So I did some work on my site recently (this was prior to making the previous post) and I fixed some issues that had come up with it and updated some things and figured out how to add a gallery to show off my amigurumi adventures, and then I even added categories for my blog posts.
It probably doesn’t seem like a huge deal to anyone else, but seeing how I basically shuttered my website and only posted to tumblr from 2016-ish till 2019 (those years were extraordinarily hectic) then from 2019-2022 I had a square space site temporarily to basically have a place holder and keep my domain (which I have had and used to keep updated since the mid 2000s) but it was too expensive and I was too busy being a new mom to really do updates, then at the end of 2022 I went ahead and switched my hosting provider to make sure my site and my data were hosted in Canada on Canadian servers cuz the world is a disaster and I wanted to ensure a higher level of data privacy for myself.
Then began a year of me trying to rebuild my website, to learn how to do things differently, learn how to use WordPress (before that my old website was entirely coded by me with my own html and my own CSS stuff cuz I used to have time to do any of that lol), and figure out how to use new features that were not a thing or not easy to use 10-15 years ago when I was more active on my personal website development!
Anyway – things in my life have gotten better but not less complicated: since 2015 I graduated from university, I got married, I had an entire career change, my MIL got cancer, I got pregnant with twins, I quit work to have twins and took advantage of Canadian maternity leave to have 18 months paid but then the pandemic happened and I just stayed at home ever since. Raising twins has been hard, my husband had a health crisis and that’s been hard. Since 2019 I’ve read close to 250 Warhammer 40k novels (and other works), over 300 manhwa series, a pile of manga and western comics and several dozen other novels/novel series as well: I’ve also put thousands of hours into assorted video games cuz I can’t stop gaming. I got myself diagnosed with autism (which is its own huge post for the future but it was like a fucking lightbulb moment where everything suddenly made sense to know that everything is the way it is cuz my brain is just different – just plain different – I’m not doing a bad job, I’m actually doing very well for having to cope with autism and all the other shit I’ve had to face in my life *self high five*). My kids are now 5 and they will be starting school in the fall (huge life changes everything is happening too fast) and we moved to a new city last year and I started my website back up and this year everything has finally settled down and I want to blog more.
I think my main goal now with this website is to basically blog about how I am reviewing my life through the lens of gifted pda autism and generally scream into the void about the shit I would probably talk to a therapist about if I could afford a therapist. I may be Canadian but even our socialized health care doesn’t fucking cover mental health the way it should. Our system is trash and only good when compared to the USA (which is generally why we constantly compare ourselves to Americans – it makes us feel good -> some kind of schadenfreude I assume) when we really should be comparing ourselves to like assorted European and Scandinavian countries that have got the socialism down pat : if they can do it why can’t we! (something something go vote for more socialism not less).
I also want to start actually practicing writing reviews. The thing I am best at in life is reading books and remembering what I read. Outside of an academic framework there’s not a lot of jobs I can do that involve me reading and getting paid to do it. My brother suggested applying my bachelors degree in English (graduated with honors) to the thing I like to do and write reviews for books I read and post them on my blogs and try to cross post those reviews on sites where regular people leave reviews and build a portfolio that way! I figure – it’s worth a shot – I can also try it for video games and comics as I read a lot of comics and play a lot of video games in addition to reading novels and reading kids books to/with my kids.
So that’s my rambling semi-synoptic update on ‘life this last decade’. Hopefully I can follow through with more regular updates. We will see if this spring is a motivating spring or a stressful spring!!
