I've been watching Pearl's Hermitcraft season 10 and it's super fun! She is definitely one of my favorite hermits to watch, honestly, I love how she builds, it's very inspiring. I'm going through HC10 by creator-- I started with Pearl, and then I'm going to watch Gem, Scar, Cleo, Tango, and Bdubs. I might go backwards, though, for some of them, because that's a lot of hermits! I think I want to watch 100% of Gem and Bdubs, but I might cheat and skip around a bit for the others, since my favorite phase of Hermitcraft is mid to late Hermitcraft when everyone's doing their big awesome builds and there's always something nice to look at. 

But I love Pearl's solarpunk theme! I'm vaguely planning my own next base for the next season of the Patreon server that I'm on, and I have a lot of ideas. I want to make a farmhouse like Pearl did for s10, but I also want to make a mineshaft base like Xisuma has in season 11, but I also want to make a pirate kingdom tropical island build. Oh, and I think building a magical ivory wizard tower would be super cool, too. Since I want to start putting videos on YouTube, I wonder if maybe I should try and build those in creative mode and make little videos for it. I don't want to focus too much on Minecraft videos for YouTube because there's already just so much content out there and I'd rather start in a smaller pond, but that's no reason not to do a little Minecraft that sounds fun to me. 

Speaking of streaming and recording, though, I have everything set up to do it! I just need to actually do it... I'm a little nervous, so I want to start just by recording game videos, but I think I need to find something that I really really want to play, so I'll actually do it. I had wanted to start off with Hollow Knight or Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom, but I think I'll have to rethink that. My dilemma is that I want to play a game that I like, and I can't know if I like it until I play it, but replaying a game does not have me nearly as excited to do as playing for the first time. I think the solution is to buy a new game that I really want to play, but it's got to be just the right type of game... maybe Shovel Knight? 

Normally lately I've been trying to avoid making frivolous purchases, though, to get my cashflow reined in, but I did my taxes this week and I'm getting a huge refund because tips are now deductible from taxes. So according to my tax return, I've only made like $11k in taxable income, but I've been paying taxes this whole year as though all of my income was taxable. I'm very glad to have the money, even though I would rather pay full taxes to a blue administration. But if we have to have Trump, then at least my tax money is back in my own hands, I guess. Idk, I feel a little conflicted, though of course it's not going to change how I vote. 

But that leaves me with a lot of money I wasn't expecting... most of it is going to go into my savings account, since I've been low on savings lately and want to beef it up. But I also really want to buy something fun for myself since I can afford it now! I was thinking maybe a Nintendo Switch 2, but seriously looking at it, I'm just not sure that I'm actually going to use it to play switch 2 games yet. I don't need a new Mario Kart, and even with Pokemon Pokopia, it looks like the newest Animal Crossing update that I haven't played yet will scratch a very similar itch. I definitely want to play the newly announced gen 10 Pokemon game, but that won't be until 2027. The games that I definitely want to get a switch 2 for don't even have release dates yet-- Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition, and Danganronpa 2x2, but it's very likely that Danganronpa 2x2 will also release on the PC, and I've been waiting to play Elden Ring for so long that it won't be a big deal to wait longer. So I'm very hmmm. I think I'm going to sit on the money for a little bit, and hope that a Genealogy of the Holy War remake gets announced for Switch 2, because that will definitely get me to buy a NS2, lol. 

Oh, and I've decided (again) that I want to go back to college, but this time I'm going to do online college with condensed terms, to alleviate the boredom I've struggled with in longer terms, and because my main goal is to just get it over with and get a degree. I'm currently aiming for a BA in Information Technology. With my work schedule only being four days a week, I think it's very doable to do an online class, even a highly condensed one, while working. I just need to have some more discipline about my weekends, which is already something I want, but also something that I struggle with. Maybe I ought to plan on going to the library to study, instead of trying to get myself to do it while I'm home. 

Anyways that's mostly been what's going on with me lately! I'm still watching Naruto, too, and I intend to keep playing Silksong, but it's been on the back burner for a while now. Work has been more stressful, I suspect because the ongoing union bargaining negotiations mean that upper management is trying to fire as many people as possible before we get our raises (with possible backpay), but it's mostly manageable.