2526: Quiet Weekend

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I’ve been working all week, and I now have two full days — a proper weekend — to look forward to. And I am indeed very much looking forward to it.

In particular, I’m looking forward to spending some more quality time with Final Fantasy XV and Pokémon Moon, both of which I’ve had the chance to play sporadically throughout the week, but not for particularly protracted periods of time due to the necessity of getting up the next day in time for work.

I’ve always appreciated free time with no commitments, but nothing really makes you appreciate it quite like a week of hard work, whatever form that hard work takes — whether it’s getting out of the house and doing something in exchange for money, or simply doing something useful at home.

Although the work I’m doing is just temporary — it’s the same seasonal position in retail I held last year — I’m enjoying it, and I’m noticing a few positive things about myself in the process. In particular, I’m finding it a lot easier to quite simply talk to people and feel like “part of the group”. Whether this is a result of working with the same people I worked with last year and consequently not having to build new relationships from scratch, or if it’s something to do with the new medication I started on about a month back, I’m not sure — it’s probably a combination of those two things — but I am, on the whole, feeling uncharacteristically satisfied with certain aspects of myself at present.

There are plenty of things I’m unsatisfied with too, of course — most notably having put a bunch of weight back on since losing a bunch with Slimming World last year, though since changing medication I have subsequently discovered part of the blame for that can be laid at the feet of the pills I was on earlier in the year — but for now I’m trying to enjoy life as much as I can. I don’t doubt that in January when my temporary position comes to an end that things will get a little difficult and tight once again, but I have a few plans in place for things to do and some potential opportunities to pursue.

It’s perhaps a tiny bit early to review the whole year, though most people will probably agree 2016 has largely been a big pile of shit. That said, this last couple of months have proven to be a little better than the rest of the year, at least, so all I can really hope for at the moment is that the worst is over and that this is the start of the long climb back out of the abyss into something resembling a normal, satisfying, happy life.

It remains to be seen what 2017 has to hold, but I’m not worrying about that too much for the moment. Right now, I have a full weekend to look forward to. And I intend to enjoy it as much as possible by doing as little as possible.

2508: The Cough of an Eighty Year Old Man

I am ill.

I do not like being ill, because it is annoying and painful, particularly when it is that particular breed of “ill” somewhere between a cold and flu that causes you to feel constantly stuffed up and occasionally cough like an eighty year old smoker. Also I have the shits.

It is not a pleasant day to be ill, either. Andie’s phone claimed it was -7C outside earlier and while I tend to take phone weather readings with a pinch of salt, the fact that it is still visibly frosty outside leads me to believe that yes, it certainly is at least a bit cold out there. Meg the cat certainly let me know that it was cold when I let her in just now.

I have spent the morning in bed accompanied by one or both of our cats at all times. I’m always amazed at quite how well cats understand people; they know exactly when you’re not feeling great, whether it’s physically, mentally or both, and they know that what you often need in such situations is company and affection. Ruby, who is typically the more irritating of our two cats, rather fond of walking across your face when you’re trying to do something, sat with me quietly and peacefully for most of the morning, even curling up and settling down for a bit, which is rather rare to see her do.

I’m up now and craving nothing more than “ill person food”. Specifically, I’m feeling a steak slice, nice crisps (Walkers Max!) and some chocolate might help with the doldrums of being ill, accompanied by plenty of Lemsip, of course.

This is a singularly tedious blog post, I’m aware, as there are few things more boring than listening to someone else talk about how ill they are — I’ve heard enough complaints from my parents about my grandmother having such conversations with them to know this all too well — but, well, it’s something to do now that I appear to have exhausted my capacity for lying in bed wheezing all morning. Now I am on the couch beneath a blanket like a homeless person while Andie puts up the Christmas tree and decorations, because now it’s December, it is an acceptable time to do so.

Time to dose up on drugs and steak slices, I think, and hopefully I’ll feel a bit better tomorrow.

2501: Thanksgiving

We don’t really “do” Thanksgiving over here in the UK, but I thought it would be a nice thought exercise in positivity to use today’s post to simply list some things I’m thankful for. There’s plenty that is shit in my life at the moment, but this post is not about that.

I am thankful to my wife for standing by me while times have been tough, even as she had her own shit to deal with.

I am thankful for my friends who have stuck by me through the difficult times in my life over the last few years. Some of them I speak to more often than others; some of them I see more often than others; some of them I don’t speak to or see nearly as often as I’d like. I’m still thankful for all of them.

I am thankful for my family who, likewise, has stuck by me through the trials and tribulations of the last few years. There has always been support there when I needed it, even if I didn’t really know how to ask for it without feeling bad.

I am thankful for those who read my blog, whether they’re silent readers or those who reach out to talk about the things I’ve posted. The purpose and angle of this blog has sort of evolved over the years, but as I said yesterday, I’ve always found it to be a helpful outlet.

I am thankful to video games for providing me with something to be passionate about; a medium that excites and inspires me on a daily basis. I am particularly thankful to those creators (mostly, though not exclusively, of Japanese origin) who have created works that particularly resonated with me for one reason or another; titles with which I could get emotionally invested, or titles in which the main casts became like “friends”.

I am thankful to the people I interact with online who are interested in similar things to me, who don’t judge me negatively or make assumptions based on my tastes, and who are happy to be enthusiastic with me.

I am thankful to the written word for providing me with a more reliable means of expressing myself than the spoken word.

I am thankful that I have somehow survived all the trials I’ve faced to date, which gives me a small amount of hope that one day, someday, everything will finally turn out all right.

2500: Traditional 500-Post Pondering

So, post 2,500. I was going to try and write something meaningful, but then I worked a 12-hour shift (voluntarily) and now I’m knackered and my feet are killing me, so my heart’s not quite in it. Still, onward we go.

Occasionally in recent months I’ve found myself wondering if I should keep this blog going, and/or if so, how long for. Why am I still doing it, who is it for and am I getting anything out of the experience?

On the whole, I think that yes, I do find it to be a valuable and helpful experience on the whole. It’s a means for me to express myself to people who know me in a way that I might not find particularly easy or practical to do so in person. It’s a means for me to talk about the things I love without having to worry about boring people in the same room as me — if you’re not interested in something I talk about for a post or two, simply don’t read it. And, of course, it’s a means to continue practicing the craft of writing, not that there’s a “right” way to do it. (Except for those people who insist on writing all their posts in lower-case letters. Those people are wrong.)

There are things on here that I’m glad I’ve talked about, and things I wish I’d never brought up. There are good times and bad times; there are things I’m happy about and things that make me infuriated.

More than anything, though, this blog is me. It’s a record of, frankly, what has ended up being a rather turbulent period in my life, and it’s been something I can focus on each day even if everything else around me might have been shit. It’s been a great outlet and a good means of broaching difficult topics as well as a place where I can happily vent my feelings, good and bad, on a daily basis.

So yes, I’m carrying on. Until when, I can’t say. But 2,500 daily posts in, it kind of seems like a shame to stop now, huh?

1880: Better

Well, today was a somewhat more positive day. I took a trip for the interview I mentioned yesterday, and it was a very positive meeting. Remains to be seen whether anything will come of that, but in the meantime I also have some other business I can pursue. So we’ll have to wait and see on that for now.

Happy to reach another weekend, even though the concept is relatively meaningless for me at present. I’m still on something of a PAX comedown, I think; I had such a great time over in Boston that coming back to the stark realities of my current situation was somewhat… jarring, hence yesterday’s frustration. Onwards and upwards, though, I guess. Hopefully.

On an unrelated note, our Final Fantasy XIV Free Company is being fun at the moment. It seems that everyone has had the same idea as me — that they want to level all of the classes to 50 before the release of the expansion Heavensward in June of this year — and thus there are lots of people playing jobs they don’t normally play in lower-level dungeons. It’s fun to see people play stuff they’re less familiar with, and it’s also fun to get to know some of the other classes that I haven’t tried out quite so much.

Today I’ve been playing a bit of Warrior, which is a tank class, and Bard, which is a DPS class with some support elements. I’d held off on levelling Warrior in particular because I couldn’t think how it would feel that different from Paladin, which is my “main” class at present. It does have a distinctly different feel, though; just the animations and sound effects make this axe-wielding job feel a lot more cumbersome and hard-hitting than the relatively nimble, graceful-feeling swordplay of Paladins. The cooldown between skills is still the same, but it’s surprising quite what a difference just those elements make. It’s a more complex job overall, too, with a lot more possible actions to take at any given moment. Paladin is mostly about trying to mitigate damage as much as you can; as Warrior, you have a bit more flexibility and can put out some eminently respectable damage just by yourself. That flexibility means that there are a lot more abilities you use a lot more often, however; I’m not sure I love it, yet, but it’s interesting to see the contrast, and it gives me hope that Dark Knight will provide a unique experience again despite being another tank class.

Bard, meanwhile, is a joy to play, and a big contrast from Black Mage, my main DPS class to date. Bard’s ability to move while attacking is a complete change from the fixed-in-place heavy artillery nature of Black Mage, and it’s a lot of fun. Playing Bard feels very “technical”, for want of a better word; there’s lots of keeping an eye on your abilities and triggering the appropriate ones at the right time. There’s also a lot more “weaving” than other classes — i.e. slipping in extra skills that don’t use the “global cooldown” timer between your regular attacks — which makes for some satisfying improvised combos rather than the more fixed sequences that many other classes use.

There’s still plenty more to do to get to 50 — Warrior and Bard are both in the mid-30s so far, Pugilist (which later becomes Monk) is just level 15, as is Arcanist (which becomes Scholar and Summoner, arguably two of the most complex classes thanks to their use of pets) and I’m yet to try Lancer (later Dragoon) at all. Then there’s all the crafting and gathering stuff to do, as well… I’m going to be busy for a while, but I have confidence I’ll be well-placed by the time Heavensward comes out. And then it will be time for all-new adventures!

And what adventures they’ll be, if this preview video is anything to go by. Can’t wait.

1877: Aaaaand We’re Back

Made it home, though my last flight from Dublin back to Southampton was delayed by two hours and the heating appeared to be broken in the part of Dublin’s airport that I had to wait for my flight in. It was very cold indeed and not the sort of experience I wanted before 7am. But the time eventually passed — assisted partly by Criminal Girls, whose “Education Block” chapter has made the whole experience very much worthwhile — and I got on the noisy shed-with-wings that was to carry me back to my home town, and that was that.

Unfortunately, the two-hour delay meant that I missed out on a few hours of work (and, consequently, money) today, but there’s not a lot I can do about that, unfortunately. I have several hours of work tomorrow, though, so that will help, and from here I can start trying to get myself into some sort of routine, working on various different things over the course of the week in an attempt to (hopefully) make ends meet somehow.

I’m a little worried about the future, to be perfectly honest. Right now it’s quite difficult to determine quite how much money I’ll be able to get rolling in each month, but I guess that’s something I’ll be able to figure out with time — coupled with determining how much time I need to spend chasing paying work up, and how much time I have to pursue other projects which may or may not lead to something. It’s anxiety-inducing, but at least it’s not stressful and soul-destroying in the same way that being systematically bullied out of a “regular” job has proven to be on more than one occasion in my life. So I guess there’s that.

In the meantime, I have some fond memories of the weekend just gone to look back on, and I’m glad about that. We’ve already been confusing people with talk of vampire zombie maids and poisonous war elephants, and it’s clear that everyone had a good time, albeit an exhausting one.

I shall sleep extremely well tonight, I’m sure. At 20 past 10 in the evening, I’m struggling to keep my eyes open; I did the final boss of Syrcus Tower in Final Fantasy XIV mostly with my eyes shut. (It’s quite easy.) So I think it’s probably time to admit defeat to the exhaustion of the last few days that has finally caught up with me, slump into bed and fall asleep. That, at least, is satisfying; while I’m sad to have left my friends behind, it’s also good to be home, and back to my own bed.

1671: Whoopsy

The astute among you will have noticed that there was no post yesterday — or at least, there didn’t appear to be. In fact, what happened was that I wrote the post, saved it as a draft, went to do something else — possibly eat dinner, have a poo or go to bed — then promptly forgot to publish the bloody thing. Whoops. Oh well. “Caught up” now — not that the original “rules” of #oneaday really matter now that it’s just me still beavering away at this blog every day.

I’m glad I still do, though, for numerous reasons. For one, it’s satisfying to see that number at the start of each post, and to think that I have been writing something of varying quality every day for nearly 1,700 days in succession. Over the course of those 1,700 days, my life has been through some significant changes. I’ve held several jobs, moved house several times, just about lived through the end of a marriage and the total collapse of my life that resulted from it — seriously, make sure you marry the right person and avoid all that shit happening to you — and now find myself pondering what might happen in the next 1,700 days.

For starters, I have not just a new job but a new career ahead of me — ten days from now, I’ll be starting my new position that I secured a while back. I’m hesitant to go into too many public details at present — never sure why this is the norm, but I’ll go with it for now — but suffice to say that it’s a position that will actually make use of the skills and experience I’ve built up over the past few years, even if it isn’t precisely what I pictured myself doing a few years back. Still, as I noted around the time my position on USgamer came to a close, I’ve come to the conclusion that pursuing your “dream job” is an exercise in frustration that only, in very rare cases, leads to something stable you can do for years to come. Much better to nail down something that you know you can do well, and that will still have a chair ready for you each morning rather than unceremoniously dumping you at a moment’s notice. (At least I hope that’s what I’m going to get with this new position!)

I have a new car, too, but I’m sure that will be the subject of a whole other post some day in the not too distant future. All I’ll say for now is that I like it very much, and hopefully it will be a suitable means of conveying my person from my house to my place of employment on a daily basis, starting ten days from now.

Aside from that, there isn’t really that much interesting going on in my life at present. Which, to be honest, I’m kind of cool with. While “interesting” periods of your life can certainly provoke plenty of interesting things to talk and write about, they’re also exhausting, both mentally and physically. At present, I’m quite enjoying the feeling of “nothing” — the fact that things are slowly falling into place, and I don’t need to do anything else for now. I can just sit back, relax and enjoy myself for a few days — and I think I’ve earned that.

1630: Sunday Night

Unimaginative post title, I know, but it’s Sunday night (well, 00:30 on Monday morning, technically) and my brain has pretty much switched off. When I wake up tomorrow, it’s back to the doldrums of being unemployed and looking for work — not that that ever really went away over the weekend, but both Andie and I have kept ourselves busy enough that there wasn’t too much time to worry about stuff like that.

We painted the spare room this weekend — something we’ve been meaning to do for a while but haven’t really got around to. Andie’s going to wallpaper two of the walls since she discovered during the initial decorating process of this place that she’s actually quite good at hanging wallpaper. (I, on the other hand, can pretty much guarantee that I will not be any help whatsoever at hanging wallpaper, since I am a clumsy oaf who is not to be trusted with anything that required accuracy and careful placement.) The other two walls have been painted and just need another coat before they’re done and dusted.

We wanted to get the spare room done because we have visitors at the end of the month — my friends Mark and Lynette are coming over from Canada and are dropping in on us for a few days, which will be nice. It’ll be the first time I’ve been able to host visitors and actually offer them a proper spare bedroom in which to sleep, so we figured it would probably be best if we covered over the revolting yellow and dark blue walls the previous occupants left the room with — not to mention the big patch of bare wall where Andie had scraped off some paint having discovered it wasn’t clinging to the wall all that well. (A previous occupier had clearly been a heavy smoker, since the wall behind the paint stank of smoke; hopefully we’ve dealt with that effectively now and won’t have to worry about big chunks of paint falling off.)

Andie also remembered that the inside of the built-in wardrobe in the spare room needed painting, since it was covered in graffiti from what appeared to be a teenage girl. (I guess we know who the smoker was?) The owners before us had had a small child in the bedroom, so I don’t think it was their work — I don’t think they were really old enough to know what “shagadelic” meant, nor do I think that they had such fickle tastes in men as the writer of said graffiti clearly did.

Anyway, that’s been painted (well, primed) over now and should actually look reasonably nice by the time our visitors arrive. Once that’s all done, we just need to do another coat of paint in the toilet and the inside of the house will be pretty much done for the immediate future, though there are bits and pieces we may want to change in the long term, like the rather ’70s carpets in several of the rooms.

The garden is another matter. The previous owners clearly hadn’t had much to do with the garden, as it was rather overgrown when we arrived and has only continued to get worse since we’ve been here. I attempted to tackle the lawn with a lawnmower that my parents helpfully provided, but said lawnmower was regrettably not all that good, flattening the grass rather than actually cutting it, so we have replaced it with a brand new Flymo that should hopefully be a lot easier to manoeuvre as well as actually cutting the damn grass. I’ll have the joy of trying that out at some point in the near future. Excitement.

For now, though, it’s time to head to bed, and back to the job hunt tomorrow morning. I really hope this doesn’t take too much longer; while thankfully I have a bit of “rainy day” money in the bank — and right now certainly qualifies as the proverbial rainy day — I would rather, you know, save that up to spend on something useful and/or nice than just spend it on the boring necessity of, you know, living. Oh well. We shall see; this whole hideous jobhunting process is not something that, in my experience, you can rush, however much you emphasise the fact that you can start immediately and would really actually rather like to.

Fingers crossed that there won’t be too many of these posts before I can joyfully exclaim that I have a new job. And fingers crossed that said new job isn’t rubbish, though with every passing day the fear grows that I will, indeed, end up doing something rubbish.

We shall see, I guess.

1017: An Uneventful Halloween

I actually quite like Halloween, barring the whole “locking yourself in the dark to avoid terrifying teenage trick or treaters” thing, which I don’t have to do any more because I don’t live in an area infested with pikey scumbags. (Also, it was absolutely chucking it down with hail earlier, so any trick or treaters who actually braved the elements deserve a fucking medal, not some pathetic “fun size” chocolate. “Fun size”. What the fuck is “fun” about chocolate that is smaller than it is supposed to be anyway? Fuck off, pathetic chocolate. Gosh, I’m in a bad mood tonight. I apologise, and will take a deep breath after I close these parentheses.)

Ahem. Anyway. Yes. I actually quite like Halloween, though this is perhaps more due to my love of dressing up than the actual spooky day itself. Although there is a certain perverse pleasure in the amount you can get away with on Halloween. I won’t get into the whole “sexy costumes” thing now, but, well, no-one really bats an eyelid (no pun intended) if you’re dressed like a complete loon.

One of my favourite Halloweens was back when I was at university. It was around the time of Scream and Scary Movie, so the “black robe with mask” look was “in”. I participated, and went along on a night out with my friends dressed in full Scream regalia. It was an interesting experience, because beneath all the flowing robes and the mask that completely obscured my identity, I felt pretty confident for once, even going so far as to share a few Scary Movie– (and Budweiser-) -inspired “WAZAAAAAP”s with complete strangers. So that was fun. (Drinking through that mask was impossible, though, which kind of ruined the illusion somewhat.

I haven’t had the opportunity for a good Halloween fancy dress kind of situation for a long time now, though. When you’re in your early 30s and two hours away from all your friends, no-one seems to invite you to parties any more. (Not that I’m particularly fun at parties anyway, but still. Or perhaps it might just be that no-one’s actually throwing any parties.) I’m not really complaining — parties are rife with all that enforced socialisation, and if you feel like you want to leave after half an hour, everyone gives you weird looks, regardless of how awesome your costume was. Clearly what I need to do is to throw my own Halloween party and invite only people I actually like and who all know each other. That way the entire hideous situation can hopefully be avoided for everyone. And we can concentrate on doing something like playing board games instead.

Regrettably, it’s a tad late to organise that now, but perhaps next year. I propose an evening of horror-themed entertainment — perhaps an episode or two of something like Haiyore! Nyaruko-san early in the evening to get everyone warmed up, then some light horror-themed games (Chez Cthulhu, Lord of the Fries and Last Night on Earth spring to mind) followed up by a lengthy game of something like Arkham Horror into the wee small hours. With everyone in costume.

That sounds fun, right? It sounds fun to me. Sadly, for this year, I will have to content myself with the complete non-event that was Halloween in Chippenham, in which I spent most of the evening being by turns grumpy at the fact my brand new laptop apparently has a faulty battery (BOO to you, Novatech!) and quite depressed at the news that a games journalism freelancer killed himself earlier. He wasn’t someone I knew personally, but it’s still sad news to hear. But that’s a discussion for another day, I feel.

On a brighter note, tomorrow is November, and if you’ll recall my post from a few days ago that means a month of fiction here on this site. The stickmen will be taking a short hiatus while I aim to churn out a couple of thousand words a day, but they’ll be back at the start of December. (Holy crap, December. Where did this year go?)

I am rambling. So I will cut that short. Hope you had a good Halloween.

#oneaday Day 816: Half-Past One, AM

It’s 1:30 in the morning, because I’ve spent the last little while putting together my first article for ages on Bitmob/GamesBeat. It’s about the three “Operation Rainfall” RPGs — Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower. You can find it here. Please give it some love. I was tempted to recreate the whole thing here and call that today’s post, but I thought I’d at least make an effort to do something different. For some reason. I don’t know why. I’m kind of tapped out on creativity, but I have no doubt that just typing and typing in my usual stream of consciousness manner will cause at least something to flow out.

Whether or not it’ll be interesting does, of course, at the time of writing this sentence, remain to be seen.

This week has been one of those ones that has simultaneously zipped by at a breakneck pace and also appeared to be exhaustingly busy. I don’t think I’ve been doing anything particularly out of the ordinary — though we have been to the gym a few times after a few weeks of poor motivation — but things have felt more chaotic than usual. I’ve been working as usual (this week’s iOS app recommendations: Skylanders Cloud Patrol and Saturday Morning RPG with an honourable mention for Burnout Crash even though I have a suspicion it might be a bit rubbish) and hanging out on Twitter. I also sat in our back garden for the first time ever. I read a bit of a book on my Kindle. It was nice, and I’ve apparently got over my fear of deckchairs.

I also ordered an Android tablet. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a total Apple fanboy (I’m typing this on one of two iMacs that adorn my desk, and my iPhone and iPad are within easy reach) but 1) I’m curious about what Android has to offer and 2) it will be useful for my work. Also, 3) Android tabs — particularly the Motorola Xoom, which is the one I’ve ordered — are great for emulation and retro gaming. A Twitter friend regularly evangelises about how great it is to have a portable device which merrily plays the entire back catalogue from systems such as the SNES, Mega Drive, NES, Master System and numerous other platforms, and I won’t lie, that possibility is immensely appealing. Imagine how cool it would be to roll up to a friend’s house with a single device and be able to play things like Street Fighter II and Mario Kart without having to faff around behind their TV? Awesome. (Hopefully. I’m yet to see it in action. But I’m confident.)

In a few moments I will be going to bed, and then it will be the weekend. Technically it is already the weekend, I suppose, but it’s not really the weekend until you wake up on Saturday morning after sleeping and then eat bacon and sausages and eggs and smother them in brown sauce. (Yes, brown sauce is the correct sauce to put on a full English.)

Oh, I give up. My brain is dry and so I cut my losses and say goodbye. (Hey, that rhymes.) Good night!