Hey, I’m still alive.

I hope y’all are well, too.

Given what my last post here looked like, it shouldn’t surprise you to hear that I’ve been overwhelmed with life stuff since I wrote it. I have managed to fit my hobbies in somewhat over the past 5 months or so, and I’ve even scanned a few things here and there with the intention of posting about them (I have gotten some really cool stuff lately, and I still owe everyone the Negro Leagues Legends card set post or posts, which everything is scanned for), but it hasn’t happened yet.

Part of this, mind you, also has to do with the fact that my main newsletter (which used to be at Substack, but Substack harbors and subsidizes the work of all sorts of truly terrible people, so I didn’t want my newsletter there anymore) has been chugging along at my other website. I’m not writing daily at the moment, like I did from September-February, but I am starting to write with a bit more frequency again. It’s private and invite-only, but also free (unlike a lot of these newsletter ne’er-do-wells), and covers mostly pop culture and my personal life. (A little bit of hobby stuff has leaked in, but I’m really not cheating on y’all that much with the newsletter.)

If you’re interested in reading it (subject to approval; everyone reading it is someone I’ve had some extended contact with either in-person or online, and I’d like to continue to keep it that close-knit, though there are definitely some of you here that I think would enjoy it, and would qualify for being on the other side of the wall), email me (including your preferred email address for receiving newsletters and preferred username for the comment section/archives), and if I know who you are and feel comfortable inviting you in, I’ll hook you up.

I’ve actually given some thought to taking this site private, as I did with my other one to make the newsletter out of it, but for reasons related to my energy level alone, that probably won’t happen for a while, if it does at all. Yes, it would be an inconvenience to people who just wanna read the thing if I did it, but I’ve also come to the conclusion over the past few years that public life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, so I’m finding myself more and more inclined to do my writing and Internet socializing in slightly more private settings. I got rid of Facebook and Instagram, I locked my Twitter accounts, and, as mentioned, I even made my main website private.

Honestly, it’s working out well for me, I think. I’m able to concentrate better on what I need to do (which has been important, because holy crap have I “needed to do” a lot these past few months), and when I talk to people I know (email’s been my preferred method, though I also have a private Discord server or two that I frequent), I’ve been having fuller, less surface conversations. It’s been a meaningful and positive change.

With that said, again, if I do put this site behind a wall and make it Newsletter #2, it probably won’t be for a while (my guess would be this coming winter), so you have time to enjoy my extremely infrequent posts, which tend to be more about this site than the topics this site was built for, these days, before it happens.

I do have some other site business, related to what this site’s actually about, to discuss, though! I am also posting to note that Highest Priority Card Set Want Lists, Highest Priority Comic Set Want Lists, and Baseball Card Flagship Sets Progress Report have been updated for the first time in over a year, and that, while I haven’t been able to add many cards to my trade pile (which means there are only about 70,000 available for trade in it), and I only have about half a small box of comics that I’d consider to be “available for trade”, I am fully vaccinated and comfortable making recreational trips to the post office again for the first time since last August (And really, the couple of trips I made last summer? I shouldn’t have.), so if you are interested in doing The Trades, let me know.

That should about do it for now. Again, I hope y’all are hangin’ in there, staying safe, and enjoying what you can.