Well the holidays are over again and it is time to welcome another year. Feels about the same.
In some ways, 2024 is predicted to be the craziest year since 2020. It is uncertain where the path may lead, but I hope that I can finally get back to doing content again, be it YouTube or otherwise.
I didn’t do a whole lot in the tail end of the holiday season except watch the VTuber Awards or as I like to call it the Filian Awards (mainly because they were hosted by Filian whom I have started watching recently thanks to her very frequent collabs with Projekt Melody.) As expected, Melody won Lewdtuber of the Year. I was on her stream where she was streaming the awards show up until after Shylily won Just Chatting streamer because she was still super-emotional after her win. And of course Ironmouse swept all three categories she was nominated in: Miss VTuber, Most Streamed Event for her Subathon and VTuber of the Year. This happened almost a week after she won Content Creator of the Year at the Game Awards. Filian did an excellent job as host of the VTuber Awards (though I couldn’t nominate her for Most Chaotic VTuber even though I tried.) Also the production value of the show was off the charts.
Over the holidays, I was trying to get the next episode of Tails of the Blackcat done since I managed to get the last episode up by Christmas morning but that didn’t happen. I was also planning to get a feature-length commentary of The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (which was one of the worst movies I’ve ever reviewed) but that also is taking a little more time than expected. It’s like some higher-up being doesn’t want me to revisit that movie in particular especially since I have been planning it for two years. I hope that I can get around to it soon.
I’m not really much for making resolutions for New Year’s but as far as New Year’s goes, I have to get back to producing content more frequently, whether it’s writing or the podcast or making videos or my newfound hobby: AI art. I also have to continue to make sure I’m okay health-wise. So far so good on that front at least.
In conclusion, 2024 is gonna be a crazy year but I hope for my sake it will be a good year.
In Episode 3 of Tails of the Blackcat, due to the end of my movie review podcast series Movies to Go, I review the best Star Trek movie ever: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Also I talk about my social media recaps for the end of the year and some updates from last week.
In this new, revamped episode of Tails of the Blackcat, I talk about my struggles with diabetes, getting back into writing, VTubers, my newfound hobby in AI art and my latest issue with YouTube.
Well, it’s been a hot minute since I last wrote a post on here (apart from the short story I posted the other day.) So much has happened: A pandemic, some health issues on my end and an attempt to reinvent myself online to adapt to the ever-changing political climate. But after posting my latest short story on here, I figure it was time to go back to my roots before I decided to get into video making and all that stuff. As everyone who has read this blog since 2007 know that I started my social media journey as a blogger but before that I originally intended to be a writer.
As you know, this site briefly had a run as Blackcatloner.com for a couple of years but I had to downgrade it mainly due to money reasons and I mainly was using it to post my videos as individual posts because I felt like video making has replaced blogging as a medium. So I continued on with it until about 2018, which was about the time the political climate started to change which led to me deleting my old videos from YouTube in 2019 because the algorithm changed to adapt to those times. At that time, I decided to start reuploading some of my old content under a podcast-style format where I don’t show my face.
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic where the country was on lockdown except for essential workers, of which I was one (I can’t say where anymore for doxing reasons) and everyone had to wear masks. I continued to do my job during this time, despite the fact that I was starting to lose sight in my left eye. I couldn’t seek medical attention because of the pandemic back then so I basically had to make due with my good eye. Since I couldn’t eat out anywhere, I soon reaped the benefits of Doordash (not sponsored by the way) and I still use the service to this day. I did briefly have COVID in late January of 2021 and I was out of work for twelve days but it was a mild case. After that, I went back to work.
However, things really started going downhill for me health-wise the following January when I started losing sight in the other eye and it got so bad that I had to take a leave of absence from work. When I saw the eye doctor at my job, I got the diagnosis that I needed cataract surgery and they gave me the impression that I would only be gone from work for a week and a half. However, I went to the doctor and as it turned out, the wait for the surgery would take a lot longer than a week and a half. Also on top of that, I needed an established doctor. I haven’t had one in years (the last time I had a general doctor was in 2011 and that was only to prevent myself from being kicked out of college for not having medical records.) So that day, I managed to get an appointment to get an established doctor which was a couple weeks afterwards. He requested blood work and no sooner did that happen that I finally found out that I had Type-2 diabetes. My blood sugar was at 395 which was really high (the normal blood sugar range is 130.) And he said that until I got my blood sugar down to normal levels, I could not have the surgery.
And so began months of checking blood sugar and trying to get my blood sugar down, eventually getting it down to the acceptable levels by June so the surgery could go ahead and it was set for mid-July. I made it to the surgery and I had my left eye done first. They put me under anesthesia, which I didn’t respond to too well. In fact, I couldn’t keep down food. But within a day or two, I could see again, probably better than I ever did. Of course, I still did not have use of my right eye but within a couple of weeks, I was back at work.
Of course, I just need to bring up that while I was waiting for the surgery, I was able to get around my house okay but if I had to go anywhere (like a doctor’s appointment), I had to have family members come up and help me out.
Two months later, I had the other eye operated on and for the first time in a very long time, I had use of both eyes. And I was able to take my own blood sugar which has remained consistently around normal levels up to this day. And within a year, my diabetes was more or less under control.
Now that I got the heavy stuff out of the way, let’s talk about how I had been trying to get back into content creating. During the pandemic, my attempts to get back into content creating in terms of videos were influenced by watching a new breed of YouTubers known as VTubers (short for Virtual YouTubers) where people stream or produce videos using a virtual avatar instead of streaming in real life. Throughout 2020 and 2021, I reuploaded some of my old videos hiding behind a black cat avatar to YouTube and as soon as I regained my sight, I started producing new videos (including short videos which was a feature YouTube had to compete with TikTok) and for a while I started to gain an audience, not enough to regain my partnership but enough to think that I still had what it took to produce content. In fact, I had started not one but two podcast series: One was a movie review podcast series called Movies to Go (named for an old video store that I used to live near growing up) and a fictional podcast series of my adventures called Tails of the Blackcat.
In the end, the biggest thing against me was time, most notably the fact that my job didn’t really leave me a lot of time to devote to my content, especially for the amount of research required for Movies to Go. I have one more episode that is nearly finished for Movies to Go and I am going to pretty much end Movies to Go. Tails of the Blackcat is also a hard podcast to produce in a timely manner as well but I am planning to continue with that, but as far as Movies to Go goes, I never intended for the show to be a trilogy but between the lack of time I have to devote to it, not to mention the oversaturation of online movie reviewers and the public’s divisive attitudes toward movie reviewing, there just isn’t any reason to continue reviewing. If something comes up, I might do a one-off review but other than that, I am done.
I also decided to finally get back into writing. I found a lot of my old short stories that I wrote around the time I was in college and I am in the process of putting them together into a short story compilation book. The short story I posted on here last week was a short story I started writing a few years ago and only recently finished writing about a man reluctantly going to his high school reunion and it helped my site get more clicks. So there might be something left.
At the end of the day, who knows what the future holds but I am back for now and I am back to my roots on the Internet. Here’s to my next era.
Blackcatloner 