State of the Skeleton - Quick Update June ‘25

*Correction - In a previous draft I mentioned that I was taking care of my dog all by myself, and this isn't fair to Grace. She is paying for half of his bills and seeing him multiple times a week on top of taking him on two overnights a week. Grace and I are still figuring out what our working relationship looks like but it was not fair to make it seem like she had abandoned me or our dog.

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Hello Skele-friends,

I may have gotten too ambitious with my post-Faceball plans. The video topic that won the poll was Garbo Amazing Ports, which is a project I’ve been kicking around since at least late-2023. But what’s the hold up?

There’s a thing that happens with you go the gym. I like to lift heavy things, it’s a lot of fun for me. I am a huge dork, but deep down I am also a macho jock douche. But when I’ve not gone to the gym a month or maybe two, I always have this moment where I have to scale back my reps and the weights. I always wanna get right back to the big pump, but I need at least a session or two to get back into things, even though it hasn’t been that long!

This is what happened with the latest videos. All of my last few projects have been really big ones and the problem with that is you lose practice on actually finishing projects! You just research, take notes, right down ideas, capture footage, pump up the outline until you realize it’s been several weeks and you haven’t really gotten anything done yet...

I uploaded a re-edited UDUG video to YouTube and the response was really positive, something I try to never take for granted, but people also said they would prefer shorter projects if it meant more output from me. And that got me looking at the Garbo Amazing project and thinking about scaling it back. I wanted to cover ten games,

Space Invaders Atari 2600
Burnout Legends DS
MK11 Switch (Specifically the Krypt)
Borderlands 2 Vita
Dragon Quest XI 3DS
Medal of Honor Underground GBA
Splatterhouse TG16
Hyrule Warriors 3DS
Ark Survival Switch
Doom SNES

…but I’ve decided to cut that in half to five, and if it does well, I’ll just do other five. Even with the research and footage I’ve already done, I needed to focus on closing! I’ve grown really rusty at closing projects, always the toughest and least fun part haha. I always get anxious about not bringing my A-game, my best work. But that’s just preventing me from getting you anything! This loop of worrying so much about doing good work that I don’t actually get anything done, it’s something I’ve been working on with my therapist. You’d think for as long as I’ve been doing this, I’d be good at it! If I’ve learned anything through all this is that there are things that you get better at, but they never get easier. And I have always loved the challenge of this, but I didn’t really consider how badly I needed to regain my sea legs.

Another reason I’ve been struggling is I’ve had to adjust to the solo life again. If you weren’t aware, I recently separated from my long time life and show partner. However, because of additional craziness, they didn’t actually move out until the end of April. Heading back to the single life was an adjustment for numerous reasons. Not the least of which is that I am now taking care of my dog Launchpad all by myself (though she does occasionally take Launchpad for a night or two). He recently lost his sister Dollop too and has needed more play and stimulation than ever, and I can’t neglect him either. The good news is my monthly-average steps are up almost 2000 more steps! But I’ve had to make a new normal work-day schedule. And then stuff like the other day, I thought I could do grocery shopping in the morning and then somehow have energy to for work. Yeah, didn’t get much done that day. But I had an awesome dinner.

I’m only bringing all this up for transparency, so you know what’s going on. I’m not asking for sympathy. You’ve all given me enough of that, don’t worry about Uncle Derek. As you get older, you face moments where you have to start over. In work, personal life, hobbies, family you’ll have to go back to square one again. It’s just how it is. I’m moving forward, and honestly not even exactly back at “square-one”!

So don’t forget to vote for this month’s UDUG! I gotta take the boy out for his post-dinner walk now and then Ima get back to freaking work and quit complaining! This is gonna be my year but I gotta put in the work.

Thanks as always for the continued support! I WILL see you again really soon!
-UD