This morning, I answered blog comments, which I hadn’t done in a good long while. It was nice to see some familiar avatars. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy interacting with you all. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy interacting with humans on any level really.

For over a year, like everyone else, my main contact with the world has been virtual. I talk to my coworkers through email, text, and the occasional phone call. I talk to my mom on the phone or through Facetime. I have a Zoom call with my friends to do the important business of conquering dungeons every 2 weeks or so.

Yes, I’m still doing a bi-monthly dork game. In fact, our next session is tonight. We switched from Pathfinder to 5e. I’m almost a level 10 Totem Warrior Barbarian. I very much enjoy killing things with efficiency. Still, in all these years of dungeoning and dragoning, while I have seen my fair share of dungeons, I have never once fought a dragon.

Still, I haven’t been here for some reason, even though this place was my touchstone for at least 8 out the past 11 years. This place kept me sane. Once again, I missed my anniversary, because I wasn’t here.

For the record, WP gives you nothing for your anniversary present. Not even for 10 years. And while I was away, I see that they changed everything again. They even twiddled with images so all the images in my old posts are either way over to the left even though they’re center aligned, or if they are in the center, the next block of text runs under the image making it illegible. I don’t know how to fix it. Thanks, WordPress. We should break up. This relationship is toxic. It feels just like olden days with WP changing stuff randomly and me bitching about it. Also, I hate this new post editor.

Way back when I was active on here, the ideas and the words would just come. Not always, but often, I’d be taking a shower or walking the dog and sentences would form in my brain. It was just a matter of writing them down. Now, I’m out of practice. I need to train my brain to blog again, because as it is, I don’t feel much like writing. Even if I do feel like writing, every sentence is a struggle.

But, just like riding a bike if you haven’t done it in years, I believe that you can get on a blog and know how to do it again, too. My brain may be rusty, but the words are there. I just need to work harder to get them out. They don’t come easily, but someday, maybe they will.

I’ve already started training my brain to draw again. In the last month, I’ve done two animal doodles and put them up on Redbubble. Since the first one sold so well and as a reason to get me drawing again, I decided to do another animal alphabet, but with different animals this time. This is the original:

I can replace a lot of the animals with ones I’ve already drawn, but there are some holes. So, I drew an alligator and an eagle. Now, I just need a new I, J, K, N, Q, U, V, X, and Z. Sigh.

Still, it’s good to have a project again. These days, I find that I’m more likely to draw an animal if I need an A or an E than I am to pick one randomly and start drawing. Maybe I need a project on here, too. Any suggestions? I suppose I could start by updating all the series I have on here. I don’t even remember what they all are: Dear Goldfish, Awkward Moments, etc. First though, I need to fix the image problem that WordPress randomly fucked up. Excuse me while I go relearn CSS.

So, tell me, dear reader, what’s the scuttlebutt? What happened while I was gone? How are you?