2021: A Brighter Future Thanks To Goals

I guess I’m a bit late to the party, but I would like to talk about my goals for 2021, both on a personal level aswell as gaming related.
I had a bit of time to think about it the past week, seeing as I finally had some time off, and I think I’ve managed to formulate some decent goals to work on. The focus this year will be mostly on personal non-gaming related goals, but as always some gaming has snuck it’s way in because it’s my biggest hobby.

So what do I want to achieve in 2021?
I think the most important overarching goal is get to a better physical and mental health level. Both of those have suffered considerably in 2020 and I don’t think I can sustain how I’m living right now and come out good at the other end. So I’ve set a few goals to help me get back on track. In no particular order they are:

  • Establish a healthy sleeping pattern
  • Exercise every day
  • Work on losing weight, dropping below 70kg is the goal
  • Take better care of myself personally, both inside and out

I was on track with these goals at the start of 2020 but the pandemic threw me back a lot. I’m at my heaviest point right now and I’ve had weeks where I would barely leave my house. It’s been very unhealthy and it’s been causing me both physical and mental issues. As such I really want to take better care of myself. Get myself on a healthy sleep schedule so I’m not exhausted at work every morning and feel like I need hours and hours of sleep once I have a few days off. I’ve noticed that getting some sort of exercise in every day helps with sleeping at night, so I’ve been making an effort to go for a walk every day. Atleast 30 minutes but I’m up to 45-50 most days now. When the weather is bad I’m planning to use my Ring Fit Adventure that I bought on release but barely used. I just need to keep my body moving and this is the perfect way to do it.
Next to exercise I also want to take better care of myself in other aspects. I’ve been very lazy when it comes to some personal hygiene and care and need to fix that. Stuff like picking up flossing again instead of only brushing my teeth. Take better care of my skin. Keep an eye on what I eat, meal plan in advance and stick to it. I’ve been eating way too much junkfood and need to get to cooking more healthy things. No more skipping meals. No more eating breakfast 3 hours after I started working. Just keep a healthy food rhythm going.

Additionally I want to establish/achieve the following:

  • Plan my weeks every week and stick to my planning.
  • Get a cleaning routine going in the weekends
  • Learn to cook more/healthier dishes

Next to not really taking care of myself properly on a personal level I’ve also let my house cleaning slide. I don’t want to say that it’s unliveable here, because it’s really not, but I notice I get lazy and then don’t clean for 2-3 weeks at a time. I let the laundry pile up, and dishes, and I don’t think I’ve cleaned my windows in months. That’s going to change. Sunday is my designated chores day and I’ve made a list of everything that I need to do weekly, bi-weekly and monthly. On Saturday morning I look at my list and plan my chores accordingly for Sunday and actually do them. I started doing this last weekend and I notice that I feel much better once my house is decluttered and cleaned. It also massively helps with my allergies so that’s an extra bonus.
Setting structure in general is going to be important to me, aswell as sticking to said structure. I have a weekly planner that I’ve started using to plan what I do in my weeks outside of work. This covers weekly meal planning, task planning, when to blog, when to call people to make appointments and what games I want to play on which days. It helps me with not just lying down on the couch after work and then doing absolutely nothing but wallow in misery all night. I don’t plan everything into detail but I do write down the things I want to be doing during the evening and try to stick to it. It’s been working so far.

Finally I want to learn to cook more dishes than I currently do. There’s so many things I can experiment with and especially during weekends I have a bit more time to do so. I will probably use that to create some posts on here. Speaking of the blog… I’ve currently planned three days a week for blog posts. I have enough content to write about the coming months, as I will describe in my gaming goals bit, and I just need a steady outlet for the chaos in my head. Right now I have blog posts planned on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Let’s see if I can stick to that shall we?

Of course a goals for 2021 post wouldn’t be complete without writing down gaming goals. This is mainly a gaming blog after all and throughout the pandemic I atleast haven’t stopped playing games so there’s that.

What are my plans for gaming in 2021?

Actually I don’t have that many big plans for gaming in 2021. Or maybe I do, but they’re condensed to less games, making them seem smaller. For now though these are the main things I will be working on gaming wise in 2021:

  • Climb the solo/duo queue ladder in League of Legends. I want to get to atleast Gold tier, but climbing higher is the aim.
  • Keep up with content in Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft
  • Finish atleast one single player game per month

Only three goals. So small and yet so big. I think the most important one for me will be the League of Legends one. I guess some elaboration is needed and that will come in a future post but let’s just say that I’ve been completely sucked back into LoL since last Worlds. I’ve been following two streamers and am active within their communities. On top of that I’m dabbling in a bit of coaching related stuff to get me better at the game. Again I will detail this more in a coming post but this project will probably dominate a lot of 2021 for me.
Keeping up with the two MMO’s I play will be a standard thing aswell. I’ve been struggling with Shadowlands in WoW and am currently taking a break from raiding for a myriad amount of reasons, but I do want to keep up with the lore and renown cap every week. I’ve been taking a small break from FFXIV, mostly due to Shadowlands launch, but want to pick that back up again and keep up with the content there aswell.

Finally I’m once again going to try and tackle my backlog. I’ve not bought that many games last year and I have actually been slowly pouring more time in single player games over the past few weeks. My aim is to complete one game a month, this can be a long game or a short game, as long as I see the credits roll. As always that is my main goal with playing games, any time I spend extra on it is a bonus.

So yeah. These are my goals for 2021. I feel like I’ve made a good start on them this week, now I just need to grit my teeth and follow through. For now though I’m pretty happy with what I’ve set to achieve for myself and I will keep you updated on how things develop.

2020: The year that was lost.

2020. A year that the world will never forget. Even if the year has been over for 10 days now, it’s effects will be felt for a long while yet. The pandemic is still running rampant. We are still collectively in lockdown. People are still getting infected and with the mutations of the virus it seems we will live through a very bleak life for the next couple of months still. Yet there is hope. Multiple vaccines have been developed and are being administered world wide. An end into the global lockdown may finally be in sight and I for one welcome a return back to something that we could consider “normalcy”.

The past few months have been very rough on me on a personal level. Getting sent home halfway through March and hoping that this would all blow over in a few weeks has turned into working from home for most of the year last year. I was lucky enough to be able to go back into the office for a few days a week over the summer, but the moment the second wave of COVID hit the Netherlands at the start of September we were all sent home again, where I have been honestly going slightly batshit insane. Being alone, as I am, in a small flat for 7 days a week almost 24 hours a day does crazy things to the brain. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this lonely and vulnerable in a very long time and it’s a feeling that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I miss real world contact so much. Not being able to hug people out of fear of a disease has been heartbreaking. Not being able to go out and do fun things. Not being able to go on vacation so you can relax and unwind and change scenery has been tough. Mentally I’ve balanced on the edge so many times this year. Feeling anxious, feeling depressed and not knowing what to do with myself. I’ve cried so much, especially near the end of the year which is already a harder time for me than normal. I don’t think I’ve ever had this much of a hard time with being single than I have in the past few months and still have today. It’s been awful and horrible and I’m so done with all of it.

In a lot of ways I consider 2020 to be a lost year. When the year started I was well on my way to establish a healthy schedule for myself. I was going to the gym twice a week and I went to the swimming pool 1-2 times a week aswell. I was working on healthier eating habits and preparing for my dream trip to Japan that was supposed to take place at the end of March. I was thinking about putting myself out there in the dating world again and I wanted to pick up a new hobby so I could meet new people. All of that has kind of gone out the window. My lifestyle has become considerably worse with having to work from home. My health has considerably declined, both physical and mental. The dream trip never happened and I don’t know when it will. It’s a year that I feel like should be erased from my life as soon as possible so I can move on and work towards new goals. The whole “new year, new me” feeling hasn’t ever appealed to me that much, but now it feels different. I don’t want to have another year lost and I don’t want to feel the way I do anymore and the only one who can change that is me.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to get out of this year on a personal level and hobby related. I’ve cautiously started to write down what I want to achieve and am thinking about how I want to achieve it. A part of it is definitely reviving this blog and getting some structure set up. Another part is self improvement, both physically and mentally. Finally there are some goals related to gaming, as usual, but I’ve tried to keep them small.
As I get my goals more defined I will post about them here, aswell as updates on working towards said goals. Not everything will be game related but… This is my blog and I can do whatever I want with it. So with that out of the way I’m looking forward to sharing my life and my gaming love with you all again. See you soon!

Vacation Blues

A bit of a short one today.
I got my test results yesterday morning, or Wednesday late at night if you prefer, and I’m not infected with COVID-19. A lot of people have expressed relief for me, but to be honest I wouldn’t have been shattered if it would have been the dreaded virus. I was virtually symptom free yesterday anyway and I would’ve only had to be inside untill today according to official guidelines. It would have meant that I would have started making antibodies in my system which could have turned into me donating blood to people who are very bad off with the virus. But it turns out that it was probably a common cold, so there’s that. I went out yesterday to the supermarket. It was nice to step foot outside of my apartment again after 5 days of being “locked up” but otherwise not much has changed in my situation.

My two week vacation has come to an end and this Monday I will return to my working from home schedule. I have to say that being at home alone all the time at some point gets to me and as such I’ve been struggling a bit with a funk the past week. I miss real life interactions with people a lot, I miss going to the pool without all the hassle and to the gym without having to reserve a spot in advance. I just really wish that things would’ve been blown over by now but it doesn’t look like the end is in sight for a long time yet. It’s bringing me down and as a result I’m struggling with myself a lot these days. Which in itself is always hard to admit because I don’t want to bother others with my inner demons.

As result I’ve been really low on my energy, or spoons as some other bloggers call it, and I need to find a way to get out of this mood before it takes me over completely. Luckily one of the events I’m looking forwards to every year, the League of Legends World Championship, has started today and as such I will have my days filled with a lot of League of Legends the coming 5-6 weeks. So that should keep me atleast a bit occupied. For now though it’s time to enjoy the final few days of no work obligations before the horror starts back up on Monday. And what better way than to do so with some games?

End of Vacation

They say that time flies when you’re having fun. It’s not a wrong saying but time seems to fly by in general these days. I blinked and my two week vacation was done. I went to my cabin in the woods. I’ve relaxed. I did a small project that was sort of related to work but not really and I’ve slipped back into the habit of reading a bit every day.
I managed to get my Warrior to level 80 in Final Fantasy XIV and I’m turning my attention towards leveling Dark Knight now. Being a tank aswell I’m sure I’ll have that up to 80 in no time and then it’s just Gunbreaker left.
I’ve been poking about in World of Warcraft the most on my Warrior. I’ve been diligently doing my dailies on her and managed to get the Uldum Accord reputation up to Exalted, which means I can drop doing those dailies (yay!) and only have the Rajani reputation left to get to Exalted… I’m only 5k reputation off that so I think I can get to it next week maybe.
With working on these reputations I realized I wasn’t too far off the 100 reputations to Exalted achievement. I went back to Desolace to bump up the centaur reputations to Exalted there and I’m working on the Sha’tari Defense reputation now that we have Warlords of Draenor timewalking up. If I can finish that up and get Exalted with the Rajani I only have one more reputation left. Unfortunately that one will require some grinding on my end since it’s one of the goblin town reputations (Gadgetzan) and I’m about 5k off there aswell… And the only way to get that up is to repeatedly kill pirates in Tanaris that give 5 reputation per kill. I kill them pretty fast but it’s 200 kills for 1k rep so that means that I’ll have to kill around 1000 mobs to get where I need to be. I could sit down for a day and grind it out but I’m not that masochistic so I’m taking 30 minutes here and there to dedicate to that grind.

I’m not sure how to feel about these two weeks off. I did what I wanted to do in regards to taking a weekend away from my house and I managed to read through two full books, but on the gaming front and on the relaxation front I’m not that happy. I do feel more relaxed than I have been in a long time, but I’m also still somewhat restless and dreading to go back to work on Monday. In the gaming world I’ve been mostly hopping back and forth between games but never sat down to play through something properly. I spent most of my time poking around on WoW and chasing silly goals and I did a light leveling bit on FFXIV but that’s mostly it. I didn’t touch Ratchet & Clank and I didn’t touch the Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
I didn’t even manage to keep up with my weekly planner, something I have been doing since I got it and it kind of stings. Luckily I’ll have a rematch next week which I will be planning out tomorrow.. But it still doesn’t sit quite right with me.
If anything it shows me I’m still far away from forming good habits and having a clear structure to my days. Going back to work may help a bit in that regard but I struggle with making “optimal use” of my free time. I tend to spend a lot of time just lounging on the couch and staring into the abyss or the tv while time ticks away and it annoys me. I want to be more productive and I want to have more fun doing things after work but I’m just struggling to motivate myself to get there.

For now though it’s time that I get a good night’s sleep and then have my final day of no work that’s probably filled with doing chores tomorrow… I can’t wait till my next two weeks off.

Cabin in the Woods

Vacation has been treating me well. It’s taken a few days to wind down and not feel completely exhausted, 5 to be precise, and I’ve been enjoying the stress free life. A part of me is curious how my team is doing without me but I need to learn to let go, so I’m doing exactly that.
I’ve been spending a lot of time sleeping, doing as little as possible and gaming. Especially World of Warcraft has seen a lot of love the past few days with me kind of abandoning the gold grind for a bit and instead hunting achievements on my Warrior. The army of alts that I’ve been using to grind gold have kind of worn me out and as such it was nice to put that on hold and just play my Warrior and not worry about running EVERYTHING because I feel like I have to. We still do our weekly heroic Ny’alotha clear and I’m helping people with some Mythic+ keys but overall I’m noticing that my playtime has gone down significantly and my focus has shifted to other things.
Like playing Final Fantasy XIV! The next patch, 5.3, is due to land on August 11th. I managed to get the Ixion mount that I had been wanting from the Moogle Tome Event today so I’m essentially done with that for now. My Warrior is sitting at level 78 and I managed to unlock two more Relic Weapons for my Dragoon and Bard respectively. I love that they only take 1000 Tomestones of Poetics to unlock since you kind of get those passively if you do roulettes anyway. After my Warrior gets to level 80 I only have Dark Knight and Gunblade left and then I’m done with all my battle jobs. I may turn my attention back to crafting instead then to get all those jobs from 70 to 80 and then I really only have Blue Mage left before I’m officially done with leveling everything.

However those plans need to be put on hold for a few days since I’m leaving for a cabin in the woods tomorrow for a long weekend. I have my bag already packed. I’m taking my Switch and an e-reader and nothing else. I just have to check the air in my tires before I go tomorrow and do a few groceries and then I’m all set. It’s going to be so nice to escape my apartment for a bit and have a “vacation feel” for real, even if it’s only for a few days. I’m planning to keep my phone off for most of the time when I’m there since I just really need to disconnect from social media and everything related to that for a bit. I’m planning on doing some nice walks and maybe dip into the local swimming pool but otherwise it’s just relaxing to the max. The cabin I’m renting is a bit of a luxury one which comes with a bath that also doubles as jacuzzi and a sauna and I’m going to use both. I even finally get to use some of the bathbombs I’ve taken home with me from work!

I’ll come back on Monday afternoon and then I still have the rest of the week off to enjoy untill I go back to work. For now though I’m going to get a good night’s sleep before I do the final round of apartment cleaning tomorrow morning and head off for a few days.

What are you doing this weekend?

Vacation, finally.

This past week has been rough. I’m starting a two week vacation today where I don’t have to do anything for my job and can finally relax for the first time since March. And for longer than a week aswell!
I’ve been looking forward to this for a while because I could seriously feel the burn from work. It’s been crazy with everything that has happened the past four months. The pandemic hitting, suddenly being forced to work from home and having almost no live social interaction for weeks to finally being allowed back into the office again for a few days a week and getting a sense of normalcy back.
Not to mention that it feels like there was an even bigger amount of work piling up than normal and we were going stir crazy with all the projects and last minute jobs that needed to be done.

Two of my coworkers had a few weeks of in the weeks before this and as such a lot of the day to day work had landed on my shoulders since we’re a really small team. In my current position I’m a senior and even though I do help with the day to day stuff I often don’t partake in a lot of recurring work anymore since my focus has shifted towards other things. So having to do my current job and part of the “old” work takes it’s toll after a while. I could feel myself just not being able to care about the work anymore and having an increasingly harder time focusing on just getting stuff done. That’s usually the sign I really need a break so I’m happy to have the coming two weeks to rest up, relax and hopefully tackle some of my backlog of games.

I have planned to take a long weekend getaway to a different part of the country in a bit of a luxury cabin with a sauna and jacuzzi. I’ll be in a very wooded area so I also plan to take a few nice long walks and enjoy the scenery, but mostly I just need a few days away from my regular environment. Being cooped up in my apartment for the last four months hasn’t been the best on my mental health unfortunately, so being able to get away is extremely nice. I’m probably going to pack my e-reader and my switch and just spend a few days in an extremely relaxed state reading and gaming and not being available to anyone.

As for the rest of my vacation plans… I will be attending my cousin’s wedding, in my country the COVID-19 restrictions have been slowly lifted so this is possible again, and otherwise it will hopefully be a lot of sleeping in and gaming and then hopefully be all fresh and happy to go back to work!

Getting into planners

I’ve been trying to get more structure in my life. When I was still in school and college I would keep a weekly agenda for all my lessons and homework and what not. They were fun and themed and I loved picking out a new one every new school year.
Ever since that part of my life is over I’ve tried to keep agendas but never seemed to be able to keep at it. They felt boring and the horizontal weekly format wasn’t working for me anymore and as such I stopped keeping track of my stuff on paper and instead opted to keep everything on my phone.

I tried keeping a bullet journal but it was a bit too free form. I’m not that creative and I felt like I couldn’t make good use of it. I try keeping a diary sometimes or just a daily note of what I did that day but those aren’t the long lasting type either. So I just gave up on the whole idea.
But then I saw this Youtube video by Chestnut and suddenly an entire world opened up to me. It looked so much fun to use a planner like that and it will finally help me get some planning and structure to my day so I splurged on a planner, a bunch of planner stickers and I made my first weekly spread!

It’s my first spread so I got pretty creative with it but I’m already thinking about what I can do differently in the next week. I also should have saved some of the full box stickers for another week but you live and you learn I guess.
I really like this planner so far. It allows me to track if I get enough hydration during the week. It helps me track habits that I’m trying to form, like taking a walk every day and taking care of my teeth better. I am planning my meals ahead, although I’ll probably move that particular box to the notes side next week. It helps me track important things and I can decorate to my heart’s content.
I’ll probably do a weekly “plan with me” post on Tuesdays, seeing as I want to get a bit more scheduled with posting here aswell. Then I can show off my spreads and fill you all in how I did with the old spread aswell.

So far I’m experimenting a lot and having fun with it so I hope this won’t be a phase but something that sticks for longer and helps me get a bit more of a grip on my life.

Cleaning House = Cleaning Brain

Mondays. Usually they are the start of the new work week and the harbinger of another five days of constantly having to answer questions. Not today though. Today it was a day of sleeping in, cooking a nice meal and starting the big spring cleaning process that I’ve been wanting to do for a couple of weeks now. The weekends are always too short to do projects like this though so it’s nice that I have more time now to really dive into all the stuff I’ve been hoarding and, hopefully, getting rid of a lot of it. Today I started with personal hygiene and care products and also learned how to shave. Working at the head office of a big drugstore chain has gotten me a lot of free stuff on the make-up, shower, perfume, and body care spectrum. A lot of stuff that I don’t use or that has gone bad over the years of not using it up. I dove into two bags and a crate of the stuff and ended up with two bags full of things that I could throw out. Body creams and sunblock gone bad. Perfumes that were free samples but smelled absolutely horrible. Hairsprays that didn’t really work anymore and the list goes on. It felt liberating throwing everything out and now I’m left with a crate of stuff that I actually use and keep in my bathroom. It’s mostly shampoo/conditioner, shower gels and foams, body care products and some toothpaste. I’m prepared for summer with two different types of sunblock and some after sun. I also own a ton of facial cleansing products since I like to clean my face before I go to bed and put night cream on so I feel clean and hydrated in the morning. I notice that next to working towards a cleaner and less cluttered house, it’s also decluttering my brain. Not having to be annoyed at random bags in my bedroom anymore feels really nice. Being left with stuff that I know that I will actually use is even nicer. I don’t want to say that I’m a minimalist, because I’m really not, but I don’t want to take stuff home with me anymore that I know I won’t use that someone else actually will. So now I’m left with the necessities and it’s making me happy. I also realized that I’ve owned Animal Crossing for more than 10 days on my Switch now which means that I can actually see how much time I’ve put into the game so far. According to my Switch it’s somewhere between 15 and 20 hours. Which means I’m playing a little over an hour each day and that sounds about right. I’m actually not really actively working towards anything right now. I’m mostly just running around my island and making sure I dig up my fossils every day aswell as find the money rock and do some fishing and bug catching. I guess I’m aiming to get the next installment of my house paid so I can upgrade again and start making some individual themed rooms instead of the one big room I have now. I’m kind of amazed with how other people have shaped their island by all the pictures I see on Reddit and Twitter. I know a lot of people do “time traveling” to unlock stuff. Which basically means they’ve been tampering with their date and time settings on their Switch. Personally I don’t feel the need for that and instead am just doing my own thing. Which is fine aswell. I’m not sure why I suddenly feel the need to blog so much. Maybe without my work I finally have the headspace to focus on other things. If I had more than one week off I would have considered joining Blapril as active participant since it seems like writing is coming much more naturally now that I have the time. However since I have only one week off and my work will probably be slightly crazy as I get back to it I’m going to shy away from Blapril and just do what I feel like in the moment. No stress. No commitment. It’s nice for a bit.

Ready, set, go!

There’s currently so much stuff going on in my (gaming) life that I finally found the need to blog again, even if it’s just to write everything down so that it’s out of my head.

First off a small update about my friend. At this point we are still mostly in the dark. She’s scheduled for an MRI scan as soon as possible so they can determine the size of the tumor and whether or not it has spread. At this point in time everyone is hoping for the best but bracing themselves for the worst outcome. It’s been hard, especially because there’s nothing I can say to her that she hasn’t heard dozens of times already in the last few days. I guess this is where I thank Dutch healthcare and our healthcare insurance system since whatever happens it won’t ruin her financially on top of everything else. I’ll periodically post small updates like these since I mostly just need to get it out of my head before it drives me insane.

Now on to happier stuff. As I write this post I’m feeling absolutely exhausted but in a good way. I’ve been feeling sore all over from my workout session from yesterday and I’m enjoying having an evening off. It’s been a bit of a brutal week for someone who has kind of gotten used to just sitting down at night and not doing anything else. So far I’ve been to the gym twice (Saturday afternoon and yesterday evening) and I went swimming once on Wednesday. The swimming was actually more brutal than the gym and it showed me that I’m really extremely out of shape. For now the plan is to go swimming twice a week, Wednesdays and Sundays, and go to the gym twice a week on Thursdays and Saturdays. The weekdays are going to be a bit more of a challenge to keep doing I think since I’ll have to motivate myself to drag my ass off the couch after long days of work. On the other hand it combats me going a bit insane just sitting at home every night and doing nothing but watching Netflix or Disney+ and playing games. So yeah, I’m starting to put down a routine and I’m very much motivated to see the routine through in the coming weeks/months. Atleast untill I’m off to Japan at the end of March.
Speaking of Japan.. That’s slowly edging it’s way into my thoughts aswell. I’m in the phase where I want to start researching what I want to see in Tokyo and Kyoto since those are the two cities where we will spending the most time. I know I want to atleast visit the Pokémon Café in Tokyo so I will make a reservation for that somewhere in the coming weeks. Akihabara is high on my list aswell but otherwise I have no idea where I want to go or what I want to do. I’m really interested in maybe visiting some retro game shops aswell as some gacha establishments but I’ll have to see. I stil have around two months to do some planning so that should be more than enough time.

In gaming land I’ve come to realize that trying out new MMO’s isn’t my thing. I just can’t get over outdated graphics, especially since Final Fantasy XIV has spoiled me with the pretty. I also just can’t invest the time to learn an MMO from scratch anymore so I’m going to retire Lord of the Rings Online. Instead I’ve resubbed to World of Warcraft, mostly because I crave comfort gaming right now and WoW has always pretty much been there to fill that need. I’m still deciding on what I want to do with my WoW time right now. I’m either going to explore the new content on my Rogue or level up my Warrior to 120 and get a refresh on the war campaign story before heading off to work on all the new stuff. I have enough time to do both, it’s just a bit hard to have to choose.

In my FFXIV adventures I’ve been doing trust dungeons here and there and my current group of trusts is about halfway there. I think I need to run Dohn Mheg two more times before I can move on to the next dungeon. This is mostly caused by Alisae and Alphinaud being behind on experience compared to Thancred or I would’ve only needed to do the dungeon one more time. Oh well. Due to me leveling via this Trust route I’ve kind of given up getting two more classes to level 80 for this month, instead I want to bring my Bard to level 80 together with my first group of Trusts.
In sidequest land I’ve made some amazing progress and I can officially say that I’ve wiped the map clean of quest markers in all zones now! I think I’m going to spend some time on gathering and crafting this weekend because it’s really relaxing and I’m sure I can get a few classes to 80 if I just sit down for a bit and actually gather and craft.

So yeah, that’s kind of what I’ve been up to this week so far. My mind is still all over the place but I’m trying to keep a positive outlook for my friend while my own life simply goes on. It’s weird but that’s how it is.

Bad News

I got told today that one of my close friends has cancer. She’s my age (30), has her whole life ahead of her and now the entire world is turned upside down. It’s breast cancer and it’s aggressive. I don’t know yet what the treatment plan is and honestly right now everything is just sinking in.
I don’t really know how what to write down about this situation. My thoughts are nowhere and everywhere at once. It’s scary, it sucks. It makes everything else seems insignificant in the grand scheme of things. It makes me even more focused on getting my own health and life on track again because with one bad spot during a scan can shatter everything.
I want to cry and scream and throw stuff. It’s not fair like nothing in life ever is. Cancer is such a horrible disease. I’ve seen how much of a life destroyer it can be. I almost lost my dad to it in 2012 and it feels like any time I’ve had with him since is borrowed because it will come back at some point and then there’s no more treatment to be had. But I try not to think about that.

I hope against hope that my friend won’t have to give up her breasts. That they can extract the cancerous cells and leave everything else intact. That she won’t need heavy chemo therapy or radiation. That it’s been found on time and her chances of survival are good. But for now we know nothing except that it’s bad and treatment is needed. And now we wait.