Away

Gosh, it's been a while, hasn't it?

It's been a busy half a year for me, so far. I had my end-of-semester exams in January and February, and then after that was straight back into the second semester. Between coursework, mentoring sessions and revision for exams, it's been quite full on academically. Thankfully, it seems to have been worth it in the end! I've also been hard at work on the Minecraft gameshow project I've mentioned before, but that's a story for another time.

Instead, the reason that I'm writing this blog post is because I've just arrived back at home following my second meetup of the year (and unfortunately, if last year is anything to go by, my last of the year 🙁).

Meetups for me are always a bittersweet experience. One the one hand, I get to hang out with my best friends in person, and I sometimes get to meet people face-to-face who I've only been able to speak to online. But on the other hand, I know that it can only last for a few days, and afterwards it's going to be back to the normal stresses of life and this unlikely, socially awkward, rag-tag gang of people are just going to be voices for many months to come.

Back at the end of April, I got to go to my 3rd Insomnia event (which we vlogged) and took part in a couple of the tournaments that Nintendo UK VS was running. Overall the event was really fun, and the weather managed to hold out for us too!

Then, this weekend, we visited Manchester, UK for a general get-together. There wasn't an event that we were attending, but we still found a bunch of stuff to do, like the Crystal Maze Experience (a genuinely amazing evening - if you get the chance to do it then you really should), some escape rooms, and also a quiz massive that one of us put together. I spent some time in VR and got to see (very briefly) the gameshow project at the proper scale (which is to say: massive). I also had the chance to met people that I either hadn't met in person before, or that I hadn't seen in a year (pretty much to the day), and I got to have a proper chat with people that I don't normally get to talk to that much online.

I fully understand just how lucky I am to have friends like these. The fact that we can just decide with a little less than 3 months notice that we're all going to congregate in one place, from all across the country (and even internationally), for one weekend is amazing. Just having a chill weekend with people is lovely, and I really appreciate that people didn't try to make every day full of activities so there was the opportunity to have more chill moments.

Yeah. I don't think I can really put everything my brain's thinking into words right now. Massive love to everybody that I saw this weekend - you really, really do mean the world to me. 💜

Nearly home following an absolutely wonderful weekend with @RASA_Studios and Co. in Manchester! You lot genuinely mean the world to me, and I can't thank you all enough for putting up with me for so long 😊 pic.twitter.com/kdlgBsUvRj

— James C. (@MrJamesCo) July 29, 2019

And, until next time,
o/