Hey, this blog is a year old today! On 7-11, oddly enough. I did visit a 7-Eleven to get a free 7.11oz Slurpee today. You’re a sucker if you didn’t get one!

Um, so. A year ago, I had finished Riviera, and wrote a review of it for the 4CR forums. After that, I dunno, I think I was checking out someone’s blog that happened to be on Blogsome. I thought the name was cool, so I went to the main page and actually signed up.

I did it because I had enjoyed writing. That’s why I’m still doing this, really, except now there’s a little more ego factor. I have somewhere between 3~5 regular commenters, and that motivates me to try to write something meaningful and good to read. It’s still mostly out of the joy of writing though.

A year ago, I had also just begun my job as a copy editor at my university’s newspaper. I was just looking for a little job, and I thought this one would be easy with my particular skills. I didn’t have any interest in journalism; I was just an introverted little psychology major without any definite life plans besides playing video games and being with my girlfriend. Not that I really have better plans now; however, I’m a semester away from graduating and know about and love journalism more than I imagined I would. I’m definitely going into it as a career, but doing what? I dunno. I’m equally good at editing, writing and photography. With some more practice, I can design too. Currently, I do them all, and it’s a little bit too crazy.

So, last July… The summer feels a lot like Meteos and Kirby Canvas Curse. Every time I park my car in a particular parking lot, I remember sitting in it a year ago, waiting for class by playing Kirby with both the air conditioner and my DS blasting. (i have one of those tape adapter things that i usually connect my Zen Micro to, so Kirby music was pumping through the speakers. probably why i remember it so vividly. that, and the game is awesome.)

I had just broken my first DS, bought a blue one, went to the Final Fantasy: Dear Friends concert and played Meteos with complete strangers, beat Riviera which reawakened my appreciation for RPGs, reigstered for Blogsome because the name sounded cool, and posted a placeholder kind of post on July 11th. I also forgot to go to 7-Eleven that day, which I regretted enough to remember to do it this year.

Not that I really drink Slurpees all the time or really like them at all. Just, you know, free stuff.

I drove to an out-of-the-way GameStop about a week later to buy Ninja Five-O, wrote about it, and decided I liked blogging. I’ve made some good friends since then also, and this keeps me sane in a time when I have 15 different jobs.

This summer has been nuts, seriously, but I’m cutting back on it. For a few weeks there, I spent 14-16 hours in an office on Tuesday, 10 hours at my university job two days a week, a couple hours a week running experiements, plus class, plus being available at all sorts of weird hours to photograph things. I lost it after a while; I snapped at people, never got enough sleep, and started getting chest pains. I saw a doctor, and he said it was just anxiety and I need to calm the hell down. I took the advice and dropped a few responsibilities.

Anyway, happy birthday little blog. I beat Star Fox 64 in your honor today. I didn’t get the good ending, true to semi-professionalism.

Hey, it’s the awesome link banner I made. I need to use this more.