On stream of consciousness

I was imagining things I could write about on my blog whilst I was out for a walk yesterday, and I realized that a great majority of my blog posts are really written as is, with little forethought. There's the truly moment-to-moment writing I do with my freewrites, but my regular blog posts are generally written on a whim as well. I guess I try and stick to a topic more when I'm not doing freewrites, but that's one of the only differences.

I have pictures to upload. Stuff I've cooked, graffiti, and natural world things like wild mushrooms and tree cover in the fall. But, most of these pictures are now being taken on my cheap replacement phone (that I just haven't bothered to upgrade because it works fine). That's one thing I miss from my old Windows Phone: good quality pictures (up to 41 megapixels!).

I should get around to uploading photos here and there eventually, because while the photos are sometimes blurry, there's still a story I can tell with them. Really, I'm just a bit lazy and I don't like dealing with Bluetooth transfers and image uploads. There's not much automation there because again my phone is kind of old at this point.

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Snow is arriving! It's falling as I write. It's been a few weeks with little to no snow, so although I've enjoyed being able to bike, it's also nice having snow for the quieting effect it has. And it looks pretty, and it's winter after all.

Last note: I'm not listening to much music this month, but I did have a nice walk with some Melodic Progressive electronic playing in my headphones yesterday, and that was nice.

Y-Yoga & appreciation

I went to a yoga class this week, to a different YMCA than I usually go to for yoga. It was kinda neat to be in a different atmosphere. I was up high, literally, because it's on the fourth floor and out of the windows all I could see were skyscrapers. The downside of going to this Y is that the classes are 45 min instead of an hour, and the centre is just a bit farther away than my usual Y. So I probably won't go as often, because it's not the most convenient spot to get to via public transit, and now there's snow again and I tend not to bike when there's snow.

Still, my class was a positive experience. Although I usually just do my own thing and don't talk to people, I had a short conversation with someone named A. and they made me feel welcome. It's generally a friendly place, whatever Y I go to, so I'm not surprised.

On a different note, but still on that same positivity vibe, I had someone at work the other day tell me "I appreciate you" - even though I couldn't help them find what they were looking for. It was nice to hear, but for a second it seemed out of place because I'm used to hearing those three words together at support groups and the such. Only for a second did it feel weird though, because this customer seemed quite genuine and the fact that I still remember this even though it was a few days ago shows that spreading positive energy works.

Hey you! I appreciate you for being here!

Zen Freewrite

Is this a freewrite? It is! What have I got to write about? All I did was open this page, and as soon as I saw the blank rectangle waiting to be filled with words, I decided "fk it, we'll do it live!".

Is blogging exciting, -oh, I was unrudely interrupted by a snack from my housemate! Hard-boiled eggs & olives with the parsnip hummus I made last night- well, it can be, but I prefer to use it as a place to wind down, to vent, and there is some excitement to be found in those activities, but it's not the quiet place that I sometimes want this spot to be.

I am writing right now because I am writing right now. I read zen books sometimes. Sometimes, the zen books have utterly pointless sentences like the first one in this paragraph. It's okay, I can be zen or not zen - it doesn't matter!

I found the title for my blog post. There, I just put it in now, it's a nice change from all the Freewrite the -insert colour- I was doing because I'm certain I've never used this kind of freewrite before whereas I'm somewhat worried that I've re-used the same colour twice for my titles. Yeah, that's something that bugs me a tiny bit: repeated titles.

Freewriting can seem pretty chaotic. Is my mind chaotic right now? I just write whatever comes to mind. It's not the most fun to read because I do very little editing, even less than I usually do, so the quality of the writing can't be all that great but the ideas, the ideas I can generate when I'm just stream-of-consciousness writing might have some value. I'm jumping all over the place, rarely backspacing. Nothing particularly extraordinary pops up.

I've been writing to a friend, and I said I would work on story writing. Here's a short freewritten story that I will write right now:

The lake was still at this hour of the night. A loon, diving in the moonlight, was the only disturbance. I was crouching behind some rocks, not wanting to sit down on the dark, splotchy ground, but also not wanting to stand. How I ended up beside that lake when I'm usually an urbanite is an easy question to answer: it was camping season. Why I didn't want to get noticed, on the other hand, is a bit more complicated. I should have been asleep in my tent, not too far from the spent campfire after an evening of roasting game, and yet I found myself in the middle of the forest, crouching, waiting. Waiting to hear the sound again. A long, slow moan, almost like a whale's, but a whale it could not be as the nearest ocean was hundreds of kilometres away. A sound that reverberated through my whole body, and that somehow -felt- metallic.

Did the whale sound wake me up? Did it drag me out of the tent, or did I do that? Why aren't any of my campmates here, crouching too? Well, as long as their heads are below that sound line, where the whale sound ebbs and flows, I guess they won't hear it either. It's only when I stood up in my tent that I first noticed it, after all.

It frightened me when the magnetic, metallic sound entered my mind, and it frightens me now even though I seem to have found a way to dull it.

To be continued...

Back to gaming

I've taken a break from my Nintendo Switch... to play Path of Exile on PC. Technically, that's accurate because although I'm inputting my commands on an ancient iMac (we're talking early 2010s here), the game itself is being run on a high-end PC somewhere in a data centre owned by Nvidia. And then I'm streaming the game to a nice screen, basically. So yeah, cloud gaming.

At the risk of losing my readers by going into details on the hours I spend playing Path of Exile... there's a new league out. See, every three months or so, the developers of PoE release a new mini-expansion to the game, with new content and new challenges to complete. And they've been doing this for years now, and some of the new temporary content gets added permanently, so after all this time there's actually quite a lot to do in the game. But this also makes the game more and more complex. I hadn't played for years (because you need a decent PC to have any hope of playing it) until I rediscovered it with cloud gaming, and I was barely able to make my way through because of all the new content that had been added since I had last played.

Path of Exile is an ARPG, which stands for Action Role Playing Game. It's isometric, so you're controlling your dude or dudette from above. If you're familiar with the Diablo series, it's a spiritual successor to Diablo 2 (but way better!). There are a bunch of classes, and each class has 3 sub classes, but the key to customization is the massive "passive tree" where you allocate one point per level. So you run around killing monsters and collecting loot to upgrade your character to tackle harder content. And you can trade with other players, playing using the game's currency system that offers a massive variety of "currency" that you can spend to craft items, modify the content you're running, or use to buy items from other players.

So I'm playing a Poison Seismic Trap Saboteur (Seismic Trap is the main skill I use, and I'm using it to inflict poison damage from the physical damage it causes; Saboteur is the "Ascendancy" (or sub-class) of the Shadow class). And this particular combination is really powerful, and really popular for the current patch (played by 13% of players at the time, which is massive considering there are literally hundreds of possible main skill/class combinations). So I'm part of the "meta".

Often, the more advanced players will start with a "league starter", and then make a whole new character once they've accumulated enough wealth on their 1st character, and all this within the 3-month league window. They'll make multiple characters, even, to tackle different content. Me, it's too much of a time investment to do that (and it takes me too much time to level the characters up through the boring part of the game for veterans; the campaign/levelling section), so I'm still on my 1st character and I don't plan to make another one until we move on to the next league and this current character doesn't matter anymore.

Okay, so that was a rough overview of Path of Exile, and I will end it here with a screenshot so you get some semblance, visually, of the game I'm talking about:

The dude with the fiery wings is the guy I control; you can see some zombie things blinded by one of my skills to the left of my character.

Puzzled by large moving objects

I walk down the street and I observe all sorts of big SUVs and similar vehicles everywhere. And I start to wonder what kind of life these people have to be able to afford these things. What kind of jobs they have, the stress they have to deal with, the responsibilities they take care of. And while I have no desire to own an SUV (I might feel different if I had my driver's license), still, I compare myself to these ghosts of people that are inside these roaming vehicles.

Are they not stressed out by the debt they undertake? Isn't it annoying to have to pay so much every month when there's public transit and biking in the city?

The other day, I saw what I call the "parade of terrible investments". It's a lineup of dozens of SUVs, idling, waiting to pick up their kids single file at a local school. They have a whole system that "snakes" the vehicles around and back out through the public streets. I am always impressed when I pass by this. What a strange thing it is to behold, if you think about it. But, it passes off as totally normal.

I can't afford these large moving objects, and so I wonder about them.

Mid-December snowy weather

There's snow outside. I like it for the most part. Only thing I don't like is that it makes it harder to get around town, as I usually bike. If there's only a little snow it's not bad, but it limits the space you get on the road so there can't be much if I want to bike comfortably.

Work is good. A little repetitive, but I enjoy the customer interaction more than I thought I would. People are pretty kind actually. And they understand if I don't know things if I tell them I'm new.

I'm feeling sad. Just some regular sadness, nothing big. It's kind of lonely in my world, but it could be worse. The cats, I enjoy their company. They're always around, and they enjoy the attention I give them. They don't seem very concerned about worldly things. And I doubt they care about loneliness.

I've fallen back on some old patterns. I try not to view them as negative. I do eat more, though. But my weight gain isn't there. So I should be happy about that. And I still work out. I just don't do as many activities as I used to, giving myself the excuse that I'm busier with work and I'm not used to it. And it's wintertime, which usually leads to fewer outdoor activities.

So I guess I'm feeling sad and a little bit anxious because I'm not taking care of myself as much as I used to. And I feel like I let someone down because I was disinterested in what they were talking about. And I don't like that feeling, but I genuinely wasn't interested. I still enjoy cooking. And the anxiety is more of a physical feeling, and I'm looking forward to yoga later today, even if I can't get there by bike.