Plethora of Tranquility

Anyone who knows me knows I love virtual pets. I fell in love with them back in the 90s, and I’m still avidly collecting them and playing with them even now.

One of my fondest summer vacation memories happened back in July of 1997. I was armed with mad money, and I set out to have fun and buy some new treasures. On my excursion to the stores, I came across this strange new device I’d never seen before. (I think it was at Toys R Us, but I'm not sure.) It was a cute little rounded game device attached to a keychain, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand (or in your pocket). It had a screen and buttons, and it said you could take care of it like a real pet. Naturally, I was curious. So I got it. It was at that moment that my first ever virtual pet came home with me in the form of the Nano Kitty. I was hooked for life the second I pulled out the battery tab and activated it. It became addictive, and I had to have more of them. The Dinkie Dino was my second one. I was intrigued by how many different ones were available and all of them being different in some way. There were Giga Pets, Tamagotchis, Nano Pets, and dozens of off brand ones that you could find in practically every store, with more of them popping up every week as the fad became more fevered. Tamagotchis were the hardest to find since stores couldn’t keep them in stock. It was much later after that when I finally obtained my first Tama. Seems like my parents might have gotten it for me for either birthday or Christmas or something. But I’m not sure.

At the time, the technology and device itself was new and just getting started. I feel like I had a hand in setting the trend in my area, because I was the first of my friends to own one. Friends I had at church were fascinated by my Nano Kitty and asked me a lot of questions about it. Then eventually, they started getting their own. One friend in particular that I had at that time of my life started collecting them like I was doing. Every week when we met at church, we would pull out this ridiculously huge wad of virtual pets and sit out in the foyer and talk about them and care for them together and show each other the newest ones we got. She had some I didn’t and vice versa. It started out with a couple, then before we both knew it, we had a huge wad each that we carried with us. I swear to high heavens you could have probably swung it around and knocked someone down with it. Haha! Now that I look back on it, I have NO earthly idea how we managed to properly care for that many at once. lol! I feel like I took such poor care of mine back then.

But virtual pets are such a beloved nostalgic thing for me that I have a lot of great memories connected to. Such an innocent, carefree time of my life that I wish I could go back and experience again.

I still have every single one of my childhood virtual pets.

NO technology we have today can ever compare to these little watch game devices, imo. They rule forever.

Oh! Hey! Hello! *waves* 👋 😃 Long time no post. I'm not sure if anyone out there is reading this blog, but if you are, I’m SO sorry I disappeared for, like, a year or year and a half. Ugh. 😵 Has it really been that long since I last posted??? Sheesh. 

So much has been happening in my personal life since I made this blog account. Life’s been busy, crazy, and hectic in so many ways that I really haven't been able to keep up with. Some of it’s personal, so I won’t go into those details. I’ve also been sick off and on with one thing and another (sinus allergies, acid reflux, stomach issues, etc). Mainly, I feel like I’ve been struggling to heal from a lot of things. So much has been happening lately that’s drained me emotionally and mentally and been overall taxing on my health in general. I think some of my sickness has spawned from that, as well as from stress and anxiety. 2024 started out horrible, so the past several months as far back as January have been horrific in their own ways. A lot of stress and anxiety. But I've also seen a lot of answered prayers and blessings this year that have left me speechless. (Thanking God for His mercy and grace. 🙌 ) Again, a lot of this is personal, so I’m not going to go into details on a public blog. Life HAS calmed down to a certain extent right now, thank goodness, but the months still tend to come with their own trials.

Been struggling to get back into my writing for a while now. Just within the past few months, I’ve been writing some short fanfics to ease myself back into the groove, which has felt good to do. I’m still going at it even now, so I’m hoping this helps to kick my writing mind into full gear again. I've needed this so bad. I was beginning to wonder what happened to my writing muse.

Planning to go on a mini trip with my cousins this summer, so I’ve been busy preparing for that. SO excited!! I’ve needed this outing so much, you have no idea. Hoping that it helps to heal and refresh me in ways I need to be.

It's hard for me to grasp that we're already halfway through 2024 and the 4th of July is in another few weeks. Crazy!

As of right now, I’ve pretty much pushed all social media out of my life. With the exception of Instagram. But I’m now having second thoughts about even it since they’ve changed their policies to allow AI scraping and theft of copyrighted content. I pulled all of my artwork off my account at the beginning of the month and will not be posting anymore art on there from now on. I’ll just post photos and such. Stuff having to do with collectibles. I’ll continue to be active on there since I still like the platform and enjoy following certain people. But none of my art will ever be uploaded there again unless they give US residents an option to opt out.

But, it feels good having pushed myself away from social media. I definitely have no regrets. It’s been fun and refreshing getting away from all of that and feel like I'm free to live life as I did prior to social media becoming a thing. I feel less stress, less frustration, less anxiety, and more relaxed. Overall, I feel like I can enjoy things in life again and living in the moment more without thinking I’ve got to document it to put on Facebook. It's opened my eyes to see that everything I do doesn't have to be everyone else's business (and shouldn't be). And that I'm the one who decides what should be shared and what shouldn't be. It’s interesting how social media conditions you to basically be stressed out all the time and feel like you've GOT to post it on there and share it with the world. Sort of a digital peer pressure, I guess you’d call it. No more will I be a victim of this feeling. I'm done with it. I've purged myself of it and have no plans to go back to social media.

I really want to get back into blogging heavily again, because I enjoy it so much more than social media. It's way more fun and enjoyable. I feel like it's low maintenance and doesn't require me to always be here to entertain an audience. It requires me to take time and think through my posts and be more creative with them as well as put more substance to them, which is far more satisfying to the writer side of me than quick chitchat of social media. I only have to post when I feel like emptying thoughts. It doesn't require me to be part of an algorithm or toxic environment full of politics, news, ads, bots, spam, and otherwise. My blog space feels like a quiet, secluded part of the Internet that's just for me and whoever wishes to follow my ramblings. It reminds me of how the older Internet used to be before social media took over and ruined everything.

I’m going to TRY and keep this up. We'll see if I disappear again. 🤞

Now, whenever you type in something, it's insanely hard to find answers or find images or find whatever about anything. All the search manages to do is bring up a bunch of useless sites and pages that, sometimes, aren't even related to what you searched for. Or you end up with a ton of advertising junk. If you DO manage to find what you're looking for, chances are there's very little info there that's either vague or feels halfway written. Not nearly enough to tell you what you need to know. (This is especially frustrating when you're doing research for writing.) Or you have to pay a fee to access it or use it or download it. I don't even see the amount of backgrounds and wallpapers and images as I used to that were usually free to use. Now, everyone wants money for them. Or they've removed them entirely for whatever reason. Or they've suddenly become overly protective of their stuff and won't allow anyone to use it anymore.

If you want answers to anything nowadays, you basically have to fall back on YouTube vids, which can be time consuming to sit down and watch, especially if you're in a hurry. Or you have to search for it on large collected sites like Wikipedia (which isn't always accurate and doesn't offer alternatives to cross check information). Pinterest is the best place to find images these days, because Google and other search engines are somewhat pointless and don't bring up nearly as good of a selection. Fan sites have turned into Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook groups, and other social media platforms that a lot of people don't care to join and are trying to move away from because the atmospheres have grown toxic and vile and the algorithms are changing. Because it's really not possible and practical to just build and own a fan site anymore like it was in the good old days.

Changes to the Internet in more recent years have taken something away from us. The Internet as a whole feels less personal and feels more mainstream and watered down. I literally hate browsing for anything anymore because it always becomes highly frustrating to me because I very rarely find what I'm looking for. I can't begin to count the number of times I've wished I could have the old Internet back.

I'm really glad to see some blogging sites have survived and still exist. It's a little bit of nostalgia that's hung around and hasn't changed much.