Samantha Puc's Blog, page 4

Staring Social Media in the Face

I grew up on the Internet. After my mom installed AOL and signed me up for my first AIM account, I rushed home every day after school to talk to my friends online while I did homework or played games. I remade my account every time I wanted a new username and loaded each one with lyrical away messages and cryptic statuses. Meanwhile, on Neopets, I taught myself to code basic HTML and practiced math through their massive games library. These were my first steps into early social media, and since ...

Game Thoughts: Completing My Oobledex

When I want to turn off my brain, one of my favorite activities is settling into bed or posting up at my desk to play a mellow, cozy sim game. Animal Crossing: New Horizons kept me sane during the first year of the pandemic and the newly-released Mail Time was a balm when it hit Steam. Disney Dreamlight Valley gives me the serotonin of farming, decorating, and completing small quests, and it also gives me the ability to hang out with characters like Wall-E and Stitch, which sort of scratches the...

Books I Read (and Loved) in April and May 2023

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It was only a matter of time before I fell off for a month on making these book review posts. Although I created an entire skeleton document for April and another for May, I never wrote or posted either—so this post combines my favorite books from both months. That’s something, right?

In the weeks leading up to my hysterectomy (I’ll have a post about that soon), I piled my plate high with deadlines so I could take a proper brea...

In Case You Missed It: A Link Round-Up

I don’t have a newsletter. I’ve started multiple and always fallen off of them, no matter the service, yet every time I see someone mention their newsletter I once again think about starting one. I have accounts on seemingly every possible newsletter creation platform and I’ve even considered taking my blog posts here and simply turning them into newsletters to be mailed out when I post. As you can probably tell, I haven’t done that, and I likely won’t.

Why am I rambling about newsletters? In eve...

How Real Pain Management Can Feel

Being chronically ill has taught me one very humbling thing: Everything can change in an instant—for better or for worse.

Despite having experienced symptoms of Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome (CVS) since my senior year in college, I didn’t receive a diagnosis until last summer—a whopping 10 years later. The only reason I’m able to put a name to this illness is that my partner did an intense amount of research into my symptoms, trawling through social media and Reddit and medical websites after my atten...

Books I Read (and Loved) in March 2023

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How is it April already? It feels like cheating to already be opening the windows to let in the spring air, but I’m also just wildly grateful to be slowly sloughing off the winter depression. March was… long. I turned in some of the most personal work of my career and spent a lot of time with my partners and our cats, just trying to soak in safety and community and healing.

I also did a lot of reading, but most of it was for wo...

S.A.D.

Winter always feels so long, especially in a basement apartment. My partner has poured hours into cultivating a well-lit and serotonin-inducing space, and the payoff has been immense for our little family.

On nice days, we open the windows and listen to the cats as they yip at the noises outside and run laps from the bedroom to the living room and back again. On cold days, we turn on hours of bird TV and watch them paw at the television while we make drinks and snacks before we jump back under t...

Books I Read (and Loved) in February 2023

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February is always a particularly strange month for me, and this year was no exception. We had two major emergencies (both of which have been resolved, and everyone is doing much better now!) and time felt like it was simultaneously glued to the wall and moving faster than light.

Each day made it harder to hold onto the hours before they disappeared, and even basic tasks felt heavier than they usually do. I struggled to concen...

Books I Read (and Loved) in January 2023

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In the Everything of 2022, one of the things that fell by the wayside was one of my favorite forms of self-care: reading for pleasure. I read for work and I read for school and I read for news, but I didn’t spend nearly as much time as I would have liked reading just to read. And looking back, I’m certain that contributed to the Small Depression Spirals I hit throughout the year, leading up to the Big Depression Spiral I lande...

Somehow, It’s Almost February

I can’t remember the last time I wrote an honest-to-god blog post. Not a round-up for the year, not a review of something, not an essay. A blog post. A space to share what’s going on in my life, what I’m reading/watching/playing/doing/hearing, what’s been on my mind, or whatever else I feel like writing about.

At some point, the idea of blogging became really daunting to me. I feared not having the right kind of Content to share. I worried that writing about certain aspects of my personal life w...