Slaughtered
Lifestyles of the Bored and Restless
The Lock-down lifestyle is a thing that just creeps up on you…the negatives can be overwhelming, but scraps of good stuff can emerge from your captivity.
Here’s my Top-10 Lockdown issue list
- Lack of real exercise or movement
- Unless you are the healthy type or just have a nice home with a great garden or field then it’s natural to just meander from room to room with no real purpose.
- Lack of routine
- This lack of purpose is just a headshrinker…. Why I am here? What is my purpose?
- Lack of real face-to-face social connection
- So, what if you have 500+ LinkedIn. Body language makes up over 50% of our comms.
- Perpetual Snacking
- I’m a grazer and can’t help but wonder in the kitchen every hour or so for a snack. Even when I’m not hungry
- Zoomed Out – Screen time Obesity
- If our effort to become productive we use ever screen possible and this obsession pushes up to 10 hours a day on various devices.
- Trapped on a wheel
- So, you walk from your home office to the dining room then to the kitchen then back to your home office…been here before. Yes, you have.
- Losing your talent
- I’m a creature of habit and routine and this is where my craft blossoms. Without that routine, my talents are at risk…
- Filing Time with gibberish
- Fooling yourself you are actually being productive is pretty common. Let’s have pointless Zoom meetings and phone calls whilst goofing off.
- The plague of interruptions
- The perception that you are “available” at home is annoying and probably my number problem….Yes, I am busy and Yes you are interrupting me.
- Lost of Risk
- From the time you step out of your house you are risking something to gain something. Without that Risk, there is nothing to gain and without that gain, you are just a cardboard cutout of your true self.
Creating my own certainty out of nothing, grind some labs and re-inventing my your own purpose.
Lifestyle of a job-hunter
Perfectly out-of-sync
I had a situation yesterday that forced me to re-evaluate my coping skill levels. it’s been a while since I practised and, like many skills, you can lose the talent. Meanwhile, the first batch of PS5 pre-orders were snapped up in a matter of minutes and Amazon sold out.
Bringing back etiquette to Air travel
Is Air travel a luxury? I’ve put up with another year of flying the 4th worst airline in the world according to the AirHelp Global Airline ranking system.
I’ve become immune to the waiting times, nasty fees and negative staff attitudes and constantly over compensate by expecting a late arrival. No disasters but I’ve come too close to missing important life events and this accumulates to a constant state of high anxiety I sooth with massive doses of downloaded Netflix series.
So here’s how I did…again
No checked luggage -90% of the time my flight runs out of space, so I get to check-in luggage free of charge
Prepare for late night arrivals – the last flight is always delayed leaving me transportation issues when car hire closes at 11pm, fortunately I found all night train route.
Pack only what you need
Avoid gifts and comfort bits
Avoid speaking to airline staff, the ground crew just tell you to visit the website anyway.
Use the airport lounge, this oasis is perfect preparation to be squished up in a seat with absolutely no creature comforts. Worth every penny of investment and your last bit of civilisation for a few hours.
Don’t tell Loved ones you’ve landed till you are in the airport…. it’s not unusual to be left on the tarmac on plan waiting for a gate or “somebody” to bring a bus to the airplane.
Line up early, this actually beats the so-called paid “Speedy boarders “as it usually every man for himself as over 150 people try to board as fast as possible through 2 ground crew checking passport and boarding passes on mobile phones. Expect no decorum here.
Fly solo, it helps you get into the brutal zone but always have a plan B and C lined up.
I’ll be enjoying one of the better airlines this December and will be snacking with real cutlery on-board and with enough leg room for two.
The Closer I get to You – Unforgiving and Brutal
I condensed my usual pace of gameplay over 3 weeks into 3 days of The Division because of the Global Event. I didn’t come across many players who hadn’t played the game before and It’s clear that The Division 2 will break sales records with millions of players jumping around DC for loot and kills.
Enough is enough already, so I fell back to my cut-off strategy of removing the disk and deleting the game to simply stop playing it. I haven’t even looked at others title for the past few weeks.
August gameplay
This month’s line up looks great with Mafia III (single player) and Dead by Daylight (PvP) free for PS Plus folk. I nearly bought Mafia III a few months ago when it went on sale but figured it would be free at some point for this 2-year-old title. Dead by Daylights format of 4 verses 1 has not been as popular as the all-out 100 player format or 4 versus 4 formats.
Anyhow for me, August is a PvP free month but I’ll certainly view my favourite streamers escapades and will be missing the past few days ShotGun onslaught up close and personal.
Re-inventing yourself
The serious business of Gaming has not gone unnoticed by the global powerhouses like Microsoft. Gaming is one of the six massive investment areas that the tech giant is focusing on and it makes me laugh when individuals jab at my lifelong indulgence on this “not so niche” area of computing.
In the meantime, this weekend I took some time to level up my 3rd character in readiness for the next Global Event in The Division. It’s always fun starting from scratch and it gives me a good excuse to opt-out of real life. I was joined by a few friends along the way and avoided toxic or youth gamers.
In a way, I guess we re-invent ourselves in real life to suit the situation and our personal goals all the time.