Hello~!

If you can believe it, I once again neglected to write in my blog for an exceedingly long time. It's frankly a bit more cumbersome than my other self-documentation methods.

For the past year, I've been journaling a lot. It's been nice to have that space to be reflective in a way that's just for me. It's useful as a way to see what I felt like writing down and what ideas I tend to return to.

Speaking of which, I guess I'm kinda trying to sort out what role I even want this blog to play in my life, even as I write this post. I write the journal entries mostly when I'm riding on the train to or from Boston, and those are nice because I can reflect in a way that's for my eyes only.

I also have a small youtube channel where I occasionally record audio logs. Those are nice because I'm able to speak freely, and understand that those have an audience beyond myself, even if it's mostly just internet friends.

[Behind the Blog moment: This blog post was originally drafted on May 30, 2026 but is being edited for release on September 19, 2026. Oopsies!]

As for this blog, I've not really figured out what niche it serves. It's something that I've shown to both real-life friends as well as internet friends, so it needs to be suitable for both audiences.

Tell us something you're interested in, then.

I suppose I can tell you a little bit about the game I've enjoyed lately, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach.

For those who don't know, Death Stranding is a Kojima video game set in a post-apocalyptic world in which decay in all its forms consumes the world, but instead of being some legendary hero, you're just a guy trying to make deliveries.

When I played the original Death Stranding in 2020, I had recently built my new gaming PC specifically to have the specifications to be able to run Death Stranding. I had built a literal Death Stranding machine based on Steam's recommended PC specs for the game.

When I was playing the original, I was pretty damn depressed, and the game was one of the few things I had that I could return to and work on. I was unemployed. It was the middle of COVID lockdowns. It both reflected the world I saw and also was an escape from it.

But it was more than that.

This post isn't really meant to be an in-depth review of DS 1 or 2 for that matter. I do want to say that both games are about making connections in a highly divided world, both through catastrophe and isolation. That obviously resonates with COVID times specifically, but is something really true about our world which seems to string together crises in a neverending chain.

Funnily enough, Death Stranding [as well as life in the wreckage of Neoliberal America] is about finding new meaning amid unideal conditions. I've been able to find that for myself over the course of the last 6 years, learning to regulate my nervous system along the way.

This sounds like it's not about video games anymore, but go on...

Last July [2025], I was given a really useful diagnosis after having had four hospitalizations since 2020. This diagnosis afforded me an organizing principle around which I could build a system of recovery that would actually work. I realized so many aspects of my life that were in place to maximize the amount of peak experiences I could feel, were actually giving great instability. The peak was there, but the valleys were unestablished.

I'm trying to speak in vagaries so that my blog doesn't get scraped for medical information, though if you know me well and read this, feel free to ask me for more of the inside scoop and I'll be happy to share.

This diagnosis, as well as some pretty quickly applied changes, has given me a really solid baseline on which to finally give my life a fair bit of stability. Over the past year+, I've come to enjoy ordinary moments a lot more, finding immense depth in regular life. It's kinda like the point of that Disney movie, Soul. Have you ever seen Soul?
[As a sidenote, they should really put that shit in Kingdom Hearts 4.]
Not to give major spoilers, but the main takeaway from that movie is that life is not about particular peak moments when you "make it," but instead about regular ordinary living and the sheer depth of what already is here.

Through the turbulence of the past several years of my life, I often used spirituality as an organizing principle; as a way of telling up from down in an existentially confusing set of circumstances. Finding this state of relative peace, however, I find that I'm able to set aside spirituality as a method of understanding that is constantly running. Simply stated, spirituality has done its job of helping me weather the storm. I used to be someone who was constantly doing spiritual calculus in their head, but now I'm free to think about whatever arises in the moment without losing that intrinsic sense of fullness.

Alright, buddy, save something for a future entry, but what was that whole thing about Death Stranding 2?

When I was beginning to write this entry in late May 2026, I had been playing DS2 for 2 months. I was marveling at how much lighter the experience felt compared to the existential dread I had when playing the original game. My experience with the game was less about surviving apocalyptic conditions and became more about the joy of traversal, of moving through a detailed world again for the first time. While the first game was about redeeming the United States and had some big ambitions there, the second game, taking place in Australia, was more about rewarding the audience of the first game with a sequel that had more levity.

Come the weekend of July 17-19, and I gleefully played the last 8 chapters of the game in quick succession. By the afternoon of the 19th, I was speedrunning a lot of the remaining achievements.

For context, when I typically play video games, I only play for one hour at a time before going to read a book, meditate, go for a walk, etc. DS2 was captivating enough to keep me involved from front to back, which hasn't happened for me in years. Part of that was probably the fact that DS2 involves simulated walking, and has as much depth as a book plot-wise.

Anyways, this entry is getting out of my hands with its length.

I think that's enough for today. Can you tell that I'm used to journaling where there isn't any limitation on length because I'm the only audience of it?


Thanks for reading this, and hopefully there'll be more entries for later! Time to publish!