A late anniversary wish this year! (Five years of this blog!)

 Hey friends, it's been a while! I missed all of the last few months, and along with that, I missed a pretty important reminder, that my blog has been around another whole year! As of September, my blog is 5 years old. I need to get caught up a bit on lots of things this week and I'm sorry that I've been gone so long. As I said several months ago, I've been working on taking a few classes on top of my work responsibilities, and it has just taken a lot out of me, I hope you understand! Without further ado, let's talk!

    When I started this blog a long time ago, I didn't think that much about it. I was going more than a little stir-crazy during the Covid 19 pandemic, I had been sending what felt like endless resumes out to big jobs that I was interested in, and heard almost nothing back. I also had been thinking about starting a Youtube channel or blog when I was in college, but just never got around to it. This pandemic marked my chance to finally start something that I could be proud of, and as such, I've treated it as a bit of a written resume. Pandemic ended, but this experiment and piece of myself continued on. I hope that you all have enjoyed reading it all this time, and I'm looking forward to hopefully writing more again soon. I posted every Friday for a good long while, but for the past several months, I have been taking a hiatus, and that's on me. I've been extremely busy with all my classes, but I appreciate all of the kind words about my writings a lot. In the past year, I've had a lot of experiences, including a few very hard ones. I had to say goodbye to a few friends that I really had grown attached to, I faced a new grief of helping others say goodbye to a lot in a short time. I also traveled with a youth group all over the place during the summer, whether to New York City or a camp a bit closer to home, helped the group through a period of transition, and have experienced a pretty major transition in myself as well. I'm slowly learning to trust myself, to notice the good things that I can do and that I have done already, and I see that as a major accomplishment. To get into theology just a moment, one piece that I've wrestled with a bit this year is "Love your neighbor as yourself." I had a discussion with a friend fairly recently who pointed out that this scripture means that you should also love yourself. That's a piece that hasn't always come easily to me. I have a fair amount of self-doubt, but it's something that I'm always working on, and it made me feel a bit better to know that I'm not alone in that. I'm getting to a place where I'm very proud of the things that I'm doing and what I'm learning how to do better, which is a big step in the right direction.

    Let me talk a little bit about the games of the last year/ last few months that I've been thinking about a lot recently. This year was pretty big because we got the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2. While many have called it out for being very expensive, I've really enjoyed what I've been able to play on there so far. Yes, the price point is a bit higher than I was hoping to pay for it, but I'm fine with paying the same thing that I paid for PS5 because I know in the long run, I will most likely enjoy the games that I can play on it even more than I could find on the technically more impressive hardware of the other console. Mario Kart World was seen as a letdown for a lot of people, because it definitely doesn't have as much content as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe after the Booster Course Pass, but I think there are a lot of cool ideas here. I don't think it's a perfect attempt, of course, but it's a really cool concept that I hope will be continually refined as time goes on. I think one of the bigger issues with the game is that it was the first thing to come out for a new console, so you kind of had to play that one game specifically for a while. Donkey Kong Bananza was a fantastic new title with new ideas coming left and right for the entire duration. It was a joy to smash everything in your path and unlock new moves and abilities as you go. The emotional resonance of the game was definitely something that I was not expecting, but the end of the game was insane, and then leaves you with this sweet and honestly beautiful ending to this tale. We got the Switch port of UFO 50, a game that is a lot of fun, but I still have a long way to go. It's overwhelming just how many cool games there are in the retro-coded collection, and it adds something for them to include the cherry and gold objectives to give additional content even if you think you've mastered one of the games.

    Sonic Racing Crossworlds came out a month or two ago and I genuinely underestimated how fun that game was going to be. I love the crossworld mechanic, where you switch to a different track for lap 2, and while it can be annoying to only have the first and third laps to look for the red rings in Grand Prix mode, I think it's a really great mechanic. I also love the addition of all of the new DLC, whether paid or free, we've already gotten Hatsune Miku, Joker from Persona 5, Ichiban from the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series, Steve, Alex, and Creeper from Minecraft, and Spongebob and Patrick just came out at time of writing this. Another game that I have weirdly gotten into in the last few months is Death Stranding. When this game first came out, I never thought I would even try it, it looked like the definition of tedium. I have to say though, after a certain point, I just kept going and I wanted to see where the story went. I can confidently say that this is one of the strangest games I've ever played, if not the strangest, and I was all here for it. I was worried that there wouldn't be enough gameplay for me to actually enjoy the game, but by the end, I was kind of wishing that the BT's would just go away for a while and let me deliver packages in peace. I finished it just a few weeks ago, and I started on the sequel not long after it, which is equally crazy. I'm really enjoying it so far though!

    Now I want to get to some games that I haven't played yet, but I really want to sometime soon. Metaphor Re:Fantazio is the most recent title from Atlus, and as my friend who is a persona fan told me, I need to give it a try. I like the artstyle, it seems interesting that they've built a neo-medieval fantasy world that this story takes place in, and I'm a little overwhelmed by the idea of the different classes that you can change your characters into, but it does look really good. The other game that I'm looking forward to playing soon is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I really want to give it a shot because I've heard really good things about it, but I'm a little short on time right now with all of my other things going on right now. I really like the music that I've heard so far, and I'm definitely curious to see what makes this game so special that set the world on fire despite the small team behind it. I briefly want to touch on Dispatch as well, because I really loved the Wolf Among Us back in the days before Telltale Games went belly up, and this game looks really cool. I'm not just saying that because I'm a huge fan of a lot of the cast members (shout out to Alanah Pearce and Laura Bailey, just for starters), but it looks great and I've heard a lot of good things about it!

    Truly there are way too many games that I'm looking forward to, so I'll be talking about more as they come out and I have a chance to play them. I have been having a great time this semester as I learn a bit more about calling and how I can fit into the world in a meaningful way, and my time with the blog has been such a help. Even though I've slowed down a lot this semester, I hope you'll still check every now and then when I'm able to post here. I'm sorry that it's been so long, friends, I pray that I'll be able to post more regularly in the future, but we'll see how that all goes. Five years is nothing to sneeze at, and I'm so proud of myself for the work that I've done on this little labor of love. Thank you for all the kind words of encouragement over the years, and thank you for bearing with me as I continue sharing my thoughts and opinions on various different things. It means so much that people enjoy reading what I put out every now and then, even if I do get a little too "inside baseball" for a lot of people to understand.

    I hope you're all doing well as we continue into this holiday season. It's a hard time for so many, but I'm thinking and praying for you all, and I hope you'll think of me every now and then as well. I truly love talking to people who are excited about things coming soon, so please reach out to me somewhere online if there's something that you're excited for in the near future. Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Dreamer, and I'm so happy to have you in my corner. Know that I'm in yours too.