and other miscellaneous little projects that I’ve had on my radar for a couple of years. Again, I don’t know if it’s just hitting an apex of middle-aged life or something else that creeped up on me, but I have been in “get shit done” mode for the front half of this year and I’m feeling the rush of dopamine that comes with completing that list of things. Huzzah!
As far as the cats are concerned, everyone is doing great. Gabby is actually doing really well, even with her kidney disease diagnosis, and as of last month’s bill of health check she’s still kickin’ it in fairly good condition. I think the jolt of fresh energy four kittens gave her was unmistakably good, and though she has her old lady crabby moments, she’s warmed up to them quite a bit. They’re always hanging out around her, she comes down late at night to eat with them when I’m done streaming, and everyone is just very well behaved and courteous.
All in all, I mostly just wanted to give a more in-depth update to let everyone know, even though you likely watch the stream and already know this, that life is good and I’ve been working hard at updating some home-related things. As I’m feeling an end to the projects I desperately had earmarked for completion this year, I’m eager to return my full attention and energy to the stream with some creative ideas that I’ve got jotted down to (hopefully) close out this year with some new and exciting content to offer.
I figure maybe I ought give a few life updates here and there on this blog, along with just a general list of what I’ve been consuming media-wise, just for funsies. You know, kind of like the way Livejournal used to be in the early 2000s. We’ve picked up watching movies again on the weekends, which I often offer up little succinct blurbs via my Letterboxd on. I’ve also been trying to get out of a true crime genre hole that’s honestly hard to deviate from at times, but I’m working on it. Lately, I’ve been:
Watching on TV: Interview With The Vampire on AMC, which I’m almost entirely caught up on. I was skeptical at first because of my strong attachment to both the novels and the 1990s movie, but the show has won me over entirely. All I want now is to immerse myself into some really good gothic vampire novels. House of the Dragon started up again, so we are watching that. I also rewatched Mindhunter and lamented over how I’ll likely never get a third season. Sigh.
Reading: Before I go down the vampire novel rabbit hole, I have decided that I desperately want to blast through the Clive Barker books that inspired the Hellraiser film series, so I’m nearly finished with The Hellbound Heart, and I’ll move on after that to The Scarlet Gospels. My hope is to eventually round back to the two white whales of my library that are ever-looming in the background, House of Leaves and Dune, but I need some fairly easy reading to accomplish first.
Watching in movies: We binged the newer Villeneuve Dune movies, which I honestly loved, and desperately make me want to get back into the books. The aforementioned desire to consume some easy reading so I feel like I’m accomplishing some reading is very felt, however, so I can wait. We started rewatching Indiana Jones so that we can watch the newest film, The Dial of Destiny, which I’ve been trepidations about. I also finished Monkey Man yesterday, which I found to be pretty good.
Listening to: Among my normal deluge of stream music, which is more often than not just a lot of new goth playlists I scrounge up, I was interested in revisiting a couple of artists I heard recently on Liquid Metal during Ian Christie’s segment ROOTS, which is a weekly show that tries to thematically introduce new bands, both old and new, to people’s ears. This particular week I managed to tune in for was D&D themed metal, and I managed to bookmark the bands Lair of the Minotaur and Orcrypt, both of whom I really want to dive a little deeper on. Trav also put out a new LP called Lenny, which I hope everyone’s picked up by now 🙂
Playing offstream: I haven’t honestly had a lot of time to game offstream, but when I do find the time I have been quietly consuming Persona 3 Reload and I get it, as well as Manor Lords.
Until the next post, y’all!