Tag: stress relief

#oneaday Day 446: A quick week?

This week, oddly, seems to have kind of flown by. I'm not complaining at all, I hasten to add, because the quicker this week and the next goes by, the sooner the wife and I get to go on holiday. And we're both really looking forward to some nice time away.

Things are… less stressful than they have been at various other points over the course of the last few months, but I'm still pretty burnt out and ready for a break. It will be great to completely disconnect from social media, work and most other modern annoyances and just relax. I am taking some form of computing device with me on holiday, though; my intention is to set aside a bit of time to do some creative writing each day, as a pleasant "forest retreat" seems like the ideal environment in which to do such a thing.

I haven't quite decided how I'm going to achieve this as yet, though. I think what I'm probably going to do is buy one of those little portable monitors you can get, then either hook that up to my phone and run that in its "DeX" desktop mode, or just take my mini PC with me. Then all I need is a keyboard and mouse — and I have plenty of those — and we're sorted.

I'm not promising anything that is going to gush forth from my brain during the holiday is going to be great or even coherent, but I am conscious of the fact that I made a big deal of setting up that "Scratch Pad" site for the distinct purpose of doing creative writing, and then haven't done any as yet. That needs fixing, and being in a suitable environment to write for enjoyment and pleasure, rather than for obligations, would seem like a suitable opportunity to do just that.

But anyway. There's a week and a half of work to get through first, but I feel like I can make it through that without too much trouble. I've got a to-do list of things I want to (or should) try to complete before I leave, and it's not at all excessive in its length, so I'm pretty confident I will be able to achieve everything by or before next Friday. Because if it ain't done by then, it ain't getting done… until I get back, anyway. And, as unforgiving as I might have been sounding about unplugging and going pretty much "off-grid" during the holiday (aside from this blog, which will still see daily updates) I don't really want to leave my colleagues in the lurch while I am absent.

So that's that. Now it's time to head to bed and read a bit of The Black Cauldron, I feel. Or perhaps a quick game of something on the MiSTer before that, maybe…?

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 128: Imminent Holiday

As I may have mentioned once or twice recently, we're going on holiday tomorrow. We'll be away from Monday to Friday visiting Center Parcs in Elveden Forest, which has been a thoroughly nice place to have some time away on all the previous occasions we've visited.

My intentions for this holiday are to unplug almost completely. I will post on this blog daily because of the whole #oneaday thing, but outside of that, I intend to avoid any sort of attachment to the Internet whatsoever, except where absolutely necessary to research things. That means I am making the following promises to myself:

  • I will not worry about writing anything for MoeGamer or making any sort of video for YouTube.
  • I will not poke my head in on Discord channels that are likely to annoy me.
  • I will not look at Twitter at all.
  • I will minimise my use of Bluesky.

I haven't really talked about the last one at all, but as you may have surmised from the sidebar, I have been dipping my toe back into social media with Bluesky recently. And for the most part, I've found it a thoroughly pleasant environment that feels very much like Twitter did in the early days. It's very left-leaning, which can at times be a little insufferable, and wherever you look you're very likely to run into either a particularly horny furry or someone proud of the fact they're wearing a cage on their cock, but for the most part it has been a remarkably stress-free social media experience so far.

Part of the reason for this is that the platform is built to discourage "dunking", whereas Twitter outright incentivises it these days. The main way Bluesky differs from Twitter is through its absolutely nuclear block function, which means that if someone quote-posts or replies to someone they have subsequently blocked, if you are following the person who made the quote-post or reply, the original post will appear as blocked to you also. This discourages people from going "looking for trouble" because you can't even see the username of the blocked post. This can be frustrating at times if you missed the original context, but for the most part I think it's a positive thing.

So anyway, as a result of all that, and the fact I have a few friendly faces there, I have been using Bluesky a bit recently, and thus, if I'm going to share anything about the holiday that isn't on this blog, I'll likely do so there. If you're a Bluesky user and want to follow me, here.

But yes. Anyway, the main point of this post is to note that I will be disconnecting from the greater part of the Internet as much as humanly possible while I am away, because I need it. I need some time away where I just don't put any unnecessary pressure on myself, or potentially put myself in situations where I might end up getting annoyed. I'm tempted to outright leave a few Discord servers to remove the temptation altogether, but probably won't go that far.

This holiday is to rest, relax and genuinely get away from it all. My mental health has been in the toilet of late, and the Internet has played a big part in creating that situation. So instead I'm going to be among the trees, play some video games, go swimming and look at friendly deer. We might go and fire a crossbow (not at the deer) and play some pool, too. We haven't decided yet. But it's going to be nice.

Today, meanwhile, it's last-minute packing and tidying up ahead of my mother-in-law coming to look after the cats — sorry burglars, the house will still be occupied while we're away — and perhaps finishing off Silent Hill 2 later.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.