Author: jiggyflyjoe

Flash Forward

“New Year, New Me!”

You’ll see that line a ton from content creators, influencers, and the media as we move into 2026. It stems from the idea of “New Year’s Resolutions,” a concept that oodles of people latch onto to try changing themselves or their habits in the New Year. In the last several years, though, I’ve noticed more and more people denouncing those resolutions. It even seems like the trendy-but-sensible consensus these days. No point in trying to change if you, ultimately, are just going to slip back into your old ways, after all.

My personal opinion on New Year’s Resolutions oscillates between the two sentiments. I’m mostly in the latter camp, seeing as I’m maybe the most likely to fall into bad habits by February. But honestly, New Year’s is the best time to try and think up ways that you can better yourself and your goals. We can make the next year suck a little bit less than the past year, right?

So while I’m not setting anything in stone here, I do want to write down my two goals going into 2026. Maybe you can help me stay accountable?

And I would trust Joshua Jackson if I were you.

Being Present

Listen, I’ve never been great at taking care of myself physically or mentally. I’ve suffered from depression and anxiety for what feels like my entire life. I’m pretty sure that, at some point over the past year, I’ve told the story about how I cried in kindergarten one day because I thought I had no friends and nobody liked me. It’s only grown into a bigger ordeal as I’ve gotten older, and I am being medically treated for it, but sometimes I think that there’s a lot more that I should be doing for my brain that I’m not. I mean, honestly, it’s hard not to be anxious or depressed with the state of the entire world right now, but surely there’s still a way to find joy in our lives or something that meaningfully makes us feel whole, right?

This past year, I absolutely went through a midlife crisis. I might still be going through it. It’s the only way that I can explain the way that I’ve felt over the last several months. At one point, a couple of weeks ago, I had an emotional meltdown after seeing a TikTok video that someone made of their kitten growing up into an elderly cat set to the sounds of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” Justifiably, I had to get it together and then confront the looming question of why I’m a 40-year-old man sobbing at the image of an aging cat. Then Stevie Nicks popped into my head, repeating the lyrics, “Time makes you bolder. Even children get older, and I’m getting older, too.” And I realized that was what’s bothering me. The internet described it as “grief in advance.”

I’m very close to my father. Sometimes he’s incredibly frustrating, but I love his humor, his way of always supporting us, and even just sitting and watching TV and eating copious amounts of junk food together. But he’s visibly aging, and it worries me. My four cats, my babies, are visibly aging, too. We don’t know his exact age since he was an adult when we adopted him, but Tigger has been with us for at least 13 years. Even my sweet little Rufus, who is practically my shadow, is coming up on 10 in 2026. And me… I’m not ready for it. I still feel like a kid most days. And somehow forty snuck up on me. Despite my bad back, migraines, achy bones and feet, diabetes, and increasing forgetfulness.

I’ve started coming out of the “meltdown” phase of it all now, and I’m trying to take action now and in 2026. My goal is to FOCUS ON NOW. Indeed, I can’t choose when the inevitable comes for dad, my cats, or the rest of my family and friends. And even if I could, it still wouldn’t be enough time. But I can control here and now. And here, I want to spend more time in the living room with dad. Laughing and watching TV, even when it’s his ridiculous cop videos on YouTube. I’m trying to remember how it feels when petting one of my cats, sometimes even gently grasping their fur in an effort to hold onto them forever. I know they don’t understand my words, but I tell them that I hope to find them in every timeline.

And for me? I need to exercise more, honestly. I need to start working a walk around the neighborhood into my days. Maybe some light exercise videos. I’ve never been somebody who enjoyed physical activity, so it’ll be slow and steady. But it’s certainly better than the last forty years of nothing. I hope that spending less time seated will start easing the rest of my ailments, too. It’s so simple, yet so overlooked. I have a Fitbit that I’ve woefully neglected since I left my retail job. Maybe it’s time to start putting it to good use again?

Being Consistent

Another one of my worst characteristics is that I’m terrible at staying consistent, and it is often the biggest obstacle in the way of my achieving anything or making real progress. I’m just taking an educated guess in saying that it’s probably from undiagnosed ADHD or some other “neurospicy” explanation, but I lose track of my motivation pretty frequently. I’m easily distracted and maybe a little bit lazy, too. Which isn’t to say that I don’t also work really hard on things — when I do feel motivated, I can hyperfocus like a superhero! — but everyone has low-energy days, and as I get older, it gets harder to keep on keeping on.

Reframe your thinking, chat!

For example, I started my Twitch channel several years ago in 2019. I have just barely over 200 followers on the platform, though, and even that very “smol” community took years to grow. And the one thing making the growth of my channel feel like an uphill battle is my lack of consistency. Yes, the channel has been active since 2019, but I haven’t streamed to it that entire time. Work and school, for a while, made it nearly impossible to find time to do it. So I’ve taken a lengthy hiatus or two from Twitch! But toward the end of 2024, I decided that since I was no longer employed or enrolled at a traditional school, it was time to make my triumphant return. And as I wrote about in a past Ghost Archive post, streaming started feeling a lot easier this time around! But while my feelings toward going live have changed considerably, I still struggle with maintaining the schedule I’ve set for myself. If ever I don’t feel great or just don’t want to be “on” for the camera, I simply cancel the stream for that night. Going into next year, I want to BE MORE CONSISTENT.

Even when I don’t feel good, I still need to make sure that I show up. If I don’t feel like being on camera, I can turn the camera off and continue with whatever activity we’re doing. If I have trouble maintaining my presence, I can end the stream early. I mean, really, it’s my channel, and I can do whatever I want. But it’s important to keep your known schedule so people know when and where to find you. If you keep failing to show up, though, then why should anyone else? And it’s especially important for Twitch, since the tips and subscription fees are my only source of income at the moment. And even that is pretty slim!

And that’s just one example in my world of very poor consistency. I’ve waffled back and forth about projects on my family’s home server that I built, I need to keep working on my courses at freeCodeCamp daily and not just “whenever the urge strikes,” I need to take time to keep my bedroom and office clean, I gotta remember to update and maintain this website and other web projects, I need to play with the cats more often, I need to read more, I need to keep looking for job opportunities, I need to work exercise into my daily schedule as I mentioned in the last section, and on and on. I get so absorbed in the things that I’m doing that I forget to take care of the rest. And sometimes, I’m not going to lie, it’s important for me to get “me” time. As an introvert, I need time to unplug and decompress. Take a nap, watch a show, play a game, pet a cat, sit with dad.

And really, there’s not enough time in the day to do everything. And I say that as someone who doesn’t even currently have work or school filling up half their day. There’s never enough time. It’s a constant juggling act. And I guess what I’m saying here is that, maybe if I’m more consistent with my daily schedule and the pen-and-paper agenda that I keep for myself, it’ll make that juggling process a bit easier. Fingers crossed that I can start making that work!

So those are my two major goals for the New Year. Call it a resolution or just call it some goals that I’m personally going to be working toward. Until then, I’m taking the rest of the year off. From everything! But how are you feeling about the New Year? If you have any resolutions or goals that you’d like to work toward in 2026, tell me in the comments below!

Wondering what Jiggy is up to right now?

Ask Jiggy anything!

December 30, 2025
Jiggy’s Jog Through 2025
It’s the season of all things “Wrapped,” folks… And I don’t just mean holiday gifts!

As we get closer and closer to bidding 2025 adieu, all our favorite sources for entertainment keep hammering us with the stats of which films, TV shows, music, video games, and more that kept us going throughout the year. It’s a trend that seemed to really take off once Spotify’s Wrapped recap became a must-share among users. Now, every platform, from Steam to YouTube, shares a tiny yet interesting nugget of data with its users each December.

I don’t exactly have a lot of “data” for a variety of reasons. For example, not all of my film and TV consumption was done on Netflix. In fact, our home has access to what feels like a dozen streaming services these days, so none of it would really be all that accurate. Instead, I’m presenting all of you with some of what I considered the very best options from what I consumed this year. A good selection that I can confidently recommend!

Film — Animation Ruled the Year

Netflix alone reports that I watched its content for 219 hours (or around 9 days). It is probably a lot by most standards, but do keep in mind that I’m still technically unemployed. When I’m not in my home office trying to remedy that situation, I’m either asleep or in front of a television. So, brushing my excessive consumption aside, here’s what I discovered this year in the world of film.

Like so many others, KPop Demon Hunters seeped into my soul.

While I don’t necessarily have anything against animation, an animated piece of media does typically have to really ‘wow’ me in a way that live-action doesn’t. Which is yet another weird fact about me, I know. Most geeks like me are known to love it, especially anime and manga, but I just never picked up that characteristic, I guess. But three films that I watched multiple times on Netflix this year got me right in the “feels.”

I’ll go ahead and get KPop Demon Hunters out of the way. Yes, I did completely buy into the hype, but only after I had kept reading glowing reviews one right after another, and friends of mine demanded that I watch it with them. As a lifelong, 40-year-old nerd, I do not believe that I fit into this movie’s target demographic in the slightest… But it still managed to capture me. First of all, the soundtrack is full of actual bangers, the mythology and lore is spectacular, and the story of the Demon Hunters themselves is heartwrenching, but understand me when I say: Cat. As a father of cats, it’s hard for me to avoid anything cat-related, so without question, Derpy the big, beautiful, silly, and supernatural blue tiger is the real star of KPop Demon Hunters for me. And I can only hope that any future sequels or tie-ins include Derpy as much as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade did!

The other two animated films that I fell in love with in 2025 were both Academy Award nominees that competed for Best Animated Feature Film. The first is The Wild Robot, a DreamWorks Animation venture that featured the voice work of an all-star cast, including Lupita Nyong’o in the title role. This film was first recommended to me as a candidate for us to watch together in my Discord community, which we did back in July. I have to confess here that the story of Roz, the “wild” robot in question, brought a little bit of a tear to my eye.

This is sort of like my reaction when Flow was first released.

The last film, which actually wound up winning the aforementioned Academy Award, was a little Latvian production called Flow. As I had stated earlier, it’s hard to keep me away from anything cat-related, and boy, does this movie deliver! The movie’s entire plot, which is presented without any spoken dialogue, follows a small cat trying to survive in a world that seems to now be largely devoid of humans, and the water level begins to rise dramatically. The way in which this movie is able to convey the emotion and panic through the eyes of mostly just this one cat (and occasionally his other animal pals) is incredible, and speaks volumes to the way the film was handcrafted in free and open-source graphics software Blender over the course of more than five years. By saying that I “highly recommend” this film is an understatement.

As for honorable mentions, y’all know that I’m a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so I would be remiss not to mention both Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four: First Steps. I think that both movies represent more of a “return to form” for Marvel going into next year, which will see them releasing the next Spider-Man and Avengers offerings. They were also far and away better movies than the fourth Captain America outing that was released in the early part of the year.

Television — This Was More Varied…

I’ve mentioned in past posts and on my Now page that I watch a lot of television. I think part of the reason why I also love the Marvel universe and a few other big franchises is that it’s all serialized. I like taking a big bite out of stories that are likely to continue in future installments. Big fictional worlds created to endure. So, needless to say, I consume more series than I do standalone films. You might want to strap in for this one! It’s gonna be a looooong list.

Key art from Showtime’s Yellowjackets, featuring actresses (from left to right) Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, Tawny Cypress, and Juliette Lewis.

And for the sake of time and length, I’ve also only included TV shows that I actually started watching this year. So the latest seasons of Stranger Things and Wednesday, spectacular as they are, don’t get featured here!
- The Diplomat. I’ve loved Keri Russell since Felicity in the late ’90s/early ’00s, but I couldn’t really get into her award-winning turn on The Americans later on. But surprisingly, this series has hit all the right buttons for me. I’m already on the third season after having just started a couple of weeks ago!
- Wayward. Toni Collette is absolutely chilling in this limited series!
- The Residence. This series had me absolutely hollering! I’m so disappointed that a second season isn’t going forward. Please give Uzo Aduba all the flowers and awards, please and thank you.
- Sirens. This is another limited series that had me captivated from start to finish. Parts of it felt very soapy, but in a kind of good way? Especially awesome performances by Julianne Moore and Meghann Fahy!
- Yellowjackets. This one is a few seasons in already, but I discovered it for the first time this past February and wound up adding Showtime onto my Paramount+ account just so I could continue watching more recent seasons. This show is completely bonkers, but in the most addictive way! The cast is pretty star-studded, also, and they carry the show remarkably well.
- Severance, Silo, & Foundation. Putting these three together for a reason, which is that they all felt like they blurred together for me. Let me explain: After gaining access to Apple TV+ this year, I knew that Severance was going to be one of their first shows that I was going to binge. I like a lot of the cast, and the sci-fi premise already sounded fascinating from the tons of posts I kept seeing on social media about it. And I clearly know myself, because immediately after the first episode, I couldn’t stop. While I was still in the middle of Severance, my brother insisted that I check out both Silo and Foundation, both of which are incredible stories adapted from sci-fi books. So, once Severance was finished, I moved right on to Silo, and then all three seasons of Foundation after that. Each one is quite the adventure, so if any of them sound appealing to you, I do urge you to check them out! I also wrote more about these shows and Apple TV+ overall in this post from the Ghost Archives.
- Daredevil: Born Again. Technically speaking, this series “began” with the Daredevil series on Netflix years ago, but Disney and Marvel rebooted the series to bring it to their “proper” Marvel universe timeline, and its first season was released earlier this year. It still maintains its much darker and violent premise, and Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock/Daredevil), Vincent D’Onofrio (Wilson Fisk/Kingpin), and Jon Bernthal (Frank Castle/The Punisher) still star. It’s a must-watch for fellow Marvel fans!
And I’ll once again give an honorable mention to Marvel with the Ironheart series. Even though it was hugely delayed, only gave us six episodes, and it didn’t receive nearly as much pomp and circumstance as most of the other Marvel properties, it was still a highly entertaining watch for a few hours!

I’ll likely close out this year by finishing up Stranger Things and the second season of Fallout.

Music — Oops, All Throwbacks!

If it wasn’t actually released in the 1980s, then it probably sounds like it did!

According to my Spotify Wrapped recap, my most-played song was “Friday I’m in Love” by The Cure. And while that track was released on their 1992 album Wish, a lot of the band’s popularity and most of their gothic rock and new wave sound were straight out of the ’80s. Several songs in my recap were also from The Midnight—a modern-day band with a retro synthwave sound. You can visualize their inclusion on the soundtracks to every popular ’80s film you can think of.

Jumping back out of the decade I was born in, the rest of my favorite tracks are also tracks that I’ve been jamming to forever. Some selections I’d like to share include:
I know, I know… My favorite song from KPop Demon Hunters wasn’t the massively popular “Golden.” I love that song too, but it’s the closing number for me. Why? Because there’s something beautiful in the moment when you finally meet the real you.

I also resurrected No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom album this year. I don’t know why, but that album is just the sound of the ’90s to me. Probably because of “Don’t Speak” topping charts for an incredible 16 weeks back in 1996. That song was ubiquitous, and I can’t say that I don’t understand—easily one of the absolute greatest rock breakup songs.

If you had this album on repeat at any point in the ’90s, we should be friends!

Oh, and since it’s the holiday season, check my Spotify playlist for my favorite holiday tunes!

Gaming — Return to the Grind

Around this time last year, I stepped back into Palia because I needed something simple, cozy, and had that holiday flair. It served me well. According to my Steam Replay 2025 recap, I spent 52% of my gaming time in Palia this year. I recognize that it is a good amount, especially for a game that is still extremely underdeveloped, but there’s a lot of reasons why I kept going back to that one. I think it’s because the devs did a lot of work to make it feel very ”homey.” Plus, they’ve added a whole bunch of updates throughout 2025 that expanded the game considerably. You can also read a little more about Palia in this post that also appeared in my Ghost Archives.

The other games that I dabbled with this year have something in common with Palia: There’s a lot of grind. My current favorite game at the moment, Enshrouded, as well as Guild Wars 2, the MMO that I’ve decided to return to, all feature what gamers call a “grind.” They all include doing menial tasks as part of the built-in progression system. Mining, foraging, farming, ranching, crafting, etc., are all such tasks. Oftentimes, these games have daily or weekly quests that are very grindy, and once you do them, you earn rewards! If it sounds like work, that’s because sometimes it feels like it! But only in the most fun way possible.

I think it speaks to where I’m at in life right now, honestly. Having trouble finding meaningful employment throughout the last year has me so troubled that I’m looking for work in my entertainment, right? That’s one theory anyway. Sometimes I also just find it a little bit comforting or therapeutic to just sign on and go mindlessly till my garden, bust open some rocks, or can a bunch of pumpkin puree to go sell to the cartoon villagers, okay? Yes, I am an adult, stop judging me!

Palia also features a cat guy named Zeki. Could you blame me???

In any event, those are the three games I’ve been spending the majority of my time on, though I’m always open and willing to dabble in other types of games. If you’d like to come hang out with me sometime while I’m gaming, be sure to check out my livestreams on Twitch! I also try to post entertaining clips from those streams to TikTok and YouTube Shorts, so feel free to enjoy those also!

In Conclusion — Life is Lifin’

Not a lot changed for me overall in 2025. Even my coding and programming courses sorta did a reset. freeCodeCamp retired the Responsive Web Design certification that I earned at the beginning of the year, so I essentially started over with their full-stack course instead, only for them to break it up into modular pieces once more. Sigh. It’s fine… Running through all the HTML and CSS lessons has been a good review, and they’ve added quite a little more to their labs, workshops, and instructional pieces than they had before, so I’m still learning. I’m just very eager to start getting into courses for things that I don’t know anything about so far.

This year, I also started planning out my days. Which sounds weird, because it isn’t like I do a whole lot without a job or a big social life, but I try to stay busy most days. I did finally settle on Obsidian when it comes to a digital notebook, but I’m also keeping the old-school pen and paper agenda. I love when things are in the virtual space where I spend most of my time anyway, but there’s something about physically writing things down and taking notes that helps things stick to my brain a little bit better. I’m not too disciplined yet and sometimes have low-energy days where I do not manage to get everything accomplished that I set for myself, but I think the point is that I’m making an effort and trying every single day. Life is what you make it, you know?

Anyway, if you’ve read this far, I appreciate you big time and hope you have the loveliest of holiday seasons with a few of my recommendations found here. And I beg you to tell me: What were your favorites this year??
December 21, 2025
The Festive Film Feeling

We don’t normally get very “into” the winter holidays, but there are exactly two movies that I watch every year.

Before I share which movies they are, I want to make sure anyone reading understands that, while my family does celebrate and observe Christmas, we don’t typically make a point of making everything feel magically seasonal. I appreciate a modestly-sized tree, some twinkly lights, excellent food with the family—none of whom should have to work, preferably—on Christmas Day, and maybe a small gift or two. And quite frankly, even the gifts are optional most years. Because why does it always seem like everybody’s money situation gets complicated in December? What is that even about?

Also, when did the holidays start the day after Halloween? I’m not trying to yuck anyone’s yum here (because really, you do you, boo!), but we have never so much as hummed that Mariah Carey song until after Thanksgiving. We are a family of people who love to eat, so we need to give Thanksgiving its due first.

But November has come and gone, so it’s finally time for us to break out the holiday cheer with the rest of the class. Not only can you find that Mariah song on my brand-new Christmas Jams playlist, but I’m also going to fill you in on the only two films I feel the urge to watch every single holiday season. One is usually considered a very beloved holiday romcom, while the other is… Not. But I have my reasons, so stick with me.

The Family Stone

Okay, so this movie is very hated by critics, and to be fair, a good amount of the vitriol is justified. Specifically, the elements about Tyrone Giordano and Sarah Jessica Parker’s characters that are outlined in this review by Stereogum. However, there are a lot of good things and some emotional aspects of the movie that I think I mostly recognize from experience with my own quirky family. That alone helps it land on a soft, mushy part of my heart, but the fact that it has an all-star cast, many of whom I really like and who I think dialed in a decent performance, certainly helps matters.

For those who haven’t seen it, The Family Stone was released in 2005 and stars Diane Keaton, Craig T. Nelson, Dermot Mulroney, Luke Wilson, Claire Danes, Rachel McAdams, Elizabeth Reaser, and the previously mentioned Tyrone Giordano and Sarah Jessica Parker. The plot revolves around parents Sybil (Keaton) and Kelly (Nelson) and their five adult children, Everett (Mulroney), Ben (Wilson), Susannah (Reaser), Thad (Giordano), and Amy (McAdams), all of whom are gathering in their New England hometown to celebrate the Christmas holiday with each other. Everett, however, is bringing his uptight girlfriend Meredith (Parker) home for the first time, and things get heated when she fails to live up to the family’s expectations. Things get so intense, in fact, that she later calls her sister, Julie (Danes), to join the fray in a last-ditch effort to receive the support she isn’t getting from Everett.

Everett eventually finds himself falling in love with Julie, rather than Meredith, whom he had initially planned to propose to. Everything shakes out okay in the end, though, because his kooky brother Ben also has an unlikely attraction to Meredith. Everything culminates in a big slap fight showdown with Everett and Ben, and most of the ladies on the kitchen floor covered in Christmas morning breakfast strata (which sounds delish, by the way).

The big Stone family showdown in question.

It is basically the typical Christmas romcom you might expect to see on the Hallmark Channel, but instead, it had a theatrical release and starred actual A-list actors. And truth be told, I’m not at all the kind of person who enjoys Hallmark Christmas movies. Especially bad ones, which this movie would no doubt categorically qualify as, to most film reviewers. But there are a few reasons why I love it.

The family dynamic reminds me a lot of my own. My own siblings and I have a relationship not unlike the trio of Everett, Ben, and Amy, standing at the bottom of the stairs, smacking each other over the head for some reason or another. My mother was also the second-born of six siblings, most of whom had children, and many of those children have children now. For many, many years, we spent our holidays surrounded by aunts, uncles, and literally countless amounts of cousins. Which is fun until it isn’t. There was a lot of drama some years, some of which I would have traded for a slap fight instead. Truthfully, we probably did have a slap fight or two. But there are also core memories that I made with my family during these holidays. Memories that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Sybil’s untimely passing toward the end of the movie hits a little close to home, too. The breast cancer she once survived has returned, and there’s no treating it this time. Cancer has impacted my family more times than I like to try keeping track of, especially regarding my own Christmas-loving mother. But I’m a weird dude, and sometimes, consuming sad or painful things in pop culture makes me actually feel a little bit better. Like, somehow, if I look things directly in the eye, they don’t feel quite as threatening. It feels cathartic in a messed-up kinda way, I guess. It’ll feel doubly so this year after Diane Keaton’s own real-life passing.

The movie may be poorly written, but I love that it’s Christmas. I love that it’s family. And I love that I can see my own mother in it. I don’t really think you need much more.

Love Actually

Although this 2003 film is the better of the two, I feel like I won’t need to write nearly as much about it here, because it’s already one that is pretty well-regarded by critics. And this time, I can’t really argue with the critics. I find that it’s a very well-done British romcom set during the holiday season. I think that the film largely found success because it also features a large ensemble comprised of big names, but the connected story also shines by being simultaneously emotional and lighthearted.

Set in the United Kingdom, Love Actually begins with a narration by Hugh Grant’s character, explaining that whenever he gets stressed out or depressed by the crazy world we live in, he likes to think about the arrivals gate at the airport. There, one can typically find friends, families, significant others, etc., waiting to embrace their loved ones getting off a flight. The movie then begins by telling several different types of “love” stories.

In my opinion, the reason these separate but interconnected stories work so cohesively is because of their ability to display different definitions of the word love. For example, the love between two longtime friends is illustrated in the story between aging rockstar Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) and his manager Joe (Gregor Fisher). The feeling of unrequited love is showcased most effectively in the story involving Mark (Andrew Lincoln) and his feelings for Juliet (Keira Knightley), who has just married Mark’s best friend Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor). A childhood crush is played out between Sam (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and Joanna (Olivia Olson), while Sam’s step-dad, Daniel (Liam Neeson), is mourning the death of his wife. Grant’s character, David, is the new Prime Minister who develops feelings for a junior member of his staff, Natalie (Martine McCutcheon). Numerous other prominent stories emerge as the movie carries on during the Christmas season, with each linked in some way to the others.

In case you needed someone to literally draw you a picture to keep all of the movie’s storylines straight!

Except for the storyline involving Harry (Alan Rickman) and Karen (Emma Thompson), all of Love Actually‘s plot points wrap themselves up in a nice little bow by the end of the film. It’s something of a seasonal warm hug that I just like to take in before the holiday season is over. Kinda like how you gotta have that one peppermint mocha or cup of nog to really feel like it’s the season—it just doesn’t feel right without it. And I think the fact that Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Martine McCutcheon recently appeared in a Love Actually-themed commercial for the Google Pixel is evidence enough that it’s a widely shared sentiment!

It doesn’t matter how you love someone. It just matters that you do.

I mean, he’s kind of a stalker, but can we deny that Mark’s gesture was sorta romantic?

So there you have it… The two movies that I watch every holiday season. Mostly because I’m not into the “classics” the way that some folks are, and also because of all the reasons I stated above.

What holiday movies are on your must-watch list? Let me know, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll give it a view myself this year!

Happy Holidays! 🎄💖

December 9, 2025
You Need a Website Too!

As you may have gathered from the fact that you’re reading something on it, I have a website! And guess what? You should have one too!

You see, back in the early years of the internet, most folks who were technically savvy enough did have their own personal websites. The web was a weird, colorful, and wonderful place to visit and browse for a while. Even corporate websites were filled to the brim with clashing colors, flashing animations, and the horror we now know as the font Comic Sans. It was a digital era full of creativity and free expression. It was also one of the earliest examples of decentralization on the web… Something that more and more people, like myself, are gravitating toward.

Building a website could be this easy!

Wikipedia defines “decentralization” as: “the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and given to smaller factions within it.” If you’re looking for a modern example of decentralization on the web, look no further than the micro-blogging platform Mastodon. Rather than being hosted on a single company’s servers, Mastodon is made up of several servers hosted by its users on their own equipment. This means that users are directly in control of their own data, and some super-rich billionaire bro can’t come in and purchase Mastodon because it’s already distributed to the public.

In April 2022, the popular app Twitter was infamously purchased by Elon Musk, who has subsequently made numerous unpopular changes to policies and moderation that has seen a persistent spike in hate speech and misinformation. The platform, now known as X (or “Xitter” if you prefer my cheeky way of referring to it), also took away the ability for users to fully block one another. Grok, Xitter’s AI chatbot, is also now trained using data from its own users. Which might be okay, if Grok also weren’t occasionally known to praise Hitler. In a nutshell, when a billionaire takes over a public forum, it generally doesn’t go well. It’s a large part of the reason why I stepped away from Xitter—which was my favorite social media platform, once upon a time—around this time last year, and set out on a path toward greener pastures on both Bluesky and Mastodon, both of which are built on decentralized protocols.

Post by @sophie@social.lol

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Building your own website, in many ways, helps alleviate the stress of social media, or could maybe even help you eliminate it. Even though it has its dark sides, I love the internet and how connected it has helped us all become. So I didn’t ever truly feel like I could be completely without an internet presence of some kind. And being the technical, computer-heavy user that I am, building my own websites and blogs has come naturally. I’ve had one off and on since I was in my teens. The best part about having this website, for me, is that I can still write about my life and interests and post photos and other media without it being connected or networked to everyone else. My posts don’t automatically show up in your feeds, obnoxiously reminding you to read them, it’s true. But you know where to find me if you ever do find yourself missing me or my content.

That helps a lot with the feeling like I’m “out of the loop” with all my former Facebook and Xitter friends. And any time that I start feeling like I might miss Xitter, I log into my old account, take a gander at my feed, and immediately “nope!” right back out. Do I secretly hope that Elon will eventually give up on it, and someone else is able to revive it back to its former glory? You better believe it! But just in case that unlikely event never comes to pass, I’m hoping to keep this space for as long as possible. It’s my way of expressing myself and creating content in a way that is authentically me, just like the Mastodon post I shared up above states.

And quite frankly, I’d love to see you all express yourselves in similar ways! That’s my totally selfish way of advocating for you to build your own website, but it’s valid nonetheless. 😉

💡 Interested in building your own website?? I’m more than happy to help! Feel free to get in touch.

November 26, 2025
Jiggy for Good

Edited on 11/21/2025: When I launched this campaign last weekend, I made a mistake and set everything up via Tiltify, a fantastic charity fundraising tool commonly used by streamers, because I was under the impression (from Twitch’s own wording in their announcement post) that they would count toward receiving the chat incentives (badges, emotes, etc.), but it turns out that is not the case! In an effort to resolve the issue, I’m transferring the campaign from Tiltify to Twitch’s native charity tools. Any further donations made on Twitch should now award chat incentives! I’ve also lowered our goal from $250 to $200 since we’re now a week into the campaign. You can still donate at any time, only now you can do so directly on my Twitch channel page. Any and all “donate” links and buttons around this site will also be updated to reflect that change! Many, many apologies for the confusion!

Edited on 12/2/2025: The campaign has now ended. Thank you for all the support!

I’m excited to announce that I’m participating in my very first livestream charity campaign!

Many of you already know that I spend three nights a week livestreaming on my Twitch channel. In fact, in case you missed it, this very website now has an entire page dedicated to those streams, and you can monitor when I’m live on the homepage! It’s pretty cool, they are a lot of fun, and it’s absolutely one of the biggest extensions of my passion for creating things on the web, so naturally, it should be featured pretty prominently here. And now, I’ve decided to take it up a notch and give something back this holiday season!

I’m going to be participating in Twitch’s own Together for Good campaign, presented by Wicked: For Good, this year. My channel specifically will be raising funds for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) beginning now through December 2nd. While I will still humbly accept any support from the community in the form of subscriptions, tips, and bits, I’m asking that you instead donate to this cause that’s very close to my heart. As an animal lover, I believe that we share this world with them, and they deserve to feel safe and loved just like all of us do. The ASPCA works to make that happen for as many neglected, abused, and homeless animals as possible here in the United States. Together, we can hopefully make a difference.

My Twitch Together for Good charity livestream schedule.

In return, Twitch and Wicked are offering up a bunch of extra perks! I could potentially be featured on the front page of the website, which in turn, helps new viewers and potential donors find us. And those of you who donate or share clips from our charity streams will earn fun things like chat badges, emotes, and more! Plus, you just might see me get forced to try some weird gaming challenges, catch cameos from my kitties, or try an odd-flavored candy cane or two during an 8-hour streaming marathon that I have planned on Black Friday (November 28th)!

DONATE NOW

If you have no interest in hanging out during our streams but still want to help out, not a problem! You can donate to the campaign fundraiser any time before December 2nd. Also, since I know some folks are already spending a ton of money during the holidays, you can help out simply by hanging out in the stream chat whenever we’re live or sharing and amplifying the campaign! Since I still have such a “smol” community, my initial goal is to raise $250 for the ASPCA, but if we happen to smash that goal and go above and beyond… Even better!

Hope to see and hear from you all soon. I can’t wait to get started! ❤️

November 14, 2025
My Mom the Gamer

If my mom were still around, she would be making kids cry on Fortnite.

Unfortunately, however, my mother passed away in 2000 from cancer when I was still pretty young. But one of my favorite things about her, that most assuredly carried on in me and in my two siblings, was that she was also a gamer. She was a fan of some of the earliest video games, including the very first game in The Legend of Zelda franchise. Before Nintendo Power, internet walkthroughs, and official players’ guides were even a thing, she was not only making her way through each dungeon and collecting pieces of the Triforce, but also mapping them out by hand. On graph paper and in excruciating detail!

Despite all the resources at our fingertips today, I still wish that I had those original handmade maps. I don’t feel like the hardcore gamers that exist today would ever even believe that a working mother of three played a video game at all, much less enjoying it and progressing through it enough to be that dedicated. And so many times in the years that have passed, when we’ve failed to maneuver our way through an instance in World of Warcraft, she would be rallying us back in fighting shape immediately… Whether it was a school night or not! And you best believe she would have been pwning every noob in those Mythic+ dungeons on the daily.

And that could translate to just about any game she set her sights on. She was a big fan of classic puzzle games and tabletop games, too. Don’t challenge her to a game of Yahtzee! or Clue unless you want your ass beat. She was very polite, thoughtful, inclusive, and very loving, but she’s also who taught me this important life lesson: “Don’t get mad, get even!”

Her birthday just recently passed on November 4th. I miss her a lot and often wonder how our lives would be different if she were still here. Not just in the ways the gaming industry has changed, but also maybe in the ways she would have helped change it. But also, as weird as it is to realize, she’s now been gone for more of my life than she was around for, and I wonder what it would have been like to know her as a fully-formed adult. If you can even call me that. But one thing I’m glad for is that her love of gaming eventually became my love of gaming. I’m glad that, as a small child, she let me ”help” her play by pushing buttons on the unplugged controller next to her. It’s one of my earliest and most fond memories of her, that I somehow managed to absorb into my Jello mold of a brain, because it’s also one that I hope I never forget. ❤️

November 9, 2025
Navigating Life: Age, Regrets, and Growth

Do you feel your actual age?

A few days ago, I was walking somewhere and noticed myself doing “the shuffle.” You know the one: where your entire weight seems to shift between legs the whole way because something is creaking and painful somewhere. My sister, who came from Indiana like the rest of us, likes to refer to it as a “hitch in your get-along,” which is somehow the most Kansas any of us has ever sounded. When I finally paused, I thought about how I’m going to be forty-one (!!!) in March.

41!

I’m still reeling from having entered my forties in the first place. I don’t think I’ve ever been someone who has cared much about a person’s age, except for myself. I distinctly remember being a kid and thinking that 25 seemed “old” and that I’d never make it there. (To be fair, I was kind of a LOT as a child.) And hey, look at us now! But do you want to know the really weird bit? While sometimes I physically feel my age, like when I got that hitch in my get-along or my incredibly painful feet back during my brief stint in retail, I don’t feel my age at all mentally or emotionally. I’m still me inside — the same kid or teen or twentysomething or even thirtysomething that loves computers, video games, TV shows, and good music. I love storytelling and a sense of community and fun. And the idea of owning a home or getting married and having kids is still completely foreign, while people that I graduated from high school with are starting to become grandparents!

Anyone else relate more and more to Ouiser lately??

An older friend of mine once told me that it’ll always be this way, too. You’re always the same on the inside; it’s just that your body grows old, weak, and tired without your consent, and it sucks. Because as we age, we also learn more about people and the world around us. Imagine me at 16, armed with the knowledge, experience, and insatiable craving for the things that spark joy that I have now? I feel like I would’ve been unstoppable! Most awkward kid ever? For sure… But it would have been incredible.

Sometimes it makes me sad to think about all the things I didn’t do when I was younger. Finishing college, pursuing things that I loved for a career, etc., because hey… I might have been somewhere and settled by now! But I’m also not upset about who I’ve become by taking the path less traveled. I’ve concluded in the last few years that maybe I’m not meant to have kids or a spouse of my own. I’ve got my dad, my siblings, and my kitties, which, quite frankly, I should be able to claim as dependents with how expensive it is to care for them. I’m learning and pursuing what I love now, and while it’s taking an excruciatingly long time for me to get it, I also have a better sense of seriousness and determination about it. The 23-year-old version of myself, who had spent his birthday in Las Vegas drinking and throwing money away, would not have even thought twice about coding and web development. Now I literally cannot even imagine having fun on a birthday trip to Vegas. And I’m pretty okay about it!

There’s this thought that I’ve always had, which is that you wouldn’t be who you are today if you had made different decisions in the past. And we maybe shouldn’t have many regrets in life because of it. I don’t ordinarily subscribe to the idea that “everything happens for a reason,” but in this case, maybe it’s true. Maybe the past made us all who we are for reasons we just don’t understand until the future becomes the present. And until we can jump in a DeLorean and hit the rewind button, we’re going to have to live with it. (How’s that for “elder Millennial” pop culture references?? 😉)

Sound good?

October 22, 2025
The Magic of Docker

The popular British science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once said,

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

And let me tell you all this: I’ve started practicing magic.

That quote is the third of three laws Clarke put forward, and is probably one of the most repeated and cited. But when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Could you imagine someone from centuries in the past time-traveling to our present day? They would think everything was foreign, or maybe even sorcery. I recently saw this concept illustrated beautifully in the classic 1993 Halloween film Hocus Pocus. It’s one that we watch at least once a year during “Spooky Season,” and the one particular scene that stands out to me these days is when one of the teen characters, Max (Omri Katz), threatens and confuses the witchy Sanderson Sisters (Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and Sarah Jessica Parker) from the past with a power of his own: the “Burning Rain of Death,” which involves him holding a cigarette lighter to a fire suppression system and causing the sprinklers to engage. They briefly scream, assuming the falling liquid is deadly because they’d never seen a mortal child “make fire in his hand.” Clarke told no lies — the sisters witnessed Max perform actual magic.

The “Burning Rain of Death” scene in question.

As a lifelong Trekkie, I also like to throw it back to the ’60s. The casual Star Trek viewer might think that the technology Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew utilize is nothing short of fairy tale make-believe. But in today’s age, their hand-held wireless communicators, face-to-face video conferencing, and voice-activated digital assistants are all common tech you can find on the average device in your pocket. In fact, your iPhones and Androids are just a few small features short of literally being a “tricorder.” Recently, in one episode of Strange New Worlds (one of Star Trek‘s more recent spinoffs), the character of La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) makes off with vital information she found on a PADD that our new, young Scotty (Martin Quinn) had gathered. Rather than a simple prop made to look like said “PADD,” I think the series has just started using actual iPads, because I was struck by how unfuturistic the device looked… Despite the series being set hundreds of years in the future. And while scientists are still working on making them a reality, Star Trek still has plenty of tech that seems downright impossible for those of us still stuck in the past.

Uhura’s had it with this shit, too.

Well, I guess the future is now, because I’ve started learning more than I expected to when I started tinkering with an old PC of mine. I was determined to turn it into something of a “private server” for me and the family to use, however we wanted. You may recall that I initially tried to host this very website on it for roughly a month before I threw in the towel on trying to keep it up and accessible. The problem was largely that I had decided to use a platform called YunoHost (the name of which is clever internet shorthand for the question “y u no host?”), which you can install onto any available server and then run self-hosted software on it with just a few clicks. No less impressive than installing an app on your phone, really. The issue, though, is that YunoHost had a bizarre way of sinking its hooks into every part of the server’s system, which complicated the way that I wanted to host stuff outside of its services.

That was when I sorta made the hasty decision to quit the server project. I wiped the entire machine, moved this website over to a proper host (much of which you can read about in my last post), and called it a day. My brain kept thinking about it all, though, and I decided that I still wanted to experiment. Tinkering with this stuff and the feeling of creating something useful out of what was otherwise useless equipment was turning out to be a little addictive. My nephew was also still keen to at least get the Jellyfin media platform running for his library of literally hundreds of digitized movies. Plus, my frustration, in reality, stemmed from my mistake of putting all my eggs into YunoHost’s basket, not the homelab itself. So I started looking into alternative approaches to what I was already trying to accomplish.

That new approach turned out to be Docker!

For the non-technical, Docker is a platform that allows you to install services, apps, and other types of software into virtual “containers” on your computer (or a server), which not only allows for really clean and organized stacks of tech, but it also prevents software from gaining footholds in the rest of your system!!! Which I can’t emphasize enough, since that was the biggest issue from the last build that I did. Since it all stays isolated in its own little containers, you can actually test and experiment with stuff without them all conflicting with one another. Then, when you decide you aren’t going to use it or don’t like it, you can delete the whole dang container as quick as you can type docker compose down!

It’s perfect for someone like me, who mostly enjoys learning by doing. I’m still wrapping my brain around the concept of testing things before launching them or throwing open the door for others to enjoy stuff that I’m hosting, but even then, it’s still been a really fulfilling concept to learn. I had to learn how to set up network utilities like Nginx Proxy Manager and Pi-hole — the lack of which I have a sneaking suspicion may have contributed to my WordPress hosting issues before the wipe — and finally got Jellyfin up and running right before my nephew got me the media library to populate it with. I’ve even started learning how to customize the software by initializing it all via Docker Compose, a method that spins up an app based on your commands written into a docker-compose.yml file. It’s all pretty incredible, and has had me Googling topics like “fun docker images” for the past week.

Now, even my 72-year-old father can enjoy the hundreds of movies and shows we’re serving up on his TV’s Jellyfin app. Almost as if by magic. ✨

October 13, 2025
Reset

Making my own decisions is kind of a struggle.

If you’re a regular viewer of jiggyflyjoe.com, you may have noticed that it has undergone some major changes this year since I launched it as a blog/email newsletter hybrid on Substack back in February. You see, what Substack is doing is pretty interesting. It has seen a growing number of independent journalists and writers like Aaron Parnas and Under the Desk News set up shop on the platform that could easily be described as a hybrid between traditional blogging, email newsletters, and social media. I’ve stated numerous times, however, that it was brought to my attention pretty early on that Substack also willingly platforms white supremacists. So I packed up shop and swiftly moved over to Ghost instead.

Ghost was surprisingly refreshing. That’s why Jiggy’s Journal thrived over there for so long. Ghost is also a hybrid platform that mashes up blogging and email. They’re also in the early stages of adopting the open web to add that crucial “social media” element to it. Ghost also has one of the slickest and most enjoyable editor, which allows you to utilize Rich Text and/or Markdown simultaneously. I had (and, honestly, still have) high hopes for Ghost. I’m still rooting for them. But ultimately, the platform was difficult for me to maintain as a self-hosted app on my own server, and paying for their Ghost(Pro) service felt like too much for a personal website like this one. Especially since I would have had to fork over even more cash for the full ability to customize the website’s look, layout, and other critical settings for me.

So ultimately, I wound up back on the old standard WordPress. And look, I thought I would be able to self-host WordPress on my own server because installing it and getting it running was surprisingly quick and easy. But since I’m still extremely new to the whole “self-hosting” thing, I kept running into catastrophic system failure after catastrophic system failure, and in my mind, jiggyflyjoe.com needs to be up and running 24/7. It’s the one link that I provide everywhere on the web. In my social media bios, on other website forums, and even on-screen during my Twitch streams. That said, when the link that I have posted all over the internet doesn’t work, it’s like OCD takes over, and I start to get itchy. What I wound up doing instead is scrapping the entire self-host server build, and I moved this site over to a proper hosting service. Because even while I continue to tinker and experiment with my own home lab and try to understand the concept of Docker, this here website needs stability that only the professionals can provide right now.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve taken steps to rebuild this site from scratch, and per usual, there were a few casualties. The mailing list was an important one, but I was thankfully able to log back into an old database on the server and manually extract it before fully wiping it, so you should all still receive these posts in your inbox. If not, there are plenty of spaces around jiggyflyjoe.com where you can still subscribe (or re-subscribe if I somehow missed you). One of those places is right below this paragraph! Most of the text from all my old posts is still available, too, but they may have some broken links and missing images, comments, and other elements. I’m going to try and restore the important stuff here and there as I’m able. Those old posts can now be found in The Ghost Archives, because it just sounds cool and spooky, but also because a majority of those posts were written on Ghost.

Your email goes here!

Essentially, I’m just trying to say: Please don’t mind the mess!

More cool things are coming to the website, as well. WordPress itself is kind of a fun place to experiment because there are so many compatible plugins and services for it. And unlike the platforms in my past, I have full control over this digital space, and we can turn it into whatever we want it to be.

Stay tuned! 😉

October 4, 2025
The Funny Farm

I’m raising chickens now.

Okay, admittedly, they are virtual chickens within a video game called Palia, that my sister and I have grown very fond of over the past year or so. The chickens (referred to in the game’s world as “pekis”) were added to the game this week in an update that also includes an entire animal husbandry and ranching system, as well as modular player housing, and a variety of other fun additions that player’s have practically been begging for since the game’s debut. It all comes on the heels of the game’s Elderwood Expansion, which opened up an entire “adventure zone” and brought Palia, which was available to PC and Nintendo Switch players, to Xbox and PlayStation consoles also.

An adult and baby peki in Palia.

Launched in late 2023, Palia is essentially a fantasy adventure life simulator. Players dive into a realm as one of the first ancient humans to re-emerge in a high-fantasy world. They will build a home and relationships with the villagers, develop skills in a multitude of different crafts and disciplines, and explore and shape the world and story around them. The game is also an online multiplayer service, which means you’ll see other players running around inside of it, and can even team up with them to reap greater rewards. The game even encourages it, providing bonuses for players who tackle their to-do list together!

Did I mention that the game is completely free to download and play?

Video games without a price tag attached don’t usually attract much attention. They often contain microtransactions or a “premium store” designed to earn their revenue in ways that can sometimes be a little scummy. If you find yourself in a free game, you usually wind up needing additional lives, turns, perks, add-ons, and other items to keep playing, and those are going to cost you some of your hard-earned dollars, and thus get dubbed “pay-to-win” games in the sense that they aren’t truly a free experience across the board. That’s why many popular titles wind up charging upwards of $60-$90 to purchase the game upfront and/or require a recurring subscription to play. Some titles like Palia, however, have turned that sales model on its head.

Rather than charging for the game or exploiting pay-to-win mechanics, Palia has subscribed to what I like to refer to as the “Fortnite model.” Much like that massively popular battle royale game, Palia also has a premium store, but nearly everything in it is for cosmetic purposes only. You can buy a virtual peki to run alongside you in the game, a fancy outfit, or even an entire landscape on which to plant your own farm and cottage. But the big difference is that it has a negligible impact on actual gameplay. You don’t have to spend a single penny in Palia to have the same experience as the people who spend a fortune on it. The wealthier player has no gameplay advantage over the poorer of the two. In my opinion, that’s actually kinda beautiful and makes games like it far more accessible for the average gamer.

In my game, I’ve started the new ranching skill and adopted two pekis. Initially, I named the two “Tigger” and “Rufus” after my oldest two cats, but as I played further, it turns out that you need to breed the two together in order to birth baby pekis. Though the game is genderless in most circumstances, it still felt awkward for me to have two of my boys mate to create offspring. So once I devised a new naming convention and acquired a few “Rename Cookies” once I was able, I set out on figuring out some fun new names for my feathered friends. Now I have four pekis — the original two and two babies — named Chick Jagger, Henifer Aniston, Angelina Jopeep, and Loretta Hen. No, they’re not completely original, but I did find them clever enough after racking my brain forever and eventually consulting Google for assistance (this page in particular was very handy). Just wait until I get Feather Flocklear and Chick Norris!

Anyway, in case anyone has been wondering where I’ve been for the last several days, I’ve been letting myself get absorbed back into my weird and wonderful little world of Palia. It feels a lot better than doomscrolling and letting myself be completely consumed by the constant darkness in our real world right now. Feel free to stop by my Twitch channel sometime to hang out while we wander through the game together live, or you can even find some clips from those streams on TikTok and YouTube Shorts! One of my favorites especially is when the hot pot table blows my hair off!

September 13, 2025