I spent almost all of my free time last weekend playing Spider-Man: Remastered (originally for the PS4) and then Spider-Man: Miles Morales. I actually 100-percented SM:R (though there’s technically 3 trophies I’ve yet to collect since they were added as part of an update that added a New Game + mode that I’m going to do eventually, once I’ve had a break from the game), which makes it the first game I’ve ever gotten all of the achievements for. It makes a lot of sense, though, since most of the non-story achievements involve exploring, traversing the world, and taking the time to look around or find interesting places to perch. I’ve always been about that stuff, which I wrote about extensively in my review about three months ago, but going directly from Spider-Man: Remastered to Spider-Man: Miles Morales has really made me reflect on my experiences with these games as a whole.
Continue readingI Fell Into A Burnout String That’s Dire
I am writing this on the sixth day of November and I am already so incredibly burned out that I’m considering taking time away from work already. Well, not “already” since I haven’t had much time away from work in about a year that wasn’t set aside for a specific purpose. The holidays last winter, visiting a friend/interviewing for a job that I didn’t get, going to Spain, my friends’ wedding, my move, and then labor day weekend (which wound up being preparations for my grandmother’s passing)… All the time I’ve taken away from work has been specifically for an event of some kind or to deal with some kind of major life stress. I haven’t had a proper do-nothing, restful vacation since Thanksgiving of 2022 and that barely counts since I was preparing myself for family therapy with my sister and parents. The last time I took a vacation and didn’t have something horrible, stressful, or upsetting happen immediately afterwards was when I went to a cabin with my friends and siblings for most of a week in the summer of 2022. Which only counts because the stressful thing that happened after that was something I’d mostly gotten used to dealing with (my eye problems flaring up). I really need a proper rest and I really hope I can get one this Thanksgiving. Next week, as you’re reading this.
Continue readingSleep Paralysis
Robyn’s mind drifted to the surface of consciousness. Something heavy was draped over them. Unfortunately, since they slept on their side, they couldn’t see what it was. They couldn’t turn to look, either. They were paralyzed.
Trying to stay calm, they slowly worked through their insensate body. Knees wrapped around a pillow, left arm curled into the corner of the sheet, torso propped up by pillows, and head supported by more pillows. Only their right arm was unaccounted for.
Pushing against the numbness, Robyn tried to raise their right arm.When nothing happened, they pushed through the building fear and realized the arm wrapped in the sheets was holding them in place.
When they managed to shift their left arm enough, the blankets loosened and the numbness began to fade. Feeling began to return to their body.
Just as they were about to try moving their right arm again, Robyn felt a light, puffing wind on their neck. They froze, paralyzed by panic, as something warm and wet fell onto their neck.
Fear took over and they wrenched free of the blankets. They sat up and fumbled for their lamp. When the light clicked on, their room was empty. Their bedroom door was still closed and their oscillating fan gently puffed at their hair as they panted. There was nothing in the room.Nothing had been sitting on them. It was just the fan and their sweat.
They rifled a hand through their hair as they breathed a sigh of relief. A moment later, they realized they weren’t actually sweaty. They raised a hand to their neck and it came away wet, a few viscous drops of liquid clinging to it. As they stared at their hand, they felt the frame of their bed shift as something beneath it moved.
The First Descent Into The Rotting Heart
One of the things that got me through this past week of exhaustingly busy days at work was thinking about my game of Heart: The City Beneath. I admittedly did not have much time to let my mind sit idle or even concern itself with anything other than the project I’ve spent thirty-six of the last sixty hours working on, but what time I did have that included free conscious thought was directed toward that game and the fun place we left it after our last session. True to form, we spent a lot of time roleplaying and only a little time on an adventure. We did get some major fallout, though, since the one player who’d managed to avoid any kind of fallout the first time around wound up getting a wee bit stressed the instant the party started their adventure. It worked out pretty well, though, because I got to do something super fun for me AND the character who got the major fallout had an ability that allowed them to make progress in their delve despite the horrible failure that resulted in said fallout. Everybody won!
Continue readingWork/Life Balance Means Spending 12 Hours At Work, Right?
As I mentioned in Tuesday’s post, work has been staggeringly busy. I haven’t even had time to think about my organization project this past week since every single day has been over eleven hours of constant effort and focus. Well, not every day. I had one short day, since my friends where getting married and I wouldn’t miss that for anything, but that was the day that turned my “one long day to make up for one short day” plan for this week into my “every day is a long day since there’s so much that needs doing now, if not sooner” reality. Turns out something we thought wasn’t working for one specific reason actually wasn’t working for an unknown reason, which we know because I proved that the specific reason wasn’t actually at fault. Turns out the assumptions I’ve based my last three months of work on were incorrect, actually. Turns out everything we’ve been doing to “fix” the problem actually only hid it. And, as it turns out, the problem is likely more wide-spread than we thought it was but an incidental quirk of the hardware involved might have hidden it in most cases. As of yet, we still don’t know for certain what the cause is. I have some strong suspicions and a theory I’ve been able to back up a bit, but there are still problems with that theory that I haven’t figured out yet. I will continue to work on this problem all day, every day (well, I don’t expect to come in on the weekends, so hopefully only every work day) until we’ve figured it out and then, finally, we can lay this thing to rest.
Continue readingNational Novel Writing Month Update: One Week Later
Well, it’s been rough. I was INCREDIBLY optimistic about the course this month would take and I think I hit my primary daily writing target only once so far, let alone my daily secondary target of getting enough words to exclude my blog posts from my daily writing totals. I’ve been so busy with work and then so burned out from how busy I was that I when I finally go home and eat dinner, I’ve only got enough time and energy to spend an hour listlessly trying to write before shuffling off to bed. Even the weekend wasn’t much better since all the exhaustion I’d been putting off since I couldn’t afford to feel tired during my incredibly busy work days came crashing back down on me. I did almost nothing but play Spider-Man (the PS4 one, since I never finished the DLC) the entire time. I did eventually finish a blog post and do my laundry, but I was so wiped out that writing the post took three times longer than it should have and I didn’t even fold my clean laundry. What little energy I had for stuff beyond all that was spent on doing my dishes, a little bit of cooking, and taking care of things like paying my bills and other such unfortunate necessities. It has been rough mentally, emotionally, and physically these past few days, and even now that it seems like the worst has passed (though it remains to be seen if this will stay true since it’s not like I anticipated the horrible, frantic, and exhausting week I’ve had since the month began) I am barely staying on my feet as I struggle to remain functional despite the exhaustion.
Continue readingThe Write Way To End An Exhausting Day
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the years is that, sometimes, pushing yourself a little bit harder than you think you should, taking one more step after you decided you’ve given up for the day, or just convincing yourself that even just a little bit is better than nothing at all… All of that can make the difference between peace of mind and feeling like you’ve failed. I worked for twelve hours today [wrote this on a Wednesday, rather than my usual one-week-ahead, which really only matters to me since I worked 7.5 hours on the 31st and then 12 every work day since then]. I spent the entire thing running around, chasing down a problem, and trying to run herd on a group of people who were placed at my disposal to help figure something out. I ended the day barely on my feet at a quart to nine in the evening, so mentally and physically exhausted that I had to take a break between walking to my car and driving it to the restaurant where I’d made my takeout order. I was done. I had barely enough energy for a shower and to climb the stairs from my main floor to the second floor where I’d planned to eat my dinner at half past nine, watch a little anime, and then play video games until exhaustion overwhelmed me. I had done enough. Even I couldn’t have asked more of myself than I’d already done, because I not only did everything I expected to do, but everything that came up along the way.
Continue readingI Played So Many Tabletop Games Last Week
Last week was a pretty active week for me, in terms of tabletop gaming. Three of four possible games happened and I enjoyed each of them in incredibly different ways. While I’ll save my ruminations about my every-other-week game of Heart: The City Beneath for Friday, I have plenty to write about from the Elden Ring themed game of Dungeons and Dragons 5e I played last Thursday and the game of Pathfinder 2e I played two days later. As I’ve mentioned before, the Thursday game is one that has been going on for a while and meets at least somewhat regularly. I’m still fairly new to Pathfinder 2e and the group I play with every other Saturday, but I’ve been settling in well despite our scheduling issues and enjoying the somewhat more intense roleplaying that game provides compared to the encounter-heavy Dungeons and Dragons game I play. The two of them make for a lot of fun experiences since I’m very comfortable with D&D’s rules, so I can just relax and enjoy some silly combat stuff, and I’m always happy to do a bunch of roleplaying, so I’ve got a fairly easy environment in which to learn Pathfinder 2e a little better. I’ll admit that some of my knowledge gains in that game feel a little futile given that the remastered version of the game is coming out soon and I’ll have to unlearn and relearn a lot of stuff when that happens. Especially since some of that stuff is what I’ve been very focused on previously since my character, a rogue who dabbles in alchemy and tons of crafting, apparently lands in a lot of areas being reworked from one edition to the next.
Continue readingCubicle Fields Forever
Darryl rose and left his office. He paced past the dark cubicles and down a dim hallway, looking for the one coworker he knew would be around this late. Greta usually visited him but, today, he thought as he counted rows in the next cubicle field, he’d visit her.
After turning down the seventh row, he found an office belonging to “Tim” that he was certain should’ve been Greta’s.
“Weird.” Darryl turned and found himself in the middle of the cubicle field again. The office behind him had vanished. Darryl rubbed his eyes and headed toward a looming office wall he could follow back to the hallways.
When he got there, he peered at the sign on the nearest office. “Regie? Z52BQ?” Darryl reached out to touch the plaque. It was real but, when he pulled his hand away, it said “Reachme.” As the hairs on his neck rose, Darryl spun to find himself in the middle of the lightless cubicle field again.
Darryl took off running and, when he finally reached a wall, sweat pouring off him, he glanced behind him to find nothing back there but endless dark cubicles.
Darryl looked forward again just as something loomed in the shadowy door of “Meatgyre’s” office. He screamed as a blazing light erupted from this figure.
When his vision cleared, he saw the tall, solid form of Greta holding out a hand. “Oh my god, are you okay?” Greta hauled him to his feet. “I was just about to leave and you startled me!”
“What?” Darryl looked behind him and saw the ordinary five-by-five of cubicles with offices on each side. “I was…”
“You shouldn’t wander around here in the dark.” Greta patted him on the shoulder and led him away from her office. “You might get lost. Or worse…”
Digging Into The Subtext Of Fullmetal Alchemist
Very recently, out of a desire to have something to do that didn’t require any input or attention from me (well, and to continue teaching Crunchyroll what kinds of stuff I liked), I started watching Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. This is easily one of my favorite anime since it is a remake of the Fullmetal Alchemist story that closely adheres to the manga by the same name, which is absolutely my favorite manga series. I am not a fan of the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime since it seems to go in some odd directions pretty much immediately (largely because the anime series was made well before the manga series was finished), but I know plenty of people who watched it and enjoyed it. I’ll admit a level of bias here since I started reading Fullmetal Alchemist as one of my first manga series right as the first two volumes were released in the US and I didn’t miss a new volume until the series concluded. I read through it at a very formative time in my life and the story has stuck with me for years, standing up to scrutiny each time I read through it again and sometimes revealing things I missed the first time. Which is what I’m finding now as I watch the anime and think my way through the bits of the manga that it skips past or trims to fit a different media format. There’s a whole major aspect to this story I never really considered all that deeply despite how integral it is to the setting. Sure, it isn’t something that’s addressed explicitly by the manga or anime, but it’s not only a major aspect of the setting and worldbuilding, but a active backdrop that helps develop every single character in the series. After all, the story wouldn’t be even close to the same if it wasn’t about power struggles and working towards the good of all within a facist, authoritarian state.
Continue reading