“Oh, mainly cozy games like Diablo, Coral Island, Cozy Grove, & Destiny.”
& then I explain, those are cozy to me. Zero stress, just zoning out and having fun with my pals or solo. Cozy is so subjective.🫶🏼
This is why I return to Destiny again and again. It’s an old worn pair of pants. A cozy sweater to wrap up in for the day. Destiny is comfortable. It’s not perfect. It’s aged. It’s not going to compete with the youngest and newest games. It’s not going to compete with anyone for hottest or trendiest. But I know it.
I know it so well. The skies I’ve stopped to admire and battled under. The maps I’ve played and replayed and re-re-re-re-replayed thousands of times. The hundreds of days I’ve spent running across the same plot of land. If the digital artwork were earth, there would be deep paths worn into the dirt.
It’s also a decision I don’t have to make. I sit down with my coffee or cola. I turn on my Xbox and I press A.
That’s it.
I don’t have to look through my library. I don’t need to worry about whether there’s gigabytes of updates to wait through. I don’t need to worry about how the game has changed since I last played it.
I sit down. I power on. I play.
I play with my friends. I play with new people. I play alone listening to music of podcasts in my ears. I don’t need the dialog or music. I’ve heard it all before. I don’t need to worry about what the game is trying to tell me, I can see where I need to go and what I need to do.
Destiny is where I’ve spent thousands of hours playing since 2014. I’ve recorded a weekly podcast about it since 2019. There’s plenty in the game I have never done. There’s parts of the world of I have never seen nor step foot into. But I play what I like and I play it often.
It’s an easy choice to the point where it’s not even a choice anymore. It’s my default. I don’t look at other games when I turn on my Xbox. I turn it on and I’m surprised if it’s not sitting in the first spot ready to go.
The Office is for people who like to talk.
Remote Work is for people who like to think.
I’ve had this thought running through my head since I competed my two mandatory days in the office every other week. On the weeks where I go to the office, my days are filled mostly with meetings which is no different than home. The difference is the quality of the meetings is… exactly the same in terms of getting what I need out of them.
Any part of the day not already blocked off by calendar invitation is subject to an impromptu meeting. Someone coming to stop by and bring you a problem they’ve been holding on to. A convenient moment to grab three people together into a room to discuss a problem or plan out a new feature.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of this. But it should be recognized. When I go into the office, it’s not that I don’t plan to work. But instead a of planning to dig into my work and make good headway, I end up making a list of tasks to work on when I can return to the quiet and focus of home.
I’ve worked remotely for… 6 or may be it’s 7 years now. And I would never go back to working in an office full-time. I have an ergonomic desk and chair that fit my body and don’t leave me with an aching back. It’s quiet and comfortable. I control the lighting, temperature and noise level. I can get absolutely lost in a problem as the hours melt away and the light of the day fades away.
It’s comfortable because it’s for me. I can make food in my own kitchen so I’m not spending money in cafes or fast food. I am not burning gas and sitting in hours of traffic. I can stand in my kitchen and watch the birds or go for a walk over my lunch break. And I actually take a lunch break.
It’s liberating to be able to enjoy some fresh air when the weather is nice. Or work form my bed, or sofa when I need a change of scenery. Working from your patio under blue skies with chirping birds and warm breezes.
The white on white text is exciting.
Is there a setting I can toggle?
Solving the “where did I put that” problem of text.
I love Nextcloud. It’s a wonderful sync for things and I don’t need to worry about paying for Dropbox.
I love Obsidian. Now that there are apps for it for it on Mobile I’m inclined to use it as a way to find things I type and stash in folders.
Joplin is the odd-app-out. I don’t love Joplin. It’s fine and I absolutely love that I can use Nextcloud as a back-end to sync it. But it stores everything in gibberish file names so I can’t get to it through other editors.
Typora. At the end of the day. I want to type every single document in Typora. But I don’t want to organize nor manage in files there.
Obsidian is where text lives.
Typora is where text gets written.
But how do I keep all of that text in sync across multiple operating systems and devices? In a given day, I interact with that text from Linux, Mac OS and Android. Once I get this sorted, I’ll be adding iPad and Windows to the mix, although less often than the first three.
I’m leaning towards Obsidian Sync. I’m using Nextcloud to sync everything right now and it works great on computers. But it falls down on mobile. The Android (and I assume iOS) apps do not sync files in the same way. I toyed with the idea of setting up Syncthing to solve this problem as it handles syncing of files on mobile without issue.
However, that’s one more thing to manage and support and hope it works and continues to work. (Though I may still setup Syncthing to move data between raspberry pis.) But that’s another story.
I’ve been thinking about paying for the Obsidian Sync. And even though it’s a few dollars a month, it’s something I don’t have to think about. It’ll handle the text syncing so I don’t have to.
I believe you can start that creative project.
I believe you can make that move.
I believe you can ask for that need to be met, to set that boundary, to have that hard conversation.
I believe you can climb that mountain, walk that path, swim that ocean.
You can do this.
You were made for this.
I believe in you and your capacity to do the thing.
Now let’s get going.
I love this entire idea about focusing on positivity of new pursuits and life changes. I’m as guilty as the next person at finding all the cautionary tales and warnings about failure.
What, instead, if we shifted into loving from fear, into loving from belief?
I will try to love from belief rather than fear more often. And try to identify when I’m loving from fear instead of belief. The feedback loop of positivity can get kickstarted just like a fear loop.
Nerds.
There will be plenty of devices for everyone. The PS5 will have a long life. The new Apple thing will be the old Apple thing in a year.
If you didn't trade money for nothing today fear not. You will get to trade money for a thing later.
It will be just as good.
The only reason to have Facebook is to keep tabs on your parents before a visit to make sure they're acting responsibly.
“During my walks I collected data on the visible address numbers attached to the front of each home along my route, categorizing each home as either serif or sans serif.”
I Walked All 1,114 Blocks of My ZIP Code Just to Catalog How People Style Their House Numbers
slate.com/human-int…
via Instapaper
Totally normal grocery store trip. We picked up most of what we were looking for. Idly thought "maybe we'll get a pizza." Nope.
Decided to check out the toilet paper aisle just for fun and... Nothing.
We also made a trip to Panera for bagels since our local bagelry is closed. Added some fancy bread because sometimes you need to see new foods to get you through the week.
Safeway reminds you to keep your distance.Pizza? Pizzno.Decimated.Devastated.
So… Webex chats stopped working. Only private chats work. No groups like All Attendees or All Panelists. Not even “Panelist” or “Host. You must select the specific person to chat to. Or they simply fail to display, or send.
