Ring out the chorus and strike up the band, for I am back to PC gaming.
Seems like butt and this cushion finally came to an accord and I can sit down in front of my computer and play games for a while without problem.
I mean, I have to get up and re-seat myself because my butt has grown uncomfortable, but I had to do that before my legs went bad too. So no big deal there.
And it’s not the acute localized pain I was experiencing before. I think my body finally finished filling the wound that was there in and now I have a healthy butt.
Mostly. I can still feel where the wound was but it doesn’t bother me unless I end up sitting on an angle where my buttocks are sort of twisted.
That’s an easy fix and easy to avoid, too.
So life can finally go back to normal-ish again.
Of course, it’s not that easy.
I was out of action for three months plus the 16 days of purgatory in the hospital. and my habits totally changed in that time. There’s a new normal in town. one where I lay in bed all day playing games on my tablet (how sad), and it’s going to take a while for me to change my habits back to what was normal for decades until 4 months ago.
But whatever. No pressure. What will likely end up happening is that I will end up with a sort of hybrid of the two lifestyles in some form of balance with one another.
Admittedly, now that I am back to full on PC gaming, the tablet games are starting to seem pretty lame. Some of the ones I have on the go now are good enough that I don’t feel the need to give them up yet, but some are pretty meh.
We’ll see how things work out.
The first PC game I reinstalled was an odd but excellent one called Monster Train. I figured my first game after my hiatus should be something turn-based that I can play just by clicking the mouse in order to ease my way back into PC gaming.
Baby steps, and all that.
But once I had played that for a while. I got impatient and skipped straight to a full on realtime 3D fave of mine, Fallout 76.
I love this game. I love it so much that the first time I installed it, I ended up playing it for 517 hours, or 21.7 days of gameplay.
That’s because I obsessively did every single thing there was to do in this MMORPG. Did every single quest and side-quest, found all the random collectibles, explored every pixel of the main overworld map. everything.
I just didn’t want my time with the game to end.
But it did. And so I haven’t played it for a couple of years.
Lately I had started thinking about going back to it. After all, MMORPGs change fast so surely there would be new stuff there by now.
And yup, there is. So yay that.
Even that might be only temporary though, because I have $60 sitting in my Steam wallet from when I would use the leftover money on my various Paypower cards to buy Steam bux and thus preserve the value.
And I am all about preserving value.
So I am currently in the market for a brand new (to me) game to be my new obsession. There’s no rush as Fallout 76 will keep me busy for a while, but I am definitely looking for something good that my creaky old PC can handle.
I wish Steam had a “only show me titles this PC can play” option.
More after the break.
The easily overwhelmed
One of the symptoms of my depression is that it’s easy for life to make me feel like too much is going on and I can’t handle it and I am overloaded and overwhelmed.
It’s like my brain is a circuit with a way too easily tripped circuit breaker.
And it occurred to me that I don’t immediately see why that is a known facet of depression.; What’s the connection between the two? It’s not obvious.
I can only assume that depression is a huge drain on your cognitive resources, and mental bandwidth is one of those resources.
But there has to be an emotional component too,. as I can keep a ton of variables in my head when I am,. for example, playing a video game I like.
I suppose there’s such a thing as emotional bandwidth too. Plus there is the undeniable fact that anxiety or stress triggers an adrenaline response, and adrenaline shifts the brain into “fast but stupid” mode where emphasis is put on the here and now and ytour brain shifts away from the deeper thinking that is great for abstract reasoning skills but not so useful when trying to hunt a gazelle.
Here’s an odd idea : what if we could eliminate stress from an individual? A medication, say, that damps down the adrenaline response.
Is that what anti-anxiety pills do? Hmm.
I mean, most of the time, a modern human doesn’t actually need their adrenaline response. We live lives that are quite safe and the sort of life or death situations for which the adrenaline response is appropriate rarely arise.
Oh. but that would get rid of the positive responses too Imagine not being able to get excited over anything! Greeting even great news with total equanimity. Christmas morning feeling like just another day to you. Never being truly happy.
And obviously sex would not be possible. Or if it was, it would be an oddly cerebral event, without any kind of passion.
What a repulsive thought. No thanks, if the alternative is a passion free life, I will keep my anxiety, and be glad to have it.
There has to be some kind of happy medium, though. Something where I can have a normal amount of adrenaline response without being freaked out by life.
It’s all so overwhelming.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.