Where the hell have I ended up?
My last post dates back to mid-November last year… An eternity. I don’t think I’ve ever gone this long between two posts before.

I simply lived.
I focused on gaming.
I finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and found it magnificent, even though I’ve never really played a turn-based combat game in depth before.

Then I made an important choice: after just a few months, I sold my super high-end gaming PC. I realized I’m not a PC gamer at all—I’m a console gamer. I need to not have to deal with any hardware issues, not worry about updates or anything like that—just turn on the console and play.

And I made another big decision: I sold all the Xbox devices I owned and bought a PlayStation Pro. Specifically, the 30th Anniversary limited edition.
Xbox has basically become a publisher now, releasing all its games on PlayStation too, so for me, there’s no point in keeping two consoles anymore. The PlayStation ecosystem has everything I need, and when I’m traveling, the PlayStation Portal finally lets me play any game in my library… It doesn’t get better than that!

What else? We went back to Italy for the Christmas holidays. A week and a half that was super intense—full of food, family, and friends. I don’t think we’re quite set up yet to properly manage our schedule when we’re in Italy; we mostly get overwhelmed by all the events and find it really hard to say no…

We’ve started the paperwork to get our green card. This will give us a bit more peace of mind, and we won’t have to go back to Italy every 3 years to renew our visa anymore. On the flip side, for now we can’t leave the United States until the process is complete, and it could take up to 18 months.

In the meantime, on January 22 I had shoulder surgery. I dealt with the U.S. healthcare system and I can’t really complain—obviously I have great insurance, and I only had to pay “just” $2,000 for everything. But the system is so efficient that over the weekend my surgeon called me on my cell phone to check how I was doing. At least on that front, we were pleasantly surprised, unlike what we’re usually used to—doctors mostly trying to cover up the pain rather than treat the root causes.

Our dog Panna had surgery in Italy for a melanoma on her belly. Back in September, we decided to leave her there until December to avoid stressing her out with travel. Once we got back to the United States in January, they told us the melanoma was malignant and there were some micro-metastases. We saw an oncologist here, who said the results suggest no recurrence at the moment and no other cells have been affected. Fingers crossed.

I keep creating content on my YouTube channel, I’m still having fun, and every now and then I go back to Feedly to read posts from a few blogs. I don’t know if I’ve lost interest or if I’m just tired of being online, but that’s where things stand right now, and it’ll continue like this for the time being. My blog is always here, and when I have something else to say, you’ll know.