I'm back!

Well, I never really left, I was still reading & commenting, but I was busy traveling for the past month so barely found time to write.

I did sit down for two hours on an afternoon that I had free and wrote a scathing new review of a crypto game. But somehow that post managed to get lost and I have absolutely no idea how! I'll have to rewrite that one another day.

But I'm back in the comfort of my own apartment and it is time to start tapping away at the keyboard again. However last month I figured out something important about myself which will affect my writing, so before I begin I'll take a moment to organise my thoughts in writing, and communicate the major change I will be making here on PublishOx, and the reasons behind that change.

I started writing Small Steps as a self-help kind of thing. It honestly wasn't that long ago I started it, and at the time I was dealing with a huge pile of crazy stuff - loneliness, joblessness, singleness, a huge feeling of disconnection from the world I had left behind AND the one I now live in, the language barrier, and a few other things too.

But it is amazing what a few months can do to you and your life.

I'm not saying all of those problems have gone away or been fixed, I'm still not working, still single, and I've barely learned any more Ukrainian since then. But I now have some real local friends, and no longer have that disconnected feeling. I really did miss this place while I was away, and for someone who hasn't felt truly at home anywhere for the past 4 years, that is a big BIG deal. Those things add a lot to my general happiness.

But how does that affect my writing here?

I figured out that when I am in a decent day-to-day mental state like I am right now, I have zero interest or motivation to write about how I got myself there.

I can't explain why, so I'm not going to even try, but writing about how to turn the bad shit into fertilizer when I am already swimming in the fertilizer pile is just not something my brain likes - it actually stresses me out somewhat to do so.

So there's the problem - I really want to continue helping others who are going through the same kind of crap I went through. But in doing so I would be negatively affecting myself, which is not something I am prepared to do right now since I am at my best place, emotionally and mentally, since 2015 or earlier, with an even brighter outlook for the coming months despite the craziness in the world right now.

So at least for the near future my content for Small Steps will have to remain unwritten. Given that I only managed to get out a handful of published posts plus almost as many unfinished drafts, I don't think there is a reason to keep Small Steps in its current form. So I will move those posts into Miscellaneous Debris, then drop Small Steps so I have a slot open for something new.

And there will be something new very soon.

My next blog will be more reviews since I really enjoy writing them (and you are welcome to call me crazy for it but I also enjoy the research that goes into them), however these will be serious reviews about one of my biggest loves in life - music. I listen to an insane amount and range of music - mostly metal, but also pop, rap, rock, alternative, and a bunch of other stuff too. It is not hard for me to listen to the full range almost each and every day of the week, and I want to share some of the hidden gems (or piles of shit) that I come across, regardless of their genre.

Plus I will be continuing the brutal crypto game/faucet reviews, because they are amazingly good fun to research and write (and hopefully read!).

So there we have it.

My apologies if you were following me for the content I was writing in Small Steps. You are welcome to unfollow if the content you were interested in is no longer going to happen, I understand. Thanks for your time so far, but hopefully you might stick around for some music reviews!