Oh, hello there. It’s been a while. Again. I’ve been desperately wanting to write something more substantial here for the past few days but I’ve been quite busy for reasons that, if the title above doesn’t make clear enough, I’ll talk about here for a little while.
I work in a used game store. A one-off one, at that – not a chain store like GameStop or anything of the sort. It’s a great place to work, as one can imagine. Yes, it’s work – I don’t just sit around and play games all day. There are consoles to clean, test, and get ready to sell, games we sell online that constantly need to be pulled, cleaned, tested and sorted to be shipped out, customers wanting to buy things, to trade items in (sell, in common parlance – more on that nuance in the future) or repairs to be brought in, made, or given back to the customer upon completion.
Add in that we are in a space that is maybe half the size it should be for as much as we do, well, it can be pretty chaotic, especially around this time of the year.
I’m often staying at work until 10, 11, or 12 at night working on things. Sure, it’s a very lax environment, and once the store closes I have nothing but time to work on whatever I need or want to, but it’s still a process. The past week, for example, I had to take about 15 Xbox 360 consoles and get as many of them ready to sell as I can. They had all kinds of issues (these are S and E models, no original ones, so no RROD issues – we don’t bother with those at all anymore) but for the most part I was able to, with parts from some of the less-than-stellar ones, get them going. I did repairs on quite a few older consoles, all while manning the storefront. No, I’m not alone in the store all the time, but there are times where it’s only one of us, so we can only get so much done while customers come in and out.
My point is I’ve been busy. Very busy. A little too busy to really devote time to the site, as much as I want to. Even now, I could be doing something else with this time, but I’ve been wanting to write this entry for about a week and felt my readers would enjoy a bit of an update.
Outside of work, I’ve had quite a few other projects going on – setting up an “office” in the house, more crazy computer projects that I might bring up in the near future, and some other projects which aren’t worth mentioning here, and some other things which simply happen in life, and have needed to be addressed. To say I’ve kept busy is an understatement, to say the least.
Of course, I’ve made time to relax and until writing feels like a hobby rather than work (something that’s really bothering me, actually) I’ve taken time (and the opportunity I had to get the game for a good price) to play Red Dead Redemption 2. Last night I completed the story, and feel a small set of articles coming regarding the game. It’s been an incredible experience, to say the least, and has really been the break I’ve needed after many stressful months.
Back to Xadara itself, as things stand my articles on the PlayStation Classic still seem to dominate views. That’s cool, I guess – so long as the site is getting views that will help with the way search engines and social media classify things. I still notice space related articles getting hits, and it hurts that I’m not covering all these things I love like I want to, but something had to give, and I want to push the site back in the direction it was always intended to go when I started it all those years ago.
There’s so much more I’d love to say, but for now, I’ll leave with this – I hope in January to begin rebuilding everything as it should be. Sure, old games, random tech, and the like, may not be everyone’s thing or may not be seen as “professional” but it’s what I love, and this is my space on the internet to do what I wish and express myself.
I guess the trick to having fun with it is finding out just what I should express.
More to come, as always.
Also, I felt like sharing this song from Red Dead Redemption 2 for no reason other than I’ve been listening to it a lot recently.