2167: Boxing Day

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Today was Boxing Day, apparently a day when everyone and his dog decides to go shopping, because having a single day of the year when you can’t go shopping is apparently too much for some people to deal with.

While I certainly don’t begrudge people the business they have brought my place of work over the festive period, since they keep me in a job for the time being, I do find myself a little bewildered at the eagerness to get right back out into an absolutely rammed town centre and do something it’s possible to do almost every single other day of the year.

I guess it’s the promise of “sales” that has people enraptured with the idea of immediate post-Christmas shopping: the prospect of being able to pick up a bargain with any money and/or vouchers that came their way to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of our Lord, but looking around town today I can’t honestly say that I saw anything I’d particularly regard as a “bargain”. Sure, some stuff was maybe a little bit cheaper than it is usually, but we’re talking a reduction of like 20-25% at most in many places, which doesn’t amount to all that much.

Mostly the thing that bewilders me about immediate post-Christmas shopping is the fact that people are willingly giving up time where it’s absolutely fine — even encouraged — to slob around at home doing nothing of any consequence save for eating, drinking and playing with toys, and instead spending money they probably don’t really have on things they’re not sure they want, perhaps for people they don’t really like.

Oh well. As I say, I certainly don’t begrudge these people their choices, since the amount of money we took today — a lot of it cash, too, making for some impressive wads in the tills — is proof enough that online hasn’t quite killed the high street just yet, and it’s keeping me in employment for the moment, and hopefully for a bit longer after the holiday season is officially over. That last bit remains to be seen, so fingers crossed.

As for me, though, I don’t plan on doing any shopping anywhere other than Steam over the next few days, and I don’t have to get off the sofa to do that. I have two days off now, so I will most certainly be doing as little as possible over the course of the next 48 hours to ensure I’m rested, relaxed and ready for action as we creep towards the new year.

I hope you all had a thoroughly pleasant Christmas, and that you’re having the chance to enjoy at least a bit of a rest over the holiday period.

2162: That Not-So-Wonderful Time of the Year

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It seems to me that this holiday season has been, for many people, a period of inordinately, disproportionately Bad Times. I’ve had some shittiness to deal with myself, which I won’t go into here, but just from browsing my Twitter feed each day it’s clear that I’m not alone in having a tough time of it right now.

This post, then, is perhaps to reassure those who are feeling a similar way that they’re not alone, that there are other people out there who understand the way they are feeling, and who would hang out with them, play video games with them, share lewd pictures of anime girls with them and/or hug them as appropriate. I say this as someone who would enjoy all of the above with the people I’m talking about.

This holiday season feels like a highly concentrated form of the tension that has permeated all of 2015. There’s been a thoroughly unpleasant undercurrent of “walking on eggshells” with regard to political correctness, and it feels like it’s been coming to a head recently.

Arguments over whether or not Hermione in the Harry Potter series is black erupted today, with both sides attempting to claim some sort of moral superiority in a frankly rather childish, stupid and utterly pointless conflict that didn’t need to happen in the first place. But this is far from the only thing that’s been highly charged; even the new Star Wars movie became politicised, with some commentators making more of the fact that its leads feature a black person and a woman than the fact that, by all accounts, The Force Awakens appears to be something of a return to form for the series.

Among it all, the ever-bubbling conflict between the so-called “Social Justice Warriors” — blowhards who want to look like they’re saying the “right” things with regard to political correctness, but who are actually just seeking glory for themselves rather than having any real interest in changing society for the better — and people who just want to be left the fuck alone to enjoy whatever they want has continued, with the former group in particular continuing its trend of making wild accusations without any sort of proof, blaming all of society’s ills on “GamerGate” and “the Men’s Rights Activists” rather than taking the time to get to know any members of these groups and contemplate why they are at loggerheads.

This perpetual “culture war” makes me incredibly sad, because it has poisoned what used to be lively and interesting public discussion and debate over subjects such as video games. Anita Sarkeesian’s appearance on the scene, with her oh-so-brave step of saying that sometimes common tropes in video games favour men over women — while conveniently ignoring the hundreds, even thousands, of excellent female characters in gaming — acted as a catalyst for all manner of nutjobs to come out of the woodwork, and this whole movement seems to have grown in prominence by a huge amount in the last year. Fans of Japanese games and anime on social media are particularly perturbed that there are no mainstream sites remaining that are willing to give niche Japanese titles the time of day, instead preferring to look at them on a superficial level, brand them “sexist” or “misogynist” and move on, when in fact, in many cases, these “otaku games” are far more progressive than any bullshit these loudmouths might come up with. Seeing these discussions makes me all the more sad that I was strongarmed out of my position at USgamer, where, as many of you know, I ran a weekly JPgamer column, celebrating the weird and wonderful entertainment that our friends in the East — and the intrepid localisation teams — brought us.

It’s not so much the lack of media representation that saddens me in this instance, though; it’s the sense of alienation I feel when I see people that I thought were friends starting to spout ill-informed nonsense in the name of being “progressive”. Mockery, public shaming and similar behaviours are not progressive, and I cannot support them or anyone who condones them — speaking as someone who was bullied throughout school, and who suffered a horrendous targeted harassment campaign a couple of years back, I know what harm dogpiling can do to your wellbeing. It surprises and upsets me to see friends who once suffered the effects of being publicly humiliated by these assholes now joining their ranks and gleefully indulging in that sort of reprehensible behaviour. A case of “if you can’t beat them, join them” perhaps — but whether or not that’s the case, it still sucks to feel like you don’t know someone any more.

This post has rambled and perhaps got a little off-topic somewhere along the way, but all these thoughts are swirling around my head right now, and this holiday season feels like something of a focal point for all the misery, tension and discomfort that 2015 has brought to numerous people I know, including myself. The world feels like it’s getting worse, not better, and when you’re someone who tries their best to be a good person and not hurt anyone, this is exceedingly frustrating and upsetting.

Hopefully 2016 will be a better time for everyone, but at this stage I’m not particularly confident. I hope I end up pleasantly surprised.

2151: Life Line

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“You’re on a long flight, and a palm reader sitting next to you insists she reads your palm. You hesitate, but agree. What does she tell you?”

Daily Post, December 10, 2015

[This didn’t post yesterday for some reason, so here it is today.]

“Hmm,” she says in a long, drawn-out sort of way, clearly milking the moment for maximum drama. I look around, conscious that other passengers are surreptitiously watching to see what’s going on, clearly having overheard her request. Then I look back at her. She’s gazing intently at my proffered palm, running her fingertip down what I assume, as a layman, to be my “lifeline”, but she’s saying nothing for the moment; all I can hear is the low drone of the engines, and the somewhat subdued conversation of the other passengers in the cabin.

“Your path has been a meandering one,” she says at last. “You have stumbled headlong into chaos on frequent occasions, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that chaos has sought you out; it is hard to tell at this point.”

I say nothing but incline my head slightly in silent agreement. Well, she’s off to a running start, at least.

“You have endured many hardships on your travels,” she says. “They may not have been physical hardships, or even hardships that people could see you struggling with, but they were hardships nonetheless.”

I feel my skepticism fading away a little as she offers what appears to be an accurate assessment of my life to date; that said, there’s still a little voice in the back of my mind pointing out that everything she’s said so far is fairly ambiguous and could probably be applied to anyone.

“Your pain has helped to forge you,” she continues. “Your struggles have made you stronger, but at a cost: turbulence, uncertainty, a lack of clarity.”

I glance around to see how many passengers had reacted to the mention of “turbulence” — not a word you want to utter on a plane in most instances — but most people in the immediate area appear to have returned to their own business, or at least are being subtle about their eavesdropping if they are indeed indulging their own curiosity.

She’s not wrong, but again, these statements could probably apply to anyone out there. Without context and specifics, I remain not entirely convinced of her reading’s veracity.

“Your future remains uncertain,” she says, her finger apparently reaching its destination on my palm and ceasing its movement; she doesn’t break contact, however. “You desire nothing more than to know exactly what the future holds, and how you can ensure you are on the correct path. But the truth is that there is no correct path, only the path that you choose to take. While it may feel like you are at something of a crossroads right now, be sure that you will make a decision and proceed down a road, and that road will be the correct one for you. It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, it may not even be next year. But your route will one day be illuminated, and you shall find your way.”

She releases my hand, which plops back into my lap.

“Thank you,” I say simply. Ultimately I’m not sure I’ve learned anything particularly new from her statements, but if nothing else they gave me pause to reflect on my life, the decisions I’ve made, the decisions that were made for me, and what the future might hold, as uncertain as it might be.

Finding that route will be scary, no doubt, but as I look at her gently smiling at me, I feel like there’s at least one person out there who has faith I’ll make the right choices somewhere along the way, and that everything will work out for the best.

I hope she’s right.

2150: My Beard Controls the Universe

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I’m pretty sure most of us have behaviours and signals that things are going well or badly at any given time.

For me, it’s the length of my beard and hair. Generally speaking, the more unkempt I look, the worse I am feeling; in other words, the length of my beard and hair are directly proportional (inversely proportional?) to my current state of mental health.

I trimmed my beard to a somewhat more manageable length this evening. It wasn’t necessarily because I’m feeling any better about things than I have done, but it felt like something of a symbolic gesture if nothing else: the desire to see things change and get better. To put it another way, I trimmed my beard in anticipation of an improvement in my mental health. If it happens, great; if it doesn’t, well, I have a somewhat neater beard than I had when I woke up this morning.

The length of various hairs growing out of my body isn’t the only indicator of my mental state, though. The tidiness of the rooms in which I spend the most time is, too. Specifically, when we’re talking about the lounge, which is where I’m writing this from right now, the amount of crap there is on the coffee table is generally directly proportional to how miserable I’ve been recently. There’s a fair bit of crap on there at the moment, though at least part of that is down to the takeaway curry we had for dinner this evening.

I say all this, but it’s entirely possible that it all works the other way around, of course. Perhaps my hair and beard being long is what causes my mental health to decline. Perhaps the messiness of my environment causes me to feel bad.

Or, perhaps, it’s the more likely situation: both sides contribute to each other. I feel miserable, so I let things slide, then I see how much I’ve let things slide, and that makes me miserable, so I let things slide further because it doesn’t feel “worth” doing anything about them, then I see how much worse things have gotten… you get the idea and see how this works, yes? This is, broadly speaking, how depression works, and how it can get you into an endless spiral, circling the Drain of Misery but never quite — in most cases, anyway — getting completely sucked down it.

I’ve been in worse situations in my life. Things could be much worse right now. Certain aspects of my life are fairly positive. But on the whole, there are a lot of influences making me a bit miserable at the moment. Not exactly how you want to be feeling going into the festive season, for sure, but all I can keep doing for now is looking forward and hoping for better days ahead, I guess.

2147: Back to Reality

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Was going to assemble a lengthy post full of Xenoblade Chronicles X tips and tricks, but felt that three days in a row would probably be pushing it a bit, so I’ll save that for tomorrow. I have plenty to share!

So, as Sunday rolls into Monday, our short holiday is over, and we’re both back to work in the morning. The last week has kind of flown by, which is a bit of a shame, but we’ve both had a good time, and it was clearly good for both of us to get out of the house and away from numerous stressful influences so we could just enjoy ourselves.

I actually don’t mind the prospect of going back to work, though. I feel like I’m getting into a decent “rhythm”, for want of a better word — though irregular shifts and hours mean that it’s probably not the best word — and I feel reasonably confident staring down the Christmas retail period. I’m also feeling semi-confident I might manage to stay on after the holiday season is over, but I’ve learned to my cost to not, you know, something something chickens hatching. So I’m not counting on it.

Not a lot else of note to share right now, really; we saw some owls and did some archery at Center Parcs (not at the same time) and lots of swimming. We ate nice food — we set aside a particular day to ignore the diet and treat ourselves, so we’ll see on Wednesday how much impact that had — and enjoyed some peaceful R&R in the woods.

We’re into December now, and the end of the year beckons. 2015 has been another year that hasn’t been all that great for me, frankly, but there have been highlights here and there; this last week has probably been one of them. Let’s hope there’s a few more I can squeeze in before 2015 becomes 2016.

For now, though, it’s time for bed, and back to normality tomorrow morning. Boo.

2140: Rate Me!

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I’ve been thinking about user reviews. It’s a long-standing joke that user reviews aren’t always entirely useful, particularly when it comes to people who think they’re more hilarious than they actually are, but on balance, I think they’re a pretty good thing. Or, rather, I do actually look at them when considering whether or not to purchase something or make use of a service.

The reason I got thinking about this is because I tend not to leave reviews myself very often. I am, for the most part, one of those people who tends only to leave bad reviews when I hate something, and just let good work go silently appreciated.

This is no help to anyone, of course, because recommendations are just as important — if not more so — than advice to Steer Well Clear. And, given I’m a reasonably intelligent sort of chap and I make use of user reviews to inform my purchasing decisions, I should probably make more of an effort to be helpful to other prospective purchasers.

From hereon, then, I’m going to try and review more things in the hope that the things I have to say are helpful to someone. I’ve already done a fair few Steam reviews over the years, and I always make a point of trying to be informative when I write them. But I’m also going to try and review more of the apps I use on my phone, and software I download on my other devices such as my 3DS, Vita and PlayStation.

I’m actually quite taken with Nintendo’s approach to reviews on the Wii U and 3DS; rather than allowing people free reign with their comments, it simply asks a number of simple questions that, in their own right, are quite informative and helpful. Firstly, there’s the question of whether you think the game would appeal more to men or women. Then it asks you how old the person who enjoyed the game the most was. Then it asks you to give it a star rating between one and five, and finally asks you whether you think it’s more suitable for “Everyone” or “Gamers”, and whether it’s more suited to “Casual” or “Intense” play sessions.

Five questions that give you a reasonably good idea of what the game experience is all about, and it takes a matter of seconds to fill them out. I am all for that.

In that spirit, then, I present to you a series of five-word reviews of things I’ve played recently.

Nintendo presents New Style Boutique 2: Fashion Forward – More fun than you’d think.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past – Still relevant now, in 2015.

The Legend of Zelda – The Dark Souls of Zelda.

DiRT Showdown – Lots of fun in cars.

Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed – Mario Kart meets Blur. Yes!

Mini Metro – Minimalist puzzler with lovely sound.

Hyrule Warriors – Impa is the most badassest.

OutRun 3D – Arcade classic still plays well.

Streets of Rage 3D – Mega Drive brawler still fun.

2139: Black Friday

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I’m exhausted, both physically and emotionally, so I hope you weren’t expecting anything too coherent or lengthy this evening. I’m still here, though, so let’s get this over and done with.

Worked the Black Friday weekend at work (yesterday and today) and was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t as much of a clusterfuck as I was expecting. It was fairly busy, but not to an excessive degree; we didn’t have hordes of customers trampling each other or anything, so that was something of a relief.

I feel I’ve settled into things quite nicely with this job. I’ve established some decent “work friendships” with the people I work alongside — having been burned a bit before by getting too close to certain people I worked with, I have been deliberately distancing myself a bit without seeming too impersonal — and I feel like I know what I’m doing a bit better than I did when I started. I evidently exude something of an aura of confidence in what I do, because a number of the other seasonal temps who started after me keep mistaking me for a full-time, permanent member of staff. This, in turn, gives me a bit of a confidence boost, which I’ve been sorely in need of.

As part of my recent work, we’ve been opening up a new store. This has been really nice, as rather than trying to fit in to an established environment, I’ve been able to take a certain degree of “ownership” over the new place right from the outset. I know where things are, I know how the place works, I know its little quirks and idiosyncrasies. Being much more spacious and better laid out than our previous premises, it’s also much more pleasant to work in generally.

So work’s been going well. It’s just a shame a lot of other things have been so shitty recently, because it’s really getting me down; had a bit of an emotional breakdown this evening when I reached my absolute limit of endurance, and while I think that “release” helped a bit, I still feel a bit crappy.

Still, holiday coming up next week, so I shall do my best to relax and enjoy it, and hope things improve from there onwards. I can but hope.

2136: Dark World

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I am having a rough time, I don’t mind admitting. I was pretty open and honest about one of the things that was bothering me a few days ago, but it’s just one of several things that have been mounting up and causing me a not-inconsiderable degree of grief and stress just recently.

I would like it all to stop, please.

The person I care most about in the world is suffering with pain that won’t go away and that no-one seems to know how to fix. It’s at a point where it’s impacting both of our lives fairly significantly, but I don’t know what to do about it. Well, I sort of do: there isn’t really anything I can do about it myself, save for hanging in there and offering support when and how I can. I don’t resent having to do that, of course, but it is exhausting.

Alongside that, I find myself worrying about doing the right thing with regard to working. I’m enjoying my current seasonal temp position in retail, but at the back of my mind is always the knowledge that I’m underpaid, overworked and overqualified; a little voice in the back of my mind reminding me that I am 34 years old and should probably have done something a little more with my life by now.

The thing is, I’ve tried doing more with my life. I’ve tried being a teacher, and failed. I’ve tried having a “normal” office job, and failed. I’ve tried being a games journalist, and failed. In each and every instance, I’ve been pushed out by some combination of me being unable to stand up to people being assholes, my own declining mental health, my own lack of self-confidence and, on several occasions, events that were completely beyond my control.

It really, really blows to feel like you’ve wasted so many years of your life, and that you’re stuck on the “bottom rung” of the career ladder. It makes me feel guilty for enjoying the work I’m doing, because I “should” be doing more. But the thing is, I don’t really feel like I want to be doing more, nor do I feel like I’m entirely capable of doing more. My experiences since leaving university have proven to be such repeated and violent blows to my own sense of belief in my own abilities that I just want to be able to get on with things and let progress happen naturally if it’s warranted.

I really don’t know what to do any more. I guess I just have to ride this particular mental storm out, just as I’ve ridden out all the previous ones I’ve suffered over the years. This one feels like quite a bad one, but I can’t give up; I mustn’t give up. Giving up will simply make everything worse.

Forgive the self-pity, but as you can probably tell, I’m not in a great place right now. You will, dear reader, hopefully understand if I am somewhat out of sorts and in need of venting a bit of steam over the next few days, weeks, months…

2132: Calling

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How do you find your “calling”? In other words, how do you figure out what it is you’re “supposed” to be doing; the thing you’re good at?

I’m still not convinced I’ve figured it out myself, but I’ve been pondering it somewhat recently.

At one point, I thought teaching might be my calling, but the reality of the situation set in quite soon after I started my training; in retrospect, I’m pleased with myself that I managed to survive as long as I did, but annoyed that I wasted several years of my life and possibly left myself with some irreparable mental scars in the process.

At another point, I thought games journalism might be my calling, but going by the state of the modern games press and its contemptuous attitude towards both its audience and the things it covers, it’s pretty apparent that I’m not particularly welcome in that field, despite it being one of my biggest ambitions when I was a bit younger.

Most recently, I’ve been working retail for the second time in my life, and I’ve been surprised how much I’ve been enjoying it. This week we’ve been setting up a brand new store, and I’m absolutely exhausted as a result of the long hours everyone on the team has been working, but it’s extremely satisfying. And when I was in the existing store serving customers, it’s been extremely satisfying to help people out, advise them or simply hand them a hotly anticipated product ready for them to go home and enjoy.

I shouldn’t be that surprised, of course; the last time I worked retail, I enjoyed it a lot, too, though I attributed this to the corporate culture of the company I was working for at the time. My positive feelings towards said company — or, rather, the management team of the store I worked at — dissipated after both a colleague and I were treated rather badly, but I still look back on the majority of my time at that store with fondness.

The fact that I’m enjoying it just as much in a company with a somewhat more laid-back attitude — for the most part, anyway — suggests that it might be the work itself that I’m finding fulfilling. And indeed there are plenty of individual elements that I find oddly satisfying: things as simple as sorting out shelves and alphabetising discs, or as complex as talking an inexperienced customer through the various product lines available. It all adds up to something that I rather enjoy on the whole, with the only really sucky part of the whole thing being that retail, on average, wherever you go, tends to pay pretty poorly, creating a business sector where many employees are overworked, underpaid and underappreciated.

Still, at this stage, having suffered through a number of jobs that clearly weren’t right for me, I’m more than willing to suck up a considerable cut in my overall pay in exchange for something that I seem to enjoy and be reasonably good at. Long may these feelings continue.

2130: Scrub Up

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I’ve been watching Scrubs on Netflix recently, because somehow, despite E4 showing it nearly every minute of every day for several years (the other minutes being taken up by Friends) I’ve never actually seen the whole thing all the way through. I’ve seen most of it, but I’ve not seen the later seasons in particular.

Scrubs is an interesting show in that it strikes a good balance between comedy and drama. It’s not a show that you can particularly pigeonhole easily, because it’s experimental and strange and isn’t afraid to have one-off episodes exploring interesting, weird concepts. In many ways, it’s a bit like earlier shows that took a similarly experimental approach in a fairly mundane setting — I’m thinking stuff like Ally McBeal here — but it very much has a feel that is all its own.

One of the reasons I’ve been enjoying it so much recently is because I’m finding protagonist JD to be quite relatable, in a number of different ways. In particular, his naiveté and hesitance to truly join the “adult” world — even when confronted with challenging situations, such as those that he faces in his job as a doctor every day — are very familiar feelings to me, and as JD gets older over the course of the show’s complete run, it’s almost comforting to see that he doesn’t really get any more comfortable with being a “grown-up”; although he’s only a fictional character, it’s nice to know that the way I feel sometimes isn’t entirely unfamiliar to others!

Scrubs is also fun for the fact that it captures the atmosphere of working in a stressful environment rather well. There are people who handle stress with aggression and impatience — particularly if, like in Dr. Cox’s case, they’re dealing with other issues alongside anything that crops up at work — and there are people who deal with it using humour. There are some who take the humour further and confront difficult concepts by making use of black humour, and there are others who, at times, allow emotions to get the best of them. And then there are those who are able to leave all the troubles and difficulties of the working day behind them the second they walk out of the door; while this is arguably the best approach for one’s mental health, is this really the best thing for those you are taking care of?

To cut a long story short, then, watching Scrubs on Netflix has given me an appreciation of why this show has remained so consistently popular since it first appeared in 2001. I haven’t yet seen the notoriously different final season, though I’m curious to, even if it’s as much of a shift from the original format as it apparently seems to be. Even if it’s rubbish, though, there’s plenty of good stuff in the preceding seasons, and it remains timeless television that I can see remaining relevant to many people for many years to come yet.