This month has been a big and busy month! Lots of highlights to get through, it’s been a good one. Oh, I’ve also decided that for these Dal Reports, I’ll attach an album of photos throughout the month! Something I’ve missed about Instagram is posting random dumps. So I wanna start doing that! The goal with these is to communicate something quickly that doesn’t need to have a whole dedicated section to it. This is also where all the photos of myself or friends will live. Here’s the link, message me for the password B)
Unemployment Update
Job search still isn’t going great. Luckily I’ve landed two interviews this month, one didn’t go anywhere, and the other is on the 27th so I doubt I’ll get a conclusive answer from them before this update will be up. The job I’ll be interviewing for isn’t one I’m thrilled about, it’s graphic design adjacent in marketing, but no actual designing. I’d like it for useful experience, especially because they seem to have a pretty robust training program. And at this point, beggars can’t be choosers and I’m willing to sign onto anyone who’ll have me. I sent in some applications for some retail businesses locally, specifically one from a bookstore I’m hoping to hear back from! But it’s too soon to tell.
I also am officially on unemployment, so I have some wiggle room to be picky, but at this point I’m getting tired of not having consistent work to do. I mean, I love being unemployed, I love having so much time to write and talk to my friends and play video games and watch YouTube videos. But it’s getting old. And I miss eating Taco Bell.
Campaign Begins!!
I was finally able to start a campaign I’ve been thinking about running for awhile! The short elevator pitch is a team of adventurers are tasked with raiding an ancient and dangerous island for magical artifacts to be given over to a corrupt and militant government regime. I’ve only got two players at the moment, (so if anyone local is free on Friday nights lmk teehee) which has meant I’ve been supplementing the party by adding NPCs with some interesting and neat backstories I’ve written for them. So far we’ve only had been able to hold one session, due to life and stuff getting in the way, but I’m really excited to continue playing! Sam and Kalyn are my current players and their characters have some fun secrets they’re hiding from each other, which will make for a really satisfying arc in a few more weeks.
Also got a lot of fun minis to be using for this, courtesy of my friend Michaela. I didn’t take a photo of them all, and I don’t have them all with me anymore because they’re being painted now, but they look super great. I’m excited to get into combat with these guys!!
Also, if anyone’s curious at all, I will be posting session notes for this campaign! They should all be up within a couple of days of the session. That way if you’re ever interested in joining, or just feel nosey, you can have a read through! One day I think it would also be cool to post my DMing notes, perhaps once the campaign ends? I want to make a write up of how I DM because. I DM like an insane person and no one should do it like me. Here’s my setup. At any given point, I will have three screens in front of me all doing different things that are completely unnecessary and seek to only add ambience. But I can’t get myself to not do it.
Rachel Visited
So I’ve been chronically online for most of my life. Since 2011 or so when I joined DeviantArt. That obviously continued into my adult life and only got worst during the pandemic, where I became super active on Discord. This was mostly talking with in person friends I couldn’t speak to and trying to make friends in various YouTuber’s servers or servers for multiplayer video games and such. But what really got me going crazy on Discord was an invite to a server called After Hours. Where I’ve spent countless. Countless. Countless hours talking to people. It’s where I’ve met some of the closest friends I’ve ever had. People I can’t imagine living without today who are incredibly dear to me. As with all public Discord servers, it eventually died, but I’ve kept in contact with everyone by forcing them into The Radio Tower with real life friends. I talk almost daily with a lot of them and it make my heart feel very full and happy to still have so many friends around me.
However, one of these people, Rachel, lives only a few hours away in Indiana!! After several years of half baked plans falling through, we were finally able to organize something. She visited Cass and I at Cass’s for a weekend and it was. So weird. It was awesome, but so weird. I’ve never met anyone I’ve known on the internet in person and it was surreal. I don’t know how to explain it, I was just so used to seeing her face in circular avatars and in images on my phone. Seeing her in person felt like I was seeing her as a person for the first time in a very weird way. It was amazing having her in our home where we could hang out, get high, and laugh late into the night. It was the magic of friendship. She also made very good chicken buffalo dip, which was delicious and I turned around and made for other friends. And now they are all fans of her and she is famous.
Another meetup is a matter of when, not if. Probably around her birthday in the summer. Oh, and she also wrote about this in her blog!! Check it out here! Rachel, we love you and are excited to host you again <3
March Birthdays
I think a big theme of this update is going to be about friendship hehe. A big part of March is the sheer number of March birthdays in our friend group. More than half of the group have birthdays then, myself, Sam, Max, and Andrew. The easiest way is of course to host a big ol party for all of us. Really it’s just an excuse to make sure we all hang out together. The main group of us have failed to consistently hang out throughout the last year so we’re trying to hang out more often. We’ve been doing a good job of it, getting in vc more often, trying to plan more. It’s been nice. I think the older I get the more I find I am a clingy friend, lol. I guess it’s embarrassing to admit, but I feel very very sad and low when I don’t see my close friends consistently. It makes me feel like I’m DYING EXPLODING DYING!!!!!!!!!!!
The birthday party was nice. Accidentally stayed up until 6am with Leah while drinking and playing tetris. It was awesome.
The Grandparents
Right after having three hours of sleep from the birthday party, I drove an hour with my brother and grandma to visit our grandparents in their cemetery. Spent some time with them, it was nice.
!!!POPPY!!!
For several fucking YEARS Poppy has been my all time favorite artist. I adore her so much. I love her so much it’s hard to even talk about or quantify, she just means so much to me. I love her story, I love her music. It’s hard to talk about it succinctly, I’ve been writing a big retrospective document of her music and the behind the scenes stuff, as well as a more broad analysis of her other works (tv shows, graphic novels, etc). It gets honestly hard to work on because how personal and vulnerable it feels to write, so it’s taken longer than I’ve wanted it to. Her music just means a lot to me. So when she showed up in Lousiville two days before my birthday I had to go. It was so fucking important. I had the time of my life. She’s an amazing performer and I had the best concert experience ever. I almost lost my earbuds in the pit, and I’ve been sore since then. I keep looking back on my videos of the crowd and of Poppy herself and seeing all the smiling faces makes me want to cry. I sobbed my eyes out after the show. I bought some shirts with some birthday money I was given and I’m so happy to have things to remember the night by. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have seen her, genuinely. It was like magic. I’m tearing up again as I write this. I CAN’T EVEN FULLY TALK ABOUT IT!!! AHHh!!!!!!!!!!!
Conclusion + Cat Photos
Anyway, I’m 24 now! Wow! There’s been a few other miscellaneous events and things. Finally got my car fixed from an accident that happened in January. I’ve had a rental car since, which has been nice, but I miss my actual car. I also finished up a campaign with one of my groups, which was great! Normally it feels like campaigns end abruptly or fizzle out as people lose interest, so it feels really nice and satisfying whenever we’re able to fully finish. You can read the notes from that here.
Here’s Guppy.
