Anchors Aweigh

Oh winter - when will you not be the worst?

I’m not sure what caused it. I had pushed myself to the brink for a month and a half getting ready for family christmas. I crashed afterwards. A couple weeks of low energy, high carb (thanks, leftovers) stupor. I didn’t even leave to head into the office after most of our warehouse team came down with omicron. But whether it was the high effort stretch, the low effort crash, or the being confined to my house again, I had a repeat of last year’s symptoms. On new years. To the day, a year after they first kicked in.

On one hand, it’s reassuring to have symptoms wane for months at a time before coming back. That seems to rule out any sort of horrible cancer or the like. But something still isn’t right, and it doesn’t feel good. My current working hypothesis is that the couple extra holiday pounds combined with too much recovery sitting caused my hip flexors to go ultra tight again. Same struggle to get my leg in my pants in the AM stuff as before. So I’m betting that, if I fix that instability and underlying weakness, it’ll fade again.

Did a bunch of extra research on proper stretching/strengthening exercises for the necessary muscles. Added it to my routine and immediately felt some relief. Hopefully that’s a good sign. If I can right the ship within two weeks of it foundering, I’ll call that less a disaster and more a near miss. Warning shot.

I’ll get it.

I haven’t been back to crossfit yet. Between my two weeks of being sick after thanksgiving, the week scrambling for xmas, the week recovery, them being closed for holidays and the big move to the new space, sudden hip pain, and now omicron it’s been tough to justify getting back. I did made it once between xmas and new years, and I’ve been tempted to just go and take the risk anyway, but my hip has made me feel like I’m better served rehabbing it before I go full force again. There’s a weird thing in the back of my mind, though, where the longer I go without attending the more I question whether I even should be going back. Don’t I like the more controlled, methodical bodybuilding style workouts? Isn’t being able to take my time and choose what I focus on each day kind of nice? Did I really fit in at that place at all to begin with?

There’s some truth to all of that, but this does feel like a case of psychology attempting to justify physiology. I don’t think I’d feel good leaving due to a short term break turning long term. If I go back to my own workouts, I think it should be a conscious decision made while attending those classes. Not because I don’t want to go back, but because I’m there and deciding that I shouldn’t be. So I’ll push through this low spot, get myself back in there for at least a few months, and then see how I feel about it. Long term, I’ll be happier with myself that way.

Besides - I really did enjoy being there when I was there. I’m sure this is just winter doubts creeping up.

I had to cancel my meal delivery service for a week in order to place a new order with updated delivery instructions. I tried to place the new order right away, but would have ended up with a new delivery date (Fri instead of Tues). The half-week would have left me with way too much food, so I waited to place the order on a later day to keep my Tues delivery.

And then… I forgot. Now I don’t have meals this week. What do I do? How will I survive? This may be the end of me, folks. It’s been a great ride. Deuces.

Seriously though, it’s crazy how I froze up when I realized I’d need to buy groceries for myself this week. Even after I had done that for years and years without a problem. How quickly we get accustomed to these luxuries. Speaking of, the cleaning lady is coming back Thursday. Guess I’ll be incapable of cleaning bathrooms in a year as well.

Good riddance.

I started editing again. I had been putting it off after feeling like I had no more good ideas for the last episode I was working on, and that extended break just got harder and harder to reverse. But, after finishing up Valheim w/ VR mod I was getting the itch to go back and edit that epic 135 hour co-op journey and couldn’t justify starting it up without finishing the last episode. So I loaded it up again yesterday. Reacquainted myself with the software. Cleaned up some cuts to get rid of about 3 minutes of fluff in the 20 minute episode. And then promptly ran out of ideas.

But I think that’s okay. I’m doing that thing where I’m letting the quality of the thing I’m creating get in the way of actually creating. Wouldn’t it be better to just hammer it out, accept that not every attempt is gonna be great, and move on? Why let it stymie me that way? Hell, maybe it’s just the source material that doesn’t give a lot to work with. I think I’ve made it mostly decent. I’ll get Bruddah to give it a few watches and see if he has any bright ideas. Then I’ll just post it and move on. Play with the Valheim footage for a bit. Similar to these posts, it’s not like anyone pays attention to them anyway. Why do I care so much that it be good?

Have a feeling that’s gonna be an ongoing struggle as long as I’m around. But I’ll keep fighting it.

Valheim was a blast. Looking forward to more content. But it’s hard to imagine how people play it in the original 2d mode after spending all that time inhabiting the world via VR. How did I used to do that? Why was that fun, looking over the shoulder of a character? Is this another case of luxury spoiling me on things I used to do? Maybe. But I wouldn’t go back. Charging at those giant boss monsters as they tower over me is just too cool.

I’ve put another 130ish hours into Persona 5 recently. It’s the most Japanese bit of media I’ve ever gotten into, and I’m WAY into it. Characters are fantastic. Dialogue is consistently great, with some laugh out loud moments coming at the end that only work because of how well-established the characters have become. It also might be the most stylish game I’ve ever played. Soundtrack, art style, and frenetic visual pace feel like an intentional, coherent design choice meant to keep the sense of forward momentum rolling through what would otherwise be a typical slow JRPG. Little things, like being able to follow up a crit with a baton pass to a teammate for added damage, are combined with a quick teammate high five animation to make it feel like it’s action-packed. Even when the core is a turn based RPG. My only complaint is that I finished the main story, it had a nice little bow tied for the plot and all characters, and then it suddenly launched into an additional in-game month for what I now recognize as tacked-on story for the Royals rerelease. “Hey, remember that thing you did that resolved the main story arc? Well it’s kinda undone a little somehow so there’s more now!” If undercut the main story immediately after I had come to appreciate it. But still, that’s a minor quibble, the game is great and I’ve already ordered the limited run character art for my walls to commemorate it.

Is anything else happening? Not particularly. Still chatting with girl from Reddit. Toying with the idea of meeting up, though the current health/omicron status have sort of played my hand for me there. Been cleaning out the workshop over the last couple days, throwing away a bunch of “well i MIGHT need ____ one day for something” junk that I couldn’t justify trashing because I had paid for it. Feels good to let go of those things and free up space again. My $800 forever-miter saw should be delivered today. It’ll require a few workbench modifications to make fit, as it’s a solid foot deeper than my current cheapo $100 miter that I’ve knocked around for the last 8 years, but should finally let me get an accurate 45 degree cut when needed.

Yeah, not a lot I guess. I was doing some thinking while cleaning up the workshop the other day. I think it started from pondering one of the Persona character arcs. A girl who thought she had everything figured out, a plan to work towards in life, and then it crumbled around her and she needed to reassess and determine a new purpose. Which is when it hit me - do I have one of those? Have I ever really had one of those? Like, I think I’ve been improvising them as I see them. Vally was very much my purpose for a long time, always being there for her and taking care of her and enjoying what I knew would be limited time together. Fitness has been a main goal at times, trying to feel better and build back up self confidence and the physical strength to be in a good place mentally. But that’s more maintenance than a purpose, right?

I tend to jump from short term goal to short term goal and make them my everything. House projects. Preparing for parties. Big date coming up. Learning a new skill. Playing a current game. Whatever it might be, But long term? I don’t really know what I’m working towards at this point. What am I still trying to accomplish? What impact am I trying to make?

That sounds like it requires some lofty philanthropic mission. “To leave the world a better place!” “To solve a major world problem!” “To give X to the Ys who need it!”. But, to be honest, I don’t think that’s necessary. Couldn’t a life goal just be “to seek out new experiences”? Or “To create as much as possible”? “To work towards self actualization”? Maybe just full-on hedonism, “To enjoy every day as much as possible”. Even if these sorts of nebulous, egocentric goals become what I want to focus on, it still feels like I need to pick one. To define it so I have something to work towards consciously, rather than drift around in that vicinity without ever knowing if I’m getting closer or further away from a thing.

Maybe that’s the crux of what I’m feeling. I need to define a long-term mission in order to feel like I’m making any progress towards it. I think I’ve been taking steps that will probably get me closer to whatever that goal might be, but without being able to pin the mission to the wall it’s hard to form any sort of metrics as to what is a good use of time and what’s bad. Similar to nutrition goals. Trying to “eat healthy” and generally choosing good foods over bad foods rarely gets people anywhere because they don’t have a finite goal in mind. Do you want to lose weight or add muscle? Macros? Caloric goals? You can choose apples over chips all day, but if you don’t know specifically what you’re working towards you can’t say for sure if you’re making progress or just spinning your wheels.

Huh… it’s funny how the times when I feel like I have nothing of import to say are the ones where ranting actually leads me to a thought of some value. This feels like it has some value. I’m not sure what the answer will be in a week or two, but I do think I should work on defining a mission of some sort. Even if it changes in a month or so, having it to work towards feels like a thing of real value.

A ship in the middle of the ocean without a destination could spend forever changing course and never going anywhere. Even if I don’t know the land I’m headed towards, I should at least pick a direction and set sail.

…

I’m on it.

-M