Being unemployed, and doing Sober October, has ruined time for me. Now, I didn’t like the concept of time before. If we didn’t have work, and encourage families to move away from each other, we probably wouldn’t need it, but alas, here we are. Having a method to talk to one another is good, but man do I hate clocks.
In college, I did work for a polling center, where I had to call people for hours to ask if they wanted to take surveys. Pretty annoying, I know, but I needed the money and I didn’t have very strong principles back then. I kinda like doing surveys, but there are much easier ways nowadays than calling people (probably were back then too). Anyway, that job went by slow as hell, and I had not one, not two, but three clocks in view of my station. One on the computer, another on the phone, and finally the program we used had a timestamp after each call which, if I got an answering machine, meant I made 2-3 calls a minute and had to see the same number. I hated watching every single minute go by, because it made the job take forever. I only ever did 3-4 hour shifts since we could basically pick our schedule week-to-week, but man it sucked. After the first couple days, I used sticky-notes to block each of the clocks. It only helped a little, but I got through it.
Anyway, at present, I don’t have a great sense for days. It’s very freeing. I’m sure (or at least hope) that you’ve felt something like that in your life. Maybe on a long vacation, where you’re so content, and have so little pain in your life that you think, “huh, what day is it again?”. I wish people could experience that more often.
My grandmother who I helped last week echoed my statement there, when we were talking about the, then upcoming weekend, and it took us both a second to remember what day is was. It was a beautiful moment, two humans, not enough else to mind about that they get to forget the morass and constriction of time, and just enjoy each others presence.
However, I do still have an idea of weekends, and Monday, because it affects my girlfriend. It affects when and how much time I get to spend with her (or the rest of my family), and it affects her pretty seriously sometimes, which in-turn affects me. Anyway, with some rough idea of time, I basically live week-to-week.
This week I’m trying something new. A schedule. Now, the dream is to be able to wake up in the morning, and live life as God intended, doing whatever I want to do on that day. I’ve talked about work before, and how laziness doesn’t exist, and how human nature makes us be generative, so before anyone reads that and thinks, “oh this guy just wants to be a bump on a log” go read some of my other posts because that’s not the case. It’s not the case for 99.5% of human beings, and if you think that, please go get some psychology education.
At any rate, I’m trying to do things to be generative, and since I need to end up having an income somehow, given how I’m currently trying to do that, consistency may be important. I’ve been doing much better about writing for my blog, and it’s shown in the reader numbers. Huge thank you to anyone who reads my content, you folks give me a shred of hope, and that’s what I’ve needed to keep it up this far.
So, mornings, I”m writing. I should get back into the habit of writing both this blog, and my Red Hoodie Games blog, but I notice there isn’t much crossover in readers from here to there. I write about gaming here too sometimes, but I get the sense that isn’t what everyone comes here to read most of the time. That being said, if you don’t play games, please do. Find a good mobile game if that’s all you can spare (might I recommend Battleheart? One of my all time favorites), or get a boardgame and play with friends and family. No, not Monopoly, or Sorry!, a really quality boardgame. I could talk more about them but if you’ve no idea where to start, try Settlers of Catan, Elder Sign, or Ticket to Ride, to name a few. Or if you’ve got a console and/or a PC (even a laptop, even a mac) you can find games very easily.
Back on track, morning time is for writing. Then, I need to get in the habit of doing some exercise. I’m thinking some at-home routine will suffice. I loathe the gym, paying for what is basically an adult playground (why don’t those exist?), or a forest seems really dumb to me, when I could get exercise doing something meaningful and not just running, or lifting something up to set it down again. Maybe I just don’t get it because no ones ever explained it. If you’re a die-hard gym fan, I’d love to hear why.
Then I’ll eat lunch, and stream some games in the afternoon on Twitch or maybe on Mixer, although it’s taking a really long time to get a stream key (which Twitch gives you upon account creation). My hope would be to stream from around 12-4pm EST, so if you are around for the games, or if you’d like to see me in action, feel free to drop by. I streamed Heroes of the Storm yesterday, and will likely stream some Sea of Thieves today.
For today, I’ve also got to get some chicken cooking in the crock-pot before I stream, and write a little bit for my Dungeons and Dragons group tonight. I may write about their adventures on here as well at some point, but it would be a fairly long post to catch folks up to the story that I’ve been running for over a year now. To be fair, the party hasn’t made it super far in terms of in-game time, but I’d want to give enough information so that folks could feel engaged and knowledgeable.
Finally, post-streaming is going to be making dinner, eating with the SO, and either playing some games with her, catching up on some Netflix, or each vegging out with our own thing. It’s not a bad schedule, if I have to have one.
I’m still working on the LLC and the Patreon. It’s hard to tell, but I’ve been told recently that you don’t need articles of incorporation for an LLC in Vermont, so that might be as simple as drawing up a real quick “business plan” for the LLC (which I’m intended to just be a holding company for my sole-proprietorships), and registering with the state online. I do need to come up with a name and that’s the toughest part. I also need to make a time to look into this, perhaps one of these morning slots when I get my posts up rather quickly. Perhaps even this morning. I’ve been known to procrastinate, and say what you will, but people who procrastinate are happier than those who don’t, there are research articles on the subject.
While I’m here, I might as well add that Sober October is, if there was a single word to describe it, frustrating. It’s a stupid thing to do to myself, and I’m frustrated that I agreed to do it. I think most of my poor health comes from the near complete lack of exercise, but I really struggle to find a meaningful way to get that in. I should’ve done a Exercise October, and given myself bowls or beers as treats to motivate me to do it. If I exercise now, all I get is to feel shitty afterwards, maybe I deserve that, maybe I can motivate with self-deprecation at depriving myself of my vices. What a strange way to think about motivation. “I deserve to feel shitty after exercising for taking my beer away, what a piece of shit for doing that to myself, I’m gonna exercise and feel worse!” Yeah that isn’t working, that just feels stupid to even think. I don’t know how I’ll get myself to do it. I guess I just will today. At least today. At least for today. That’s something worth telling myself. At least do it today.
It should be part of my schedule. I don’t know if I could handle that daily, maybe every other day for this week. Maybe just force myself to do it every day, ugh, nope, I don’t want to force myself into things. Other human beings force the way I live enough that I shouldn’t be imposing unhappiness upon myself. The only way this works is if I feel better about myself afterwards, and I don’t.
How do you motivate yourself to exercise?
Maybe that’s a subject for some personal research this week. Who knows. I think I’m rambling at this point, so I’m gonna go ahead and finish this post up with a Sober October haiku.
Frustration in me
Not drinking, smoking, vaping
Bah! When will it end
