It Can be Nice to be Busy

It's true that it can be nice to be busy, and that is what I have been in recent weeks. I went from one review to another to another, then finishing off a set of recordings, to then working on another two projects. I know it can seem weird to some, but truly, having things to do is nice. I just wish I were getting paid for it, but event still, I enjoy it. I'm doing something, and maybe somewhere out there will care.
I just hope I can find time for some of the things I have been putting off doing for more immediate projects.

It's not always Better Late than Never

The old saying 'Better late than never' really is not always true and I got an example this past week. Back in September I made a purchase from Newegg, and as it turns out at that time Newegg had been successfully attacked so my payment information was almost certainly compromised. I learned about this by seeing a news piece on it, and then wrote my own covering it. What I did not get though was any notification from Newegg. In fact, the only notification I had ever seen was a post on Twitter by Newegg, because I looked for it.
After I replaced the likely-compromised credit card, I actually contacted Newegg, because I was rather unhappy about the situation. The response I got was that all those who might have been affected "would have received an email from [Newegg] explaining what happened." Well, this past week I got a letter, as in physical mail, from Newegg informing me of the attack Newegg discovered two months prior and one month after an investigation by Newegg into what was likely compromised. Literally months later Newegg finally informed me, which makes you wonder what might have happened if I had not learned of the attack on my own and acted on my own?
As it was, I was less interested in shopping at Newegg, but now that I get this, potentially well later than it would have been most useful. My displeasure with Newegg is even greater now.

Back to Work, Sort of

After finishing some heavily-focused work a few weeks ago, I was able to take a nice break, doing work with less focus, but that's over now. I'm back to work on recordings, am nearly done with a sizeable article, and have a review to work on too. And all of this is work I enjoy doing. It is actually kind of funny to think about this when I'm applying for jobs, that in my chronic unemployment I am probably doing as much as some people in their careers, and perhaps more than some others too, but despite that, I'm unemployed. It's weird (and sad/frustrating/disappointing) how the world can work like that, but then it hardly matters. As weird as the world can be, what matters is what we do in it.

A Bit of Truth

Wow, I did not realize I was missing almost an entire month! I am back though, and hopefully will be better at remembering. I have just been so busy with reviews and capturing the playthroughs to share. The most recent was Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, which I definitely enjoyed, but still took me over one hundred hours to complete. I was focusing so much on that, it escaped me to come and put anything here.
I have not looked at them recently, but it appears my YouTube statistics are falling back to nothing again. This is actually somewhat relaxing though. Success of any kind is so alien to me, it is stressful and a kind of scary when it happens, so a return to failure has a kind of comfort to it. That is probably not the kind of thing most people want to read, but then I do not write these to lie to people. I write them because they are, at the time, what I feel is true.

Completely Unexpected

Over the years I have had a number of ideas I thought were good enough to do. Some of these have been story ideas, some project ideas, and of course my Body on Games idea. One of the more recent ideas I had, which actually came out of The Body on Games, was to start capturing my review playthroughs when I can. Thus far I have done with for Agony (on the TBOG YouTube channel), F1 2018, Star Control: Origins, and am working on Assassin's Creed Origins. (Yeah, AC Origins launched a year ago so I don't mind sharing I'm working on a review for it.) Well today I saw there was a comment for the last part of the Star Control: Origins playthrough, and the person said they not only did watch them all, but will also be picking up the game.
I was definitely surprised that someone watched the playthrough, but then I looked to the channel's stats and was shocked. It looks like this is all owed to Star Control: Origins, but the views for the past four weeks are is at 2514 with 58,751 minutes of watch time... The videos only went public on September 20 though, so that is from just 10 days...
How?! How has this happened? Yes, I'm questioning how I have achieved this measure of success because, very seriously, I have not had such success for years. The closest would have been about six years ago when my book, Sci-FU, reached #1 in Technothrillers on Amazon over just five days. It was free for those five days though, so like this, I am not going to monetarily benefit from it. (None of my YouTube channels qualify for monetization, and even if this one, GuestJimOCC, were to now, I don't think I will hit the button on it. Maybe I would set up something else, but I don't want to put ads on these videos.)
On the bright side, this does appear to be validation for my idea of capturing and sharing my review playthroughs. Hopefully it will happen again, but I will likely not be surprised if it does not. Like I said, success and I tend not to meet, so this being a one-time fluke would fit with how the world treats me. If it is not a fluke though, then hopefully I can continue producing this content, but we'll see. I do have other projects and responsibilities.