March was…
As The Crow Flies (working title)
Inspiration struck! Earlier this month I had an idea to run a small week-long RPG over messages in a Choose Your Own Adventure style, and I spent a few days writing it all up. Some paths work a lot better than others narratively and it’s mostly finished…but it’s something that I really want to develop further! At just under 3000 words it’s kind of taken on a life of it’s own, BUT I love that, and I’m really excited to continue with it, either in it’s current format or something else entirely.
Wandavision
After pretty much an entire year of no cinema trips or superhero films, Wandavision releasing recently on Disney+ was an unexpected treat. Both ‘Scarlett Witch’ and Vision have been notoriously under-utilised in the Avengers and wider Marvel Cinematic Universe films so I really enjoyed this six hour piece. It was incredibly satisfying having this to look forward to and theorise about each week, and I loved watching it progress into a great mystery that builds and subsequently unravels in nine episodes, tinged with love, grief, life, and existentialism. A superb experiment that finally gave emotional resonance and character moments to a MCU that’s mostly without. A lot better than I anticipated!
Building and Streaming Lego Medieval Blacksmith 21325
This month I continued building the new Lego Medieval Blacksmith 21325 set and streaming progress over on my Twitch channel. The set is incredibly detailed and makes a great display piece and I had lots of fun building it with all the new bricks and techniques used. Streaming the build was a bit of an interesting one -people actually watched!- and I enjoyed nattering on about Lego history and pieces. It definitely gave me a new appreciation for the hard work that streaming requires, but I don’t think it’s something I can commit to regularly. Hard work! I recorded all the video and trimmed all 7 hours into a time-lapsed 25 minutes, but without audio -and still too long?- I’ve yet to upload. This might be something that gets finished and uploaded online or I might honestly just keep for myself as a memento. Streaming may be something I take-up every so often.
Big Decisions
With a disastrous February, I re-evaluated quite a bit. After a lot of consideration I came to the difficult decision of withdrawing from my Post-Graduate study. This was really hard to do but came down to ultimately being frazzled from full-time work, winter mental stuff, and continued pandemic exhaustion. I really enjoyed what I was studying but was always scraping by each week by only studying the absolute minimum and skipping lots of stuff- I really wasn’t able to give the materials the time, energy, or love that it needed. I would have much preferred spending more time on it, or having the time in the first place. So i’m annoyed at that but will pick it up again at a better time, in a few years or even later in life. The positive effects of that decision however have been immediate. Less stress, more relaxing, oysters of free time, and honestly just a sunnier outlook. I’m not griefing myself the same about sitting doing nothing or not working. It’s a good feeling.
April is…
looking promising! Next month I want to start work on a new Lego project, play lots of games, and if everything goes to plan, get back to normal and have more frequent meets and meals with friends. Fingers crossed!