Happy Thanksgiving from Canada!

Last week was a crushing sprint to finish a video. This week, I'm still catching up on sleep. Today, I actually slept in for the first time in weeks. I got out of bed just before noon. It's Thanksgiving here in Canada, so a lot of things are on holiday hours, including my sleep cycle, it seems. After my five-day crunch to finish the last video, I just kind of shut down. I was sleep-deprived and tired. This had a negative effect on my streams and caused me to miss a day and end early every day. That is something I really hope to avoid next time around. I'm going to attempt to stretch the editing of the next large project over a few weekends rather than in one chunk. It can be hard to tell just how big a project is until you are in the weeds working on it.

I'm almost three weeks behind on a Future of the Fortress video. Tarn actually posted it early, and I did not notice until it was pointed out to me on the 3rd. I've got my footage prepped, and I'll record and edit that today after I'm done writing this post. I've also got half of a news video finished and ready to go, but I'm waiting for an additional patch before I push it live, as the additions to the beta are not that flashy.

These are all projects that would be ready to go or out already if I had been better at managing my time the last few weeks. That has been the biggest issue for me so far with the shift in content style. Managing my time was a lot easier when a highlight video took me 40 minutes to trim together at the end of a stream. These long projects are easier to finish when I just sit down and focus on them. When I am that focused, I find it impossible to do anything else. I guess it is all part of the learning curve here. At least I'm making content I'm actually proud of, and it has been a long time since I have felt that way.

I pickled beets!

Recipe from: https://www.bernardin.ca/recipes/en/pickled-beets.htm

• 10 cups prepared beets
• 2 1/2 cups white vinegar
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup sugar

I infused the brine with garlic and black peppercorns for some kick. I also added a bit of salt for texture in the jars. I love pickled beets, but I never buy them due to the cost. Aside from turning my kitchen into a crime scene set from a B movie, this was easy and rather painless.

Part of my love for pickled beets stems from October. Halloween is my favorite pointless holiday. I love the aesthetic, costumes, themes, and decorations. When I was little, there was always some creepy food served as snacks around Halloween, such as "eyeballs" (aka peeled grapes) and "sliced organs" (aka pickled beets). These were, of course, right next to finger-shaped hot dogs and pea soup labeled "witch potion." This is the first time I remember eating beets like candy. Now I can make creepy Halloween snacks for myself.

Stats: YouTube claims my watch time is up by 99% since last week. Not a huge surprise, thanks to my finally uploaded 10-year dwarf project. The channel got 104,946 views in the last seven days, up by a good margin over last week. The video itself is moving quicker than the "worst map" video but not as quickly as the "cult" video. I think this one will be a slow burn on the views front. It could pick up, but I think it has had its chance to get an algorithm boost. Sadly, nothing crazy has happened.

Twitch sat at an average of 183 this week, slightly down from last week. I'm happy with this number, though; it has been easy enough to keep my brain happy with chat activity. I'm mostly just coasting up to my vacation at this point while trying not to just phone it in, per se.

Speaking of vacation, I'll have a command for it this week. I'll be streaming Tuesday through Thursday this week and then I'm gone until Tuesday the 29th. I'll have a blog post up at some point about the trip, but content outside of that will be sparse until I return.