Moving Forward

Now that I've covered life changes in the previous entry, perhaps we can get back to blogging as normal.

I've typically reserved this blog to talk about sports because, well, I like sports. I like them a lot. They're much more fun when the teams I root for are good, but sometimes more entertaining when they're not.

For instance, after LeBron James left the Cleveland Cavaliers, the team was a train wreck, but it sometimes amusing to see how poorly they'd play. Kyrie Irving made things more interesting, but the team was still bad. It became more interesting when Dion Waiters joined the team, but all in all, this team was pretty awful for the most part. Last season was perhaps once of the weirdest seasons in recent memory, drawing some entertaining commentary from social media.

Well, James is back, the team started slowly but has become a powerhouse again, and they are generally fun to watch just because when the team is clicking, they are almost unbeatable.

I also follow the Indians and the Browns, but I tend not to talk as much about them for a few reasons. With the Indians, it's such a long season and there are so many who get much more in-depth with their discussions that it never seems like I should really try to discuss them much. Baseball is probably my favorite sport to attend live, but I don't get too excited writing about it.

The Browns have just been a trainwreck since 1999, so it's been really challenging to find motivation to discuss them. Look at this past season. The team was 7-4 and looked to be on the cusp of something big, yet fell completely apart and resumed being a laughingstock again. I won't even get into all the disasters that befell this franchise, but needless to say, most of it was ugly.

Blogging used to be my way of blowing off steam, my way of dealing with the issues that I had to deal with over the course of a day, week, month, and so on. I've gotten away from that in a lot of manners, but part of me feels I need to occasionally get back into that groove. It was a great way to vent and get things off my chest.

I also have my gaming hobby that I could occasionally discuss, but I've been reluctant to bring them up simply because I'm far too casual of a gamer to feel justified in writing about anything about them. It's another situation where I feel many more people write and talk about games far more competently than I ever could, even though my knowledge of games, consoles, and PC hardware/software has grown tremendously.

So chances are pretty good that 60-75% of the content in here will still be about sports, but I'm going to try and sprinkle more random things in here. I may even occasionally put short entries detailing things that the kids of said/done since it can be pretty wild and entertaining at times.

One of the problems I am trying to tell myself to overcome is the need to write longer entries to justify the act of writing. I've never been big on putting short, concise posts up, but I think I'm getting to the point where I think putting something short and sweet up a few times a week is far better than refusing to write unless it turns into a 34 paragraph essay filled with intense and deep thoughts.

I've also considered when I do Vlogs, putting a post up with a link to that Vlog so people can check it out (especially if I'm able to embed it into the entry itself).

I feel there's so much more I can do to express myself, whether it's via blog or my channel on YouTube, but like I mentioned in my last entry, so much of it comes down to time. It's why I haven't really gone crazy promoting my channel.

It's time consuming and I just don't have the time or energy to do it on a consistent basis. Is it hurting the growth of my channel? Absolutely, just like not feeling I can commit to doing collaborations with other YouTubers is hurting the growth as well. The best I can hope for is to post the video links in here, push the videos on the sites that I do utilize, and see what happens.

In the end, I'm opinionated, but I've been keeping my opinions to myself more often than not lately.

It might be time to change that.

Anyway, thanks for being patient with me as I try to decide what's going to happen here, with my channel, and if I decide to build a web site for my "Kracker Gaming" brand.

Life Changes

It's really hard to maintain a lot of different hobbies as you get older.

Sure, when you're young, you have time to write a blog, post videos to YouTube, go out with friends, play sports, play video games, and sleep in until 2pm when you have no school/work.

Then you get older and life starts to feel like it's compressing on you. Responsibilities grow as you do. Your body, which used to be able to function just fine on 4 hours of sleep, now needs twice that to function. Those days of getting hammered and then being productive the next day? The dwindle, as does the amount of alcohol you can consume before it leaves you immobile the next day.

This is without a loved one and/or family. Now throw the additional responsibilities of having a family to maintain into the fray.

It becomes a bit much.

But it's so rewarding. So much more so than the nights of partying and friends who turn on you the moment you aren't "available" to be their taxi service anymore.

Now, I'm not saying I know anyone who's like that, because I don't. My friends have been relatively accepting of the fact that I've moved further away and don't go out really anymore. Life is full of changes and many of them have experienced their own that have completely reshaped who they are.

No, what I'm saying is as you get older, the things that are important to you change. Going out, getting hammered, and living care-free become less and less important. Getting to work on time, making sure your bills are paid, and doing honest work become much more important.

I can honestly sit here and tell you that sitting down with my almost 2 year-old little girl and playing is FAR more entertaining then getting drunk. It's far more fun than just about anything that you could possibly do. It's highly rewarding, and seeing her laugh and smile is one of the greatest gifts this life can give me.

Now, I still enjoy my video games, my sports, and taking time to relax, but quite frankly, life isn't really trying to allow me to relax. The responsibilities I have now are far greater than when I was 24. I have an apartment to pay for, utilities to take care of, people to feed, animals to take care of, and any other number of things that require my attention.

I have maybe a couple hours a day after the kids go to bed to just decompress, and that's if there's nothing else that NEEDS to be done.

But there's always something that needs to be done.

Kids really do change things in life though. You no longer can just get up and go somewhere just because you want to. You have to have someone who can watch your child, or that child is going with you. You can't just go out, get obliterated, and pass out. No, you have a child to take care of now. Life dictates that you be able to function in case something happens.

And something will happen.

Kids are mobile accidents just waiting to happen. They trip over things, they fall over nothing, they run into anything that's in their zig-zagging path. They are the equivalent of an adult who's drunk. Until they get older, you don't know what in the hell they're saying to you, and that's without them crying like crazy over some random thing that you have to figure out.

They need constant attention, and if you don't pay attention to them by choice, eventually at some point they'll give you a reason to pay attention.

They cry, they poop, they eat random things they find, and they find the most random things funny.

I love it.

I've always had kids of some sort around me from the moment my sister began popping them out several years ago, to a couple of different relationships where the woman had kids. Even this one I'm in now, I was introduced to a child just under 2 at the time who's now 5 and has the mouth of a 15 year-old (in other words, not good!).

But when it's your own actual kid?

It's different, even if you don't mean for it to be. This is something you helped create, something that is drawing inspiration from you and has many of your traits. For better and worse, it's going to take after you.

And Kylie sure does.

She's small, she's feisty, she eats everything in sight, and she runs like she was shot out of a cannon. She can drive me crazy, much like her sister, but when she needs me, also like her sister, it's the most rewarding feeling to know that they are turning to you to make them feel better.

Kylie and her sister have consumed many, many hours of my life over the last couple of years. It has drained me at times to the point that I've almost severely neglected my YouTube Channel. I haven't played basketball in months.

But I've had the time of my life.

I'm writing this because I love writing and hate that I don't have the time I'd like. By the time the kids go to bed at around 9pm, I have to decide if I'm going to play a game, work on other computer stuff, clean up some part of the apartment, or veg out and watch tv or a movie.

Often, writing isn't even on my mind.

Quite frankly, I could see my writing transitioning into Vlogs in the future, as I do enjoy doing those, but still have to find my comfort with chatting to myself about things that are on my mind.  I enjoy the aspect of recording myself either playing video games or myself alone talking about random things and putting them up for people to watch.  It's an oddly satisfying experience that I don't think I'd ever completely give up, but it's not something that I feel driven to do everyday.

I simply don't have the energy to. Nor do I have the time to go through the process of editing a ton of footage. It's why I tell people who don't have spouses or kids to make the most of their time however they see fit. That free time slowly disappears until you realize you have very little.

Again, I'm not complaining. I wouldn't trade the way things are for anything. It's more of an explanation as to why I don't write much and what happens to the average person as they get older.

Enjoy the time, but more importantly, enjoy the things that matter most to you, no matter what those things may be.