/blog

Another cross on the challenge sheet. Another few hundred new words to supplement moving others into their proper place. The blog is becoming more of a resource that I initially thought and I like that – I suppose that's how it should be. I have been throwing thousands of words online for years so some of them should hold some long term value.

It's a good start.

Despite the good start yesterday went downhill fast.

Jay wrote "it IS cold wet and miserable but the thing is that has been a euphemism for ”˜I've been really struggling to just get on with shit'."

I know exactly how he feels.

After the initial flurry of words I was stuck for what to do next. It was grey, wet, dark and miserable which, no doubt, impacted upon my mood but it went deeper than that. I was feeling low and drained with no enthusiasm and didn't know why.

I lost count of the number of times I came to the blog, wanting to post but couldn't find anything to put down. So I gave up and fell into a funk for the rest of the day.

Today will not be like that!

The past week has seen a pair of doves join the visitors to the garden. Word of a reliable food source has obviously been spreading.

Unfortunately, this means we are also up to four pigeons from the initial two and the great tits appear to be put off by the increase in numbers of larger birds. They will happily still sit in the tree and be incredibly vocal but, that I've seen, don't come down to feed.

The robins don't seem to mind.

My wife said earlier that the reason for yesterday's malaise was my old habit of excluding myself.

Despite initially being excited about the current World of Warcraft expansion (Shadowlands) I've not played in over a month. That's my self-exclusion. The rest of the family plays and I'm currently the odd one out.

Still, I grew bored with it.

Getting to max level was easy but changes to the class of my character meant it was less fun to play. Shadowlands has multiple things to do, multiple resources to grind and that was immensely frustrating for someone who wanted to progress but was largely a casual player. My time 'in game' was already reducing and to keep on top of everything was getting too much.

I've been considering starting a new character, an easier class to play, but don't know if it'll work out. Whenever I've tried to play 'alts' in the past I've never stuck it out for more than a couple of weeks, returning to my main even if I wasn't enjoying it. I could delete my main character but that would be literally years of my life gone. Does that sound crazy?

Games are supposed to be fun and relaxing so why does this feel so hard?

In order to get a bit of motivation for exercise we are all doing a virtual "cross the English Channel" challenge – cover 21 miles in your own time using whatever forms of exercise you like.