COVID Part 5 (or 6? maybe 7?)

Well quarantine continues with another week spent largely in my basement. Not entirely, as I’m still an essential employee and had to work last week, but it still feels like the majority of my time is home alone in the basement.

This past week has been better than previous weeks. I sorted out the stuff with my school (mostly). I’m officially accepted into the proper program but the acceptance letter said I had to register for a class to make it official, however I’m done all the coursework I need to graduate so registering for another class would be a waste of time and money. I emailed the student advisors to see what I should do. Haven’t heard back yet. Worse case I guess I flush another $600 down the drain to take a class I don’t need (that I probably just drop in the first week anyway).

I’ve been playing some video games this week. Animal Crossing and Final Fantasy 14 have been the main offenders. Both games are pretty laid back and take a long time to really get anywhere so they are perfect for this time. In Animal Crossing I’m finally starting to get my town the way I want it and I’ve been focusing on planting and cross-breeding flowers to get new colours of flowers. It sounds boring but I’m enjoying it. I also was playing FarCry 5 this week. It’s got some things I really enjoy in it but by the end I felt like it was a bit of a letdown. The ending particularly sucks.

Watched a few movies. Nothing too exciting. Oh I watched Paddington 2 and I really liked it. If you haven’t seen the Paddington movies I would whole-heartedly recommend them. They are fun for the whole family, extremely charming, well-directed, surprisingly funny,  and are just filled with heart. I rated them both a 4.5/5 on Letterboxd. I reserve 5/5 for movies that I consider to be all time favourites and both Paddington movies are like right on that line but not quite there.

I started writing again. Part of me feels bad moving on from the story I’ve been working on since last summer, but the problem is that the mood of that story just doesn’t fit what I’ve been feeling at all lately. I hope one day to go back to it as I was really close to finishing but I think if I forced myself to finish now, I would be really unhappy with it. I’ve had a few new ideas that I’ve been tossing around. My main one is a sort of alternate history fantasy swashbuckling adventure with Sky pirates. I basically want to write a story that feels like Three Musketeers or Treasure Island but with cool alternate technology. I also really love heist stories so that’s sort of the direction it’s going to take.

People have been saying lately that they’ll probably begin lifting quarantine restrictions here soon since our area barely got hit. I don’t know how I feel about it. On the one hand it’ll be great to see people again and get a haircut and stuff, but on the other hand I feel like the first couple of weeks are going to be really exhausting for my work and also I worry that if they lift the restrictions soon and then people start getting infected again, it’ll lead to a second (even worse) quarantine. Ah whatever. I’m trying to stay positive.

What have you been doing to keep busy the past couple of weeks?

COVID Part 4: The Worst Week Yet

Folks, I’m not going to lie. This past week was one of the worst weeks of my life and I really need to vent.

I think I’ve mentioned this in earlier posts, but since this pandemic started to hit here my work has been constantly in flux. At first we were shut down, then we were asked to volunteer at home care, now we’re being forced to do home care or lose our jobs. I went from working 0 days a week, to 3 half-days, and then this past week I had 4 full time days (with Monday off for a holiday). Normally I wouldn’t complain too much about this, but work has been extra stressful with the pandemic. We aren’t allowed to leave the homes unless we’re going for a walk (which my one client refuses to do) and there are a lot of stir-crazy individuals who don’t quite understand what is going on who are getting upset that we aren’t taking them to regular activities. I was supposed to have Thursday off but a coworker called in sick so I got called in and I had no activities prepared to do for the day and that particular client is starting to get really tired and bored of me and… yeah. It was a rough week.

But that’s not all. I got an email from the university that told me that because a couple of my electives were transfer credits from my first degree that were older than 10 years, I might not be able to graduate after all. I’m sure I’ve posted about the drama with my degree before but this is the 3rd time I thought I’d be able to graduate only to have something change. The university told me I had to submit an appeal (which I did, no response yet) but the stress of that email really just put my mood into a downward spiral.

I’ve also been getting hit hard with loneliness lately. Not being able to see my friends is rough but also like… I really miss talking to girls. I’m not a big fan of texting and I really don’t like phone calls. Like I miss talking to cute coworkers or smiling at cute girls on buses and stuff like that. One girl I had been texting with has kinda been ignoring me lately so I think that’s done and… yeah.

Whatever. I know these problems aren’t like awful but it does make every day feel like a struggle. And having a lot of simple pleasures denied by the quarantine does make it worse. I’m not one of those “END THE QUARANTINE NOW!” types but man I need a change.

10 New Ideas

Hey everyone. Well we’re still in the midst of the COVID19 pandemic (week 4 I believe for here) and though I’m still working, I still find myself with a lot more time at home. I also feel like I’ve been kind of drained creatively lately, and so have been looking for ways to get my mind working right so that I could start utilizing my extra time a little better. On Friday night I came across this post from Quora on a friend’s facebook and thought I’d share my thoughts on it.

You should go read the post (or at least the first few paragraphs) but in case you can’t click the link or something I’ll give a brief summary. A guy who was depressed and jobless came across a big box of writing pads and decided that every day he’d fill up a page from those pads with 10 ideas. Some of the examples he gives are a table of contents for a book he wanted to write, a list of people he wishes he could meet one day, and a list of articles he wanted to write. He goes on to describe how the process changed his life, which is fine but not the part that grabbed my attention. Later he goes on to talk about how this forced creativity ended up feeling like he was rewiring his brain. It didn’t matter if the ideas were good or bad, it was helping him to see things more clearly and it was training himself to become more creative and inventive.

I really like that concept and decided to give it a try myself. My first list is “10 things I can do now to make life better after the quarantine is finished”.  I figured that this might go on for at least another month (but probably even more) and that I should be using this time to improve my future. Stuff like making sure I get my steps in, finishing my spring cleaning list, and using social media to connect more with the people I wish I had better relationships with.

My second list is “10 ways I can stave off boredom during coronavirus”. Lately I’ve been playing a lot of video games and watching youtube videos, and though it definitely fills the time, I still feel really bored by the end of the day most days. So I came up with other things I could do for entertainment and relaxation. Some stuff are things that I always say I want to do more but didn’t have the time for before (like updating this more or reading more) and other things are just little ideas to add some variety to my time away from work.

I think tomorrow I want to make a list of things that have been really annoying me lately and then my next list will be ways to fix those issues.

I’ve been finding it a good experience so far. There are a lot of things I think of constantly but forget about them when I have time to do it and so writing it out is helpful. I also have found that the first 3 come really easy, the next 4 take a bit more time, and the last 3 have been a struggle. It’s almost like doing reps of lifting weights. It starts easy but by 10 you start to feel a bit of strain.

If you’re looking to increase your productivity or just to start thinking a little more creatively then I’d definitely recommend giving this a try though to be fair, I don’t know if this is working quite yet. Still I’ve been enjoying the process and hope it keeps building from here. Give it a try!

COVID Part 3: Finding Motivation in Demotivating Times

Hey readers. I’m just hear with another quick update. I realize that this blog is becoming more about the “quick updates” than about any of the things I say I want to post about. But that partly has to do with the topic I want to discuss today.

I have had such little motivation lately that I’m having the hardest time getting anything done, even though I have hours and hours of free time.

It’s been a struggle lately. I’ve been feeling lonely and kinda depressed again lately and while I know that going for a brisk walk, completing an item off my spring cleaning list, or writing a chapter in my story will make me feel better, I just get caught in this trap of video games and youtube. Sometimes I blame it on the emotional and mental exhaustion I feel after a rough day at work, but it’s happening on my days off and also even 0 effort tasks like trying to listen to more new music, clearing up podcasts on my list, or watching movies feel like too much work for me.

This spring feels like the culmination of a few really tough events. Over the past year I’ve been working full time, having a second part time job, going to school, living mostly alone and all the work involved in that, staying on top of car payments, student loans, and visa bills, dealing with several rough illnesses, going through a heartbreak or two, and then dealing with the death of my dad. I’ve been operating at a deficit in terms of time, money, and energy. And so then with this whole pandemic giving me more free time, it’s been weirdly hard to manage it. I went from two free evenings and one free day a week, to like three or four free days and only one booked evening a week.

I don’t know. I feel like I’m just starting to solve some problems. I’ve got a few little home projects in mind that I’m excited about. I found my old N64 and I want to set it up and get a few extra controllers and a couple used games as a fun little retro set up for when I have friends over. I also figured out where to put my coffee maker and going to start introducing more caffeine to my system.

Also, I think I’ve realized the problem with my writing motivation. The story I’ve been working on was a fun, light-hearted, fantasy teen adventure story with lots of silly banter. While I enjoy it, since the death of my dad I have not been able to get in the right space mentally for that. It feels too frivolous. I want to return to it someday (I was so close to finishing!) but I think I might start working on another idea I had that’s a little more serious. Utilize some of my current thoughts and feelings. I’ll update on here if it goes anywhere.

Well that was a little ramble-y. I might do a post on here about that Netflix show Tiger King which I just finished and have some thoughts on. But depends if I find the motivation or not. Hit up the comments if you’ve found any tricks to finding motivation during these strange times.