June Update: Semi-Functional
Hey team! Sorry for the late post, it's hard to tell one month from another these days.
My Spine
Here's where things stand with my lower back: I have recovered from my relapse and am now doing better than I was before everything went to heck for a second time. I'm down to doing physical therapy only once a week and, provided nothing goes wrong, I will be discharged in two weeks. I do not need surgery, though I will be getting a cortisone injection later this month. We think we know the cause of the injury and the relapse, which is a mix of having crappy genes that leave me prone to herniation (both my parents have had surgeries for this), a year of quarantine where I was even more inactive than usual, and - here's the kicker - Ring Fit Adventure. I started doing Ring Fit in January as a new home exercise routine, and I liked it very much! But, if you've played, you know it centers around a lot of running in place. And the guy who's going to shove a needle in my spine recently informed me that, if you are genetically prone to herniations and already have a weak core from inactivity, running is about the worst exercise you can do. And my relapse happened two days after my PT said it was safe to resume Ring Fit.
This suuuuuuucks because Ring Fit was the first home exercise I've actually enjoyed. So I have to figure out a new exercise routine that doesn't put so much impact on my spine and also builds core strength. Once I'm discharged from PT I'm probably going to get a personal trainer, which I can't exactly afford but it'll be cheaper than the couple thousand I've spent on physical therapy. We'll find something that works for my abilities.
My Videos
It felt very nice sending you my UC Merced talk this past month. Putting something online! What a high! The next tasks are as follow:
My "lying prone and editing from my laptop" setup kinda works! So I am, very slowly, putting together the next and final CO-VID. I'm not going to make predictions about how long that will take, since it's not entirely under my control, but we're making headway, and my hope is that it won't be long now.
I have hired an animator to help me with the next Alt-Right Playbook! I've also got a draft of the script I'm happy with. This video is about institutional white supremacy, and, given the subject matter, I'm querying sensitivity readers to look over the script and tell me if there's anything I shouldn't be saying, anything I should be saying that I'm not, etc. So the script isn't final until I get that feedback, but, once I do, I an my animator will go into production. I'm going through the script in its current form and making notes on how everything might be visualized so I can share it with the animator once everything is locked. It's a new experience for me, having to plan all this stuff in advance, but the person I'm working with is very talented and I think they're gonna make it look pretty great.
My collaborative project has moved from the researching-and-brainstorming stage to the outlining stage. For thematic reasons, we'd like to get this thing online sometime in August, because it's got an "end of summer" vibe, though we'll have to see what we can manage.
My Life
Uh, let's see. I'm reading Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson, which is really good so far. I've enjoyed some small, adventure-ish games recently - If on a winter's night four travelers, In Other Waters, FAR: Lone Sails. I'm currently feeling a bit of a metroidvania vibe so I've been working through Environmental Station Alpha. Oh, and the Criterion Channel just launched a neo-noir collection, and I've decided to work my way through the whole thing (skipping only the ones I have already seen and know for a fact I dislike). Just rewatched The Long Goodbye for the second time in my life, and it's on to Chinatown next!
Consider those some recommendations. Also, as ever, I recommend not getting sciatica. Do some planks!
-I