Feels good to get back to this after my usual – unintentional, but usual – absence from here. But now I’ve actually got things worth mentioning!
As of last August I’d been working at my last job, a call center position for a timeshare company, for about seven and a half years. And I was going nowhere. The pay was okay but the stress that came with it just wasn’t worth it anymore. Between that and my wife and I needing to find a new place to live, it felt like it was finally time to make some big changes. We had some long talks, and we decided that it would be feasible for me to go back to school so I could finally earn a college degree. So at the end of September I tendered my resignation for the job that I’d held for the longest period of time of my life, closing that chapter and starting a new one at Utah Valley University. The next two months I spent preparing for school by meeting with counselors, signing up for classes, getting familiar with the new campus, and then enjoying the holidays at the end of the year.
I’d been at Brigham Young University before but just… didn’t do all that great as a student due to a lot of poor decisions on my part. Now, though, I’ve got a lot of things going better in my life. I’m married, obviously, and I’ve got a fantastic support system between her, her family, and my family, and all our friends; I’m on a regular anti-anxiety medication that’s helped a ton, and I’ve learned better habits to help cope when issues arise; my wife has a good paying job that can sustain us for the time being; and I’m doing my best to minimize distractions so I can actually focus on completing assignments (if they’re not just done in class – I’ll write about that later).
On top of all that, I finally feel like I’ve managed to find that delicate balance between academic life and social life. I’ve got a few friends that I’ve begun regularly playing Magic: the Gathering with (and I’ve still got D&D going on in the background), and I’m trying to be open to new opportunities that I find on campus. Last night, for instance, I signed up for a karaoke contest and didn’t know anyone else there – but that didn’t stop me from having a blast. (This is what I sang, by the way. Fell in love with this version of the song after hearing it in the Guardians of the Galaxy 3 soundtrack.)
My wife and I did end up moving into her parents’ basement during this somewhat transitional time in our lives, and while it wasn’t our first choice of where we’d be living it’s been a mostly good change of pace. It’s taken some adjusting for sure, but the chance to get to know them has been great since prior to 2021 they were still living in North Carolina.
A fair amount of my credits from BYU still managed to transfer over, but not quite everything. Which is fine, because it means that a few of my classes will act more or less as refresher courses, in addition to the ones I’m taking to get into the animation program. UVU has a track pretty specific to what I’m interested: animation and game design, with an emphasis on 2D animation. For the kinds of games I want to make this is practically perfect. (Again, I’ll write more about those later.)
This details the biggest changes that have happened in my life over the last year or so. Obviously as a goal I want to write more on here and, you know, do something with this website and blog. But while I may have had that as a goal in the past, now my life is actually different enough to feel like I can effectively reach it.
Marshall's Matters 