2326: Purpose

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In response to the WordPress Daily Post prompt for June 2, 2016.

Purpose is, I am told, that little thing that lights a fire under your arse. Trouble is, finding one’s purpose and then being able to actually, you know, follow it somewhere constructive is a bit harder than just lighting a match beneath your hairy, sweaty ringpiece and hoping for the best.

I don’t think I’ve found my purpose yet. This is probably self-evident to those of you who have either been following this blog for a while or who know me in real life. It’s not through lack of trying, mind you — I’ve tried all manner of different things, but none of them seem to have quite worked out in a way that is any way satisfactory. I’ve either found myself realising that no, I don’t really want to do that thing after all — or in the few cases where I’ve found myself actually enjoying something that I’m doing, I find the opportunity snatched away from me through circumstances entirely beyond my control.

The closest thing I feel I have to any sort of purpose is to write. About what? I don’t know. Games obviously spring to mind, as I do a lot of writing about those from various perspectives, and indeed one of the writing projects I’m finding most enjoyable at the moment is the production of in-depth studies of games over on the sister site to this blog, MoeGamer. I’m currently into my third month of producing work of this type, and I’ve even managed to attract a few people to my Patreon to support me financially in appreciation for my writing, which is nice. Not enough to live on, by any means, but a bit of pocket money each month, if nothing else.

What else do I feel qualified to write about? Music is another thing; music may not be as much of a focus in my life as it was when I was at school, but it will always be a big part of who I am, and I feel pretty confident both talking and writing about music — and indeed teaching it.

On the subject of music, I have a curious (and probably not all that interesting) anecdote to share. I tend to find that my subconscious often reflects things that are at the back of my mind or causing me anxiety through my dreams, and one recurring dream I seem to have is that I’m back at my old school, I know that there are orchestra and concert band rehearsals going on — these are both groups that I was a member of throughout my entire time at school — but I deliberately choose not to attend them, nor to participate in the regular school concerts. In the dreams, I often run into my old music teacher Mr Murrall, one of my absolute favourite teachers in the whole school, and he’s extremely disappointed in me for not attending. Perhaps this is some sort of subconscious signal that I should try and do more with my music once again — question is, what?

That annoying question “what?” is the thing that I feel holds me back most from finding a purpose. Whenever I look for a job, I get hung up on what I should be looking for. Whenever I consider offering private services such as music teaching, I wonder what I should be charging and offering. Whenever I consider training myself up in a new field to try and find a new career, I stall on what I should be studying. What, what, what.

What should I do? I don’t know. But hopefully the answer will come to me at some point, otherwise I’ll just find myself staggering into middle- and old age feeling like I’ve not really accomplished anything along the way. And that’s not a prospect I’m particularly happy about.

1513: Take a Moment

As you probably gathered from yesterday’s entry, I haven’t exactly been feeling on top of my game, so I had today as a quiet day of rest to try and recuperate a bit. I’m not quite sure exactly what has been getting me down — some combination of stress, exhaustion and achey muscles from overdoing it a bit in the gym, I think — but whatever it was, it pretty much knocked me out of action for most of this morning and I spent most of the day sitting on the sofa not doing very much.

Actually, that’s not quite true; a quiet day was the perfect opportunity to get stuck into The Witch and the Hundred Knight, which I’m reviewing later in the month and as such won’t be talking about on here just yet other than to say I’m enjoying it so far.

A quiet day is something we all need now and then, regardless of whether or not we’re actually feeling ill, run-down or some combination of the above. Weekends aren’t quite the same thing, because weekends often turn into “let’s do all the things we couldn’t do in the week”. You have to make a specific effort to have a relaxing weekend, otherwise you’ll magically find yourself at the shop, walking around town, digging the garden or something equally both banal and tiring.

The trouble with modern life is that it’s all too easy to fall into “the guilt trap” — feeling that doing “nothing” (i.e. taking the time to relax and recharge a bit) is somehow a waste of time. Different people feel this to varying degrees — I have one friend who feels guilty when he sits down to play computer games, for example, while I tend to feel it when I take a day off from work, as I did today. In my case, the guilt from taking a day off work stems from my time working as a teacher — there, if you took a day off, there was absolutely no doubt: you were negatively affecting someone else’s day, because they would have to cover your lesson. Not only that, but you’d still end up having to do some work even if you were on your deathbed; most schools expect you to provide some sort of cover work for you while you’re off. A more organised teacher than myself would have a bank of cover work already available but… yeah, no.

Anyway, suffice to say, despite feeling seriously grotty for pretty much the whole day, a restful day has done me the world of good. And while I’m not exactly feeling quite 100% again just yet, I at least feel a little more ready to face the world than I did this morning, which was, frankly, not at all — not helped by the fact that my coffee machine is presently broken. Boo, hiss and so on.

Anyway, that’s that. Off to bed for me, and back to the daily grind tomorrow.

1477: Nondescript

It’s been one of those days that just sort of… happened today. I wrote about EA’s horrendous molestation of the Dungeon Keeper series, gave Flappy Bird a well-deserved drubbing in a review and a few other things, then played an interesting horror game called Serena which I’m going to write a review of tomorrow, then capped the evening off with some Final Fantasy XIV. That was my day. That was it.

Much as we might like to always have interesting things to talk about and tall tales to tell, the fact is that most days we go through our existence are pretty humdrum, boring and nondescript, with almost nothing of note happening whatsoever.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course, because having humdrum, boring and nondescript days suggests that things are going all right — it’s better than having days that are crushing disappointments, or that make you want to punch walls, or that make you want to sit in the shower and cry, for example, but it’s also not quite as good as days that make you want to explode in happiness or play a pair of tea tongs like castanets. (Actually, I must confess to doing the latter earlier while waiting for a cup of tea to brew, but it was more through boredom than happiness. Tea tongs actually make a surprisingly convincing castanets substitute, FYI.)

Perhaps this is why social media has risen to such prominence in recent years. Everything from the humble status update to a “selfie” has the potential to make the mundane seem so much more fascinating than it really is — at least it does to the people posting these things. Yes! they’ll think. Here’s my dinner! It’s amazing! Maybe people will be jealous of what I’m having! I have beans with sausages! Joke’s on you, losers! Oh God I’m so lonely.

It’s sort of baffling if you take a step back from it all, really. Take photography in particular — the rise of digital photography and phone cameras have devalued the humble photograph from cultural artifact to disposable, throwaway thing. Photos used to be a precious commodity — you’d go on holiday with a couple of 36-exposure rolls of film in your bag, and you’d try to make every shot count. Now, you can afford to take pictures of every course of every meal you have and share them to the world as if they give a shit. And Silicon Valley types who enjoy making new social media apps for no other reason than to say they attracted several million in seed funding, whatever that is, can take advantage of people like this by offering them apps that allow them to “turn your photographs into beautiful memories” and the like. Ugh.

Of course, the Internet belongs to everyone so it is your choice how you choose to go about using it. Just remember that the things you’re posting might not be as interesting to other people as they might be to you. Heaven knows I know that after writing 1,477 days of nonsense on these very pages.

There you go. I even have something to say on a humdrum, boring and nondescript day such as today. And now I’m going to bed. Good night.

1453: Winding Down

And so we come to the end of another week, with the prospect of a nice relaxing weekend sprawling out in front of me.

This week feels like it’s been quite a long one. Not really for any particular reason; things have just dragged a little, and I’ve been quite busy. Still, better that than be twiddling my thumbs or wallowing in a black puddle of depression, right?

Not sure how I’m going to spend the weekend as yet. I’m almost certain there will be some Final Fantasy XIV involved, and probably some Danganronpa — which I’m previewing next week for USgamer — too.

I can’t say a lot about Danganronpa at present due to content embargoes and whatnot — though it’s the kind of embargo that says I can’t talk about content in the game after a certain point in the story, not the kind that gags me until a specific date — but I will say that it’s utterly fantastic. If you have enjoyed any combination of Corpse Party, Ace Attorney, 999, Virtue’s Last Reward and adventure games or visual novels in general, you’re going to have an absolute blast with this one — though bring a strong stomach, because you’re going to need it.

Other than that — well, even with all that, really — not a lot of great import or interest has happened this week. I mean, I received my gigantic fabric wall scroll poster of Nepgear from Hyperdimension Neptunia and hung it on my wall having successfully remembered how to use picture hooks after initially forgetting, but that’s not all that fascinating, really. (It is a great poster, though.) And I reached level 50 in Weaver on Final Fantasy XIV the other night by discovering an extremely easy repeatable quest and then simply making forty-seven pairs of woolen tights in order to complete it multiple times in rapid succession — I must have looked funny running back and forth between the Levemete and the quest’s “target” over and over, with the distinctive “level up” flash surrounding me every few minutes. But again, of all the things I’ve done in that game to date, that’s not one of the more interesting things I’ve done.

I’m looking forward to next week, though, since Tuesday is our first official board gaming night of the new year, and it’s my turn to pick what we get to play. Since I’ve received a pleasantly large selection of new games through a combination of Christmas presents and Christmas money, I’m taking along a nice taster selection for us to enjoy — and with many of them clocking in at half an hour or less to play through, we should hopefully have time to get plenty of gaming in over the course of the evening. I wonder which of the games will go down the best — or if we’ll get time to squeeze them all in? We’ll see. I’m particularly looking forward to experimenting with the insanity that is ten-minute real-time dice-rolling game Escape.

Anyway. That is that for now. My working week is over, so I’m going to go and flop on the sofa with a coffee now. Have a pleasant weekend!