I'm Back! So, Where the Hell Have I Been?

January 15th, 2026

I can't really think of a clever way to start this off, so I guess I'll get things going with a simple greeting: Happy New Year, everyone! It's been a while, hasn't it? Hell, by the time I'm finally finishing this thing up, it's two weeks into the New Year. I can't say I expected to go four months without writing a single page on here, but I guess that's exactly what happened. After such a long time away from the keyboard, getting my brain to form my thoughts into coherent sentences feels like trying to soften up a ball of Silly Putty that's been sitting out in the sun for an entire season. If you didn't notice the massive time gap between entries, this is the first blog post that I've written since August, and the first page that I've written in general since I did my writeup on The Substance way back in September. So, what happened there? Why did I vanish for a few months?

If I'm being completely honest, I've been trying to write the answers to those questions since around November or so. I've made many attempts to put into writing the reasons and life circumstances that led me to stop posting on here, and each draft eventually reached a dead end that led me to restart it over and over again. Writer's block would be a very simple explanation, but this case of writer's block happened to coincide with several things in my personal life going badly or wrong all at once for months at a time. The second half of 2025 was a bit of a rough and uneasy time for both myself and my girlfriend, and any desire to do something creative completely went away as I worked through everything that was going on. I alluded to some of these things in my first August blog post, but that was a pretty terrible explanation. I didn't give much detail at all, and at the time, I chalked up my problems with writing to my attention span being shot due to a lack of sleep. Now that things have been returning to normal at home, I figured that it would be a decent time to sit down and properly write out what went on. I normally prefer to keep more personal things like this offline, but since I've written a few things about my mental health before, I figured that I could lay out a version of events that is honest while still keeping some things to myself. So, here we go.

If you live in the U.S., then you likely already know about the massive cuts to various jobs and budgets due to the DOGE program in 2025. Way back in June, my girlfriend sadly lost her job as a result of these cuts. It was a hard and unexpected shock to us both, and I felt terrible for my girlfriend. No one ever wants to lose their job, especially due to circumstances that are completely outside of their control. I did my best to help her through the aftermath of it and begin to figure out the next steps for the time ahead. Since it was only going to be my income from a factory job for a while, the next few months were looking a little difficult in terms of finances and keeping a stable budget at home. But, we had enough savings between the two of us to get by, and I thought that as long as both of us kept working at what we needed to do, things would get better in a while.

What happened next was a months-long cycle of issues compounding on top of each other and getting worse with time. I'm an anxious person by nature, and when one thing goes wrong, I worry about what else could go wrong to an unhealthy degree. I would constantly stress myself out over things like bills, our savings, large expenses like car or house repairs, and other things of the sort. In the first couple of months, all that stress caused me to lose quite a bit of sleep. I deal with bouts of insomnia ever year, but this particular one went on for weeks at a time, leaving me exhausted and lethargic on top of all of the anxiety going on in my head. Needless to say, this wasn't the best mental state to be in when you have a loved one struggling right along with you. I tried to stay optimistic, but all those worrying thoughts kept repeating and amplifying due to how tired I was.

I wanted to keep writing to pass the time and give me something positive to do, but my ability to focus got worse as the weeks went on. I felt sluggish and constantly distracted, and any attempt to write felt like a massive undertaking. Even trying to lay out my thoughts on short books like Beowulf or Grendel took hours on end as I would write a few words, delete them, shuffle sentences around, or start all over again. I tried to do some simpler blog writings about video games or a few places I went to, but even my everyday thoughts were impossible to put into words that sounded right. I was keeping a big backlog of things that I wanted to cover, and I was super frustrated with myself for not being able to concentrate and do what I wanted to do. As time went on and the list got bigger and bigger, I eventually realized that I simply couldn't catch up to where I wanted to be with life being as hectic as it was. So, I just didn't feel the need to try for a while. My hobby had become yet another job to complete on top of everything else that was happening, and because of this, I didn't even want to watch or read anything for a while. When I had free time, I mainly spent it with my girlfriend playing video games, listening to music, or in my laziest moments, doomscrolling.

As summer progressed, everything I mentioned above drove me into yet another depressive spell. I've battled depression and anxiety for my entire adult life, and as anyone who struggles with the same things could probably tell you, it comes and goes in pretty big waves. While this time period certainly wasn't my lowest in terms of depressive episodes, it was definitely one of the longest ones in my recent memory. August and September were when it was sitting in the worst, and as my birthday passed, I started to think that it was time that I finally talked to my doctor about trying a different medication. I got switched to a new one in early October, and as the month went on, my mood definitely took a turn for the better. I still had some of the worrying thoughts I mentioned before, but I wasn't dwelling on them as much, and the feeling of impending doom that I had felt for a while began to dissipate. I started dipping back into my hobbies when I had some free time, doing things like getting back into collecting Laserdiscs and learning how to repair my VCR. By the time November hit, I felt like I was ready to crack down and get back to maintaining my website like I wanted to.

I really wanted to get my concentration back to where it was around March or April of last year, so I took a few steps to try to limit my distractions. Having lived with a flip phone for a few months at that point, the urge to use a phone all the time had went away, so my desktop PC was my only access point to the Internet. I used an extension to block access to sites such as YouTube, Reddit, basically any site with a never-ending algorithmic feed that keeps you wired to it. I also bought myself a notebook and some pencils so I could try to write at work when I had the inspiration to do so. And yet, I still couldn't work through the writer's block right away. Over the past two months, I've written, rewritten, and trashed this blog numerous times on everything from my old PC to a small, worn-out notepad that I kept in my pocket. The aggravating, stop-and-go process of trying to get this thing finished made me very aware of one last thing that I wanted to touch on here.

I've always liked the idea of writing for leisure or creativity, whether it's a simple journal, a piece of poetry, or even fiction. Hell, I made this site because I wanted a place to write about the things that I love and share them with people. But every time I've ever tried to sit down and do some sort of consistent writing in my life, I've never really been good at it. For example, I've had several ideas for short films that I would like to make with friends going back a decade now. But every attempt I've made to sit down and finish a script fizzled out because I have no idea how to write a compelling character. A similar thing happened when I tried to keep a journal simply because I couldn't think of anything to write about. Even though movies and books are my two biggest hobbies, I'm not the best at picking up on deeper meanings or analyzing the creative process that went into a piece. Most of what I am able to come up with boils down to "Oh, I like this part" or "Oh, that part is pretty cool too", and only when it's some autistic fixation like Italian horror films am I able to offer up some trivia or history. I feel like such an amateur dork when I go back and read a lot of my entries, and I get a little embarrassed when someone I know tells me that they read my review of something. I would definitely like to improve my writing and sound a little more intelligent, but at the same time, the whole point of this site is just to enjoy and share the things I like. I haven't decided how I'm going to tackle this in the year ahead, but maybe it's best not to take things too seriously when you're trying to get back into doing something for fun.

Now that we're a couple of weeks into 2026, I think it's time to leave all of that negativity in the dust of last year. Things have been getting much better for a little over a month now - my girlfriend started a new job, we've spent some quality time with great friends, and with life returning to a steadier and more secure place, the two of us have been happier than we have been for quite a while. Last year may have been full of rough times, but maybe all of that happened so that this year could be better than we ever expected. If you made it to the end of this massive venting session, thanks for sticking it out. It feels great to finally get this thing off my chest, and with that massive roadblock out of the way, I look forward to getting back to geeking out with all of you as the year goes on. Here's to 2026!