Category Archives: Personal

Lazy on Sunday

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Today I’m having a lazy day. I’m quite content with just lounging in my room, getting an hour of gameplay in here and there and otherwise just doing a whole lot of nothing. I tend to do my cleaning on Sunday because it’s usually the day we don’t have anything to do. With severe allergies towards dust mite it’s quite important that I vacuum and dust my room regularly. Especially since my bedroom is also a mini living room. I spend most of my time up here playing games, reading, watching shows and just doing my thing in general. It’s not that I don’t like spending time with my Dad and his girlfriend, it’s just that I’m often very tired and just want to be left alone. Plus they have their own schedule with watching certain shows on TV and basically completely ignoring me once I do spend time downstairs with them.

I used to have the mindset that time spent doing nothing is time badly spent. I always felt like I had to do something. Be it cleaning, working on a hobby, reading. Anything. Going outside, sporting. You name it. As I get a bit older (I’m nearing my 30’s what the hell) I realise that sometimes doing nothing is the best thing you can be doing. I don’t recover as well from colds anymore, I’m very low on energy due to work and house buying related stress and I’m plagued by headaches, tiredness and random shivers. All signs that I just need to take a step back and rest up a bit more. It feels weird to be okay with living in about 6 square meters when I’m moving to an apartment that will be 50 square meters. I will actually have a living room all to my own. I can plug my consoles into an actual big TV instead of one shared with my computer. I can’t wait!

Next week I don’t really have anything special planned. There is a friend coming over on Saturday but that’s it. With some luck work will be less busy aswell and I can actually use Thursday to rest up and relax instead of going into town and driving through half the country. I probably have some time to actually dive into games a bit more than last week and I hope I can get a little bit more done in FFXIV and maybe Yo-Kai Watch. I will definitely finish off Botanicula. Point and click adventures are a very nice way to relax after a long day of work, so I can see myself finishing it in an evening or maybe two.

All in all I don’t have that much to say today. I’m in a very relaxed mood. It’s nice and quiet in the house and outside (although people are coming home as we speak). My room is cleaned, laundry is done. Fresh bedsheets and a clean pajama are waiting on me when I’m going into bed tonight. All in all I feel content today. I hope I can take this feeling with me the coming week.

Update: December 17

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As I write this post I’ve had a very odd week. Work is utter chaos and I’m noticing that I’m losing my grip on certain things that normally should go naturally. We’re understaffed, it’s the busiest time of the year and I’m missing all the people that left this past year. I’m not really feeling well about the entire situation right now and I’ve mentioned this to my boss aswell. I’m struggling finding my place and feeling like I’m the one to have to make stuff work. Add up that we’re getting an interim manager in January (my boss is leaving) who is only there three days a week and it’s only going to get more chaotic from here on.

I have mentioned this in my last post but I’m buying my first own apartment. It’s still due to be built and I’m not moving untill somewhere in 2019 but still. It’s a huge step in my life and I’ve been having a really rough weekend so far with deciding whether or not I’m taking this thing. I talked to my Dad earlier today about the finances. He’s going to have to help me out because I simply don’t make enough money on my own to be able to afford anything right now and I desperately need to move out. After he assured me that the loan he’s giving me is actually already partly my own money anyway I decided to take the house. How is it my own money? Well my mom died when I was young. In her testament she left me money. This money has been untouched since 2001 and has been gathering interest since then. This all has added up to a reasonable sum and my dad told me that this money is the money he will use to help me finance my house. Which is a huge relief to me because I would hate to be in my father’s debt for the rest of my life. Which I still probably will be but that’s something else.

I thought I was done with my whole University thing aswell but it seems I’ve been enrolled for the wrong Master on accident. This isn’t a huge disaster but it means my actual graduation date will get postponed till February 1st (this is when I can enroll for the right Master). And with my Dad breathing down my neck I feel terrible having to postpone it even further. I know it’s only a month but still. I’ve postponed this so long that I don’t really dare to tell him it’s going to be later because of a stupid mistake. How I enrolled for the wrong master is a bit complicated. When I was still studying they changed the Master system a few times. At first you only had one master but now they’ve split it into three tracks. And the track I’ve done required me to register for a different Master, something they emailed me once about in 2012 or so and I didn’t pay attention to. It’s now coming to bite me in the ass and I’m really stressed about the whole affair. It’s technically not really my fault because I simply forgot. There is no system to warn me that I enrolled for the wrong Master and the Uni is really unforgiving about helping someone out when it comes to this so meh. I know I’ll get my diploma next year but I wish the road to it would’ve been easier than it has been. I’ve made it so hard on myself and even though I’m righting my own wrongs (albeit 3 years late) I feel terrible at how this all played out. I just want to pick up the damn paper and put all of this misery behind me. Because if anything University has been a miserable experience for me and something that I never imagined would happen. But that’s stuff that’s all in the past and I need to look forward if I want to move on.

On the gaming front I’ve been focused on FFXIV and WoW. My Astrologian hit 70 and I’m currently just poking around on my Miner and Botanist in FFXIV. My Raid group has kind of decided to drop the weeklies because the lockout has disappeared and with the new patch coming in January I think we all need a breather. I’m noticing my own performance on Ninja tanking horribly and my enjoyment of raiding in general is going down with it. Focusing on my Gatherers is just the type of casual gameplay I need in there right now and it will help me get stuff to level 70 and maybe attempt some endgame Gathering/Crafting stuff for the first time in my FFXIV history.
In WoW I’m still slowly leveling my Paladin. She’s about 15% off of level 106 and I’ve finished another chapter in my Class Hall story. I’m slowly working my way through Azsuna right now and I predict that I’ll be level 110 somewher in my third zone. Deciding to keep up both my Protection and Retribution weapons for now has been a smart decision. Tank queues are close to non existant and Protection Paladin is still a blast to play, especially with the Crusader elements they added to the class. I’m not going as fast through the content as I hoped I would but I’ve had busy weeks and a busy head and I’m noticing my games are the first to suffer from me feeling stressed. I just can’t get myself to sit down and play and rather lie down in bed with Netflix.

Speaking of Netflix. I know I’ve been meaning to watch the Punisher but for some reason the show just can’t seem to grab my interest. However I’ve been bingewatching “Lie to Me” like mad. I really enjoy shows like that, probably because of my interest in Psychology, and I find myself somewhere halfway through the second season already. I think I might wanna replace my Punisher goal with finishing off this show but I’ll see. December isn’t over yet and with the holidays coming up I should have enough time to get stuff done.

For now the coming week will be mostly spent at work where I hope I won’t be overwhelmed, a Tuesdaynight showing of Star Wars and signing the contract for my house. Atleast I have the last two things to look forward to!

Things go faster than they seem

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It’s funny how much stuff you can get done in limited time. If you plan well and stick to your planning you can get miles ahead on what you thought you’d be doing.

Yesterday I came home from work and felt exhausted. This is nothing new for me on Fridays. For some reason they hit me harder than any other day of the week and often I find myself sleeping my Friday night away. Normally I would be pissed at myself for falling asleep but by now I’ve recognized that I need that to preserve my energy so I just let it happen. This allows me to wake up relatively on time on Saturdays and start getting stuff done.
Did I mention that I got a new curtain fitted and that my room is dark again at night? Holy moly it has done wonders for my sleep. I can’t even describe the feeling of not waking up the moment the sun rises anymore. I’m lucky that it’s winter and that sunrise is relatively late but still. Not waking up early in the weekends is a blessing and I’ve noticed my sleep improving by leaps and bounds.

What I really wanted to talk about in this post is how fast the progression of the goals I’ve set for myself seems to be going. My Astrologian is just shy of level 69 in FFXIV. I’ve finished my book. My Miner and Botanist are both sitting above level 60. My Paladin is level 103 soon and steadily advancing all her quests aswell. I’m five hours into Xenoblade Chronicles and I’ve been watching some Punisher again. It’s really nice and smooth sailing.
As it stands now I predict my Astrologian to hit level 70 somewhere this week. I’m so close now that I really just want to get it done with. The real question is, what am I going to do afterwards. A part of me wants to keep pushing up new classes but I’m really wondering which ones. I’m obviously going to focus on both Miner and Botanist but if I keep going the way I do they should both be 70 well before the month ends. I want to get the Goddess of Magic title in FFXIV and as such I’m eyeing my Summoner/Scholar already. The class is level 58 and would be a logical choice to level up after I’m done with Astrologian. However I’m also feeling very partial towards Monk right now and I’m pretty sure I can use the diversion from playing healers/ranged to a melee again. Mostly so I can pick up my Ninja easier as well. Another thing that’s been eating at me is the scope that FFXIV has as an MMO. I’m already considering what I want to do when I get tired of leveling and gearing. There is so much to do in this game. I’ve barely touched Gathering and Crafting as it stands. There is the Chocobo racing, the card game and the Pokémon wannabe minion battles. A part of me wants to dabble in all of it and a part of me warns me that I don’t really have the time. It’s a struggle and one I want to put off untill next year. I mean, I’ve kept my December goals to a minimum for a reason.

In WoW I’ve been spending the time I have on my Paladin. I’m noticing that after an hour or so of playing I tend to get restless and shut down. I’m not forcing myself to do anything anymore and an hour of play is fine for me. Obviously it slows my whole level proces down but it’s surprising how much you can get done in an hour. I’ve picked up the quest to get the Protection Artifact weapon and I’m planning to go do it the moment I unlock Halls of Valor in Stormheim. Having to queue for dungeons as DPS is really shitty and I enjoy playing Prot Paladin so there’s that. I remember doing the quest on my Draenei and I remember it being a huge pain in the butt so I’m curious to see how well I fare on my Bloodelf. I should also do the quest for my Holy weapon but it’s not really on my radar yet… Even though it is a barrier that must be overcome if I want to advance in my Class Hall quests.

I’m also noticing that I’m much happier just doing my own thing and not being constantly asked to do stuff by guildies. I’m having a real “einzelgänger” phase now and I just want to be left to my own devices when I’m online. I guess in a way it’s lucky than that I’ve not pledged myself to any groups outside of my FFXIV raidgroup. Maybe this is also why I can finally enjoy some single player games again. No one bothers you when playing them and I can get really submerged, even if it’s only for an hour or so. This has made it much easier to sink some time into Xenoblade Chronicles. I know I’m still only 5 hours in but I’m really enjoying myself. The system is a bit complicated and the quests are hard, after dying 3 times I realized that I probably should makes some more way in the mainstory before I could complete a certain sidequest, but the entire game so far has been amazing. I love JRPG’s and I feel like I can finally sink my teeth into one and finish it.

Another reason for me to sink my teeth into games that I have is that I’m finally making preparations to move out of my Dad’s house. I got a call from a real estate agent about one of the projects I entered. Apparently someone fell through on financing their appartment and I was next on the list. I’m meeting with them next Thursday and then I can start getting my own finances in order. It’s a project that is due somewhere in 2019 so I’ll have an entire year to get the stuff I need for moving. This also means that I have to take a look at my current expenses and start cutting where I need to cut. On the gaming front it’s no more new games. I’m quitting my gym membership (seeing as I’m not going anyway) and no longer have to pay for University as I’ve finally graduated. This leaves me with my travel costs to work, phone bill, the monthly pay I make to my dad and my two MMO subs. All those costs come down to about €300 a month. I’ve reserved about €100 more for work lunches/other foods so that leaves me with about €1200 a month I can deposit into my savings account for my house. I have a big expense in January seeing as I am going to replace my PC (it’s just not working for games anymore) but other than that I should be fine saving up a storm. I’m really excited about this and feel in no way sad that I have to stop impulse buying things. I have everything I need and if I have to play all the games I own back to back I’m pretty sure that would satisfy me for a year anyway.

So yeah. There’s lots of things I’m working on and looking forward to. I really hope I can keep up my motivation to get both my real life and gaming goals done. Untill then I’ll update my blog regularly with news from my gaming adventures and probably also news about my first very own home.

Stuck in Life

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As I’m writing this I’ve had a very tiresome and awful day at work. It seems to me that these days have grown in number recently and I can no longer deny how it affects me as person.
When I was still in school I always had this idea about my future. What type of work I would be doing, that I would be out on my own or living with a partner and that I would just enjoy life and everything it had to offer. I would have never imagined still living at home with little to no social life to speak of and working a dead-end job.
But this seems to be reality right now.

I’m not enjoying myself at work. I’ve been getting more responsibilities but as time passes I master everything and start to get bored. Everything is oiled and the work, although it’s a lot, is not high in diversity, I’ve basically seen everything this job has to offer and I feel like it’s time to move on. However I’ve just extended my contract by another six months, purely for the financial stability and the promise of a different job in the future. I’m starting to question this decision. I’m no longer enamoured by the people I work with. With a ton of my colleagues (forced to) leaving I’ve been left behind in an empty shell of what once was a great department. Add up the current christmas chaos, the fact that my boss is pursuing another job and I have no idea what the future brings and you have a very volatile mix of ingredients.

All of this has made me feel even more down than I already was about things. I feel like I’m stuck in life and have no one to really turn to. Most of my friends are having their own lifes with or without kids and can only look at me in pity that I just can’t seem to make it work. As far as looking for a partner goes… I’m not happy with how I am right now. I’m quite overweight and as a result of this I feel ugly and unwanted. I know that I can do something about it and I should, but my asthma flaring up last year coupled with extremely long tiresome days at work leave me with little desire to get my ass to any type of sports. I still have my gym membership going and I am planning to haul my ass there atleast during the weekends, just to get some sort of stamina and muscle building again. It’s gotten to the point where I just no longer know how to dress well without feeling like I’m being stared at for being fat. And if I can’t love myself, how am I going to love someone else?
Ofcourse it doesn’t help that so far every love interest I’ve had over the past 2-3 years turned sour. Either they live too far away to make it work, they are completely and utterly not my type or, and this is the best one, they’re already taken. I refuse to do internet dating because I’ve been dealing with too many creeps online already as is and I am not really looking for a casual hookup. I just want to find someone that will put their arm around me in the evening and tell me everything will be okay, even when it’s not at the moment.

I guess me struggling with these issues in real life are also really affecting my hobbies. I’m so low on energy that I just can’t even be arsed to start up a game or pick up a book. All I want to do is lay in bed and scroll through stupid pictures on 9gag because I don’t have to think then. Whenever I do get around to start something up I’m bored fast. I read one or two chapters in my book before I put it away. I play WoW for 30 mins and then I close it down. I log into FFXIV to do my beast tribe dailies and then just stand AFK staring at the screen. I don’t have the energy to do anything else right now.

I know this post is in stark contrast with the previous two I’ve written this month. I’m no abandoning my gaming goals nor am I going to deviate from my planned evenings. But I do have to accept that I’m struggling with many things right now and that it will eat into time that I have reserved for X or Y. Maybe I”ll get to a point where I can motivate myself enough to do stuff again. I’m probably going to have a much easier time when the stress from work dies down aswell. But for now I’m in a very unhappy state and I don’t see myself getting out of it before the end of the year.

Settling

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It’s odd how much peace of mind you can get from finishing something that has been looming over you for literally 3 years now. I feel like I can think again and function again like a normal human being. This allows me to set goals for other stuff easier and plan my days better now that I have no more obligations to anything than work. And ofcourse I leave that behind at 17.00 when I start clearing out my desk to go home.

Right now I feel like the two major MMO’s I’m playing are in maintenance mode for me. In FFXIV we’ve basically stopped raiding except for the weekly savage clear. As group we’re not attempting unending coil simply because we are not going to make it anyway. Part of that is on me because I’m nothing more than an average ninja who, for some reason, fails to perform in raids yet again. It’s probably due to me not playing as much as I should but well, there’s not that much to do in game anyway. When it comes to WoW I’ve ceased raiding after we killed Gul’dan almost a year ago. Right now I don’t feel the need to get back into raiding either so I’ve decided to set some different goals instead and just take things casually. I can see myself focusing on leveling one character of each class over the coming months and go through all the class related lore because that’s what I really enjoy.

This mindset has caused me to start breaking up my week into planned days for certain games. I want to shove FFXIV to Tuesday evenings because it’s reset day there and play WoW on Wednesday because also, reset day. I am probably reserving my Friday nights for Heroes of the Storm and I’ve decided that Mondays are now used for reading and watching series. Obviously if there are raids happening in FFXIV they get precedence. If I can stick to this planning it’s nice to not really have to think about what I want to do each given evening. I tend to get overwhelmed with all the stuff I want to be doing and then just crawl into bed and do nothing… Which isn’t helpful at all. The December goal thing has already given me some guidance, breaking it up into certain evenings only adds to that.

So with my four working days settled I have the weekends and Thursdays to branch into other things. I don’t really want to assign anything to those days either simply because I never know what mood I’m in when I have time off. For instance yesterday I was feeling rather unwell and spent my time in bed for most of the day, thus not really getting anything done. Today has been mostly filled with chores. I find that I have a better start on Mondays when on Sundays I clean out my room. The lack of clutter makes me happy and helps me be more productive overall. Although I did manage to squeeze in som FFXIV time in the morning, finishing off my beast tribe dailies on my Astrologian and making the final push for Miner to hit 60 (yes I can actually already score that goal off!). Other than that I settled down and made a good start in reading The Name of the Wind.

It does feel odd to set goals for stuff like games that should be used for relaxation. But with so many games coming out these days and MMO’s taking up a lot of time it’s nice to just have something to aim towards and enjoy the process in doing so.

What I’m going to do for the rest of the day is unsure. I could throw in a load of laundry and I should probably put some stuff back on the attic but I’m feeling a bit lazy and unwilling to do to much in the way of chores. With vacuuming, dusting and putting away all the junk in my room I’ve done enough for today. All I know is that whatever it is I pick to do will be a nice relaxing experience and something that’s not riddled with “but I should be doing something else”.

Murmuring at Midnight

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It’s odd when you have too much time to yourself to think about stuff. Even with a job and somewhat of a social life I find myself being very lonely, especially on the weekends. Not really having someone there to confide in, who will make you happy when you’re sad or just simply tell you you’re doing great is devastating at times.
I’m very disappointed with how my life has turned out. If someone told my 18 year old self that I would still be living at home 10 years later and not only that but I still wouldn’t have finished school I would have laughed in their face. Yet here I am, a thousand big and small tragedies later.
Life has not been kind to me. I’ve had to face the loss of a parent very early on and almost the loss of my second one a few years ago. Nothing quite shakes you awake knowing that maybe when you wake up you’ll get a call from the hospital that your dad has passed away. It was a really tough time back then and it really fucked with my entire life. It made me stop my master’s thesis and almost had me fail my Master’s completely. I don’t think I ever really recovered from that properly.
I’ve had my hormones messed with when I was around 20 years old, basically putting me in menopauze because my body was hurting itself. Around the same time I got told that I probably can’t have kids of my own and that if I ever wanted to, I would have to start trying around 25 because when I turned 30 my chances would drop even further. These are not things you want to hear when you’re barely 20 years old and still have your entire future ahead of you.
I’ve been in therapy twice in my life. The first time when I was 16 and was diagnosed with PTSD for finding my mum dead in our house. The second time was two years ago because I was depressed and stuck in life. I couldn’t see a way forward and would spend the entire day in bed staring at my ceiling. I could’ve done many things in that time, like finish my Master’s degree, but I didn’t. I just simply didnt have the energy for it or the willpower. I have struggled for a long time in therpay trying to figure out what was making me so scared of moving on… And it came down to change itself. In the end therapy helped me land my first real job, but I was still stuck in my school situation with no one knowing and no one to help me get through it.

Fast forward to the present and I’m still suffering in my own way. I’ve been (eventually) diagnosed with a persistant lung infection after visiting two different doctors and taking 6 different kind of medicine to treat my cough and my breathing troubles. I’ve had heart palpitations and I’m still tired 24/7. I’m still struggling with school and I can slowly feel myself slide into a state again where I just want to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling.
Everything is costing me energy and everything that isn’t going my way is causing me major frustrations. Frustrations that I can’t air well and that has been giving me trouble mostly in my online life. Right now I really just want to crawl alway in a little corner of existence and not have anyone bother me for anything. I don’t want to talk to anyone, deal with anyone or even see anyone in my immediate vicinity. I want to be left alone and I want to cry and kick and scream. But most of all I don’t want to go back to the dark pit I crawled out from two years ago. Because I’m scared that when I do go back there I might not come out again.

A Weird State

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Things have been weird for me lately. Both ingame and in real life. I can’t really describe it properly and I’m noticing I have a very difficult time expressing myself properly in English about this. I’ve been playing around with the idea of having a Dutch blog on the side that I can mostly just talk about my personal life on and the struggles I am having in day to day life with various things and talk a bit about my opinions on hot topics these days.

For now though I barely blog here and I know I probably won’t do much on a new blog once I make it so I’m holding off on the idea untill I’m a bit less occupied.
A few areas of my life have not been going well at all. I’m still struggling with uni stuff and I’m kicking myself in the head over it because I should’ve been done over the summer. For some reason just sitting down and writing has been hard and I’m not sure why I just have this wall when it comes to finishing this project. I’ve worked so hard on this twice now and I really want it to be done. I want my diploma and move on with my life. At this point the diploma doesn’t even mean that much to me anymore, I’m purely getting it out of spite and because it looks good on my resumé.
At work I’ve come to the point where I want to move on and look for something more challenging. I love the department I’m on now and I get along with a lot of my coworkers but I’ve hit my ceiling and the challenge and fun of showing up for work four days a week has been more or less drained. I can’t really develop here and because I know the department is going to be gone soon I’ve started thinking about what I would really want to do. For now I either want to go the direction of Support/IT or maybe something in commerce. I like being the spider in the web, connecting departments together and fixing problems so I hope I can find a job that will be exactly that.
I still live at home with no real option to move out anytime soon and I’m still depressingly single. Partly this comes down to me not really actively searching for a partner and partly it’s because my self image is at an all time low. I feel fat and ugly and tired and I’m not really sure how to change this around. I’ve not felt this down in a very long time and it’s costing me a lot of energy to just do my normal day-to-day stuff, let alone start getting my stamina and muscles up to a certain level again.

Next to all of this I’m slowly realizing that I need to spend less time looking at screens in general. It feels like I’m always looking at a screen of some sort and it’s making me shallow. If it’s not for games it’s for work or constantly checking my phone. Then there’s the tablet and e-reader which are both screens aswell. It’s slowly making me, and everyone else around me, antisocial. During lunch everyone stares at their phones. You plan a meeting with someone and phones are on the table. I stare at a screen at work for eight hours a day only to get on the train and stare at my phone screen and come home and stare at a monitor. It’s kind of driving me nuts. The actual social connections are becoming hard with this. Even visiting my best friend there’s not a single time that the phones don’t come out to message people or look at stuff. It’s kind of weird and it’s making me, and a whole generation with me like this, very unhappy. I notice that my concentration is taking hits. I used to be able to spend all day working on an embroidery project or reading but now I keep taking breaks to check my phone or start up a game. It’s become an addiction and I’m starting to notice the bad side effects that come with this.
Now obviously breaking the trend in a smartphone heavy world is hard but it’s something I feel like I need to do. I don’t want to go through live like this anymore and the only person that can change this is me.

In games I’ve been struggling aswell. My static is still going and they’re a great bunch of people but I’ve been frustrated with my performance on Ninja so much that I bitched about everything to people and now apparently they leaked this back to the static. Things have gotten complicated. I’ve said stuff I didn’t mean and I’ve been grumpy about things that have nothing to do with them but with myself and it’s not really something I can easily discuss with them as group. I don’t want to be taken pity on because I’m not in a position to be pitied. I picked a class to play this expansion and although I’m enjoying it greatly I’m not on the performance level I should be and I’m having a really hard time adjusting. In hindsight I probably should have switched to Bard when I had the chance but I’m determined to make Ninja work and clear O4S. I just really hope my static will give me another chance at doing this and that I can keep my cool about all of it.
I don’t want to be angry about games. They need to be fun and a way to get rid of frustrations, not create them. I’m really desperately finding a way to make it so they are but I’m not there yet. I know partly it’s because I’m having a rough time in my personal life right now that I can’t really seem to find the peace in the games I play that I so desperately want. I’ve used gaming as an outlet for so long now that I don’t think I’ve learned proper coping mechanisms for stuff and it’s impacting everything now, including the games I love so much. And I need to break out of this.

The only question is… How?

Sunday Summaries #5

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Wow. I can’t believe it’s September already. Time really is flying the last few weeks and I’m struggling to keep up with it all.
First off, let’s start with some good news! I passed my first Web Specialization course: Introduction to HTML5. I got a shiny certificate from Coursera and I’m quite happy with my progress overall. I’ve started the second course now, which is an introduction into CSS and I hope it goes as fast as the HTML one. I’m really motivated to finish this specialization, mostly because I know it will give me a little boost on the job market. Which I’m starting to need because my current contract only goes untill the end of the year.

I”m still struggling with my thesis. It’s hard to sit down and work on it while being very tired. I am making some progress and I hope to be done very soon. In the meantime I’m plowing along at work and at life. Health wise I’m actually starting to slowly feel better. I have a bit more energy and I’m planning to spend my weekends trying to get some exercises done. We have a hometrainer upstairs and I have a few weights lying around so apart from feeling very dead there’s nothing really stopping me to start working on getting back in shape again.

Games wise I don’t actually have much to tell. I’m playing FFXIV still and had gotten my Bard to level 70. I’m working on leveling my White Mage in the battle class department and I’m leveling up Botanist and Miner together. All these classes are coincidentally at level 56. It will be nice to finally see a bit of “endgame” on my gatherers early on in the expansion. It’s nice to just run around and mine things when I don’t really feel like doing anything else and, aslong as I’m still leveling, I’m slowly working towards my goal of getting every class to level 70.
I am looking forward to the Destiny 2 launch on Wednesday. I can’t really play due to having to raid but I have Thursday off and I will have the entire day to dive into the game and play the sequel of the only FPS that actually ever got me hooked hard.

So yeah, for the next week next to FF raids I will probably spend most of my time in Destiny 2, playing the story and leveling my warlock and exploring endgame.
I know it’s a bit of a short post this way, but I don’t really have much to talk about.

Sunday Summaries #4

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Hmm. I skipped my weekly sunday post last week. I had a terrible weekend where I was feeling absolutely crap so I couldn’t get myself motivated to do anything, let alone write a blog post about what I’ve been up to.
So instead I’ll just continue telling you about what I’ve done this week, in games and in real life and what I’m planning to do the next.

So first off… Life
Yeah I normally rather talk about games but right now I’m going to take the chance and talk about some IRL stuff. I’ve been having a bit of a hard time the past two weeks. I’m in one of my more depressed moods and thus I can’t handle a lot of things very well. Part of it is caused by continuously feeling tired/sick and part of it is caused by stress over my thesis. I’m still not done yet although I have been taking some steps towards finishing it off. Tonight I’m going to send my final research proposal and then turn my attention to the beefy stuff: results. I downloaded and installed SPSS and it really shouldn’t take me more than a day to grind the numbers.
Next to my thesis I’ve also started an online course teaching me the basics of HTML5, CSS and Java. Seeing as I’m somewhere in no man’s land concerning work and I’ve always had some sort of attraction to IT I decided to bite the bullet and just enroll. It’s a five course specialization that in theory takes place over about 6 months time. However you can work ahead if you want and finish up the courses faster, earning yourself an official certificate from the University of Michigan. Which in turn looks good on my resumé and linkedin. I really feel like I want to head more in the direction of IT and being able to understand atleast the basics will help me with this. I’m not sure if I’d want to be a full time programmer, but it’s nice to know how stuff works atleast. I might even experiment with some things on my blog, who knows.

Now to the more interesting part… Games
This week has seen a mix of various games on my part. I played FFXIV and raided on Sunday and Wednesday. I also committed myself to Bard and finally managed to get her to 70. Due to the class sharing accessories with Ninja I instantly reached ilvl 320 as I dinged, which is quite nice. I also won the Susano bow yesterday evening in an FC event so I’m all ready to play Bard! I really like the AF3 gear so I’m totally going to use it as glamour. I may default to Bard a bit more for my roulettes aswell since I really miss the ranged gameplay and the class is just seriously fun.
Next to FFXIV I also reinstalled Guild Wars 2 this past week and got playing. Due to me being completely out of the game I rolled up a new character, Norn ranger, and just headed off into the Wayfarer Foothills. Which by the way is a really pretty zone. I think this is an ideal game to just run around in a few hours a week for some casual and story driven gameplay when I get overwhelmed or bored with FFXIV. A post with some GW2 screenshots and a post with my Bard to 70 screenshots will probably appear later this week.
On the non MMO front I’ve finally finished Ducktales Remastered and I’ve started a new adventure in Pokémon White 2, which I talked about a bit already yesterday. It’s probably going to be my go-to game on the train next to some fiddling around in the Pokémon Moon postgame. I also jumped in on the I am Setsuna sale for the Switch and may break that out after I finish the whole Pokémon grind. I’m not 100% sure though but we will see.

All in all I’ve done a lot of gaming related stuff this week, which mostly revolved around FFXIV and GW2. Next week I don’t plan to deviate from this a lot except I will have to find a new class to level in FFXIV. I’m doubting between Dragoon and Red Mage purely because I’ve been getting Dragoon gear from my Savage runs and Red Mage is just an exceptionally fun class to play. I know it’s another DPS after I’ve already leveled two, but I don’t really care anymore at this point. The queues are manageable and during the time inbetween I can easily farm FATEs and hunt marks for additional experience. It’s how I did it on Bard and it worked out just fine.
I will also poke around in GW2 a bit to get my ranger up. I want to finish atleast the Wayfarer Foothills this week, which shouldn’t take me too long. I also want to make some progress in Pokémon White 2. Not sure how much time I’m going to spend on it but I hope to be able to beat atleast the first gym there.

In real life I’m going to focus on my thesis and on the IT course. I’m not sure how much time I will actually spend on it but the pressure is starting to really turn on to get this stuff finished and I’m really motivated to do so. It’s about time I’d be done with Uni once and for all.

Sunday Summaries #3

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Hello everyone and it’s Sunday again! My time really does fly doesn’t it?
It’s been a really busy week for me. Work has been kind of crazy, I played a lot of FFXIV and I did a lot of stuff around the house. I also took my time shopping again, seeing as one of my bras snapped and I needed replacement ones anyway and I picked up some new jewellery and for the first time in ages Pokémon cards.

So, what have I done?
In the world of gaming I’ve been mostly focussed on FFXIV. We raided two nights of Omega Savage and got turn two down and are slowly working our way through learning the mechanics of turn three. Although I’m really enjoying the raids I’m really struggling to get my Ninja going properly. I have my opener down and most of my rotation but somewhere halfway through fights I seem to fall off quite a bit and I’m not really sure why. I’ve also realized that trying to time skills together is probably detrimental to my DPS so I’m going to try to be less rigid about it and see if my DPS improves. I have mastered Ten-Chi-Jin a bit better so there’s that.
I keep saying that I’m going to work on my gathering classes but for some reason I just really can’t be arsed. It’s not really in line with my roadmap to Stormblood but I’m just not really feeling the need to spend my time on my gatherers or crafters when I’m too busy working on my battle jobs still. This is also in combination with having less time to play overal seeing as my Friday evenings are mostly taken by either watching series or sleeping early. I’m really tired the last few weeks so it impacts my game time enormously.
I have been leveling my Bard and she’s currently sitting on 66. The queues for roulettes aren’t that horrible anymore, I average about 15-20 mins wait time per queue, and I’m filling my time inbetween with hunt marks, FATEs or doing some IRL stuff while waiting for my queue to pop. Things have actually been going so well that I think she might be level 70 by the next time my summaries post comes around. I’m also taking my White Mage through some Palace of the Dead to get her to level 60 so I can start leveling her to level 70 properly aswell. I hope it goes faster than on my Bard, mostly because I predict I will have shorter queues.

In real life my life is a bit odd right now. I’m waiting for results from varying lung tests (which I’ll get tomorrow) and for the rest I’m spending most of my time being tired. We went into town for some shopping on thursday and I could barely stand on my feet during the evening. I have made some progress in clearing out our attic again. My mom had obtained quite a big ministeck collection when she was still alive but it was spread out everywhere. It took me about 7 hours yesterday but I managed to get all the pieces into one place and neatly tucked away. I’m not planning on touching it soon to do some ministeck myself but it’s nice to have everything in the same place. It helps when you’re looking for something to know where it is. I’m also struggling what exactly I want to do with my Switch/WiiU. I don’t really use my Switch much on the TV but it’s nice to have the option for when I want to. My WiiU is currently boxed under my bed, but I have so many games to finish on it that it feels bad to let it just lie there. I may just set it up again in a few weeks so I can properly work on my backlog. I say this now however but I know most of my time will be swallowed by FFXIV anyway so don’t pin me down on this.

What do I have planned for next week?
It really depends on my results tomorrow. I hope there’s nothing serious but you never know. I want to get my Bard to 70 and put some time in on my White Mage. I also feel like I should spend some time on one of my single player games or my backlog will never go away. I’m not really sure which one I’ll pick but I’ll probably post about it when I do. There’s many games that are competing for my interest and I have a really hard time choosing what I want to do.
I hope I can continue cleaning up the attic aswell. I feel like I’m finally making some progress, there is more space and I can store some stuff that have been put down randomly everywhere in one place. I also hope I can find the remainder of my Pokémon cards. I found my big folder with most of them in but I’m pretty sure that I have more than that and I have no idea where it has disappeared to. All in all I’ll have enough to do, assuming I can do it.