In August of 2023 I was fully burnt out from work, pandemic, and relocation and decided I needed to leave Gitpod. It is a great group of people and I wish them the best, but I had been running on fumes for a while and I just needed to stop.

Of course right after leaving, I took a short holiday trip with my partner and picked up Covid for the first time in September. Isolating on a couch for a few days in a failed attempt to keep Rachel from getting sick, I dove into watching a lot of Dimension 20, a Dungeons and Dragons actual play show put on by the comedians at CollegeHumor (now renamed Dropout).

There are other shows out there, Critical Role being the more famous one, that had been in my periphery for a long time as I would browse youtube. What finally motivated me to sit down and watch a few episodes was Hank Green’s appearance in Mentopolis, a series that asks the hard hitting speculative fiction question of: “what if Raymond Chandler wrote Inside Out?” trailer - first episode.

I realize I’m likely late to discover this among my peers but it’s been a joy to watch those shows, dive into those podcasts, and rediscover the TTRPG scene that I had only small glimpses of as a teen.