I’ve been having a little debate with myself for months. Do I want a second monitor? Yes. Do I need a second monitor? Well, it’d be nice. What would you even do with it? Oh you know, stuff….

For the longest time, I wanted a 27″ monitor but that would look weird with the 24″ so I’d have to buy 2. It turns out I don’t have the desk space or the funds to buy 2 nice ones. So I settled on getting another 24″ monitor and a VESA mount for the same price as a low end 27″. This was Sunday night.

Fast forward to Monday. I forgot Amazon Prime has that whole 1-day shipping thing now and was quite surprised when I got a notification that they were both delivered. Now I live in an apartment complex. This is important because Amazon delivered it to my door, in its original packaging. The thing practically screamed, “I’m an expensive electronic come get me”. I would very much like to know how Amazon decides what gets delivered to my door and what gets delivered to the apartment office where someone has to sign for it. I mean I’ve had to sign for socks before Amazon, freaking socks. But this monitor, Nah leave at the door it’ll be fine.

Anyways, I spent an hour and a half last night setting up the mount and managing all my cables. I took the opportunity to clean off my desk, clean the area around my desk, and vacuum places that haven’t been vacuumed in a while. After all was said and done, it looked a lot nicer than it had before.

I got it all set up just in time to play some Trove with Jay. We ended up streaminig, which isn’t something we’ve done for a while. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the second screen definitely had some allure for streaming. Also, I can have Evernote open while I play games and take notes for future blog posts, see it’s totally necessary.

I am very much in the new toy phase with this purchase. I haven’t had an upgrade for my PC since I built it in early 2017 so it was time.

Now that it’s all set up and I’ve used it for a bit all I can say is…I might need a third.

For those curious, I purchased a second 24″ Asus VE248 monitor with  Vivo Dual Monitor Stand.

I’ve been reading game blogs longer than I’ve been writing one. I don’t quite remember how I found this corner of the internet but once I found it I didn’t want to leave. As inactive as this blog may be at times, I have never stopped reading others’ blogs. It’s become part of my daily routine to catch up with the blogs I follow over breakfast or on a lunch break. It’s as much as part of my life as gaming is.

But why read game blogs?

Well if you’re reading this you already know why you read these types of blogs. So rather…Why do I find myself reading game blogs?

I could easily watch a streamer or a youtube video. You’d get the whole picture of what a game is and how it plays. I’ve never been one to consume video content on the internet. I never have understood how someone could binge youtube videos or tune into streams every day. For me, video content is inconvenient and doesn’t fit into my life. Written content, however, I can read in the bits of time I have throughout the day.

The main reason I’ve stuck to reading game blogs though is that they impart the sense of fun. And isn’t that what video games are supposed to be? My favorite posts to read are in the “this is what I did today in X game” style. I will read posts about games I’ve never played and I get excited because the author is excited. What helps with this is that as game bloggers we leave the boring stuff out. We can gloss over a grind in a sentence or two and talk about the interesting things. Blogs stoke my imagination. I don’t see exactly what the game is but what the game is to the writer.

If anything, reading blogs enhances the hobby for me. More than game news or editorials from established sites. I like experiences and ideas from people like me, the players and consumers of the content. So if you’re ever wondering, is anyone actually going to read this? Is anyone out there? I’m probably there and I’m sure many others are too.

Part of the reason I enjoy participating in Blaugust is that it forces me to think more. What you’ll generally see here are posts about my game time, what my thoughts are on games I’ve finished. I like writing these because their easy and because there the kind of posts I like to read the most from other blogs. The challenge with writing these kinds of posts every day for an event is that there are some days I just don’t play anything. For these occasions I find myself struggling to come up with something to write about. Last year I actually suprised myself with some of the ideas I came up with.

This year I’m trying to think about these ideas ahead of time. I used to be able to read about games and think about game-related topics a lot more. I was a security guard for 2 years and there was a lot of downtime. Getting a new job this last year has given me a lot less time to immerse myself in gaming news and editorials. And since I’ve been blogging a lot less, I haven’t really thought too much about the bigger ideas.

As cliche as it is, my best brainstorming sessions happen in the shower. I actually have a waterproof notepad that I recently found again. That thing is going back where it belongs. So many post ideas have been outlined in there. I redownloaded Evernote as well. I used to use it all the time but when I got a new phone I never redownloaded it. Evernote has been great in the past when I suddenly get an idea and I’m out and about. Last but not least, challenging myself to post every day is also a challenge to generate more things to actually write about. We’ll see how it goes.

To anyone out there who would like to share, how do you come up with your topics when you post?

Today starts the beginning of Blaugust prep week. No doubt you’ve seen many posts this month about the blogging event that is Blaugust. It’s that special time of year when new bloggers burst onto the scene, seasoned bloggers give out their sage advice, and bloggers like me dust of their blog and get inspired again. Our feeds so full of posts there’s hardly enough time to read them!

As I’ve said a lot of times here, I like the idea of blogging, I get excited when I think about writing posts. I constantly think about what I could write about when I’m playing something. But when it comes time to write my execution falls very, very, short. Every year I say I’m going to remedy it and every year I have this conversation with myself.

They say that writing every day makes you a better writer. Makes sense. They say you need to develop a habit of writing to the point where it feels wrong not to write. Also makes sense. So this year I’m going to listen to that advice!

Last year I dove into Blaugust with a passion and zeal that would not be tempered. I got up every day and I wrote and I surprised myself with some of the things I came up with to write about. That lasted all of two weeks maybe not even. But I learned something very important, writing every day actually does make you more likely to write. And then I promptly forgot about that and didn’t post until January.

I’ve actually started to try and write every day since the beginning of July. I’m not totally consistent yet but I’m getting better at making time to write something up. You may have noticed there’s been a lot more activity here. I’m also finding that writing in advance leads to a lot more consistency with posts. I even wrote this one a whole 4 days in advance.

So, plans for Blaugust: I’m challenging myself to write and post more than I did last Blaugust, so more than 16 posts. The ultimate goal is to post all 31 days I will admit the quality of the posts will be…different but maybe even in a good way. After that, the goal is to post with less frequency but more consistently.

On a less self-gratifying note, Good luck everyone participating! I look forward to reading as many posts as I can!