1298: Far from the Valley

Jeez. I am so glad I’m not reviewing mobile and social apps any more.

I know I’ve said this numerous times before, but I feel like every day I come across something even more offensively vapid and pointless that makes me want to punch everyone involved in the face for thinking it could possibly have ever been a good idea.

Today, I came across an app called “Kahnoodle.” Here it is.

Kahnoodle is a “relationship app” that, according to The Atlantic, “wants to make maintaining your relationship automatic and easy — as easy as tapping a button. Its options include sending push notifications to initiate sex; ‘Koupons’ that entitle the bearer to redeemable movie nights and kinky sex; and, of course, the love tank, which fills or empties depending on how many acts of love you’ve logged.”

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

Kahnoodle isn’t the only app of this type, I might add. As the Atlantic piece linked above notes, “couples’ apps” have been around for a while now, and represent some of the most pointless implementations of social media I’ve ever seen: they’re social networks designed for just two people. I reviewed one a while back called either Couple or Pair (I forget which one it was, because they changed the name from one to the other, which made all the App Store reviewers of it disproportionately angry at the developers) with Andie, and we both agreed within a matter of seconds that it was an utter waste of time.

The reason that apps like Couple/Pair and Kahnoodle are utterly pointless, of course, are because there are infinitely better ways to do the same thing already available that don’t require their own dedicated app. You can privately message people via Facebook, Google, AIM, Skype, email, text message, What’sApp, Kik… hundreds of other potential apps, from which you can talk to, you know, other people as well as your partner.

Kahnoodle’s selling point is that it “gamifies” your relationship, and as we all know from listening to Silicon Valley startup tosspieces, “gamification” increases “engagement” and “brand awareness” or whatever bullshit they’re talking about this week. Because these apps, despite appearances, aren’t really about bringing people together and helping them communicate at all; they’re about building up a captive audience who can then be either advertised at or monetised straight up the bumhole — sometimes both, in some sort of hideous business double-penetration scenario.

I apologise for that mental image. But if you need to “gamify” your relationship in order to remember to have sex or whatever, then perhaps you should sit down and have a very serious talk with your partner, because I would suggest that’s a sign that Things Aren’t Going All That Well. A real-life relationship is not like The Sims, where you can get yourself out of the doghouse by grinding the Chat, Compliment and Joke options until the meter climbs out of the red.

Sigh. Anyway.

One of the big reasons the App Store, Google Play and its ilk are such frustrating places to browse these days are because there are so many of these ridiculous apps available that provide nothing of any particular worth to society. The few useful apps that are available for phones inevitably get buried under this torrent of digital sewage, leaving those who are making good things consistently frustrated at the fact their stuff can never get noticed. It’s not just in mobile games this is happening — it’s in all types of apps. I’ve pretty much given up looking at the App Store now — I use my phone for basic communication through Twitter, Facebook, email and the like, and only download something from the App Store if I know precisely and specifically what I’m looking for.

So good job, shovelware merchants; you’ve pretty much destroyed the concept of “discoverability” with your relentless pursuit of the crap. I hope you’re pleased with yourselves.

1291: The Gentrification of Snack Foods

Have you noticed how it’s increasingly difficult to buy a bag of salt and vinegar crisps these days?

I don’t mean that they’re hard to find — they’re still everywhere, and still the second-best flavour of crisps (the best being, of course, prawn cocktail) but rather it’s increasingly difficult to find a bag that just says “salt and vinegar” on them.

No, these days it’s all “sea salt” and either malt, cider or, in extremely pretentious cases, balsamic vinegar. Granted, each of those does have a distinctive taste from the others, but it’s a distinction we didn’t used to make because no-one knew what the fuck balsamic vinegar was.

Crisps aren’t the only type of food that has undergone gentrification, though. We now have “fruit terrine” rather than “jelly with fruit in”; “artisan bread” rather than “crusty bread” (or, you know, “bread”); and almost everything that involves chocolate that isn’t a chocolate bar has suddenly become “Belgian chocolate” as if its Flemish origins somehow make the poor-quality chocolate sauce you get with a chocolate pudding magically better.

There’s probably some sort of deep-seated sociological reason for all this happening that marketing people have picked up on. At a guess, I’d say it’s something to do with people having aspirations towards being “middle class”, and what’s more middle class than balsamic vinegar? Slap that on your bag of crisps and you immediately no longer have crisps — which are clearly a working class food — but instead you have posh crisps or, more accurately, “nibbles”. The sort of things you pour into a bowl because eating them out of the bag is just so frightfully common.

Where does it end, though? Wagon Wheels become Alloy Rims? (with Jammy Alloy Rims being marketed as “a delicate berry jus nestled in a bed of delectably fluffy mallow, all encased in rich, smooth Belgian chocolate”) Cheestrings launch a new “Cheestrings Pro” range made out of suitably pongy blue cheeses? Cheetos complement their Pepsi flavour (yes, it totally exists — see?) with an array of flavours based on popular wines and ports?

I jest, of course. I’m not annoyed about all this; I just think it’s an interesting cultural phenomenon that appears to have been growing over the last few years in particular — or perhaps it’s been going on for a lot longer and I just never noticed. When I was a student, for example, I didn’t go looking for pretentious crap like balsamic vinegar; I bought value goods. (Actually, that’s not so bad; cheap crisps are frequently the best due to the sheer amount of flavouring crap they cover them with. Plus you’d never get Tangy Toms rebranding themselves as “Sundried Tomato Flavour Bites”.)

Anyway, I’m off to enjoy a cool glass of triple-filtered cow beverage, and perhaps a Belgian chocolate chip Snack Disc.

1285: Wake Up Club

I hate mornings.

Actually, that’s not quite accurate. I don’t mind mornings in and of themselves, and in fact if I get my day started early enough I’m always pleasantly surprised how much free time I have left at the end of it. What I actually hate is the combination of waking up and getting up.

Waking up is the first challenge. Or rather, remaining awake after waking up for the first time is the first challenge — the actual act of waking up isn’t, in and of itself, especially difficult.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I tend to have very vivid dreams in the morning after I’ve woken up for the first time and fallen asleep again. Sometimes I have very vivid dreams immediately before I wake up for the first time, too, and the immediate temptation is to fall back asleep again to “finish” them, because waking up almost inevitably interrupts them at an interesting, exciting or otherwise pleasing point. (Sometimes they’re nightmares — err, morningmares? — but even then there’s a sort of morbid curiosity to see how things pan out.)

It’s so easy to just close my eyes and drift back off to sleep again, particularly if Andie has gone out to work and I’ve been left by myself. Without anywhere I “have” to be and with a job that I don’t need to start until late morning, I can quite feasibly fall back asleep again if I want to.

Doing that isn’t really compatible with having a productive day, though, and certainly isn’t compatible with the programme of light exercise (walking 3-4 miles a day at a fairly leisurely pace) I’ve been following for the past couple of weeks. So I’ve been forcing myself out of bed in the morning, even if I don’t really want to. And this morning I really didn’t want to, but I managed it anyway.

One tool I’ve found quite helpful in making myself wake up and get up first time is a freebie download for Vita called Wake Up Club. This is basically little more than an alarm clock app, but it has a few little features built in that engage the brain enough to prevent you from falling asleep again.

There are two main ways it does this. Firstly is the fact that in order to get it to shut up in the first place, you have to actually pick up the Vita, press the “Yes” key when it asks if it’s all right to let the Wake Up Club app bring the Vita out of sleep mode without you having to touch the power button. Once the app is open, you then have to tap on a leisurely bouncing image of your PSN avatar to actually get the thing to be quiet.

Except there’s another step after that, too, which is where the “club” bit of the app’s title comes from. Every morning, Wake Up Club picks a bunch of people who have all set their alarm for the same time and invites them to harass each other if they don’t wake up immediately. You do this by tapping on their avatar, which causes their Vita to yell at them until they, too, inform their device that they have indeed woken up and could they please stop shouting at them?

I’m actually yet to have to do this on other “players” who are using the app, since everyone seems to wake up fairly quickly. The only time I get to tap on other people’s avatars are if there’s no-one else “playing,” or if the Vita has had some sort of PSN-related meltdown in the night and has lost connection. Then you get to tap on the avatars of computer-controlled “club” members until they wake up, which takes a good few seconds. By the time you have finished tapping on things, you’re well and truly awake, those simple motor actions being enough to get your brain moving beyond that point that will allow you to fall asleep again as soon as your head hits the pillow.

Also there are trophies if you are a trophy whore and like receiving arbitrary rewards for “gamifying” your life. So there’s that.

Anyway. Yeah. If you’re having trouble waking up, get some form of alarm clock that requires you to do something more than just hit it to shut it up. If you have a Vita, Wake Up Club is as good as anything, particularly as it’s free.

1284: MIRAKURU ROMANSU

I’m a little further into Sailor Moon now. (That sounds a bit wrong. Never mind, let’s just run with it.) Still not a long way, but long enough for both Sailors Mercury and Mars to have shown up, which has thrown an interesting twist into things.

As I suspected, both Mercury and Mars are considerably more competent than poor old Usagi, who is still a clumsy crybaby even when transformed. That said, it’s interesting to see the different ways that Mercury and Mars come to “competence” — Mercury, in keeping with her “normal” incarnation as Ami, is quiet, intelligent and thinks things through; Mars, meanwhile, is aggressive, quick to anger and courageous. Mercury is by far the most “mature” of the bunch, despite Mars clearly being the oldest (I assume, anyway; I’m judging largely on the basis of their physical development and the fact that Mars has a job rather than attending school) [correction — the episode I watched the day after this post was written saw Mars turn up in a school uniform, so scratch that!] — the episode I watched today featured Usagi and Mars arguing throughout, with Mars in particular betraying the facade of maturity she clearly tries hard to keep up by getting sucked into Usagi’s ridiculous world. I’m spotting a bit of a tsundere streak in Mars, too (well, mostly tsuntsun at present) which, of course, means I find her tremendously attractive.

The show continues to be simplistic, entertaining fun at its current stage. I don’t know if it gets any more complex later on, but to be honest, I don’t mind at all if it continues in its present, rather formulaic fashion. You don’t have to think too hard about it or try to hunt for hidden meanings; you can just flop down in front of it and enjoy the silliness. It’s the Saturday morning cartoon formula — predictable villains who are always after the same thing (the curiously non-specific “energy” in Sailor Moon’s case), a predictable main cast who get to do one majorly awesome thing per episode that can be easily represented through the insertion of stock footage, and a comic sidekick character. (That said, Sailor Moon’s sidekick character Luna the cat is actually the most mature, sensible one out of all of them.)

What’s interesting about Sailor Moon at this early stage — and I could be wrong about this, since I’m only ten episodes into the whole run — is that it’s essentially a superhero show, focused almost exclusively on female superheroes, in which said female superheroes don’t appear to be there just to be “sexy”. Sure, they’re all in short skirts, Sailor Mars is wearing some distinctly impractical-looking high heels and there was a rather gratuitous pantsu shot (Sailor Mars again) in the last episode I watched, but for the most part when they’re in their Sailor Senshi forms, it’s all business, bubbles, fireballs and Moon Tiara Action. (Incidentally, I feel that Sailors Mercury and Moon drew the short straws when it came to their awesome powers — Sailor Mars can set things on fire, while Mercury can, err, make a lot of bubbles, and Moon can throw her tiara at things. Granted, getting hit by Sailor Moon’s tiara generally appears to make things turn into dust, but still. Sailor Mars can set things on fire.)

Anyway, yeah. Sailor Moon is awesome. I’m disappointed in myself I haven’t watched it sooner, but at least I can make up for lost time now.

1283: Dislike

I find myself thinking more and more about deactivating my Facebook account. I realise that in this day and age doing such a thing is tantamount to unplugging yourself from The Matrix, but I really don’t feel there’s a lot of value there for me any more.

The thing that has stopped me from closing my Facebook account in the past is the fact that “it’s the only real means I have of staying in touch with certain people.” That may be true, but the real question is how often I actually speak to the people for whom the only means I have of reaching them is Facebook? I have a lot of doubling-up between Facebook and Twitter, and in the case of most of my “real-life” friends I have their phone numbers. If I want to make plans with someone, I’ll generally text them. If I don’t have their phone number, I’ll reach for Twitter. Facebook messages are frequently ignored.

The reason Facebook’s value has declined for me over time is because the social media landscape has changed. What was once a cool means of communication has been roughly shoved in the direction of “branding” and advertising. It’s obvious the moment you read anything in tech journalism about social media, whether it’s Facebook or the latest pointless mobile app that lets you manipulate photos no-one cares about in a slightly different way to all the other apps that let you manipulate photos no-one cares about. None of the press coverage about new social media apps has anything to do with people communicating with one another; it’s all about how brands can leverage their social graph and monetize their core demographics. It’s about how a seemingly innocent app that allows you to subtly manipulate photos no-one gives a shit about is actually a means of getting your “brand” in front of as many people as possible. It’s about “engagement”, “ROI” and “CPC”.

I don’t give a fuck. And I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t want to be confronted with an ad for an app or game I don’t give a shit about before I see anything my friends have posted — which, nine times out of ten, I probably don’t give a toss about anyway. I don’t want to be continually confronted with “sponsored posts” festooned with comments from complete imbeciles who think telling an ad to “fuck off” will make it go away. And I really couldn’t give a flying honk what George Takei’s PR team (spoiler: that’s not George Takei writing those posts) saw on Reddit last week and is only now getting around to sharing with everyone on the Internet.

Even outside of “branding” and advertising, though, the way people use Facebook has changed, too. With more and more different types of post available, the service has become more of a means of simply broadcasting pointless, impersonal shit into the void of the Internet rather than a way to start discussions or have conversations. What was once a two-way discussion is now a largely one-way street. (I’m aware a blog is exactly the same, but at least a blog is under no illusions about what it is and is not; Facebook, meanwhile, has always marketed itself as some form of communication tool, when this is, in fact, a relatively minor part of its reason for existence these days.)

All this may be hypocritical, because I’ve been guilty of all of the above at one time or another. But that was a process of discovery and exploration, leading me to the realisation I’m at today: aside from Twitter, which genuinely is still a reasonably useful means of communication for me, most other forms of social media carry little value to me besides giving me something to fiddle with on my phone when small talk dries up and I don’t want to just sit there looking like some sort of mute twat.

I haven’t decided yet whether or not I’m actually going to close down my Facebook account, but now I don’t work reviewing awful, exploitative and, hell, just downright crap social games for a living, I have no real “need” for that particular ball and chain any more. I’m going to do some very serious thinking about whether Facebook has a place in my life any more in the next week or two, and come to a conclusion then. If you’ve been having similar thoughts to me, then I urge you to do the same. I have a strange feeling we’ll feel better without that particular annoyance in our lives.

1281: MIRACLE ROMANCE

I guess about now is a good time to admit that I’ve started watching Sailor Moon and, predictably, enjoying it a great deal.

In my defence, after watching Revolutionary Girl Utena and finding it enjoyable but immensely confusing, I felt obliged to check out Sailor Moon for further education in the ways of the magical girl. I have a sort of ulterior motive for educating myself on this particular aspect of anime — for starters, I’ve always been interested in it, but never got around to checking any of it out; secondly, I hear that Puella Magi Madoka Magica or whatever it’s called is very good, but is something of a deconstruction of the magical girl genre as a whole and consequently is best appreciated when you have more than a passing familiarity with its tropes.

So, Sailor Moon, then. In stark contrast to Revolutionary Girl Utena, Sailor Moon is charmingly unsubtle about everything it does. The lead character Usagi seems to do nothing but shout or cry all the time, and the show’s moral messages are only a couple of steps removed from He-Man’s posturing. While there’s no “Hey, Kids!” moment at the end of a Sailor Moon episode, the inherent “message” of each chapter is so startlingly obvious within about five seconds of it starting that it becomes more of a Columbo-style show, where you’re waiting to see how it reaches the conclusion you already know from the outset, rather than holding on tight for some narrative twists and turns.

That’s not to say it’s bad, though; simple is good sometimes, and God knows it’s appreciated after Utena. Sailor Moon’s characters are charming and endearing, even if they’re loud, and they’ve all grown and developed even in the space of the few episodes I’ve watched to date. I’m looking forward to seeing how Usagi — who, spoiler, is also Sailor Moon — develops over the course of the 300 bajillion episodes there are, because she is comically incompetent at present, despite ostensibly being the show’s heroine. Her “sidekicks” who are teased in the show’s opening titles haven’t shown up yet, but I assume it’s only a matter of time.

It’s clear even from this early stage that Sailor Moon was very influential, however. I’m seeing elements of its humour and characterisation in the latest Hyperdimension Neptunia game, for example, where Neptune takes on the Usagi role of “amusingly rubbish protagonist who’s aware she’s rubbish”, and her companions are actually far more capable than she is. There’s also the more obvious fact that Neptune and co are all themselves magical girls, able to transform into their “Hard Drive Divinity” forms to power up and become stronger — though there’s less “identity hiding” in the world of Neptunia than there is in the more “grounded in reality” world of Sailor Moon.

And that music. Amazing. While the copies of the episodes I’m watching aren’t brilliant quality — or perhaps they really were that poor quality when originally broadcast — the amazing background music still stands out, if only for the fact it sounds like it belongs in a 1960s TV series rather than the 1992 anime from which it actually hails. Huge string orchestras, wakka-wakka guitars, choirs of singers mewling “oooooooh, oooh-ooooooohh, Saiiiiloooor Mooooooon…” as Usagi transforms. Marvellous stuff.

Anyway. I’m going to watch a lot more of Sailor Moon, I predict. I have the whole series to hand, but it remains to be seen if I can manage all of it. I’m sure I can, and I’m sure I will feel suitably satisfied at its conclusion. I hope there’s a good ending. Please don’t tell me if the ending is rubbish!

1278: Christopher Walkern

So the whole “go for a walk for some exercise” thing has been going pretty well. I’ve managed to get up early and get out every day since I said I was going to, which bodes well. I am, however, probably going to take the weekend off so I can enjoy a lie in.

I’ve been walking for at least an hour each day, usually covering a distance of just under 4 miles or so. I usually follow pretty much the same route — up the road to the Common, wiggle around a bit in this side of the Common, cut across, walk down the road into town, walk through the vaguely attractive parks on the edge of the city centre, walk past the station and back up the other end of my road to finish where I started. It’s a big loop, and there’s a mix of flat, uphill and downhill walking all the way, so there’s a bit of variety and challenge in places. It’s still relatively “leisurely” compared to gasping and wheezing my way through a run, though, which makes it infinitely more appealing for the moment even if it isn’t quite as good for me.

One of the helpful inspiring factors while I’ve been walking has been the use of audiobooks. I don’t normally listen to a lot of audiobooks or podcasts any more, because I don’t really have a suitable situation in which to listen to them. I can’t listen to them while I work, because I have proven to myself on numerous occasions that I absolutely, positively 100% cannot write anything more than notes while someone else is talking in the same room, whether they’re a real person or a recording. However, when all you’re doing is walking aimlessly for the purposes of exercise, an audiobook or podcast is ideal listening. You’re not running, so there’s no real need for some music with a sense of “pace” to it; you can take your time and take in the words of whatever it is you’re listening to.

The accompaniment to my walks this week has been the audiobook of a Dean Koontz novel. I had a couple of Koontz works recommended to me a while back and enjoyed them — I read those, rather than listened to them — so I decided to take a chance on another one. It’s a bit bigger of a “risk” to try out an audiobook, since they’re significantly more expensive than eBooks or even just, you know, books. Still, I haven’t been disappointed so far; the story is interesting and the narrator appears to be pretty good, too, which is nice. (The novel is “Lightning,” if you were wondering. I have no idea if this is considered “good” or not by Koontz fans, but I’m enjoying it.)

The other nice thing about audiobooks is the fact that it allows me to enjoy books without having to actually read them. I have nothing against reading and actually enjoy it rather a lot, but it’s quite hard to make time for it when I have lots of other things I want to do as well. Reading is something I like to do when it’s quiet — much like writing — so I can’t really do it in front of the TV, and I certainly can’t do it while I’m doing something else. Audiobooks allow me to enjoy a book while I’m doing something else, which is ideal.

So that’s that. I’ll be taking it easy for the weekend, then continuing this new regime next week. Let’s see if it helps at all.

1277: Failing to Resist the Urge to Call This Post ‘Rim Job’

I’M SORRY. (I’m not sorry.)

I went to see Pacific Rim this evening with my similarly-named friends Tim and Tom. This, along with Akira the other night, means that I’ve officially been to the cinema more times in the past week than I have in the last year.

As for Pacific Rim, it was enjoyable, if cheesy. Good, dumb fun on the surface, but a movie clearly designed with an appreciation — possibly even reverence — for Japanese giant robot anime. Throughout the whole thing, I couldn’t help thinking that the movie might have been better just as a straight-up anime. In fact, partway through the movie, I found myself making mental comparisons with the visual novel Deus Machina Demonbane, with which Pacific Rim actually shares a significant number of similarities.

Lest you’re unfamiliar with Deus Machina Demonbane but have seen Pacific Rim, the former is a visual novel about giant robots battling monsters loosely inspired by the work of HP Lovecraft; the latter is a movie about giant robots battling monsters with too many mouths. Already quite similar, albeit the Lovecraftian twist on Demonbane is a pleasant break from the norm.

Then we have the whole “you need two people to pilot a giant robot” thing, which is present in both Demonbane and Pacific Rim; in the former, the pilot is paired up with a “tome” (in the case of the protagonist, an absolutely adorable personification of the Necronimicon), while in the latter, two people have to “drift” together and share their consciousness, or memories, or something.

Then there’s the fact that the main “hero” robot gets the crap kicked out of it repeatedly, yet somehow always gets repaired to immaculate condition every time, which is present in both works.

And the fact that the giant robots fighting do just as much damage — if not more so — to the places they’re trying to protect than the monsters they’re fighting, which is, again, present in both works.

Demonbane does have a bit of a twist in that the antagonists are given personalities and stories of their own, rather than just being “GRRR ARRGH MONSTERS”. There’s an overall “bad guy” in Demonbane, who is responsible for the Lovecraftian beasts invading our dimension, and there are some truly loathsome “lieutenants” who give the protagonist and the other characters in the story a lot of grief, to say the least.

Also, there is more fucking in Demonbane, while there is none in Pacific Rim, what with it being a 12A and all while Demonbane is an adults-only title. For the most part, the sexual scenes in Demonbane are more horrific than titillating, though; it’s one of those “I can’t fap to this!” games, unless you have some seriously weird tastes. Likewise, you cannot fap to Pacific Rim, but for different reasons.

Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is that if you enjoyed Pacific Rim and you’re open to the idea of playing sexually explicit visual novels, then you should give Deus Machina Demonbane a look. It’s one of the more memorable, well-written visual novels I’ve played in my time, and it’s satisfyingly hefty in length, too, particularly if you go for all the endings.

I am hot and sweaty. I am going to drink something cold and go to bed. Good night.

1275: Got Out

I successfully put my proposed plan from yesterday’s post into action today. Now it is just a matter of sticking to it.

Walking isn’t as inherently satisfying as running, because it’s not as obviously tiring. But it’s still a reasonably good workout — Runkeeper assured me that I had burned a significant number of calories by the time I got back home. In total, I was out for just over an hour, and walked about 3.5 miles in total.

I’ve always been something of an indoor person, but I do like just going for a walk sometimes. This is a surprise to me, because the idea of “going for a walk” was bewilderingly ridiculous when I was young. Why, I thought, would you ever just go out with the intention of not actually going anywhere? Why, I pondered, would you ever just go out without a final destination in mind?

Well, now I’m a little older, I can appreciate the answers to those questions a little more: the reason you would do those things is simply to appreciate the things that are around you, and perhaps discover some interesting new things in the process.

I’m not sure when my attitudes changed on this note, but I have a feeling it was when I was forced to move back home for a while after my marriage broke down. Staying in the house just made me feel exceedingly depressed all the time, so I welcomed any excuse to get out and do something, even if that “something” wasn’t really anything in particular. I’d go out for a run around the area; I’d go out for a walk to the local woods; I’d walk out of the village by one road, all the way around its perimeter and re-enter from a completely different angle. In the process, I found myself exploring places that I’d either never been to before, or which I hadn’t been to for a significant number of years.

When I go out for a walk, I enjoy it when I can find myself surrounded by nature. Again, I note that I’ve never really been an outdoor person, but I do feel something of a curious affinity for the greenery of forests and otherwise wooded areas. I enjoy being under a canopy of leaves, sunlight dappled on the ground through the few breaks in the green ceiling above me. I enjoy the crunch of twigs and dead leaves underfoot as I walk down a dirt path; I enjoy seeing peculiar, twisted, gnarled trees that have grown in peculiar directions for reasons known only to themselves.

I’m reasonably fortunate where I am now because I’m pretty close to Southampton Common, which has a lot of greenery. There’s a lot of open space, too, what with it being a common and all, but there’s also plenty of wooded areas with well-worn pathways to explore. There’s also a creepy graveyard on the boundary which is interesting to wander through.

I’m going to try and get in the habit of going for a walk every morning if possible. It worked out quite well today — I got up early, went out, walked for an hour, got back, had breakfast, had time to chill out for half an hour, then started work, and I didn’t feel like I’d “wasted” any time. Whether or not I feel “better” is a matter of some debate, but I can’t really expect to feel significantly different after just one day, can I?

Well. Let’s stick with it and see what happens, anyway.

1274: Get Out

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m feeling a little low. Whether this is a symptom of some sort of summer-related Seasonal Affective Disorder or if it’s just a symptom of my ongoing depression I don’t know, but I am feeling a little low.

One of the reasons I’m feeling low is because I feel fat and gross. I always feel fat and gross, to be fair, because I am fat and gross, but there have been times when I didn’t feel quite as bad about myself as I do right now. Those times had one common factor: I was indulging in a regular exercise routine, either at the gym and pool, or out on the roads running.

I haven’t done any real exercise for quite some time for various reasons — mostly a lack of motivation related to depression, which just feeds the cycle and makes it worse, I know, but also just recently the blazing hot weather we’ve been having every day hasn’t been helping either. The last thing I feel like doing when it feels like a greenhouse outside is picking up my pace to anything more than my usual walk, let alone persisting at that pace for 30-45 minutes at a time.

Consequently, most of the good work I’ve done on running in the past has been largely undone, and I’m a mess with regard to fitness. I don’t really know what to do about it, either; I just feel completely unmotivated and have absolutely no desire whatsoever to go out and “better myself”, but at the same time know that if I don’t I’m going to continue along in this funk not really wanting to do anything.

This Oatmeal comic got me thinking somewhat, because I recognised a lot of the things he was talking about therein. It’s almost — almost — inspired me to get up and go out this evening, but I’m not really feeling it right now. I may make a start on some sort of regime tomorrow, however.

What I’m thinking I might do is rather than jump straight back into the demoralising experience of being a fat guy trying to run, I’ll just try and do a long walk each day. That’s something that feels “doable” and “achievable,” and from there I can always work my way up to doing something a bit more strenuous. I’m not talking about a casual amble, just to be clear; I’m talking about a brisk walk for a significant distance for somewhere in the region of 45 minutes to an hour. I live right near Southampton Common, which is the ideal venue for such perambulations, so I may just start taking advantage of that fact.

Here’s my plan, then, which it remains to be seen whether or not I’ll be able to stick to: I’m going to try and get up reasonably early-ish — i.e. considerably more than half an hour before I’m supposed to start doing work — and head out for a walk in the morning before it gets too unbearably hot. Then I will come home, have breakfast, relax, chill out and start work. Hopefully that small change will have some sort of impact, if not on my body then at least on my mental state.

I’m making no promises as to whether or not this is actually going to do anything, but having good intentions is a first step at least. Let’s see if they lead anywhere.