Hey, remember back when I said I felt so excited to get back to writing, and that I had so many ideas and inspirations?
Yeah, about that … sometimes the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I ended up running into a bunch of roadblocks that made the month of July a bit of a dry spell for content. Yeah, there were some Mega Man X2 pieces posted at the start of the month, but those were technically written in late June; I just didn’t slap the screenshots in until July. This is the only piece I technically wrote during the month.
So what happened? In the words of “Diamond” Joe Quimby, it can be - and was - two things.
First, for some reason I was really tired throughout the month of July, even more so than usual. That meant that during my normal writing time - midday when the kids were napping - I was napping as well. I blame the pandemic. The time spent indoors is causing my kids to get extra stir crazy (and thus in need of more consistent and direct attention), and the rather disastrous state of the U.S. is a constant source of mental strain. Put it together and most of the time I could barely get through the day most of the time.
As for the second problem, that’s a bit of a longer story. In early July, I had played through Mega Man X3, and took a bunch of screenshots along the way. But then I decided I needed to take a break from Mega Man for a bit, and started playing some other games. I planned on writing about these games as well, so once again I took plenty of screenshots.
Near the end of the month, I had somewhere around 200 screenshots on my Switch’s SD card, so on the morning of July 21st, I plugged it into my computer to copy them off. But then something happened involving one of the kiddos that required my immediate attention. Then another thing happened. And another thing. Sometime later (maybe an hour later, but maybe less) I packed the laptop up and put it away, having realized my mistake in thinking I could use it while the kids were awake.
Some time later in the day, I was writing that piece on Outrun culture, and wanted to take some screenshots of the Out Run arcade game. I went to grab the Switch, and that’s when it hit me - the SD card was no longer in the laptop, but I had no memory of putting it back in the console. It was straight up missing. I checked my pockets, on several pairs of pants, even though I had no memory of ever taking it out of the laptop. I scoured every corner of the room, just in case it fell out and go kicked around. Nothing.
That is when it hit me - what if one of the kids took it? On one hand, they love playing with my laptop. On the other hand, I had never seen either of them remove any peripherals before. It seemed like a tossup, but ultimately I figured it was the only reasonable explanation. When kids get ahold of a “treasure” they’re not supposed to have, there is no telling what they may do with it, or where they may hide it. And considering it wasn’t showing up anywhere …
Anyway, fast forward to today. One of the kids came to me and asked for “tent”, which meant she wanted to play with this:
Notice that it uses a box fan to inflate. After setting up the tent, I adjusted the fan a bit, and that is when I heard the unmistakable sound of plastic scraping against plastic. That is when I discovered the problem; a Micro SD card and card reader were lying right beneath the blade.
In a flash, my theory became correct, Mrs. Wolfe’s prediction that it would turn up sooner or later became correct, and I now knew why I couldn’t find it in the first place. Aside from the fact that “inside of a box fan” was never going to be on my list of places to look, I had moved the fan into the garage sometime on the morning of the 21st. By the time I started looking for the card, the fan was out of sight, and thus out of mind.
In any case, the temporary loss of the card meant the temporary loss of those 200 or so screenshots. This sapped me of almost all my motivation to write about any of the games I had played. It’s hard to illustrate my observations without some visual aids, and I really didn’t feel like going back through these games just to grab screens. I started thinking about how I could still write about Mega Man X 3, and in the meantime I just played a bunch of new stuff to “ease the pain”, so to speak.
Thankfully, aside from a bit of damage to the corner, the SD card works perfectly:
That means I got my screenshots back! And I guess now I have a spare card for my Switch, in case the replacement I bought also gets lost (or breaks, or fills up). And wouldn’t you know it, but I suddenly feel motivated to write again! It’s almost as if getting all those screens I worked so hard to get made a difference or something.
Nawwww, that can’t be it. Surely that was just a coincidence or something 🤦♂️
Other Thoughts
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In retrospect, I don't regret buying a replacement SD card. While the original one _did_ eventually show up, it was just as likely that it could have wound up being put in the trash, or the toilet, or down an air conditioning vent. Replacing it was a "better safe than sorry" decision.
However, I _kind_ of regret that I paid a premium to get a replacement card from Target (via curbside pickup), rather than ordering a cheaper one from Amazon. I could have easily downloaded the games I was currently playing onto the Switch's internal memory for the handful of days I would have waited for it to ship.
But again, I only _kind_ of regret it. When one spends most of their waking hours during a majority of their days watching their stir-crazy twins - in the middle of a global pandemic that is pulverizing the nation's combined mental health - one takes an exaggerated amount of solace in the few things one can rely on or control. Even if I didn't _need_ instant access to all of my Switch games right that minute, getting that luxury back right away did an outsized amount of good for my sanity (and was well worth the ten dollar premium). Plus, now I have a card with a Super Mario mushroom on it!
- After this fiasco, I am extremely happy I decided to subscribe to Nintendo's Online service, as it meant that all my save games were backed up in the cloud. Once I redownloaded my games onto the new SD card, I was able to pick up where I left off, as if nothing had gone wrong.
