1473: Ruined

Oh, EA. Why. Why. Why. Why.

I am, of course, talking about the new iOS version of Bullfrog's classic Dungeon Keeper, which was released today and is, of course, utter bobbins.

Why? Because it's a free-to-play mobile game.

And yes, I think we've reached the stage where it pretty much is reasonable to brand free-to-play mobile games a universally bad thing, because the fucking awful ones far outnumber the very, very few good ones. In fact, I can't think of any good free-to-play mobile games offhand, whereas on PC I can name plenty.

Dungeon Keeper does every offensive thing it's possible for a shitty free-to-play mobile thing to do. It has wait timers, it has premium currency, it has the ability to purchase resources and other things rather than collecting them yourself (by, you know, playing the game) and worse than all the monetisation crap is the fact that they've taken a game that was originally an interesting, fun and original idea and made it into something utterly predictable and boring.

Dungeon Keeper is clearly aiming to ride the coat-tails of popular "midcore" strategy games such as Clash of Clans but this isn't a particularly good thing, either; Clash of Clans is an unashamedly pay-to-win title whose "top players" ride high in the leaderboards for no other reason than the fact they have paid more money into the game. Thousands of dollars, in many cases.

This is the second time EA has trawled Bullfrog's back catalogue to "re-imagine" them for iOS — the first being Theme Park — and it's the second time it's proven to be a complete insult to the memory of a great game. The people behind this monstrosity should be disgusted with themselves — as profitable as free-to-play games are and as much sense as they make from a business perspective, there's no getting away from the fact that the games themselves are complete shit, being devoid of any real depth and compromising good game design in the name of being more exploitative .

Stop it, EA. The people you're hoping to court with these games' names are the people you're pissing off the most.

1472: New Friends

After Lara died, Lucy rat was very lonely. She seemed reasonably all right for a few days, but took a turn for the worse over the next couple. She'd spend most of the day hiding in her box and not being very sociable — she'd come out for a bit if you made a fuss of her, but before long she'd go back into hiding.

It's strange and fascinating to see, in a morbid sort of way. Watch an animal who is suddenly left all alone after having become accustomed to the company of another, and it's very clear that they do "feel" things — whether that's true "emotions" as we know them or simply more of a survival instinct "oh shit, I'm not as safe as I was before" isn't entirely clear, but they definitely feel something.

And it was heartbreaking to see in Lucy rat's case. She was normally such an energetic, silly little thing, so to see her so lethargic and unenthusiastic about everything was difficult to deal with. And so, after confirming via a bit of online research that yes, rats really do prefer to live with others of their own kind, we went to the pet store and picked up a couple of young playmates for Lucy. (We got two because, practically speaking, Lucy is getting older, too, and we didn't want a new playmate to be left in the same situation when Lucy does eventually leave us.)

They're a lot younger than her — they're literally half her size — but so far they appear to have been getting on well with one another. One in particular has been following Lucy around, snuggling up with her in the little hideaway and generally being very friendly. The other doesn't appear to object to the presence of either Lucy or her young friend — whom she previously lived with in the pet store, so was at least accustomed to the presence of — but is still very shy, preferring to sit very still in the corner and hope no-one notices her.

The two of them are very distinct both from one another and from Lara and Lucy. Lucy is all white with a few light grey splotches here and there, while Lara was mostly white with a dark grey head and grey patterning on her back. Socks, as one of the newcomers has been christened, is all dark grey except for her belly, which has a white stripe down it. Clover, as the other one has become known, has more of a splotchy pattern all over her, plus a noticeably more fluffy, slightly messy-looking coat.

It's very early days for us to get to know them yet, but they're very cute and Lucy seemed immediately happier as soon as she had some company. It's always a slightly nailbiting moment when you introduce new rats to one another, especially when one has been living somewhere for a while. We had the same moment after Willow died and we got Lucy to keep Lara company — Lucy spent her first few days hiding in the corner and, on one memorably terrifying occasion, even decided to "play dead" worryingly convincingly for a while. Before long, though, the two of them at least appeared to be friends with one another, even if Lucy was always a cheeky little shit towards Lara.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the three of them get along with one another, and I'm sure there will be further updates as they start to come out of their shells a bit.

1471: Netrunning, Again

Jan 28 -- Netrunner It was supposed to be one of our regular gaming evenings tonight, but two of the usual five participants were unable to make it, so the remaining three of us decided to try something a little different — concentrate on a single, two-player game and really get a feel for it.

The game was Android: Netrunner, which I talked about a short while back, and after tonight I feel I have a stronger grasp for the "feel" of the game and how it works.

In particular, what I've found interesting is quite how different the various factions play. The recommended starter decks — Jinteki for the Corporation player, Shapers for the Runner player — include an interesting balance of abilities, but can often see a game ending somewhat quickly. The Jinteki deck in particular is rammed with traps to set for the Runner player, most of which do various types of "damage" to him, causing him to discard cards and lose the game completely if he has to discard more cards than he has in his hand.

A key part of the Jinteki deck strategy appears to be making good use of these traps. One, known as Project Junebug, is particularly deadly in that it can be quite well "disguised" as one of the point-scoring Agenda cards by spending credits to "advance" it, then unleashed when an unsuspecting Runner hacks into it, only to discover an ambush waiting for him that does more damage than your maximum possible hand size early in the game. I won a game in this way this evening; my friend Tim likewise won one against my other friend Sam by making use of a similar strategy, though this time by simply setting two identical traps, luring Sam into the belief that one was an Agenda and the other was not, but actually revealing after the fact that both were deadly Project Junebug cards. Nasty.

Part of what is clearly the most interesting thing about Netrunner came out in our game this evening: it's as much about reading your opponent's psychology as it is about playing the optimum cards. In my game against Sam, for example, I left an Agenda card completely unguarded for a significant part of the game, building up defences in front of my other cards — including Project Junebug, which I then proceeded to "advance" in order to further cement the appearance that it was, in fact, an Agenda. By the time I laid some defenses in front of the previously unprotected Agenda and started to advance it, Sam was firmly of the belief that the more well-guarded card was the more valuable one — and from there, I was able to eliminate him easily.

Conversely, when Sam and Tim played one another, they tried different decks. Tim tried the Criminals Runner deck, while Sam went for the Haas-Bioroid corporation. It was quite hard to get a feel for how the Criminals deck played — it appeared to be quite focused on attaining a decent amount of wealth, which can subsequently be spent to enhance your capabilities during a "run" — but the Haas-Bioroid deck was a clear contrast from Jinteki. While Jinteki is all about bluffing and setting traps, Haas-Bioroid is all about setting up impenetrable defenses that are quite difficult for the Runner to get through. Conversely, a Criminals vs Haas-Bioroid match went on for significantly longer than the Shaper vs Jinteki matches we had previously tried — and rather than the games ending quite quickly, this matchup resulted in a much more protracted battle in which either side could have feasibly won.

I'm yet to delve into the more complicated side of building your own deck to play the game with, but even the differences between these starter decks are fascinating. I'm really looking forward to having the opportunity to play the game again and see how differently the other factions play to one another.

1470: Move

Jan 27 -- Running Well, I did it; a little later than intended due to an all-round shitty week last week, but did it nonetheless: I got up early and battled through my own sense of inadequacy to have a very slow run, kicking off yet another attempt at the Couch to 5K program.

My trouble with getting up, out and exercising at the moment is the fear that it's going to be difficult and painful. The rational response to this is "well, of course it is" but the irrational side of me uses that as a reason to want to put it off. I'm not sure why, though, because putting it off for longer is just going to make it more difficult and painful in the long run, which will just make me feel worse, which is ultimately somewhat counter-productive, to say the least.

What I've found I need to do in the past is try not to worry about what other people think of me, and try not to compare myself to others. I am woefully unfit and rather overweight, so of course I'm not going to be able to run as well as that guy with the frighteningly muscular legs who just overtook me. It's hard not to compare and want to push yourself, though — but in my current physical condition, pushing myself too hard just makes me want to stop completely which, again, is ultimately somewhat counter-productive.

What I generally try to do is to blot out the outside world as much as possible. When it's crappy weather like this, I put on my hoodie and put the hood up, and put some loud music on to encourage me to give it my best. Today I had on my "Gym Battles" playlist from the last time I had a half-hearted fitness drive, which includes a selection of anime themes plus battle music from a variety of RPGs — all of which make fantastic exercise music, I might add. The soundtrack to Split/Second also makes for brilliant running music, so I can highly recommend that if you have a copy.

Now I'm back and about to have breakfast, and my legs are aching. I'm sure they're going to hurt even more later and tomorrow, but that's an oddly satisfying feeling — it's physical evidence that you've worked hard and done something positive. So long as it doesn't continue aching for too long, that is!

I'm going to try and support the occasional running with some Wii Fit. I don't want to set myself too ambitious goals so I get disheartened and don't stick to them, but at the same time I also don't want to waste my time. I'll have to experiment a bit and see what works for me in the long run.

For now let's hope I can keep this up for a while at least.

1469: Read Before Posting

I'd like to try a little exercise with you, oh fellow denizens of the Internet.

Find the last thing you posted online, be it chat message, tweet, Facebook status update or, if you've got more time than sense, blog post. Then what I would like you to do is read that post out loud — but with a twist. I'd like you to make all the faces you typed emoticons for, and any acronym you used, I'd like you to actually do the thing you said you were doing. (For example, if you typed "lol", I would like you to laugh out loud; if you typed "lmao" I would like you to laugh until your arse falls off. Yes, literally.)

Did you look like a complete dingbat and/or a creep? Exactly. Herein lies part of the problem with online communication: while emoticons and acronyms were originally intended to allow for some semblance of "tone" to be indicated in the necessarily dry nature of text, they don't really work all that well in the way that they tend to be used today.

Take the humble "lol". Depending on your literacy level, you may actually put "lol" in a sentence where you really would laugh out loud. But more often than not, it seems, it's used as a substitute for punctuation, and it doesn't really matter what punctuation mark should have gone in there if we were going to be all persnickety about Standard English. No, many's the time when I've seen people type a message ending with a redundant (and, frankly, somewhat disquieting) "lol" or even joining two completely largely unrelated sentences to one another. I recall one former Facebook "friend" (actually someone I went to school with but barely spoke to when I was there, let alone since) posting some epic rant about how she had had a difficult week lol but was looking forward to putting her feet up with a glass of wine lol xxx. That's… no. That just doesn't make any sense.

I think more infuriating to me than inappropriate lolling is the use of the tongueface smiley, however. I associate sticking your tongue out with a distinctly 1950s expression of rebellion — something an Enid Blyton character would do while running away from someone they didn't like very much. It's not something I generally think to do… well, at all really, as a 32 year old man, and so I tend not to pepper my online utterances with tongueface smileys at any time other than when I am clearly mocking someone and need to make it abundantly clear that I'm not actually being mean. I will confess to making a fair amount of use of the good old-fashioned smiley face emoticon, but that's about it. (I don't even use "XD", whose usage annoys me for much the same reasons as "lol" does.)

I am sure I am overthinking this, and that the tongueface smiley has somewhat transcended its associations with Enid Blyton characters, but I still find it oddly jarring when I see it somewhere that it just doesn't seem to belong. So again, I urge you, before you send that message, just read it out loud and make all the facial expressions you said you were making. If it feels weird to stick your tongue out… maybe take that particular colon-P out, hmm?

1468: Magick and Mend

Jan 25 -- WHM I'm just shy of level 49 on the White Mage class in Final Fantasy XIV, which means I'll more than likely hit 50 tomorrow, which in turn makes Final Fantasy XIV the first MMO that I've not only reached the level cap and done some endgame stuff, but also the first MMO in which I've reached the level cap more than once. Granted, once you've done it once, subsequent levelling is significantly quicker thanks to the "Armoury Bonus" mechanic — bonus experience points based on the difference between your current class' level and your highest class' level — but it still demands a significant amount of commitment and, as the complete-once quests around the world dry up, creativity and flexibility in terms of how you're going to level up 49 times.

This second run to 50 has been interesting for a number of reasons, firstly because it's involved playing the game in a completely different way. During my first runthrough, in which I took the Thaumaturgist/Black Mage class up to 50, I was following the game's "Main Scenario" questline, which takes you through a complete, authentically Final Fantasy story in the purest sense. And it's a resolutely old-school Final Fantasy, too, all about crystal-related mysticism, powerful ancient forces stirring to cause chaos and, of course, a cast of villains in memorable-looking but impractical armour that probably makes it impossible for them to go to the toilet without lacerating their genitals. It's also paced in such a way that aside from a slight "dry spell" in the mid-40s, it's always taking you to new places in the world and providing you with a bunch of sidequests to do — by the time you reach the grand finale, you'll be level 50 and have a thorough understanding of how your class works, and consequently should have little difficulty challenging the "final" eight-player dungeons and obliterating the Big Bad from the face of Eorzea.

Conversely, once you're done with all that, there's not quite the same narrative push to keep you earning XP and progressing — the game switches, for the most part, from being all about following a linear storyline to "living" in the game world and making your own fun to a certain extent. It takes on a much more freeform feeling — though there's still something of an "optimal" route to level up as quickly as possible — and provides fun of a different sort. There's also a lot more flexibility to take on your own personal challenges — I'm hoping to eventually collect all the unique sets of equipment from the various dungeons, for example, but this will require me to be a bit more organised than I currently am, clear out my bulging Armoury Chest and make some checklists. Soon. Soon.

As well as this shift in play style, playing a completely different type of class has been interesting, too. Ever since my first serious attempt at playing an MMO — World of Warcraft — I've largely focused on playing heavy damage dealers, usually mages or the local equivalent. While these roles are demanding in their own right — particularly later in the games, there's an expectation that you have a thorough understanding of your abilities and how to use them efficiently to inflict as much damage as possible in as short a time as possible — there's often not as much "responsibility" as comes with the other two important roles in a typical MMO party: the "tank" and the "healer". Consequently, when I came to Final Fantasy XIV, I wanted to start with something I was familiar with — and while Black Mage comes with its own unique mechanics that I haven't seen in an MMO before, it was still largely about flinging flamey things at bad things until they fall over.

Switching to Conjurer/White Mage, though, was truly interesting, and it becomes particularly clear how different it is to play a healer the moment you step into a dungeon. No longer are you concentrating on the enemies and queueing up devastating attacks; instead, you're focusing your attention for the most part on the little party window in the upper-left corner of the screen, and making use of your restorative abilities to ensure none of those numbers reach zero as much as you can. This is very easy early in the game — a lot easier than I was expecting, in fact — but becomes more challenging the more abilities you have available to you. By the time you're healing later dungeons, you're having to content with status effects (dispatched with a swift cast of the "Esuna" spell) and bosses that inflict damage on the whole party at once. You start having to prioritise your actions carefully — can the tank take a few more hits while you buff up the armour of the more squishy party members, or should you fling him a heal or two first? — and the responsibility of knowing that the fate of the party largely (though not completely in many cases) lies with you becomes more obvious.

I actually thought this experience would be terrifying — to be frank, I was worried I'd fuck it up and get yelled at by people who died as a result of my incompetent healing — but I've found myself enjoying the experience a great deal, and seemingly being quite good at it. I haven't yet been thrown into an eight-player dungeon — the first of those don't show up until you reach level 50 — and I'm a little nervous at the prospect since I'm not quite sure how two healers divide up the workload of healing a much larger party, but I'm sure I'll figure it out. Plus it's always nice to be useful, and healers are certainly that.

Anyway. Time for bed. It's been a pleasantly peaceful day today, and I can feel my head gradually getting back to whatever passes for "normal". Not quite perfect yet, but getting there.

1467: Broken

Lara's death hit me pretty hard. Or, to be more accurate, it was the tipping point; the straw that broke the camel's back and other such cliches: the bad thing happening that caused all the other bad things in my head to overflow, boil over and spill out like some sort of pitch-black overcooked soup of eternal despair.

To clarify: today has not been a good day. After spending yesterday rather upset at our dear little furry friend's passing, I woke up this morning not feeling any better. In fact, feeling significantly worse. It was that kind of bleak feeling where it's nearly impossible to move, speak or function at anything more than the most basic level. I cried for no apparent reason on two separate occasions; it helped a little.

Right now? I'm at least functioning somewhat better than I was earlier, but I still feel like my brain is broken (and I have a headache, too, which isn't helping matters). I've had a good day at work — got an article shared by TotalBiscuit, yo — to distract me from the bad things rattling around in my head, but they've still been there lurking on the periphery, waiting to lay me low once again.

I haven't felt this bad for quite some time, and it sucks. It's not entirely due to Lara's passing, either; while that did indeed make me very sad and it still makes me tear up a bit to see Lucy by herself in her cage, as I say that was little more than the stimulus; the additional pressure that caused everything to come gushing out.

It's hard to know how to keep feelings like this under control. For the most part, I'd been feeling reasonably positive recently, but apparently I'd been repressing more emotions than I'd thought. The silly thing — and one that will be familiar to anyone with depressive tendencies — is that with all the confusion and chaos these emotions bring, it's impossible to come to some sort of rational explanation as to what is making you feel so bad. This, of course, makes the answer "what's wrong?" extremely difficult to answer with anything other than a non-committal "I don't know", but it's true; more often than not, when I feel like this, I really don't know what it is that's making me feel so bad.

Today should be a positive day, though, for a couple of reasons: Andie and I went to find out how much the bank would lend us for a mortgage earlier today and it turned out to be more than we were expecting; and I wrote an article that's been pretty widely shared and attracted a ton of potentially new eyes to USgamer, which is great. So I should focus on those positive things and less on the negative, and use the rest of the evening to do things that cheer me up and make me happy. Then hopefully, eventually, the dark edges will fade and I can get back to some semblance of normality again.

1466: Lara Laid to Rest

A day I had a feeling that was coming, but didn't want to think about happened today: our pet rat Lara passed away, from the looks of things during the night or the early hours. We came into the lounge for breakfast and she was just lying there, sleeping peacefully underneath the little log cabin in her cage. She didn't look as if she had suffered; she had just obviously thought it was time to pass on, so fell asleep and didn't wake up.

While I had maybe been expecting and worrying about this for a lot longer than was strictly necessary — she was a pretty old lady, as rats go, and she'd obviously been developing a few health problems over time — that doesn't stop it being any less upsetting and sad to see it come to pass, however peacefully she passed away.

Lara was part of our family. She was not only the first pet I've ever owned myself — along with her cagemate Willow, who was taken from us well before her time — but an important part of the home Andie and I have built for ourselves. She was a presence I had grown accustomed to; I enjoyed seeing her face peeking out of a Pop-Tarts box — she loved hiding in boxes — and to see how she'd scurry frantically to the cage door at the prospect of treats. Especially yogurt. She loved yogurt.

She had her own distinct personality that developed over time. We initially called her Lara because in the original pairing of her and Willow, she was the one who came out of her box first and started exploring the cage, climbing all around it like the Tomb Raider heroine. (Willow, conversely, was shy and meek, much like her namesake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.) As she grew older, she became a little chubby and discovered the concept of "comfort". We'd put a hammock with a furry lining in the cage and she'd often be found reclining in there; we gave her some pieces of an old towel, and she'd always find wherever she thought was the best possible place to put them, then sit and relax on them as her newer, slightly younger cagemate Lucy would buzz around her excitedly.

Seeing Lucy today is making me feel a bit sad. As I type this, I can see her climbing around the cage, sneezing and inxeplicably digging in the food bowl as she always does, but she seems to be a little down from her usual energy levels. I couldn't tell you for sure whether or not rats actually "feel" anything emotionally, but my gut tells me that Lucy is lonely, and that she misses Lara; she has spent much of the day tucked up in the Pop-Tarts box her cagemate loved so, and would only come out with a bit of encouragement. I certainly know that Lara felt very attached to Lucy: any time we'd take Lucy out of the cage for whatever reason — to take her to the vets, for example — Lara would panic and begin frantically searching around for her uncharacteristically energetically, so I can't help but feel Lucy probably feels something similar. Only for her, Lara isn't coming back. I feel sorry for the poor little thing, so I have little doubt she's probably going to get quite spoiled over the next few days.

This is always the saddest, worst part of owning pets. They offer such warmth, happiness and companionship when they're alive that it's difficult not to feel like a member of your family has passed on when their time is eventually up. I still find death quite difficult to deal with, to be honest, though I don't think that's necessarily a particularly bad trait to have in the grand scheme of things.

So it was that we said goodbye to Lara earlier. Living in a third-floor flat, we don't have a garden of our own, but fortunately the border of our building's car park has some soily flower beds. We laid her to rest in a fresh Pop-Tarts box, dug her a grave and planted some flowers above her.

I hope that wherever she's going next that she is happy, and that she thinks back fondly on the time she spent with us, and with Lucy.

Goodbye, Lara. We love you.

1465: Day of Peace

Today didn't quite go according to the sort-of plan I made yesterday, but that's all right; aside from sorting out some urgent personal matters that I won't go into here, it was the opportunity for a much-needed, stress-free break from the daily grind.

I know, I know, it's not long since Christmas, but there's a difference between taking a day for yourself and the obligations that come with holidays such as Christmas time. Christmas is stressful, in short; taking a day for yourself is not. Usually, anyway.

Right now, it's silly o' clock in the morning and I'm still awake. On this particular occasion, it is, as usual, Final Fantasy XIV to blame. As I type this, our party is in the middle of some dowtime between "turns" of The Binding Coil of Bahamut, the main endgame dungeon and the hardest challenge in the game as it stands right now. (It's also home to some of the best music in the game, as any good "final" dungeon worth its salt should be.)

I've been finding it interesting to compare the teamwork required in Final Fantasy XIV with popular online game Dota 2, which my friends and I have been tentatively dipping our toes into recently. For sure, the two games have a certain amount in common with one another — a reliance on true teamwork being the main aspect — but it's interesting to compare and contrast. I wasn't altogether convinced I'd like Dota 2 after our first outing — in which I hadn't done any of the tutorials and didn't know anything about how to play — but it's grown on me a little bit since I've learned it a little better. I still think I prefer the purely cooperative nature of Final Fantasy XIV, but ultimately they're both very different games that can coexist quite happily; both will happily eat up your life, but in different ways — Final Fantasy XIV sessions can go on pretty much indefinitely if you have plenty of things to do; Dota 2 sessions, conversely, are 45-60 minutes at a time, but there's never any shortage of opponents to take on.

Anyway. I'd better wrap this up as it looks like we'll have our final party members ready to go shortly. Wish us luck as we delve into Turn 2 and beyond — there's 5 altogether, but we've never made it beyond 4 as yet. It's hard!

1464: In One's Own Skin

Jan 21 -- Des

Self-indulgent, self-pitying ahead. Feel free to skip on by.

Whoever started (and perpetuated) the rumour that fat people are "jolly" is a cock.

I am feeling decidedly uncomfortable in my own skin today, and, as usual, it's largely to do with my weight. I'm conscious of the fact that I have put on weight recently, and I know it's due to my largely sedentary lifestyle coupled with the fact that past exercise programmes I followed have fallen by the wayside.

It's something of a self-perpetuating problem, though. I get anxious about my weight, which frequently stops me from sleeping well at night, which means I find it difficult to get up in a timely fashion in the morning, which means I get up feeling tired and shitty and having to immediately start work, which means that when I'm finished in the evening all I want to do is just zonk out and relax, which means I feel guilty and anxious about not doing anything about my weight, which means… you get the idea.

It also doesn't help that if I get upset or depressed, I tend to want to eat something, too. Even knowing how counter-productive it is to want to eat something because I'm depressed about my weight, I still do it. Justifications vary, but I still do it, sometimes when I'm not even really feeling hungry.

I know I should do something about it. The anxiety I feel about my weight at night-time frequently escalates from "you're fat and disgusting" to "you're probably going to die if you don't do something about it." This is how irrational anxiety works. But, as I say, said anxiety often stops me from sleeping and makes me feel too exhausted in the morning to want to get up and exercise or do anything, really.

I hate it. I hate the feelings it gives me, and I hate the disgust I feel when I see myself in the mirror. I hate worrying when I sit down on a chair and wondering if I'll break it. I hate feeling physically uncomfortable because of my weight. I hate none of my clothes quite fitting properly, and I hate worrying that people look at me negatively as I walk past them in the street. I hate being afraid to fly in case I'm finally too fat to fit in a seat or to get the seatbelt around myself, and I hate sitting down in a restaurant where the tables and chairs are too close together and I find it difficult to fit in. And I hate not seeing people for a long time and wondering if they'll judge me harshly for being bigger than I used to be. I see photos of myself from years gone past when I felt like I was fat, and I look skinny in comparison to how I am now, and it makes me sad when I think that's what other people are probably thinking when they see me, too.

There are two ways out of this, as I see it: one, to accept who I am, to understand that I'm probably always going to be a little bigger and thus be unable to do certain things — something which I'm not altogether comfortable with; or two, to try and do something about it, something which has frustrated and upset me in the past. Both of them are difficult prospects to contemplate, and I'd rather see success with the latter if at all possible. I don't enjoy being the person I am, but I don't know if I have the willpower or motivation to be able to combat it effectively.

I'm going to try, though. I'm going to make an effort to get up in the morning and perhaps start the Couch to 5K program again, since I had some success with that in the past when I was in a similar combination of physical and mental disrepair. I mean, I never got slim or anything, but I got to a state where I made it through a 10K race, albeit with walking part of it. That's something, and I'd at least like to get back to a state where walking up some stairs doesn't leave me out of breath. Wii Fit U will probably help, too. I'm going to try my best to start all that tomorrow, though I'm making no promises at this juncture.

I have to fight my way through these feelings and dispatch the Shadows that infest my mind, because they're doing me no good whatsoever and I don't like the person they make me become. I don't know if I can do it, but I don't really have any option other than to try.