About 20 years ago, Google shook the world with its newest product: Gmail, a free email service with an entire gigabyte of storage attached. It was the start of a beautiful, connected world. Apple then casually dropped the most revolutionary computing device of the century, and Microsoft remembered how to make a good operating system with Windows 7. Streaming services like Netflix and Spotify completely reshaped how we consume media, while social platforms like Facebook and Twitter did the same for our online conversations. Consumer technology was taking over our lives, and we ate it up. Guys, the free market works! It really works!!

Today is Undertale's 10th anniversary. In case you weren't aware, this game used to be a cornerstone of my online identity; I used its sprites as my avatars and cherry-picked its flavor text for my social media bios. I cared about this game a lot, and I still feel the shockwaves of its emotional impact on me when I revisit it. So, today's anniversary seems like an appropriate time to write about the thesis statement that's been brewing in my head: Undertale was a good enough game to become my all-time favorite game, at least for a couple years.

As of today, by my own choice, I'm no longer employed. I carry a lot of mixed feelings on my way out the door; there's a long story behind the making and timing of this decision. That story doesn't belong on this blog, though - not only because there are NDAs involved. Instead, I want to briefly talk about what happens next, as I enter my temporary (but extended) jobless era.

I've spent a dizzying portion of my online life trying my hardest to have one name for everything. While I mostly succeeded on my own terms, my preferred name does still vary slightly across different contexts. I wish I wasn't so picky about the details, but since I am, I suppose it would be best to be explicit about it.

Recurring dates have held an almost superstitious position in my life for as long as I can remember. I'll give some examples: for a few of my teenage years, the 2nd day of a quarter (e.g. April 2, October 2, etc.) had a reputation for being emotionally turbulent in some way. A majority of my published simfile packs were released on either January 1 or April 20 (try to contain your laughter); little traditions etched into the calendar. But there's one big recurrence in my life: a comet, invisible to everyone but me, that appears in the night sky every six years. It's a deadline, and it arrives in 10 days.

At the time of writing, we're about 10 minutes into pride month, and I just published a long post about computers. Whoops! I want something gayer on the front page of my website, so here's a quick infodump about my particular brand of queerness.

I've redesigned meow.garden from the ground up, eschewing the "digital garden" concept in favor of something a little more home-grown. The "cool stuff" from my monthly notes have been split out into their own section, and the more interesting notes have been moved to a chronological sequence of posts.

Over the course of a decade, I allowed Twitter to become my primary means of socialization. The vast majority of my public writing manifested as tweets. When I finally decided I was unhappy with the status quo, I created this digital garden as an alternative outlet for my prose & declared that "I don't have Twitter". I've since shortened this declaration to "Never Tweet", which is not only more actionable, but a more accurate characterization of my problems with the website.

This is a name I made up for a pattern I noticed in my life: allowing minor inconveniences with obvious solutions to persist. The root cause is small enough to be disregarded, but the consequences can range anywhere from equally small to lifestyle-altering. These problems only take a brief moment of thought to identify, but I've learned it's surprisingly easy to let them pile up for no reason!