I Just Want it to Work

Time is precious to everyone, but when a majority of it is eaten up by kids, some things change. For me, that things is I simply don’t have the hours free any more to try to fix stuff that doesn’t work.

My computer was a major issue. Trying to find the time to solve why it wouldn’t start up ended up being a week long endevour. I can’t just ignore my family to work on it.

This week, it was my old fitbit charge HR. It should have been simple. Plug it in and charge it, put the receiver into my PC, link the device to my profile and ta da. Instead my PC refuses to acknowledge the device, though it works well enough on my laptop (an issue with bluetooth and windows 10 I’m told). Now it doesn’t want to hold a charge, and I’ve been troubleshooting what I can but there’s just no way for me to spend hours trying to diagnose the problem.

At this stage of my life I just want things to work. I want them to work as they should, out of the box, without having to spend hours and hours figuring it out. That’s one of the main reasons I contemplated going to a pre-built gaming laptop rather than futz around with my PC (again).

It feels like for a lot of things, that’s just too much to ask.

Getting Healthy Together with Challenges

One of my 2019 goals is to get back to my pre-baby weight. I gained an enormous 70lbs with my second child, and I’ve lost 35lbs of it, which leaves me with roughly 40lbs to lose this year. My husband also wants to get more fit, his job requires him to be in the best shape he can be. I decided that we should have monthly mini challenges we do together to motivate and inspire each other, along with one major challenge for the year. Unique to each of our goals, they’ll reward us with non-food rewards for a job well done.

My year-long goal is of course to lose the 40lbs. The reward? A peloton, something I’ve wanted for a few years now. The monthly goal for January is to go the entire month without eating any fast food. With two young kids we have a habit of grabbing whatever is fast and easy for ourselves, spending far more money than we have to and eating food that doesn’t exactly give us the most nutritious of starts.

If I acomplish this goal for the month of January, I get to buy some yarn – which I am very excited about. Initially I had decided on just a single skein, but my husband decided it should have a monetary value of $100. Each month the goal changes but hopefully leaves us with better eating habits. February I might be able to eat fast food but I’m hoping that because I’ve abstained through all of January the urge to eat poorly will be reduced. By December I’m hoping to be 40lbs lighter with much healthier food choices.

Will it work? No idea. In 2016-2017 I lost 70lbs (after the birth of our first) so I know it’s not an impossible task, but things are so much more hectic with 2 children instead of 1 and I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up. At least I’m trying.

Admitting Defeat

We’re into August now, and my posts for the month including Blaugust posts have been pretty sparse. Turns out I was too ambitious in my desires for this month, and I have to admit defeat. First of all, as much as I LOVE the idea of 365 days of creativity, I just can’t do it. I’m healing from my c-section, nursing every 2h, and raising my 22 month old which leaves maybe 1h a day of “mommy time” when I’m not trying to get some sleep/a shower/food. I don’t expect this to change for the next few weeks (months?). Then there was Blaugust, which I signed up for as a mentor. I feel so remote and distant from everyone else who is happily chattering away on discord, sharing their posts and motivating each other to get the blog stuff done (and podcasts, and all sorts of neat other stuff). I just can’t do it.

Add to it the postpartum depression I’ve been trying to deal with, and I simply can’t. My plate is full, I’m out of spoons, and life is just too hard right now.

I’ll try to keep posting here and there when I can because it’s therapeutic to get my thoughts out, but I’m officially admitting defeat to taking on tasks for the rest of the year, and if you don’t see me around twitter/discord/etc much, well, you know why.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Another Year, Another IntPiPoMo

If you’ve never heard of IntPiPoMo before, check out this post here at Gamer Girl Confessions. There’s prizes, and I love participating every year and showing off some awesome screenshots and pictures. Most of my posts come with a screenshot, but I’ll be adding 50 throughout the month tagged properly – so be on the lookout!

If it seems like something you’re interested in doing, sign up! It’s never too late, and you get to share some wonderful images with everyone!

People Deserve a Thank You

This week I am so grateful and thankful for the people in my life. I wanted to talk about a few of them and why.

David – who I’ve known since high school. He’s the one who set up the whole transfer of MmoQuests over to NomadicGamersEh – he did it painlessly and didn’t laugh when I asked silly questions. Plus he sped the whole site up and he wrote about what he did over on his own site here. Go give it a read. I’m thankful for people like this who have a skill set that I don’t have and I appreciate the time they put into these sort of projects.

Shai – A newer friend, but one I have already vented to on more than one occasion about life and she’s always there listening. People like this are rare and she makes me want to be a better person even though I’ve butchered her name a billion times on stream.

Speaking of streaming – Scopique and Girlvsmmo have been my personal cheerleaders ever since I got it into my head that I wanted affiliate on Twitch. They helped motivate me, inspire me, and were always there with a RT when I went live, and watching when they could. Advice on layouts, streaming gear, and everything in between – these are the folks I go to, and I’m proud to call them ‘my people’.

Ranni – This lady is one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. When life’s tough (and it does get tough) she’s still there and she keeps it real. She keeps me grounded, her stories are hilarious and honest. She probably doesn’t realize just how much I admire her, and may even find it a bit creepy (lol). Still, fantastic person.

Iz & Bex – We’ve all been going through our own personal crap lately but these two ladies are just fantastic. If I need to quickly vent about family, they are both there. We have our quiet moments but I still know I can go to either of them (or both) when I need to.

Neil – Lover of Christmas and purveyor of  Tinkerbell pictures, when things are crummy he still manages to find a good side. He’s one of those silent types that I’ve known for many years now (and helped introduce me to Wurm Online) and I just can’t thank enough for being around.

Anyway, I just wanted to put my thanks out there. There are many more people I’m thankful for, but today these folks are at the top of my list and they certainly deserve to hear it.

Back to gaming!