Zach Likes to Yap

     As the semester comes to an end and final exams are right around the corner, I have learned to take things one at a time to allow for flexibility as needed in all aspects of my life. One of the biggest thing that have helped me to gain more motivation and confidence in my life is setting goals that last and aren't things that can be achieved in a single days worth of work. A few of the goals that I've set within my own personal life are fully completing a game called The Binding of Isaac which requires hundreds of hours of dedication and skill to finish it, creating an album that fits my own standards of music without caring what others think for myself, working towards building skills within photo manipulation and 3-D modeling, as well as reading more books throughout the year. With these goals I have in mind along with other required goals within school, work and life in general, it allows me to have something to look forward to that I am invested in that gives me ...

      As the year winds down and things start to cool off from assignments to exam studying, it is important to focus on priotities to be able to get everything done in a timely manner. As I have been dealing with GERD symptoms, it has been harder for me to put forth my full effort in many aspects of my life as I am still trying to manage the symptoms and organize my life in a healthy way to reduce the symptoms to increase my quality of life. Stress and anxiety typically make my symptoms flare up more often than not, which during the final stretch of the semester, stress and anxiety are at the top of my mind with how I move forward. As far as outside of school, managing work and activities with friends has been a big priority of mine, especially hanging out with friends as it helps to rely on my support system during hard times like this.     While I have many projects juggling in the air from the development and marketing of Scenario the game created by Gabe Ha...

            While Thanksgiving break is approaching, it is more so a break from actually going to class rather than a break from everything in general. I have work all next week, on top of multiple final papers for class to work on, on top of marketing for a new album I am dropping, Scenario, and the Hardin County Community Foundation. To say the least I'm just glad I don't have to waste my time driving to class every day next week, eating up over two hours of my day practically.      I am however excited to be able to see friends and family over the break to enjoy some festivity and good food. Another thing I am excited about is the comfort of being in my home and able to put myself to the tasks I had previously mentioned. It's really easy to tell myself while I'm leaving campus for home, that I will work on a project or paper when I get home, just to be tired and want to relax after taking the long drive.     With the assignm...

          As Scenario is approaching the final release date of January 1st, the focus will shift onto my colleagues and I's ability to analyze the indie-gaming industry and leveraging social platforms like TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and Reddit. This will ensure we can connect with the target demographic of 15-35 year old gamers who love challenging titles from independent game developers. The key aspect of marketing to ensure a solid release to reach our goal of 7,000 wishlists on Steam marketplace, we must focus on the developer of the game to be more authentic with the creative processes and personalities involved in the project. This will not only boost the conversion of individuals who wish to purchase the game, but will also lead to the creation of niche communities surrounding the creators themselves.     To ensure the release is effective, our main leveraging point is word of mouth awareness by providing access keys to the game upon release ...

      As the semester begins to close and assignments from other classes are out of the way, I feel like Spencer and I can actually start dedicating a lot more time towards working on the plan and strategies for increasing awareness of the foundation through social media. The main concern we have moving forward is aesthetical, as the types of content we have in mind has begun to come to fruition, but the color scheme and other factors that influence physical appeal are still in the works. As far as the content goes, we will most likely not be posting until after the semester is over, but rather giving the company the tools they need to move forward in creating content for themselves with the knowledge we helped them gain.      The content so far is consistent of four styles of posts that are to be uploaded at least twice a week in the evenings to Facebook, Instagram, and potentially LinkedIn if the organization deems it necessary. We chose this sort of mode...

      Hey all, recently I was diagnosed with GERD (known as Gastroesophageal reflux disease). This isn't something that is debilitating often, but it really flares up when I eat too much food, eating spicy, fatty, oily, or sugary foods, smoking, drinking alcohol, caffeine, or lying down too soon after eating. Some of the symptoms I experience is my food coming back up through my esophagus, with the stomach acid creating a burning sensation and nausea whenever it happens. Along with this indigestion and heartburn are major things I experience which severely impact the quality of my life.      Over the last two weeks, I have truly been struggling to accept this diagnosis and coming to terms with having to change my habits and my diet. I knew I was going to experience this at some point in my life due to my dad having something wrong with his Lower Esophageal Sphincter, which is genetic unfortunately. There are medications that help this but mainly it is to do...

     Hey all, not going to be a super long blog today because I'm still recovering from an infection I was diagnosed with earlier this week. This just goes to show how important managing your stress is along with your workload, because I definitely had some mental symptoms manifest physically. I've been super nauseous the last few days, but I'm beginning to feel better with the medications they've given me. Although the medications make me nauseous, I feel much better than I did earlier this week, and I feel good enough to do some of my assignments to not have to worry about asking for extensions and what not.      I hope everyone is managing their stress well this midterm week, and just know that everything will be okay in time. Just have to get through the hardships and come out the other side a better version of yourself. Thanks everyone for the well wishes, I really appreciate it. I hope to see you all next week if my recovery journey goes smoothly.

       Fall break just ended and everyone is upset about it. Coming back to class after having some time to breathe would have been awesome if I could breathe underwater. I personally did not have a break to say the least, my break was spent on my laptop for over 8 hours a day working on assignments and get this, it was all for one class...     Over the course of the 4 days we had for fall break, I worked on reading a 400 page book, with a coinciding 10 page paper, an 8 page paper with 8 sources, a 5 page paper with a 30 minute presentation coinciding, a 3 page paper, and I still have yet to do really anything for any of my other classes. The funny thing is I didn't even get any of the papers done that I needed to finish because I simply did not have enough time to do it. Although most of these assignments are still a week or so out, the idea of all of them being due at the same time is really what's digging at my core. I know I am perfectly capab...

     (Pictured: Me when I get sick lol)      As the title suggests, everyone is sick right now. First it was the cold going around campus, then it turned into the flu, now it is in my own home. My girlfriend, Lily, is not feeling the best and I spent the last weekend taking care of her while she recovers. I know this is going to get me sick which I am not the most excited about, but the fact I'll probably end up getting sick during the most busy part of the semester gives me some comfort. If I am going to get sick, I'm already planning in my head the things I can get done school-wise, during the days I will not go to class due to being sick. This may seem counterintuitive but honestly, work and class are the only things holding me back from getting all my assignments this semester done. Having a few days where I'm bedridden will force me to occupy my time to distract me from feeling like dogwater.     I still have over 200 pages to read for my mul...

          Have you ever compared yourself to someone who was going through something that seemed way easier to deal with than what you have going on at the moment? Me too, and this feeling is often something I struggle with when it comes to accepting the position I am in. I compare often to other's situations because I find that it helps me to realize that maybe they don't have it as easy as I think they do, which in turn makes the things on my plate seem smaller. Although this is the goal I always have when comparing myself to others, I typically will end upset due to them having more than I do, or me not realizing I have just as much as they do. The idea I'm hinting at here is the ability for one to realize that each individual is living their own life, and their life is as vivid and complex as your own.     This realization is called to sonder. This is something that I have learned about at a young age and have taken with me through my entire l...

                                                        Hey all, just coming on here briefly to tell you to listen to more music. There is so much music out there from countless genres that use thousands of different instruments in many different ways that you have to experience to even begin to understand what is all out there. I personally began expanding my taste in music through listening to albums, which includes the songs that people don't necessarily think of when speaking to the salience of an artist. I started listening to rock music, slowly inching into classical rock, shifting rapidly to Hip-Hop and RnB, and finally landing in jazz. Listening to albums from artists like Steely Dan, Keith Sweat, Aaliyah, JID, and hundreds of others taught me that music is more than what it seems on the surface. I've been surrounded...

           Over the course of the past summer into the fall semester, I have taken on multiple projects creatively outside of school and work. I've detailed some of the projects I'm working on in my previous blogs like the game Scenario, the debut of Jazzmatik and many other side projects I haven't mentioned. On top of this, I failed to realize that going into senior year of college would make for a drastic change in the amount of assignments and research projects I would have to take on. Needless to say, I filled my plate and began using the table for the extra food.      Side and personal projects aside, school work this year has been absolutely ridiculous with the amount of things I have to work on. Multiple 1-3 page papers due at varying days of the week, three research projects/papers for my final psychology major classes, building a social media strategy with a real client and having a full 400 page book to read by October 16th. One wou...

            Over the course of the last three years, my friend Gabe has been working on a solo video-game project, developed in unity and drawing inspiration from media such as Superliminal, I Spy books, and attempts to capture the feeling of a dream-state like childhood wonder. Since the game is not fully complete, I will leave the description of the game at that point to not spoil. The purpose of this blog is to detail our efforts as a team to form a roll-out schedule to maintain and complete things necessary before the deadline of January 1st, 2026. Things we need to complete before January 1st, which is the proposed release date, are things like the Game Manual, which contains walkthroughs for each level that have been graphically designed from scratch, a storyboard or epilogue entry, how to use the base mechanics, and the system requirements for running the game. Along with the Game Manual, we need to have the game itself finished before the turn ...

     Over the course of the last few years, I have been trying to garner awareness for my music career, with many failed attempts of engagement tests and the lack of return on investment for promotions and advertisements of my brand. Failure however is the best teacher, and being comfortable with that failure can take you a long way toward reaching the goals you have in mind. To help myself build a better understanding of the landscape of social media I started taking classes for a minor in social media here at ONU. So far, I have improved my engagement and focus on things that are actually important like metrics and brand identity, rather than trying to force content into the mainstream by posting consistently without having a solid backing holding up the structure of my brand. Taking this class into consideration of my journey in social media fluency, I hope to learn skills to apply not only to my own social media presence, but also understanding what all goes into plan...

     Over the course of the summer of '25, a good friend of mine since childhood (Prismatica on streaming platforms) and I (Alphalpha on streaming platforms) began undertaking a new music project under the name of Jazzmatik. Jazzmatik can be defined as an experimental fusion of many genres including jazz, hip-hop, breakbeat etc., while not being bound by one specific niche. Our nights and weekends quickly became filled with discord discussions, password management pow-wows, music listening/critiquing sessions and developing the framework for our combined brand. It's common knowledge that it is not easy to carve a path influentially... and that idea seemingly folds over on itself ten times in regards to the music industry.     Jazzmatik is not a new idea by any means, which is why trying to carve a path using the stepping stones laid by some of the biggest influences in our lives is very important to us as a brand. Learning how to stick to a core set of values an...