Alcoholism kept me away

I don’t know what else to say beyond the subject line. The past month and a half has been a bit of a heavy low for me.

From the last month until now I’ve been busy with CONTACT, a local photography festival. Visiting all (or most of them I wanted to see) the interesting exhibits. Some work was very abstract with video elements but it was a nice month to unwind. By the end of May, there was a large open house event and I managed to see a few things.

Beyond that I’ve been kind of lonely and been trying to fill my time either diverting from my thoughts and it’s rough. Every day it has been either going out with a camera or trying to be around other people and hoping I can overcome my shyness to talk to someone. Spoiler alert: I’ve been awkward, shy and weird as per everyone has told me in my life (aside from everything else). So what I do when living in a city full of bars? I starting to drink heavily…for the second time in several months.

The first time, it was light. A few drinks here and there, then I starting drinking a couple. Then after that a couple more after that. At the moment I’m at 5 drinks per sitting. It’s not good when I’m doing this twice a week. I want to stop drinking to at least maintain some sort of self-temperance. However this drinking has opened my mind to some disturbing things. At the moment I don’t feel like diving too personal about it but I’m trying to find help without spending money. First I have to get off the booze.

I use to to upload to YouTube to share my gameplay stuff and use to be active on Twitter as well. Not I’m starting to think I need time away from it. Just watch other people because I feel little to no incentive since I feel like it’s more work than to hold me down from excessively gaming. At the moment, Stardew Valley is getting a bit of play time but I’m slowly sinking back into play hours on end. My eyes use to burn because I would stare at the monitor for over 4 hours.

Photography thing is going good. A local newspaper might want to hire me for events so I’m excited. It’s a bit of work to get on board but I think it could open up for me in terms of taking photos. Portraiture is one thing I have yet to explore so there might be something new in the works if I get on with the newspaper.

I haven’t left this place yet, but I do want to come back and be grounded to something at the moment.

Stuck without games, once again

You think you are sitting pretty in you life and it gives you a quick realization how fragile life could really be. Though familiar with bad luck, it’s untimely inconvenient for my monitor to pop something internally. I’m fairly sure either something shorted out, though I’m still getting power to the monitor. This 22” I got more than half a decade finally gave in Saturday morning; which makes it the third component to malfunction in the past few years. I knew someday the day would come when things won’t work as well for my computer or I would have to replace certain parts. Unfortunately a bad time for me to be maintaining my rig.

The weekend wasn’t as tough as the last time I had gaming withdrawal, though the upcoming week could be a bit rough. From what I’ve learned, staying positive is helpful until I feel calmer and less agitated. Also finding ways to keep busy. Aside from finding a job, I’m considering to get into some volunteering. The past few weeks, I’ve been slowly looking into volunteering along with finding some employment. I did find a volunteer opportunity a few weeks ago, though I must admit it’s pretty far by walking. So I’m looking to volunteer a bit closer to home. I hope get something considering now I’m fairly idle.

Though starting to be shyly shaky and having the drifting thought of video games, keeping positive seems to be working. Good thoughts, happy thoughts. Maybe a library visit today would help me clear my head.

Until next week, happy thoughts!

Well, here we go again…

After a month of putting up with my laptop malfunctioning, I finally tried to fix it. At first it wasn’t serious, it would not shutdown properly on occasion; it either hangs or freezes. Then recently it was failing to wake after it went to sleep. Either solution was to hold down the power button, which in my mind isn’t proper procedure when shutting down a computer. Considering my laptop had an almost clean slate, wiping the hard drive again to reinstall windows wasn’t a tough choice. Rather than using the CD I used before, I chose to use the one I used when I first installed Windows 7 on my desktop.

Rather than keeping the system up to date, I’m going to keep the operating system from updating and look into every update. I rather know if I should use Windows Update for a certain update than letting every update running the risk of messing up the system again. Probably not all blame should be placed on the OS, I did have some drivers and utilities which may have conflicted with certain files. As I said before, I didn’t have any personal files so starting over was a breeze. With a stable Internet connection, I downloaded all the programs I need; CCleaner, Avast Antivirus and so on. I’ve tried shutting down and putting it to sleep; it works fine now.

I recently finished Assassin’s Creed III by blazing through the single player. It’s definitely a tougher game than the Renaissance storyline. I believe I’ve did it within 20 or 30 hours in a span of 3 days. It’s something to celebrate considering I hardly play story driven games. So I thought, why not mix Coke and vodka? I still have a third of a bottle so I mixed two shots into a can. As anyone who has drank alcohol, I don’t have a tolerance for it. Tolerance I mean in terms of the taste and consumption, I have very little of both. Also I’ve gained enough Zen points in Star Trek Online that I can begin building a Vesta from the Vesta pack. I haven’t purchased it but at the moment, I’m gathering all the necessary items so I can slot them. With the surplus gear I have in my bank, I will have to push myself into buying or hunting for engineering consoles that improve auxiliary power since the Vesta comes equipped with a cannon powered by auxiliary and I usually focus on keeping either shields or weapons powered up. Since I still haven’t made the purchase, I could buy the Kumari escort pack but I already have an escort.

While on the STO currency problems, the dilithium market is rebounding after a low of an average of 90 dilithium for over a month in the winter. For the past few weeks, refined dilithium exchange rate has steadily increased. So at 122 dilithium from my last log in yesterday, I’ve decided to continually stockpile the dilithium when I can and probably spend it on the dilithium store. Since the Kumari was added, they began adding more items to the game within this obscure store. For one thing, they’ve added a very rare Tholian hangar pet which is much more effectie than the Widow fighters you can get from redeeming the Recluse carrier. Just another way Perfect World Entertainment saying “I love you…r money.” If anything, I will buy two hangar pets and it will be the rare times I bought something in the dilithium store. Though I’m unsure what I should get, well I have a surplus of refined dilithium so I could but I would still prefer converting to Zen (hopefully soon since I doubt any one would want to trade at that price).

Coming to full circle, I’m taking the Sunday easy. Than just sitting here and finding a job, I’m heading out there in the city and hopefully find something. Maybe also get out and enjoy the sunshine. So until next time, have an amazing weekend.