Hi

Hey everyone, I want to start this post off by saying: THANK YOU. Thank you for being here, and thank you all for your support, whether you've been subscribed for a month or 15 months. Every subscription means so much to me, and your support is absolutely not lost on me. Which is why I am writing this post, and why I feel so terrible that I haven't posted here in so long!

The main reason why I haven't posted here is because Russ and I have putting a lot of our efforts into our YouTube Member community. A lot of my free time now is spent holding special member streams where we chat and play video games (every Monday and Thursday evenings!). In addition to our regularly scheduled program of the Wednesday night livestream, it's become a LOT to balance.

So this brings me to my main point of the post: If you'd like to switch your Patreon subscription over to a YouTube Member, I absolutely will not be offended if you cancel your subscription. I really, really appreciate everyone's support, and although we have a nice little backlog of posts here on Patreon, I understand it's not being updated super frequently. I am going to try to do better with that, of course, but if you're looking for a more active, more tailored experience, with a more active Chat, the YouTube Member Streams may be the way to go. I really wish there was a way to link both Patreon and YT Memberships, so you could already access the streams, but Patreon isn't offering that feature.... YET. Maybe I'll suggest it.

Here's a link to a sample Member Stream!: https://www.youtube.com/live/udX6cgAaziw

You can join as a YT Member here: https://bit.ly/405U5OK

Lately, the member streams have been getting longer and longer. It used to run for one or two hours, but now the average run time seems to be between 3-5 hours. If you're a YouTube Member and you're active in chat, there is a very good chance I'll be able to read your message and respond in real time. So that's why I'm saying YT Members might be a better fit for some people.

That being said, if you're in the Whoppie Senior tier here on Patreon and you receive monthly letters and enjoy it, that's wonderful! We have a lot of Whoppie Seniors, and I really look forward to picking out stationery and writing out cards at the end of every month :)

I'm the kind of person who has had to cancel a Patreon subscription in the past (shout out to Chris Meyer at Learning Modular!!!) and felt very bad about it, because I really love to support other creators and artists. But seriously, if you're reading this right now and the Patreon is not giving you what you'd expect, please comment below and let me know what you'd like to see more of. I am going to be focusing a lot more of my efforts here AND on YouTube Memberships, because if you're supporting me in ANY way, I want to make sure you're getting out of it what you expect to get out of it.

OK, phew. So now that that has been said, lets do a blog post!

Last weekend Russ and I taught 4 classes at the Somerset Folk Harp Festival, and we also held office hours for anyone who had technology questions. I was so pleased to be able to troubleshoot someone's harp who was suffering from a lot of low end resonance / muddiness when amplifying, even after using our three "magic pedals" for harp (EUNA, high-pass filter, and the Empress Bass Compressor). If you couldn't already discern this from the earlier paragraphs, I don't have a TON of free time lately. But what I AM doing in my free time is experiencing my first run-through of a game called Disco Elysium. I am enjoying it SO much so far, and even though I don't think I've progressed too far in it, I love every second. I didn't think it was my kind of genre, and from the game walkthroughs it didn't immediately capture me. But my livestream viewers recommended it so much, I decided to give it a shot... And I am SO glad I did. Kim might be my favorite video game character in any game I've ever played, ever. (Also, a song that has been requested a few times in the Wednesday livestreams has been a song called Whirling in Rags, and it's such a great song in the game).

Speaking of songs in games, I am very disappointed that the game I was going to be a part of is not coming to fruition... The sequel to Hypnospace Outlaw, called Dreamsettler, actually isn't happening now, which is sad news considering Hypnospace was (and still is) one of my all-time favorite games and it would have been a DREAM for me to work alongside composer Jay Tholen. But things happen, and I'm currently working on another indie horror game that's making quite a lot of progress.

Two weeks ago I went to North Carolina for a work trip, and while I was there I got to read some books that I really enjoyed. I read Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin which I really loved, and I also read Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter. I'm currently thinking about starting Iris Murdoch's "The Sea, The Sea", but I've been loving Disco Elysium so much that I feel like that game has been fulfilling my need to read, so to speak (I found out that LOTR had about 500,000 words, and Disco Elysium has over 1 million)!!

ALSO, we started playing Resident Evil 4 on the Members Streams, and even though this game is terrifying, I really am truly enjoying it :)

Thank you all again for being here and for all your support!!!