A re-introduction to me, and an update on the blog. (One Year of Self-Proclaimed Dreamer!)

     Hi friends, my name is Jonathan and for over a year now, I've been writing once a week here on the Self-Proclaimed Dreamer. It's been a tough year for everyone, but in a lot of ways, things are slowly getting better for society as a whole as well as individually. Yes, the virus is still around and people are refusing to take the vaccine, but at least we have a vaccine in place that is slowly being distributed to people willing to take it. In addition to things getting better, hopefully the shortage in chips that is making it impossible to make next generation consoles/new cars in the past few months will be fixed soon as the factories that were shut down because of the pandemic are getting back to work and getting the chips made in a quick and hopefully effective way. On a selfish note, this year hasn't been too terrible for me personally, as it's given me the inspiration to start writing in a more focused and scheduled way, which has helped me to keep my writing skills up to snuff for the most part. This week's post is certainly not going to be like my normal ones, it's more about my thoughts on this blog and games that I'm looking forward to in the near future that I hope to cover here. 

    I have to say that it has been really interesting and kind of scary to put myself out there in this blog, as well as on my Twitch channel which I've started streaming on more frequently. I still view both of these endeavors as training for whatever professional job I do next. This blog is something akin to writing practice and punching up my chops for if/when I'm able to enter into a line of work that utilizes the skills that I've accumulated and grown over the years. The Twitch channel, while being a lot of fun, also helps me to work on public speaking in a sense, although obviously I don't have the ability to see my audience, and I don't have a camera set up yet, so it's not like I'm able to work on facial cues or interpersonal skills in terms of gestures. All the same, I do feel more comfortable talking in front of an audience that I don't really know than I did before I think. My channel is still small enough that I can react to all of the comments that come in while I'm playing, and I've actually gotten a few spam accounts that have tried posting things, which makes it seem like I must be doing pretty okay so far. 

    A lot of games have been announced recently, and I'm especially excited for the future of PS5. The biggest one in my opinion is God Of War: Ragnarok which just had its first trailer shown off two weeks ago during the Playstation Showcase. Insomniac's Spider-Man 2, Insomniac's Wolverine game, and the remake of Knights Of The Old Republic were all shown off at the showcase, and all of them look amazing, though it's clear that they're pretty early on. The original Spider-Man for PS4 was amazing, and Miles Morales is incredible as well, I'm playing through that now and really enjoying it. Horizon Forbidden West is coming out next February and it is looking pretty spectacular. The new WarioWare just came out and looks really good, and October sounds like a pretty excellent month for Nintendo, with Metroid Dread and Mario Party Superstars coming out. I'm very excited for at least one, if not both of those, and in general, I'm excited for what is coming down the pipe pretty much across the board. As of yesterday's Nintendo Direct, we know that things are very exciting for us, Nintendo fans. 3D Kirby is finally on the menu with Kirby and the Lost Frontier and we finally got more information on Bayonetta 3 for the first time since 2017, when it was first announced. Both of those games are coming next year, which is extremely exciting, especially considering that Breath of the Wild 2 is also coming in 2022. Streaming things also makes me excited to play things in a different way, and it's nice to know that my friends are able to play/watch me play even during the Covid times when we can't hang out as often. On an unrelated note, if you'd also like to watch me stream, I do it on Wednesdays at 7:30 (or 8, as I start late pretty often) and Saturdays starting at 5:30 at this link!

    Friends, it has been a hard year, but I'm happy to say that my writing has helped me out some, and I hope that it's brought some amount of happiness to you as well. I'm looking forward to the future of this blog, and even though I haven't written about theme parks a lot recently, this blog is still very much a passion product for me. I'm very passionate about Disney theme parks, so they will be written about for sure soon, there just hasn't been a whole lot of information coming out recently (save for the Genie+ stuff, which seems like a pretty thinly veiled attempt to take even more money than Disney was already getting). I'm slowly getting better and better at making this content for people to read and I'm hoping that this is leading me closer to the best version of myself that I can be. I hope that you're all doing well, and I hope to talk to you again soon. Thanks for sticking with me for this productive year, I'm honestly pretty proud of what I've put into it, and I hope you've enjoyed what you've read here so far. Until next time, this is Jonathan, your friendly neighborhood Self-Proclaimed Dreamer, and I'll talk to you soon.