I like exploring in computer games, music, cricket, drawing and pizza and sharing those with people. Oh and I also inherited the name Sleepydwagonman too ! The site is a work in progress at the moment but it's getting there, features will come in over time !
It’s been a while again – I think I’m starting to regain a bit of mental energy back and improving that physical condition after cumulative tireds over the second half of the year and the aftermath of my accident in September.
I have been posting … but not here. It was a good change doing daily Instagram advent pictures. (I’ll just pop in a link there) I’ve done advent series on the blogs before and it got a bit much but the Instagram posts were just about enough. Plus Facebook and the pictures were going in to 4 discords as well. Just a little bit of posting, although the Facebook and discord reposts were very simple to do.
So what was advent this time around ?
Dice advent calendars were a good way to go this year. That set is from Woodward’s Emporium, who a lovely group of people from MCM Comic Con at the end of November. It was my first time out in public for an event (or even for an extended period outside of hospital visits) since my accident so it was very definitely a testing experience. Both to test what I could do and testing physically as well ! It went pretty well. Good loot was obtained …
The enormous d20 there is just that … huge. And I was using it as the base of a dice tree too.
Good dice tree. And a good set of dice throughout as well.
The second calendar was from Trayed and Tested. Top left sees one of my Snowdon Dwagons with purple and gold sprinkly crinkly things inside dice. Top right is the little Pizza Dwagon with dice with mushrooms inside. Bottom left, the Feed Me Dwagon oversees a set of dice with teeth inside. Bottom right is the last set, a miniature collection of dice which the Viking Dwagon is making off with in one of two Viking Longboat style ships.
Before you compare the calendar sets, bear in mind that one was £35 and gave me excellent dice which are pretty, clear and easy to read. The other set was £90* and is up the scale a fair bit on the dice included. I hugely enjoyed both sets.
*I think my accident may have invoked a little Can’t Take It With You attitude and I’ve spent lots of money on things like a Citizen watch, the Lego USS Enterprise and pretty much only just stopped myself from getting expensive flightsticks.
MCM had another excellent Session Zero live show as well, which was another excellent reason for pushing myself out of the house to get there. It was lovely meeting up with the lovely Curlylocksgamer as well and having a wander around after the show. Oh ! Ragedarling is the barbarian there, Billietrixx is the blue haired sorceror.
As for me … I’m recovering slowly. I’m back to fluent two handed typing again but pretty much only just. My left hand is still lacking some feeling from the nerve damage but I’m steadily getting more movement on there. My shoulder is going to take more time and exercise to free it up again. I need to do a lot more of that.
Energy is an issue still though, I did go up north again to see the family but it was probably a bit too much there. More data for where I am physically there.
A new years resolution could be to post more again … I’ll look to do that because there’s still a lot to catch up again over the last few months. But I also enjoyed doing the Instagrams so I think I’ll use that some more. Just gotta go to more places to get the pictures to put on there.
Time to wrap up though – have a happy new year everyone !
Not sure how much I’ll be able to put into this one because you know I tend to underplay how much things hurt sometimes ? Well I kinda wrecked my wrist and arm so if it starts pain spiking, I’ll need to hit post.
What I am hoping is that my poorly arm has enough in it for building a new computer … What’s up with the arm ? It’s been tending to RSI for I dunno how long now but I kinda crunched it on opening the car door yesterday. Like high pain level plus I’ve apparently strained a muscle in the forearm. So I’m holding off on doing more of the gaming that involves more activity, like the hauling in Elite Dangerous or the Truck Sim games do. I’ve also been looking at trains …
That’s Derail Valley, which is a train driving simulator with its own little area to play in. It’s a curious game, which sees you carrying various bits of cargo from station to station and you can build up what you haul and fix up bigger and better locomotives. There’s a link to Squirrel’s play through on youtube on the last post. But I think that’ll take too many chances with the wrist, so I’ll hold off on it.
What’s happening with the PC ?
Will build PCs for pizza, shiny things or cuddles but especially shiny things
There we go. Pizza is life especially if you’re planning to try and all nighter and can therefore don’t need to worry about the tummy not liking all that cheese.
PC ? We’re kinda being pushed into moving off Windows 10 because Microsoft are ending patch support for it, unless we pay through the nose for extended support. So after October, all those vulnerabilities that let the hackers in won’t get patched. That’s for definite. What I also suspect is that as we approach October, Microsoft will get more and more obnoxious with pushing us towards going to Windows 11 and the paranoid / experienced part of my brain also thinks they’ll push out updates that actively harm the performance of Windows 10 machines. Because that’s what they do.
The answer is to put them in the bin … You probably want to do your own research on this and whether it fits you personally with the level of knowledge and expertise you yourself know you have (and be honest with it too, it’ll save heartache later!). But it might well be worth doing the research on what alternatives are available for Microsoft (and Adobe, don’t forget them here too) products and whether you actually need to stay with them. Let’s see what I do on this desktop :
BOINC science – runs on Linux as well.
Gaming – since Steam brought out their Linux based Steamdeck, far more games are being made available either natively (without layers) on Linux or they run as well or better than on Windows via translation layers like Proton. However, if you enjoy the multiplayer online games like Fortnite and League of Legends, research very carefully whether you’d be able to play those.
Stream watching – happens on a browser …
Web browsing – yep see above there …
Picture making and memes – I use GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) for photo editing, which has a native Linux version.
Also consider that if you have an Android phone, that runs on a Linux version that’s been phone-ified.
So Bunny PC is increasingly likely to be a Linux based machine, which saves £110 which can go towards a more expensive graphics card. And I get full control over the machine, without Microsoft changing stuff on their whim, usually without making sure that it’s actually a positive change.
Enough about the bad bits though, what am I looking at getting ?
The core upgrade will be the Ryzen 7 9800x3d processor in probably another Asrock board. Meltdown’s Ryzen 5 3600 has been rock solid in its Asrock board (after I disabled the overclocking that earned it the Meltdown name), so I’ll stick with that combination. This should be maybe double or the more the cpu grunt that Meltdown had. We’ll see.
I’ll drop 64GB in there (in 2 sticks of 32GB) which is honestly excessive … but it future proofs the machine a bit more. I’d like the Bunny to last at least 6 years preferably more, with the only changes done being graphics and possibly storage. I’m likely to acquire one of these boxes for it :
That’s a Montech King 95 Pro. (Linky to Montech’s site) The advantages of that are the reports from people around the discords who have got one, it’s a very positively reviewed case. Meltdown’s Bitfenix case very nearly needed an application of the Mend Stick (hammer) to allow the PSU to be fitted, because it was supplied with a very small distortion. BAD. I won’t get the case with all the fans (maybe) but that one does have very key features – it can fit a very large air cooling fan, plus the ports are vertically on the front. A bit of learning from this case is that if the ports point upwards at all (Meltdown’s are at 45 degrees), they will trap dust and eventually not allow the plugs to go in properly.
The cooling is another direction where I have my own big opinions there … There are three main ways to go with cooling a gaming PC :
Air cooling – a big lump of metal attached to the processor with big fans to push air over it.
All in one cooling – a small waterblock goes on the cpu and moves the heat to radiators with big fans on to do the cooling. The whole thing would be sealed unit simple.
Home brew watercooling – same as above but this would be a lot more custom, where you figure out the waterblocks, the pumps, the filters, the radiators, the fans etc.
All in one and watercooling are both very well sorted now and I should probably check them out properly at some point but … I see the fans and ask if you actually really gain anything with these ? They’re more expensive, you have to consider the fluid inside (air bubbles get in, so the radiator goes at the top so the bubbles don’t go at the cpu part) and the chances of having a disaster where your expensive gaming PC gets drowned by its own cooling system.
Nah. I’ll just go for a big lump of metal and big slow fans. It’s less complicated, very little can go wrong with air cooling and it’s still very quiet if you go for the big slow fans. It’s one where opinions differ :-D. I go my way, I look at curiosity at those who go other ways, we see what we can learn from each other and mutually hope that we both get many happy gaming hours from our respective rigs.
That’s one for the rest of life too – respect each other’s choices, cheer people on and support them in the direction they go.
Note I won’t be going to a shop for the PC again. I’ll buy off the shelf laptops but … there’s too much potential for off the shelf desktops to have components in from OEMs that I wouldn’t touch with a bargepole. Or they’ll put substandard components in to save pennies, like an under specified power supply that will explode after 12 months and a day (warranty period) and take other components with it.
Oops, small eek there as I leant on the arm a bit too heavily and nearly provoked a bigger ouch.
There we go – if you’d like more of a look at what I’m lining up to get, here’s a Partpicker list link. The actual bits I get will diverge from that a little, so I’ll transfer the 2TB SSD from Meltdown and its expansion card over to Bunny. Plus I think I’ll transfer the graphics card over for the near term too, because the graphics card market is in a big state of flux right now, so it’s not a good time to buy.
(Plus politics is happening, you see too much of that everywhere else though)
I’m not ordering tonight part because it’s getting late, part because I try and avoid spending big money when I’m feeling the pain at increased levels. The other reason is that I need to transfer over all the data I want to keep to the 2TB drive that’ll go into Bunny PC.
We had snow ! It’s always a big event that in UK because it’s quite rare. Although maybe it’s increasing as the weather gets wilder ? It didn’t last long but it was good to have a little wander in it while it lasted. Still chilly here … but the occasional clouds aren’t turning to rain or snow.
Thumbnail pic ?
There we go. Purr.in.ink are good people and I must check that I’m following them on Bluesky if they’re over there yet.
Uhoh this could be a random post – quickly on the social media stuff … I’ve given up on trying to keep up with Facebook and Twixxer. I’ll occasionally scroll through the Facebook stuff but it is very occasional. Their algorithm is complete garbage now and hides things. I don’t bother scrolling Twixxer any more, definitely not on mobile due to how advert heavy it is. Plus both Facebook and Twixxer are run by … well you’ll have your own opinions there and I probably agree with most of them. It doesn’t help that both of these sites are now deeply problematic with who runs them.
Bluesky is great for keeping up with that selective curated group of people that I follow, as is Instagram. Plus I’ve trained Instagram to mostly suggest cute dog meme videos that it shows me when the people I follow haven’t posted an update. Good times.
Snow ?
We didn’t get much, although it was enough to cover up the roads with a light layer that was giving some people a few issues.
About enough snow there to make things interesting on the roads but it was a Saturday evening, so not many people were needing to head out to go to work or get supplies. Roads were pretty quiet actually and I think one of the local chippies were closing up early.
It was nice having the little walkabout. Not too cold and the snow was easy to walk through in the boots. I didn’t see any snow people about though and I didn’t stay out for that long.
We did have the last remnants of the Christmas lights though.
Pretty.
It’s taken me a few more days than I wanted to post this one ! Back at work this week and that usually leads to me being absolutely wiped out by the time it gets to the evening. (Especially as I did Mall on Monday evening and got back a bit late) So I’ve been gaming, with the trucks and a bit of Mass Effect, chilling out with the stream watching and enjoying the reading.
First book read of 2025 was Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s the last of his Architects trilogy, set in a fairly near future universe where humanity reached the stars only to find monsters lurking in Unspace* which would come out and remake planets as works of grotesque art. *(Unspace is this universe’s faster than light travel mechanism). It was a great trilogy with lots of shenanigans and characters to enjoy and the author pulled off the ending really well.
Next up is Colony Mars Four Jezero City by Gerald M Kilby. It’s started out as a murder mystery set on near future Mars. They’re not as well written as the Lords of Uncreation trilogy but they’re still an enjoyable tale. We need these books as well as the masterpieces. And some of the really well written books can be really boring and dreary to read.
I’d prefer to dive through a bunch of great stories that pull me in quickly, than to slog through something I’m not enjoying. And I’m looking at the Peter F Hamilton book from last year there, I enjoyed part of that set up but could tell it was about to go into very dark places with very little narrative support for it going to even deeper dark places.
Oh ! Gotta get back to the book (and the ShoxxyQT* stream) so I can keep a Kindle reading streak going that’s over 400 days now. The last time I missed a day was on the return home day of the Norway cruise, which had a nightmare drive home through almost central London on a really bad traffic day.
*Shoxxy is a new find in the streaming world, she’s a Scottish streamer lady who I’ve seen a small number of streams from so far. Lovely person, has very cosy chill vibes and it makes me happy hanging out in streams like that. Here’s a Twitch link. Although it’s more disturbing horror vibes from the game she has at the moment :-D.
Back to the book ! Nite all, have a lovely rest of the weekend.
It’s been a week since the last post already ? Gosh, kinda lost a few days there maybe :-). I thought I’d do a review of the year today, which has been inspired by something that the lovely Batkitto put on her discord (there’s a Twitch link there which has the rest of her links)
This year started as it finished, with us being a bit worried about the old mum. She’s doing ok and it was good to get up there for a couple of days over Xmas.
Bats’s post was about pictures, so let’s see … what’s our thumbnail today ?
There we go. Kinda the wrong end of the year to start with but it was an excellent pick of a pic for the thumbnail. The cruise was good fun, relaxing, healing and I think it was just what I needed for that time of the year. I’d had a break previously into Wales but lost the benefit of that due to probable covid. I actually had a few away breaks through the year too, with occasional days at things like Insomnia and Creator North and Wales. More on those later. And more for the cruise in later posts too, I still owe three port visit posts there :-D. It was a wonderful time (except the Bay of Biscay crossings!) and we were looked after really well by the crew.
And there were day trips too …
I did a big camera upgrade this year to the Canon R50 :-D. And then proceeded to take it to various castles to have a nosey around and get loads of pictures of castles for people. The one above is White Castle in the midsts of hilly Wales. I’ve also been across to Chepstow, Caerphilly, Cardiff castle, the remaining wall of Carmarthen (which also saw me acquire a tripod upgrade) and then the North Wales trip took me to Conwy and Caernarfon.
It was good to be out and about taking pictures and seeing what it could do. Time for an honest opinion … Is it worth spending all that money on a fancy camera these days ? It all you’re looking to do is take selfies and relatively close range shots, no. Mobile phone cameras these days are filled with incredible optics for their size, it’s easier to get the pictures out of them (the R50 is easy but it’s still an extra step) and the software in the phone allows for incredible performance in unexpected ways. Like I left the good camera in the cabin later on in the cruise because the phone in night mode is fantastic for astro photography … with the software making a tripod kinda redundant.
Castle ! This time in Cardiff with the dragon there. I’ll look to find myself in Cardiff at some point this week, probably Thursday because everything will be closed up tomorrow. It was nearly today, although that went out for two reasons – I couldn’t get to sleep last night which meant I didn’t wake up and be active early enough today and the other reason is that my eyes are bad again … I might need to invest in new pillows and pillowcases there because I think those might be causing me problems.
One road trip that did happen was the yearly pilgrimage over to Lords for the Interservices T20 cricket. We lost half of the play to rain but the games we had were fun to watch. It’s not the best standard of cricket but the players put everything they have into the games and they’re well matched even games that could go either way, often hinging on really close moments in the game.
That was me playing with the longer lens I have, plus also playing with some of the options in the camera. The above had it in continuous shots and it let me capture the run out. Really happy with how that one turned out, not so happy with the editing I did 😀 (There’s a rogue line upper right). This is where the expensive camera comes in handy, it allows for much longer zoom lengths with different lenses.
But a huge highlight for me this year was the events that I was at with other people … Starting with Insomnia :
That’s Ragedarling, of Session Zero, playing as her barbarian character in the live action D&D show run by Josh Strife Hayes there in the picture. I massively enjoyed Insomnia back in March, it was lovely to run into Miyukipanda touring the halls, to watch the highly entertaining Session Zero show with Ragedarling and …
… There’s Billietrixx there playing Sorceress Trixx in the show. Twitch link there again. It’s been fun catching Billie’s streams and it’s been lovely being part of that community over this year and last since … finding Billie through the wonderful Tashnarr, who was a big part of making Insomnia such a wonderful experience.
They come together to be the faces of the Creator North events as well and it was good to be able to get up to Sheffield for the second of these in September this year. Looking forward to the next one of those already. It’s run by the remarkable LookItsTilly who moderates in the background for Billietrixx and Tashnarr with Maddog there being the final member of the organising crew. It was lovely being adopted by NinjaSpaceUnicorn’s little posse for the day too, that made it all the sweeter.
It was fun times, although I was suffering at the time with the extreme tiredness which was shared by a lot of people there plus I may well have done a minor dislocation on the shoulder again at the start and … probably picked up covid again. The shoulder is still attached, although I don’t think it went back in right, it’s still sore. What happened ? Someone got my attention to my left, so I turned … or at least my body turned and the arm stayed behind. Ouch.
And then I have a little away time in North Wales with trips to Conwy Castle (where Ellardy the Little Red Dwagon happened), Caernarfon Castle and up Mount Snowdon by the railway.
I missed an event ! (Translation – got sidetracked). It’s always a highlight getting to MCM Comic Con in May with Comic Con Friend. It was the first time we’re been able to go to this since 2019 and a pandemic happened. There are more pictures from Comic Con in the post (linky). It was lovely to see Comic Con Friend again, we had a great day out there with lots of wonderful cosplay to see and loot to check out and it was awesome to catch up again. And I think CCF appreciated having a chance to catch up with the messages while we were on the way to/from London too while listening in to the playlist I’d hastily popped together (and then ran out of !) before.
Events are a little congested in May next year but MCM is something that’s on the definite list. I picked up a couple more ideas from peeking at Trayed and Tested‘s update on their Etsy site, like Megacon (London in Jan) and UK Games Expo (end May – NEC). Wait, didn’t I mention loot ?
Gosh, this is turning into a long one. It felt good to be blogging regularly again through December with advent, you’ll see the picture I posted into Batkitto’s discord in the post before this one. I’d missed the posting but with the burn out continuing, plus putting everything into work … I wasn’t feeling like opening the writing up again in the evening. Kinda like I’d spent the brain power through the day and wanted to be robot in a game or soaking up a good book while watching a stream in the evening. So the blogging went by the wayside there.
There have been many books ready too this year, Kindle tells me that I read 32 books this year although it only counts multibook packs as 1 each for the whole series. So the actual is probably 40. I think I’ll summarise those in another post. Games have been fun this year too, I’m close to picking up Star Wars Outlaws in the Steam sale, that was an excellent game.
Time to wrap up though, on this post and on the year. It’s been an odd year. There’s been the massive highlights from the events and seeing much loved people again or for the first time. It’ll be good to continue that into 2025 and see about getting to more events. It’s been a rough year on that front too, with events closing down and jobs in the gaming industry going that the streaming people depend on.
Hopefully you’re all back here reading a similar post at the end of 2025. What adventures will we get up to ?
I hope to share at least a few of mine with you, either on here … or maybe in person ? We’ll see. Looking forward to seeing you <3.
Just another quick one today. I’ve made the trip up to see family … good to see people again, although bugs are going around again so won’t be able to see everyone this time around.
What’s behind the door ?
I’m just snatching the chance to pop in this last of the advent series posts while the dinner prep is starting. Great to see sister again, mum is back home as well which is a big relief.
(The model is from the obscure Young Jedi Adventures series, bit of an odd choice for the finale model of this set but it’s a decent looking ship)
Time to hit the post button but not before acknowledging that it’s felt good to be blogging so regularly again, even if a few of the evenings have seen the post rather forced out from behind a wall of worry and or just basic pain and sometimes both over the last week.
I haven’t preplanned how the posts will go this time, it’s just been a fairly random choice of subject from what’s been happening on the day or evening. Or it just lurches sideways from the first intent to something rather different. Just remembering back to a series on the old site at least 4 years ago, the Elitecember series was a good one and did see me preplanning lots for it (part because I needed to be in game to acquire screenshots where required) but I think that time it rather burned me out on both sketching and blogging.
I’ll attempt to avoid that burn out again, while posting a bit more regularly. It was a really good habit to be in and I hope people have enjoyed the happier posts, sympathised with the unhappy ones and that you’ve liked the pictures coming through.
I think I’ve pretty much crashed today ! Not felt like I’ve had the energy to do much today, which has seen me just watching videos (still catching up) and then be enjoying watching the ever lovely and fun Tashnarr as she’s been streaming for us all day.
She’s hunting dinosaurs in the ARK Survival Evolved game. What’s behind the door today ?
There we go. It’s Mr Darth’s fortress, as seen in the Rogue One movie. Must watch that again.
I’ve had some more news, after having decision paralysis all day ref attempting to contact. News is ok, although I’m still very unsure about what’s going to be happening over the next week. We’ll have a gathering but I’ve been feeling so burned out that I don’t feel I have the energy to look after myself, let alone help anyone else. And my psychology meaning that I have a deep need to help people out works against me as well there, because it adds some weight on to that depression when I have to withdraw from helping people out.
This is in danger of extending a bit past the quick in and out I thought it might be but I think I needed to get those thoughts down in some sort of order.
The general exhaustion is why I haven’t been getting out and about as much as I’d have liked to. I’ve been a bit starved for star gazing opportunities (bought lens, permanent cloud since) plus I’m that deep in that burn out hole that I’ve been needing rest time after a trip.
The cruises have been great for that, because you get to the ship and then it’s completely just chill out time and they do everything for you. North Wales was a good trip (probable covid not included) for the castles but I could have done without the mayhem of the one car park, being around British drivers and especially not the drive back … which took 7 hours instead of 4. (Oh and I was also in trouble with a poorly tooth)
Anyway, I’m missing out on the last little bits of Tashnarr streaming. Time to hit post and go back to stream. There’s the link to Twitch again and there are links to her Instagram and other socials over there too. She doesn’t stream so much now but it’s been lovely keeping up with the Instagram updates, especially with the advent calendar series. She had a delicious looking chocolate one from work and the dice from the Trayed and Tested advent calendar are turning out even better than expected. It’s cheered me up seeing the delight when the doors have been getting opened. Trayed and Tested are over on Etsy via the link there (and in the links list). I’d thoroughly recommend checking them out too.
There we go, picked up at a show I greatly enjoyed earlier this year.
Time to disappear again now, have a lovely rest of evening.
Quick one again – internet feels better but I’ve had the old warning sign from my hand which means I probably shouldn’t type much … What’s behind the door today ?
Oops. Learning again not to press ctrl+v instead of ctrl+c when copying out the alt-text. (Random aside time!) It’s been a pretty useful skill to learn that, making the alt-text. The intention is to make the site more inclusive to people who can’t make out the detail in the pictures. Alt-text is descriptive words that you add, which gets picked up by screen reader software that’ll read out the text on the page. You’ll see it if you hover over the picture.
Why has it been more useful ?
Often, you’re not supposed to or aren’t allowed to take pictures of things. I mentioned spyware on mobiles last time, it extends to the phone providers insisting that you really want to upload all of your pictures to their servers. Ok, so what if you point the camera at something and capture something sensitive ? Oops. It’s now on Google’s or Apple’s servers too. The trick is to not point the camera at the sensitive things. But … when you’re the one person sent to look at something and you need to fully report back what you’ve seen to the others who aren’t able to go ? That’s the other way alt-text comes in really handy.
It lets you paint that picture of what you’re seeing in a concise descriptive language to pass on to those who can’t see what you’re seeing. But … it also trains you in observation to have you pick up the detail that you might have otherwise passed over with your eyes.
Anyway, it does mean that I need to pop the alt-text here in two places to make it work.
It’s a really valuable habit to pick up, because it really does help people out although I have been getting a bit lazy with the advent scene alt-text lately.
Other news before I disappear today …
Truck Game is doing a winter event at the moment, where you do short trips to and from the Winter Wonderland zone, added in for the season. It’s a good little variation in to the game, including having driving on snow effects.
And I think I need to rest that hand and disappear into book again. After enjoying A Sorceress Comes To Call by T. Kingfisher, I’m on a John Scalzi book again now. It’s The Collapsing Empire and it’s got a promising introduction to its space opera universe told in Mr Scalzi’s easy to read and very enjoyable style.
Just a very quick one today because I’m still feeling very strained … What’s behind the door today ?
There we are, another minifigure today and a Luke Skywalker. Complete with gloved hand there and remembering the moisture farm on Tatooine with the jumper there.
I think that’s about all I have for today, although it was good seeing the Xmas vibes in a very short Truck Game session earlier.
I didn’t have much more available in me than just a fairly quick there and back to the seasonal event zone to do a couple of deliveries. Wasn’t feeling the vibes due to the exhaustion and being concerned about people.
Back tomorrow and I’ll summon some good vibes into another cruise port post. Be well everyone, have a good evening.
Probably a short one today again because I’m feeling struggles both within and without … What’s behind the door ?
There we go, stormtrooper today.
Why the struggles ? It does feel like it’s coming from all sides at the moment, with work and family stuff that will definitely not be going here.
It’s definitely coming from within, because I’ve been feeling that I’m nearing the end of a very long and very frayed rope. I think the big part of it is psychological, because I’m finding it very hard to find joy in things. Perhaps that’s a sign of a depression creeping in there ? Maybe.
What I have been finding cheering me up is how people were finding things like the Dwagon on Tour pictures. It was really lovely seeing the various interactions popping up with those with people giving the hearts, the likes, the occasional omgs and general seeing that other people were really enjoying seeing what I’d been posting. Kinda makes you want to disappear out of the world again for a little while and go some place to let me send out more Dwagon on Tour pictures.
Hopefully at some point next year, I’ve run the annual leave down to about the minimum I can carry over. That refreshes at the end of April, so it needs to cover Xmas, Easter and I’ll need to disappear from work for a week around Feb as well due to …
I’ve been in burn out for a very long time now. The first symptoms really kicked in around covid times, with things like the sketching just ending. I haven’t sketched in years now, although a couple of emotes happened when idea plus can I do it combined at just the right time.
At the moment, it’s manifesting both mentally and physically. It doesn’t feel like my brain’s running on all of its cores at the moment, plus I’m even more absent minded than usual. Physically, I’m having increasingly sore hips, what feels like a void in my lower back and the injury I did to my right knee during the cruise hasn’t recovered yet. Add to that, the shoulder joining in and an elbow that’s making me shy away from losing myself in games like the Truck games.
And all that together means that while I look at the new games and think I’d maybe enjoy playing them, I’m not at a spot where I want to learn those games.
It’s not at a point where I would consider myself physically disabled, plus I was able to walk for around 15,000 step days during the cruise. But that constant low level pain does get to you after a while.
Last bit before I fetch my dinner which has the timer bell starting to go …
Any more of you feeling especially exhausted at the moment ? I’ve had that for quite a long of time. I keep hearing it from so many people as well. It doesn’t feel like it’s just me at the moment. It feels like a more generalised malaise has settled in where everyone is struggling to find the energy to do even just those basic tasks. And that’s not just for me in too many years to count, it’s younger people in their 20s and 30s as well.
If you recognise that in yourself, then I hope you can find that energy to get at least some of the things done that your brain is telling you needs to get done.
Another aspect of it for me is that I find it very difficult asking for help. I don’t take time off sick, I haven’t been back to a doctors in years and I probably need to do that for both an allergy test to finally confirm what I can and cannot have and to see if there’s an answer for why I’m so exhausted so much of the time. I can still start doing something and keep going until it’s done … but when that need to finish is over, I’ll go splat.
This isn’t intended as me reaching out and asking for help. I don’t like to impose like that on other people. But what I will say there is … whenever I see an interaction with something I’ve done, it gives me that little bit of Happy that I struggle to generate from within. It tells me that I do things that people like, that people want to engage with what I do and that people care.
If you’re reading this and are wondering if that means you – DEFINITELY YES it does.
I hope you have people looking out for you as well. Hopefully back with a happier post tomorrow but I think I needed to safety valve out some of my feelings like this tonight.
I kinda wanted to end on a cheery happy meme but that counts I think. Where to for Dwagon on Tour 2025 ? We shall see.
Bit of a bad body and brain day today so I’m going to attempt to pay attention to that and do a quick post … What’s behind the door today ?
There we go. I’m attempting something new today with using numbers on the dice for the days. Does that work ? I’ll keep at it although I’ll need to improvise when the dice run out of numbers.
Today’s new figure is the Emperor’s Shuttle, which has the little central pod with two long wings either side that fold up for landing. The prompt there could be to talk about the evil overlords or modern day who’s in charge. But you know me, I don’t like to bring that in to here. You get enough of that from all of the other sources of media. I’d prefer to be a bit of an island away from all that stuff.
(Wonder how much that sea castle from the other post would be and what it would be like to live there 😀 )
I think it’s updates about me time – I mentioned bad brain bad body day above … I think that’s mostly down to the time of year and it being close to the winter break. I don’t think I saw the sun today (work from home all day plus Big Cloud) and that probably has something to do with how awake I’m feeling. The winter break will be good for getting away from Stuff and generally being able to chill out.
I’m struggling a bit physically, with an ongoing back issue and issues in my hips. I should probably replace my chair again because it’s almost certainly contributing heavily to those issues. Oh and the 3? (could be 2 and a bit) year old chair is already falling apart. I’m also having cramping issues in my legs, which are slowing me down a little bit.
Yep. Tired and sore but still mostly functional, so I’ll get by on that. I know a lot of people are worse off than that, hope they can get by on what spoons they have available as well. That’s the thing, we throw everything into things like the day job and don’t have much left for later.
Other stuff ?
I think the day is imminent where I retire the phone … my mobile is with the Three company and it’s over a year out of contract. They’ve just announced an imminent merger with another big company which means … no idea on what’s going to happen with the prices ! So a Cunning Plan could be to upgrade the phone so I get an upgrade for the phone and at the same time, tie in the monthly cost for the length of a new contract.
I’m also heavily considering upgrading Meltdown (desktop PC) a bit early … because this could be a good time to do that. Except I think I’ll do it the economical way and defer getting a new graphics card for a few months. Oh it looks like the ones I’d get are largely out of stock at the moment anyway. I’m looking at going to a 16GB 4060Ti card. The one in stock is £464, the ones on “pre-order” start at £390. Pre-order on a card that’s been released for a while usually means that the website doesn’t know what to do about cards that aren’t in stock.
I think that’s it for now. If you’re struggling, hang in there. Hope you get a good chance to rest and recharge soon. Nite all !
Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?
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