Some Thoughts On The Matter

      As the year comes to a close, and a new one starts anew, who better to spend your time with than your family? This year, my family had decided to go on a little road trip for new years, allowing for us to spend time getting to know an unknown part of Florida while spending every hour possible together. As college becomes more and more demanding, and I start having less excuses to go visit home, I welcomed this opportunity to spend time with my favorite people (and dog), and we had a pretty great time!     Rather than doing a day-by-day retelling of what we did during the trip, I'm opting to instead just share a few of my favorite moments, so that this blog post isn't a billion words long. Having said that though, I had fun pretty much every moment during this road trip! Where many families would be bored and silent as they drive up and down the countryside, we were constantly talking, laughing, and yes, bickering too. I feel really blessed to have this sor...

      As 2024 comes to a close, I look back on everything that's happened this year, good and bad, and I realize that I wouldn't have done things any other way. For better or for worse, the choices that I've made this year have led me to the point I'm at now, peacefully tapping away at my last blog post for the year. Having said all of this, however, I still feel like I can improve on the things I've done this year, and squeeze more value from 2025 than I have from any other year, as long as I give myself clear goals and challenges to meet throughout the year. So here are a few personal goals I want to set for the new year, and I hope everyone reading this has a good 2025!      Getting the most obvious out of the way, one of my (and every other breathing human's) goals for the new year is to work out more consistently and get into better shape. While it isn't really a unique idea for a new years resolution, I am not as hopeless as I was at the start of last...

      Watching the Sonic the Hedgehog movies as an adult feels like I go back to being a little kid again, reliving the best parts of my childhood. I remember hours spent reading and rereading Sonic Archie comic books, even though I had never played any of the games. It's pretty funny when I think about it, despite never having played a single Sonic game, I was an avid fan of the comics and TV spinoff shows, to the point I had a few Sonic themed birthday parties when I was younger!     The other interesting thing about the Sonic movies is that each one was released at a particularly interesting point in my life. The first Sonic movie had been released in theaters in early 2020, and I remembered it being the last movie I saw before the COVID-19 quarantine was placed on us, signalling the last I'd see of my friends in person for many months. The second movie had been released in 2022, and if I recall correctly, it was the first movie I had gone to watch in theater...

      For anyone with a remote knowledge about my relationship with one of my roommates (who shall remain unnamed), you will know that I have a certain distaste towards house music (meaning the genre, not like... general home atmosphere music). For far too many nights, I have lost countless hours of sleep to the thudding reverberations that pulse through my walls like an obnoxious heartbeat, as my roommate blasts his music through the haunting hours of the night. Whenever I hear house music, I associate it with my rather dreadful roommate, which has rather sadly put me off from an entire genre of music ever since I moved into my current apartment.     However, on my Spotify Wrapped this year, there was a house music song as my third most listened to song of the year. How could this be?  Well, at some point during the semester, I had been fed up with my roommate's terrible taste in music, and so in an effort to annoy him slightly, I had begun to blast my own...

      As winter break settles in amongst all college students returning for home, my friend group decided to engage in a yearly tradition: the two-week Minecraft phase. For a limited time every year, we start up a Christmastime server for us to busy ourselves with, as we sit around at home, unburdened by our college coursework and extracurriculars. This is always an eagerly anticipated tradition, as it allows us to recede back to simpler times and play some Minecraft with the boys, build cool things, and engage in a limited-time creative project that brings us all together at once.     However, this year. I wanted to try something a little different. Even though we only do this once a year, things can get a little stale and boring when its the same group of people doing the same stuff every time. So, I wanted to propose a degree of challenge for our next server, something that would incentivize people who don't usually play to get on and try out the challenge, w...

      So! After another awesome semester at FSU, I'm finally back home for the holidays for some well deserved rest and relaxation with friends and family! I'm already looking forward to the time I'm going to spend with my love ones, but that isn't to say that I won't miss my place back at Tallahassee during the time I'm down at home. This semester has been probably the most eventful so far, so I thought I'd take a quick moment to blog about some of the highlights and important lessons I've learned in the last few months at college!     I'd be lying if I said that all of my experiences with my current apartment haven't been the most important parts of my life for the last few months. Moving into a shithole apartment that was crawling with roaches, filled with rotting food, and packed full of the previous tenant's junk is probably going to be one of those formative memories I look back on when I think about my time in college. However, as bad ...

      For almost all of my life, I have always lived with the relative certainty that I am a good writer. Ever since first grade, when I had first received praise for writing a story, I had decided that writing is what I wanted to do in life, which was a pretty helpful time to have a heading for my future. Having said that, over time I recognized I am not in fact a perfect writer (shocker) and have since always welcomed criticism and advice when it comes to my work. After all, peer review is one of the strongest tools in a writer's wheelhouse, right?     The issue is that most people aren't really equipped to give meaningful feedback on writing. In my college classes, whenever we would take a day to peer review each other's drafts and essays, 95% of the time I was paired with people who skimmed through my essay, gave some vague compliment about my work, and then a surface-level observation about a detail that could be changed. Suffice to say, peer reviews are of...

     Time and time again, I have reiterated the simple fact that I am decidedly not  a horror movie guy. I could blame my distaste for the modern horror slop tendencies to go overboard with gore, or I could simply say that I have a weak heart (the latter is most likely), but the bottom line is that I don't seek out horror movies to watch, as it just isn't the film genre for me.     Having said this, however, every now and then certain horror movies are released that catch my eye. Sometimes it's because they blend comedy and horror so it's more palatable for me, other times it's because of a particularly unique concept (see my review of NOPE). Last year, when a small indie horror film titled SKINAMARINK began to make waves on film Twitter, I finally caved and decided to watch the movie with a small group of friends who were more horror-brained than I was. What resulted from this night was a highly divisive and controversial movie that split us between the on...

      I always have tremendous respect for people who put on public events for groups, especially creatives. It takes a sort of commitment to strangers that I frankly don't have the patience for, particularly because it is a thankless job that often ends up stressing people out too much. However, whenever I do see people putting on these sorts of events, I always make an effort to show up and support them, since I feel like most other people will ignore their hard work, and I like helping people put on their shows and events, if only so I could vicariously feel accomplished through them.     One such event was the "Funeral for the Fall," an open-mic night that was being headed by some members of the Kudzu Review, along with some other literary organizations. As a loyal member of Kudzu, I was honor-bound to attend, even though I would've gone regardless. So, I rounded up a few friends from work, and went to the event, sitting in the center of the very front row, ...

     For many, the quintessential "college experience" can take many different mental images: late-night library study sessions, fraternity and sorority parties, getting piss-drunk on weekdays, etc. Not to discredit any of these lifestyles, but it wasn't the one I went after. Instead of becoming a party animal or a book-reading hunchback, I opted to try out the anime and ramen  type of college student life, with a small edit: no ramen. Instead, Wade and I would abuse a free pizza loophole in Dominos' pizza delivery service while we watched our shows. So I guess this is really just a roundabout way of saying I've become somewhat of an anime watcher during this semester with Wade!     I've never been much of an anime guy, but I've always liked animated shows and movies in general. As a film student, I know that Wade has been exposed to plenty of animation students and has even worked with a few himself, so I knew that he'd be open to experimenting with n...