A month ago, all was well. I was free, and at home. I could enjoy whatever  wanted to whenever I wanted to. My blog was just about to reach my landmark goal of 100 thousand views total. That's when the dreaded thing happened. School started. A month ago, I was at 97,000 views. I figured that it was inevitable that I would reach my goal within a month. After all, I used to get around 10,000 views a month. How hard could it be just to get another 3,000? I was wrong. Within the past month, I have gotten only an additional 1,400 views. That is the worst monthly-view total that I have ever gotten since June of last year. So this is the worst amount I've gotten in over a year. This was very different than for July of this year, when I got an additional 15,000 views, my best month of all time. Here is a chart to show how low my blog's monthly stats have been recently: The first two years of my blog, (back when I just started using Google Blogger in 2014) are those ...

Here we go again... It's that time of year. Shall I say the dreaded word? sc-sc-sch-schoo... SCHOOL!!! ( dun, dunn, dunnn! ) Today was my first day of school for 7th grade. My friend Xiang also made a blog post the first day of school for this year here:  http://reelroyale.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-first-day-of-school.html Xiang offered a good set of tips for anybody new to middle school, so you may want to check his post regardless of whether you are starting middle school (6th grade) or are continuing it (like I am). Today and tomorrow are the first two days of school where I live, and it will continue next Monday.  Unlike last year, I wasn't entering the building for the first time, so I was used to navigating it and the feel of it inside. Today wasn't anything exciting, really. Every single one of my classes was spent with the teacher introducing themselves and talking about fire drill procedures, class rules, cheesy "I want to get to know you and y...