1470: Move

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

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.

1464: In One's Own Skin

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.

1463: Losing Face

I've been off Facebook for some time now — a cursory search through these pages suggests I closed my account in October of last year — and for the most part I haven't missed it.

I certainly haven't missed the endlessly inane reshares of content from George Takei('s PR intern) which in turn was stuff that already did the rounds on Reddit and subsequently Twitter several days earlier.

I also haven't missed the few people who seem to think that Facebook is an appropriate platform for standing atop their soapbox and bellowing the most ill-informed political and/or sociological opinions they can possibly think of.

I also haven't missed having shit games and advertising jammed forcibly down my throat every time I log in. I spent a considerable amount of time reviewing Facebook games professionally and all it left me with was a bitterly passionate desire to never play one ever again.

And yet…

Over the weekend I went out. This is nothing unusual in itself, but this was something of a special occasion — it was a reunion of sorts for those of us who studied music at the University of Southampton between 1999 and 2002. We were a pretty close-knit bunch while we were there — though I must confess, being a joint-honours English and Music student, that I always felt somewhat on the periphery of this particular social group — and most people have kept in touch pretty well ever since. A number of us are still in Southampton, too, though a distressingly small number of us are actually doing anything with our music studies professionally. (Note to kids planning their future: when someone tells you that a particular degree is a "good, general choice that will get you into most careers," they are talking bollocks.)

Anyway, yeah. We went out to a pub near Newbury and ate our respective body weights in roast dinners and custard-covered desserts. It was thoroughly pleasant, particularly as I hadn't seen some of these people for a while.

It's partly my fault, of course — I could have very easily picked up the phone and invited them over for dinner, or coffee, or whatever, but I haven't. But then they haven't either. I don't say this with bitterness — it's just the way that the rapid pace of modern 21st century life makes people think. Real-life friendships often fall by the wayside somewhat, and people whom you once spent every day with become people that you see a couple of times a year — albeit on those occasions, you'll start singing improvised offensive German barbershop a cappella as if no time whatsoever had passed between the last couple of times you saw one another. (At least you will if you are me and my friends.)

The thing is, though, for many people, Facebook fills that gap between in-person interactions — or "face time" as obnoxious wankers like to call it. It allows you to remind each other of your existence, and to likewise acknowledge one another's existence with a Like or a Comment.

At least, that's the intention. One might argue that said intention has been somewhat diluted over the last few years as Facebook has become less and less about meaningful social interactions and more and more about sharing viral content in an attempt to amass as many Likes, comments and shares as possible.

Having almost missed out on this reunion due to my non-presence on Facebook, I find myself questioning my decision to leave the network. It also makes me ponder whether or not it might be possible to use it in a different way — specifically, to have a substantial cull of my friends list to just those who are local and whom I am likely to want to see again at some point. I'd cut out any Pages that I was following — not that I think I was following many in the first place — and keep my friends list down in the double-digits if at all possible. I'd be ruthless in the culling of people who didn't post anything interesting or useful and consequently cluttered up my news feed with bullshit, and I'd lock down my account so I'd be in complete control of who could find me. I'd also minimise overlap between Facebook and Twitter, because what's the point?

I'm tempted to try this, though with all the changes I've seen Facebook make regarding how it decides what it wants to show to you, I have my doubts as to how useful the service is even with these attempts to take ownership of the experience. It certainly can't hurt to give it a go, anyway, and if it does turn out to be useless nonsense as I suspect, it's little bother to simply hit the "deactivate" button again.

I'll leave you with this, which is a big part of my hesitance to return:

1462: Filthy Lucre

There are many things that bug me about free-to-play games — specifically, those of the mobile and Facebook variety — but one of my biggest bugbears is the ability to purchase in-game currency. Frustratingly, this is an option that has transcended its free-to-play origins and is now starting to infest other types of game — including full-price retail games on the new consoles.

The ability to purchase currency is usually touted as a time-saving feature that eliminates the need for grinding. In some cases, it's simply that — an option. In others, it becomes abundantly clear before very long that the game's economy has been balanced on the assumption that most players probably will purchase in-game currency at some point, and consequently those who just want to play the game without having to get their credit card out every ten minutes can just go fuck themselves.

Now, in many ways, choice is a good thing. Not everyone has time to spend earning virtual money in games to achieve somethingorother. But does that mean they should have the option to spend real money in order to get ahead in the game? I'm not so sure.

You see, the second you put that option there, it devalues the efforts of those willing to put in the work to earn the money themselves. Why would you bother working for something if you can just throw money at it, effectively paying to not play the game?

The reason I bring this up is that my Free Company in Final Fantasy XIV has started saving up for a medium-sized plot of land on which to build a house for guild activities. We already have a small plot, but the shed-like house that fits on the small plots is already full to bursting with the furniture that the crafters have been churning out. Consequently, active members of the guild have been working together to earn money in order to purchase one of the larger plots, which allows you to build significantly larger houses.

This evening, we spent a couple of hours in a "spiritbonding party" — we grouped up together, equipped with items of jewelry that weren't part of our normal equipment loadout, and then proceeded to battle hordes of monsters until said pieces of jewelry were "spiritbonded" to us — a mechanic in Final Fantasy XIV that means you can then break the item of equipment down and turn it into "materia". Materia are items that can be socketed into pieces of equipment for various stat bonuses, and certain among them — particularly the better ones — sell for pretty high prices due to their usefulness in completing the high-level "A Relic Reborn" quest that culminates in a character acquiring their almost-best weapon.

As you may have surmised already, someone in the guild had the bright idea of mass-producing a bunch of these jewelry items, taking them to an area with enemies that respawned quickly, and then indulging in some mass Water Sprite genocide until we had all Spiritbonded with the items enough to turn them into materia. We could then sell the resulting materia and plough some (or all, depending on how generous we were feeling) of the profits into our fundraising efforts for the new house.

The point is, while the act of going through the spiritbonding process is rather tedious — it largely involves killing lots of things that you're way overpowered for — it was something that brought a lot of us together for an enjoyable time. The experience was meaningful, worthwhile and even fun for the fact we were working together on it, even though the actual things we were doing were pretty mindless. And, when each of us successfully and finally spiritbonded with the items we had equipped, there was a feeling of achievement; a feeling of achievement that amplified considerably when the little message popped up on screen some time later saying that the materia we created had sold for a respectable amount of money; a feeling of achievement that amplified even more when voluntarily donating some of our own in-game currency to the guild coffers.

Everything I've described above would have been utterly meaningless had the option to purchase currency been in there. Attaining the medium-sized house would have felt like a hollow victory, as we wouldn't have done it through our skill and dedication to the game — we'd have done it through how deep our collective pockets are. That carries no meaning in the game world; one of the nicest things about Final Fantasy XIV's land of Eorzea is that the real world never intrudes. There's no "cash shop", the game never once asks you for your credit card details — you set up your subscription before you start playing — and once you're in the virtual world, everything you do relates to the virtual world somehow. It's a highly immersive experience, and one of the best things about the game.

Drop in a "Buy Gil" button and that goes out of the window. When working hard to attain something challenging in the game that costs a lot of money, the thought would always be there: "I wonder if I should just pay up and get it instead." And sure, it's certainly nice in the short term to be able to buy your way to victory — but in the long run, it's much more satisfying to know that everything you've achieved is because you've put the effort in.

A bit like life, you know.

1461: Day After Day

Every so often when I sit down to write this blog thing every day, I look at the number before the post title and think "bloody hell, that's a lot of posts." Then I think "bloody hell, that's quite a long time I've been doing this."

Of course, given that my day job involves writing lots of things every day, it's perhaps arguable whether or not having written a single post on here every day for the last 1,461 days is as impressive as it once was, but I like to think it still shows a certain degree of dedication and commitment on my part. And, given that I'm not the sort of person who spends a lot of time thinking particularly good things about themselves, that's one thing with concrete evidence that I can specifically point to and say "yes, that's good; that's something I can be pleased with."

I feel doubly pleased when I think back to how this all started. For those who have joined me recently, the basic gist was this: a few UK-based writers got together and decided to write something every day, initially for a year. I joined quite late in January in that first year, and haven't stopped since. Interestingly, a significant number of the people who started that first year also gave up very quickly — the person I regard as the "founder" simply bowed out with a tweet that said "fuck #oneaday" one day and never picked it up again — but others stuck it out for most or even all of that first year.

Following that, I managed to organise a ragtag group of bloggers into a group who helped motivate each other somewhat, and in the process we raised a bit of money for charity. Again, though, relatively few people made it through the whole year, but I stood firm. Now, to my knowledge, I'm the only one of the original participants from either of those first couple of years to still be blogging on a daily basis and while I may not always have a lot of meaningful things to say, I still sit down and write every day, regardless.

Because it wasn't necessarily about writing something meaningful or useful. It was just about writing. As with any creative endeavour, regardless of how ambitious it is, the only way to get better and refine your craft is to continue doing it as often as possible. You might just discover a few things about yourself in the process.

For my part, I've discovered — well, confirmed, really — that writing is a good outlet for me. If stress and anxiety is starting to build up in my head, as it often does, writing this post each day is a good means of venting some of that steam. I don't even necessarily have to write specifically about what I'm stressed or anxious about; if you look back to the period on this blog where my marriage was falling apart and I was in a seriously bad place mental health-wise, you'll notice that a lot of the posts are considerably more creative than they perhaps are now. I don't think this is coincidental at all; misery appears to beget creativity, which may account for the whole "tortured artist" stereotype.

Note: I do not advocate the seeking out of misery purely to get your own creative juices flowing, but if, for whatever reason, you're not in a good place, use that negative energy to make something. It doesn't have to be good. But it can help.

Anyway. I think that's enough blabbering on for now. Just another day in the increasingly long list.

1460: Flexitime

Where's all the time gone?

I'm not talking about the year zipping by — we're still in January when I last checked, so things are proceeding at about the right pace there — but instead I am talking about the time within each individual day. I know that reasonably speaking each day absolutely isn't any shorter than it normally is, but it certainly feels like it at the moment for some reason. I feel like I used to be able to fit more things into the day, whereas now I seem to spend the majority of the day working, a little while chilling out in the evening and then before I know it it's after midnight and I should be sleeping.

This is, as you might expect, somewhat frustrating. There are things I want to do, see. Lots of things. And, as any respectable human being in the 21st century will almost certainly tell you, there is rarely enough time to do everything you want to do. This seems to be a particular issue at present.

Perhaps I'm just trying to squeeze too many things into too short a space of time, and I should be more realistic about things. In fact, let's try a little exercise: let's list all the things that I want and/or need to do, and determine which of them can wait a bit and which of them I can probably squeeze in to the time I have. I am thinking out loud here, which is probably terribly tedious to those of you good enough to still be reading at this point, but eh. I've started, so I may as well finish.

I present, then, in no particular order, The (Possibly) Definitive List of Things I'd Like to Do (Perhaps on a Regular Basis), 2014 Edition, Not Including Things to Do With Other People.

Finish watching the anime Clannad. (Eminently doable; I'm watching an episode with breakfast and sometimes lunch each day right now, and there's only 20-something of them.)
Watch the anime series Ghost Hunt, Hell Girl and whatever I've been adding to my Crunchyroll queue over the last year or so. (Also eminently doable; do not start until Clannad is finished to minimise confusion.)
Study Japanese. (Currently attending weekly evening classes, and have just signed up for a second semester; in order to progress further, I both want and need to set aside some time each week for self-study, not necessarily every day, but at least two or three times a week, I'd say. Perhaps this is something to do in the morning.)
Make my game. (Haven't worked on this for ages, but still really want to get it done. At the same time, I find it difficult to believe I will ever get it done. Again, a case of setting aside regular time each week, I think; perhaps on days when I'm not doing Japanese self-study.)
Play the visual novels and dating sims I have on my shelf that I haven't even touched yet. These include Saya no Uta, Tokimeki Check-In, Yumina the Ethereal and a number of others. (Requires a think. How can I fit these into daily life? Should I finish some other games first, or treat them more like "books" and, say, read in bed or something? Or perhaps play them when I would "normally" watch anime?)
Repeat plays of visual novels I haven't seen all the paths of. These include Aselia the Eternal (super-long, lots of paths), Deus Machina Demonbane (quite long, few paths) and possibly some others. (See above.)
Play the bajillion PS1, PS2 and PS3 RPGs I have on my shelf. There's about fifteen years' worth of games there. Fuck next-gen.
Play more music. (Stop making excuses and set aside 30-60 minutes a day to do so. The piano's right there.)
Finish ZHP on PSP/Vita. (Need to not be playing any other RPGs first in order to concentrate on this, and perhaps even start again altogether.)
Get my Final Fantasy XIV white mage to level 50. (Eminently doable at the rate I'm going.)
Write something long-form, either a non-fiction book on some aspect of gaming (perhaps visual novels) or a novel, then publish it somehow. (The latter I've sort of done for the last few years on this blog each November, but more planning and editing is required to make something worth paying for.)
Forgive the few people who have wronged me and for whom I hold grudges. (Never gonna happen. I don't hold many grudges, but the few I do are, to me, entirely justified.)
Get back into walking, running, fitness, some combination thereof, without getting demotivated that they don't obviously make me any smaller.

I'm sure there are more, but I think that's probably plenty to be getting on with for now.

Whew. I think I might need to go back to making myself a schedule and trying to stick to it again.