Didn’t make it to the orthopedic shoe place today because I’m sick.

Feels like someone’s sitting on my chest. My breathing is a little impaired too. I got the soreness in my ears and throat and of course, I feel like used food.

SoI guess my shoes will have to wait. We’re now going to be going there on January 6 of the new year, which, coincidentally, was my late father’s birthday.

I am moderately worried about my symptoms. It could be just another flareup of that peekaboo plague that seemingly comes and goes at random, but it could actually be something seriously viral instead.

The demon on my chest feeling and impaired breathing are new. That’s what has me concerned. And, of course, the persistent malaise.

Oy, the malaise.

I feel very dragged out and slow right now. Like I am lightly sedated, only less fun.

It’s bad enough that I am having some trouble stringing the words together. My concentration is shot. Staying focused on what I am doing takes constant effort because my mind just wants to drift off back into sleep.

Ah, sleep. Like death without the commitment. You don’t have to be yourself when you’re asleep. You don’t have to be anybody.

And that means a lot to me.

My self-esteem has improved a lot over the years but it’s still not great. The rage and turmoil I once vented on myself via self-loathing are still there, waiting for someplace to go, and my belief in my worth is hardly stable.

If only I could escape this cage of mine. But in order to get out, I would have to let the world in, and I am still deathly afraid of the overwhelm.

The only cure for being overwhelmed by increased stimulation is exposure. I would have to increase the level gradually, giving myself plenty of time to adjust.

Although part of me wants to just toss myself into the deep end so that I have to deal with the issue and overcome the overwhelm or perish.

But I might choose to perish. Because it’s easier.

Not better. Just easier.

Death is, after all, the ultimate escape. An escape from literally everything.

And it has its allure. But I don’t really want to die. That’s just the weariness and depression talking. What I want is to live and thrive and grow and maybe even finally become a marginally competent adult.

It could happen.

But my dreams of basic maturity will have to wait because I am way too tired to think about them right now. It’s all I can do to deal with my own challenge free life right now.

Unrelatedly, a friend (a very cute bat named Windchaser) gave me a code for a game called Spelunky and I have been giving it a try.

It’s a game where you explore randomized levels looking for treasure while trying not to die in myriad ways.

It’s a roguelike, which means that the goal is to see how far you can make it without dying because when you die, that’s it, game over, start at the beginning again.

There doesn’t seem to be a mechanism for permanent progress of any sort and that’s very problematic for me.

The game is beloved by many and makes a lot of top games of all time lists so I am willing to give it a try but so far, I’m not getting it.

Sure, the levels are randomly generated, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t essentially the same. It’s just the same basic building blocks rearranged and that does not make the game any more interesting to me.

And so far I have not seen any of the “brilliant” things that purportedly happen all the time in the game. Unless your idea of brilliance is, “wow, this time the floating platforms are BEFORE the spike pit!”.

Big freaking deal.

More after the break.

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Another dang gme

Decided, on a whim (yay), to reinstall a game called Warframe.

It’s a multiplayer online game that has a fairly intricate science fiction setting where you control a kind of alien robot body in order to beam down to planets and do simple FPS missions like “protect this structure” or “get this thing” or “kill this dude”.

There’s PVP content too, but I don’t give a crap about that. I’m just not a competitive person. I don’t even like competition when I am fairly certain I’ll win.

I’d rather just avoid the whole ugly business altogether.

Before I got to play it again, I had a bunch of the usual security bullshit to go through. I even had to enable two factor authentication, even thought I didn’t wanna.

Luckily, it wasn’t like the Facebook 2FA where it is impossible to log in without a smartphone. I ain’t got one of those.

A dumbphone is enough for me.

Unsurprisingly, between the fact that I hadn’t played it since 2018^[1] so I didn’t remember much of it and the fact that a lot has changed in the game since way back when, I was utterly confused.

And as I feared, like in all these multiplayer games, there is no way to go back and do the basic tutorial again. So I’ve had to wing it.

Luckily, it’s not as complicated as it seems at first. Once I once more figured out how to start a mission (turns out, it was the Navigation menu). I beamed down to some jungle and started kicking butt.

I still dunno how long I’ll keep playing. I’m as impressed with the game as I was the first time I played it when I was but a 45 year old stripling, and according to Steam, back then I like it enough to play it for almost 120 hours, but I am six years older and slower and less able to keep up with high intensity fast paced combat, so I get the feeling it may not last another 120 hours on my HD.

Still, it felt good to stretch my mental muscles a bit by playing something “new”.

If Warframe doesn’t last, I will give No Man’s Sky another try. I haven’t played it in a bit over a year and there’s been a bunch of free expansions since then.

It’s kind of like making progress. At least I am trying new(ish) things!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.