I’ve been gone for over two months due to being sick, here’s the specifics and my plans for The Game Knot since I’m still sick.
So… It's been a long time since I’ve posted, at least that wasn’t an accidental post in the case of the “1bitHeart” Review. Being absent for this long, I better have a good reason.
If you want a quick summary, I posted a thread of tweets giving a quick summarization of things. Underneath the tweets embedded here is my situation in more detail:
Where was I?
For the last two months, and even now, I've had & have a chronic tension headache. At least, that’s what I think it is, that’s what I was diagnosed with alongside a potential sinus infection, but I’m not 100 per cent sure. The headache started on May 4, but even now it persists.
Sometimes my headache just shoots up in pain without any reason I can see. Such as writing this out, for some reason my headache went from a 3/10 to a 5/10. In some cases, I can be walking or just sitting, and it’ll spike in pain, even though walking/just sitting other times doesn’t give a spike of pain at all.
Fortunately, it’s not serious/life-threatening, but it does get in the way of regular activities. I’ve tried everything I could think of to get rid of it: painkillers, prescribed medication, going to doctors (even ER), drinking more water, changing my pillow, removing the ant traps in my room (I had an ant infestation), cold/warm/hot cloth on my forehead, massaging my head, going a few days barely looking at screens, and many more.
Unfortunately, none of these even provided pain relief, which is what makes the headache hard to deal with.
For over the last two months, I’ve been troubleshooting the problem to no avail and waiting for supposed end times for what I may have such as a sinus infection (I was told sinus infections last six-eight weeks… Over 11 have passed… I don’t blame the doctor who told me or anything, the lack of progress is just frustrating.
Do you want to know what hurts emotionally? Some activities make my headache worse. Do you know what two of those include? Video games and anime, the former being the main thing I cover on my website and the latter being the only other thing I review. For a while I struggled how to even work on my website because of this.
Even putting the problem of not being able to review stuff games & anime until I’m better aside, it's also made me bored beyond my mind for the first month. Fortunately, I’ve filled that void with reading books, manga, and visual novels now. Which is odd when you think about it, then again, my headache in general is odd.
However, I'm a lot better at enduring the pain overtime. So, to make sure this website doesn’t collect anymore dust, I’ll be posting again starting next week Monday. At least, that’s the plan, my head pain may say otherwise.
The Plan for The Game Knot Going Forward
So that's the situation, so what about The Game Knot? Well, there's good news and bad news.
Good News
I have 15 reviews I can post on the website, so I can follow my weekly/bi-weekly review posting schedule starting next week. I still need to finish some of them, but I'll be good with my reviews for a good while.
I can also do reviews on the books/visual novels/manga I’ve read during my time, such as "Anime: A History" and "Gunsmith Cats." Also, coincidentally, the game I plan to review for Halloween is a point-and-click visual novel.
Also, since I won’t be focusing on writing reviews, I have plenty of time to work on personal essays and experiment. I have a bunch of ideas in mind, such as making articles on specific characters from anime/video games, quizzes, and more. I might through in some pure joke articles.
Additionally, during this time, I’ll be tidying up some of my earlier reviews. I won’t do any format changes, just some general spelling/grammar corrections I’m only realizing now in retrospect. The priority will be on the "Magic Piano" and "1bitHeart" reviews as those were posted before I was finished proof-reading them.
I'll make update posts on the reviews I've proof-read every week Friday afternoon. I'll also update/add a few things to some reviews as well.
Bad News
My post schedule might be a lot less frequent with news articles in comparison to before. Especially since my head pain fluctuates, I might not be able to work on anything if the pain is too much that day. While I have a lot planned, the workflow might be slower than before.
There will also be some news I simply won't be able to cover if it's completely video, such as trailers for example. Sure, it's not impossible to watch trailers/gameplay footage, but if I push myself, my headache may fluctuate for the rest of the day with greater pain, leaving me unable to work until the next day.
So, I'm going to be more restricted in what I can or can't cover. Although, I'll retweet trailers on my Twitter account to circumvent the problem the best I can.
The worst of all, any part of my plans can crumble due to my headache. For all I know, come next week Monday, my headache may skyrocket in pain.
Conclusion
I’m genuinely sorry for not giving a heads up for my absence. The headache hit me out of nowhere, and what I thought was just a headache that’d go away in a week, has turned into nearly a three-month turmoil that's still ongoing.
I hope I’m communicating my headache properly. It’s not so bad that I’m bed-ridden, and I can still do things, but it makes doing things feel as if I'm playing a light version of Russian Roulette… It’s concerning when I can use Russian Roulette as an unironic metaphor.
That'll be all for now. I'll post another update post if anything changes.
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