2019 was, for the most part, a heck of a year. Selfishly put aside all the things happening in the country that I disagreed with and yeah, I did a bunch of things I enjoyed the heck out of. Of course, even with that stick-your-head-in-the-sand approach to looking back at the year, 2019 made sure there was no doubt this is worst decade I’ll have to live through. To summarise briefly: fuck cancer.
Anyway, that’s the doom and gloom for the post so let’s get onto the neater things~
I didn’t write this with the worst cold I’ve ever had in my life, so there’s an improvement over 2017. The rest of the year, well, it had its moments. Here are some of the things I got up to and feel are worth sharing.
2016 might have been a complete dumpster fire, but at least… nah, 2017 was pretty bad too. A smaller dumpster fire, perhaps.
On a personal level, it’s been quite a good year. There may not have been a big Japan trip this time, but I can be happy with my improving health (save for, like, the SUPER COLD that’s been destroying me for the past week or two) and a handful of other things. I made a list!
It’s New Year’s Eve 2016 and there’s nothing on TV, so it’s time for a look back at the year (that and I’m not going to remember any of this nonsense after a few weeks of 2017).
Note to future self: 2016 generally wasn’t a year worth remembering.
I think I became aware of Extra Life two years ago. At the time, I was happy enough watching people play video games on the Internet, and watching people go from being overly enthusiastic to fighting off sleep was an entertaining bonus. The idea of running our own Extra Life stream wasn’t really floated around until after the 2014 Extra Life, and as is the case with most events that are a year away, a Trello board was made for planning.
There were more than a handful of ideas that never made it into our stream. For example, we were planning to play a bunch of board games on the stream, as it’s allowed by both Twitch and Extra Life. We played some Cards Against Humanity and a little Who Want’s to be a Millionaire? on our test stream back in April, but there was just too much downtime with people going for food and messing around with cameras for it to really be worth it.
I decided the other day that I would go and see the new Avengers movie. The first film was great fun, and I’d thus far managed to avoid any trailers, character lists or spoilers. All the more reason to go and see it early, right? Nothing like being able to browse social media in complete confidence, but I suppose that’s going to remain a pipe dream until I’ve caught up with the current season of Game of Thrones.
My ticket was booked at home, but I needed to head to the cinema pretty sharpish if I was going to get there in time. I realised that I’d only be missing a few adverts if I was late, but I’d paid for those adverts and I’m damn well going to get my money’s worth.
A few months ago, myself and a friend discovered a Tesco Extra a good 40-50 minutes away from my house. We’d been walking around aimlessly, as is tradition in Reading, when we stumbled upon it. We didn’t need to get anything at the time, so we carried on past it and wandered elsewhere.
On one of my first walks with Snorlax, I decided to find a distant place on a map and walk there. Walking around by yourself without a goal in mind is tougher than it seems, so I picked the Tesco. It was close to an hour from where I was at the time, so it seemed like a reasonable location to walk to.
It’s been nearly two weeks since I started carrying a pokéwalker around with me, and I think I’ve been doing a better job at forcing myself out of the house, taking longer routes and exploring this town I’ve lived in for 9 months. I’m now at the point where I need over 2000 steps per level, and while I’m averaging about 5000 steps a day, this is the part that I’m most worried about. If Snorlax isn’t levelling every time I connect to the DS, will that kill my interest? We’ll see. If you fancy seeing the stats so far, I’m keeping a Google Doc updated. It’s also pinned on my Twitter if you want to keep an eye on it and hurl abuse/encouragement my way.
Cool things I’ve found out because of Snorlax:
I don’t really get that much exercise. I have a desk job, and when I’m not there I’m likely sat at my desk at home, moving occasionally when the kettle needs boiling. On top of not being active, I don’t really eat that well, either. I love my junk food, and honestly, I don’t really care that much about my body size and what other people think about it. If stuffing my face full of Doritos and Mountain Dew continued to feel like a good thing to do, then there’s not a lot out there that can stop me.
So when I look at cutting out all the terrible foods and actually doing some exercise, it’s pretty easy for me to just laugh to myself and carry on as I am. Don’t get me wrong, I’d certainly prefer to be fit and all, but I’m also pretty okay with how things are.
That said, there’s obviously a point to this blog post that isn’t just “I’m fat and that’s okay”. I’ve been thinking about ways to shake things up in a way that won’t put me off healthy eating and exercise after a few days trying to stick to it, so on Monday I made a few changes. I’m not going to go into most of those changes right now, but I will talk about a certain part of it. There are a few ways I’m trying to do exercise on the regular without burning myself out and never doing it again, and of course, video games are involved.
I’m going to raise a pokémon from level 1 to level 100 by walking.