End of 2018

It’s getting close to the end of this year. As I’m writing this, I have hardly slept and spent a few nights laying in bed wondering and thinking to myself. I have slowed down in writing my thoughts in my blog in this latter half because I haven’t been too well since my doctor passed away. I am still hoping I will get the help I need before it’s too late. I just have to practice and find a balance to everything which I hope can help me away from my malaise.

I haven’t picked up my camera in the past month. Starting to feel bad about it since I haven’t taken a lot of photos. Looking through it’s viewfinder, I miss how it feels and the joy it use to make me feel. Perhaps around Christmas or after Boxing Day I’ll take up photography again. The most difficult part right now is keeping up with work.

Getting a seasonal gig with my former employer is great, despite all the pain I went through last year. I hope eventually it will turn into a part time job considering the first time I felt fairly qualified to work more than a sales associate, assistant manager perhaps? Regardless I’m glad and I get to see all the people I’ve met before, though I have forgotten most of their names.

As what I hope to be the second last post of the year I guess I should try and make a list of all I have accomplished this year. As per my doctor’s last recommendation, I’m starting to look into a lot of cognitive therapy to cope. So…accomplishments:

• Went to Niagara Falls for the first time In January it’s still beautiful despite the cold, icy, wet weather. I wish I spent more time.
• Surpassed 300 photos on 500px. Also surpassed 10, 000 shots on my first DSLR camera.
• Bought a new laptop. For now I have two but eventually I will have one once I feel comfortable enough to part this old thing I found in the trash. You have served me well.
• New toys! Bought two used lenses, one (almost) brand new lens, and a used camera body. Overall I paid market price after having them professionally cleaned.
• More recent, started to look into sleep meditation and actively managing my depression. The ADHD behaviors I can accept but the feeling sad stuff needs a lot of attention.
• Enjoyed a long lost hobby, reading! I’m nowhere near attentive for novels but I’ll accept a good narrative after playing Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Before the Storm. Which reminds me, I should preorder the comic book.
• Finished Fallout 4. Now I can move on to other games. Hopefully that gaming list shrinks quickly.
• Paramore!! Second time I saw them live. Still great but I connected more with their previous album.
• Getting on the dating scene? A bit embarrassing but I can own up to it. Been on way more dates than the last 4 years combined. No winners…yet.
• A year without Star Trek Online. I haven’t logged in for so long. I think I can finally move on since the Kelvin timeline and Discovery kind of gave me a sour taste for it.
• Nuit Blanche art event. Spent the entire night checking out all the arts and culture. Last year was way too political. Still very crowded if not worse.
• Bought CD’s. An old medium but once I get a portable disc player, I’m going to have fun.
• I got Instagram to share some photos.
• I got business cards, I wish I could add my Instagram on them. They came first.

Still more to come in the last few weeks. My plans are to buy the SNES Classic and maybe the NES. I’m thinking of another Niagara trip either Niagara-On-The-Lake or somewhere small. I still want to snap photos and hopefully punch through to 400 on 500px. Lastly…

…I want to write my final post for the year. Stay tuned!

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Anniversary Post & Latent Replies

I’ve been out from posting the past few weeks. I had no time to compose anything. The past few weeks with work bogged down, I had only time to shower and eat and nothing more. Let me just say life in retail has been short but I’ve learned the good side and bad side of retail.

During the Christmas retail season, I’ve learned much about what sales associates go through. To be honest with you, it’s frustrating and stressful for everyone involved. However having a hostile work environment does make it worse which was the unfortunate circumstance I had to be in after several months of working at the same place. Right on the Eve, I’ve had it and I think my manager has the same with me. I don’t consider this individual as my employer but just a slave driver. Anywho, that’s probably a drunken rambling for the next anniversary post.

So it’s that time of year again where WordPress likes to tell me it’s “our” anniversary. I made this joke before but it’s worth mentioning. It’s a long term relationship and probably the longest I will ever have. Haha. No matter, I just like having this little digital sanctum to journal my life. Looking forward to the new year, I still do think I have a lot of interesting things to do.

This year is actually going to be a snowy new year. Grabbing my camera and definitely travelling locally to see new vistas. Speaking of which, I should get back to uploading more photos on my 500px page.  With the little time I’ve had I’ve managed to do something new and special for myself. I preface, this is not a sponsored post. For the past months, I’ve been considering getting personal business cards especially for my photography portfolio. I’ve been shopping locally until I found a shop called VistaPrint. I found later after my first visit, they are actually an online company and this being their flagship store. After finding the time to return for a repeat visit, I finally order about 500 cards. It might be overkill, but it’s was a steal since it was only $10 with their holiday offer. Otherwise I would’ve gotten a smaller amount, like 100 or so. I’m a bit excited though I wish I had something cooler to put on the card. Hopefully I’ll get them shortly in the new year.

I’m still doing the YouTube thing and playing all the games. Actually Steam has their annual winter sale, I’ve bought a few more games which I won’t be playing until next Christmas. Hopefully I’ll have enough time to play them all and upload something.

For now I’ll just enjoy the bit of relaxed unemployment. Probably get back to do my own photography. If they call me for work, I did make my intent known. I was going to play nice to declare my resignation two weeks before I leave but this manager really put it out there. Technically not illegal from what I’ve read however they have to let me know if I have been terminated. Don’t care, I’ve voluntarily withdrew my employment in a busy store and it’s the holiday season and if I remember correctly I have most if not the entire law on my side as the employee. My only regret is I wish I could work with my old manager, they were way more polite and way more helpful this garbage person. Though hopefully I can be re-employed under my old manager than any other.

Anyways, I’m glad I have a few days to myself.

Filling up.

It’s been somewhat eventful, somewhat being tiring and I’ve been trying to push myself through the paces. I’ve pushed out all the photos from the accounts I have on Facebook and Google to 500px, still haven’t updated my banner here so that’s my bad. However I’ve been trying to be more out and about snapping photos since now I have 20 photos allocated a week. Trying to not be a competition but I’ve been uploading about a 10 a week so far.

Since the 17th, I haven’t uploaded any videos to YouTube. I love to play Tropico but I think the there isn’t much encouragement. However I would like to pull off a Prison Architect and just try everything until I’m ready to move on. Meanwhile Star Trek Online is having an event so I’m trying to farm stuff from the events. A new ship and new item set; with sleeping in and work, this is mentally exhausting me at an incredible rate.

Hopefully this week will be something worth looking forward to do more than I did this past week. I really need to balance my life a bit more if I ever will have the chance to get where I want to be in my life.

Resolutions 2017

I think this year I might want to try and commit to some interests for myself. The past year or so I have weened onto photography and off of fitness. I really want best of everything I do. I’ve been playing as much video games in the past month solely because I have so much time on my hands, yet I haven’t felt bold enough to hit the gym. Same with photography once the snow came down. I really want to exercise and take in photos on my spare time; however this cold is turning me into a big of a lethargic person. Perhaps it’s not just the cold, recent misfortunes have begotten me to remain indoor and the solstice has kept me indoors after 6.

I should join a group or something in the city or have a photography partner and definitely keep trying to make the time to go to the gym.

Damage.

This week has been an eventful one with the US on it’s toes for a new president. Wednesday was a sigh a relief, until I turned in Thursday to see a lot of bad things happening down south.

From the live feeds and video crawling the internet, people have been attacking others over political ideologies. People are getting really physical, video of people beating up party supporters. It’s concerning how supercharged the American public can be during an election. Thinking one person can fix everything about a nation isn’t the right way a democracy should operate; perhaps in other forms of government.

Violence in any way should be the last resort, not as a reactive solution to an unstable situation. Of course the two main parties have candidate which have said and done some terrible things, but it’s unfortunate there weren’t other independents to spread their word. However the top two have a lot of influence.

Anyone is free to have an opinion, but no one should be beaten for it. No one should be attacked at random, not for anything. I’m not a Christian person but I believe having ethics and morals. In the past, violence only invites atrocities. Atrocities invites mistakes; mistakes which cannot be undone.

The damage has been done, whether it is victory or defeat; we must live through this.

What To Do…

The past four years on WordPress, I have continually published a minimum once a week. However things are becoming a bit more complicated as we push onto summer and my schedule changes from almost doing nothing and too much to write about anything. I have the end of May to figure it all out before I leave for about a month or two.

Of course my loyal readers, you have stuck it out for the past year. Things have changed and yet stayed the same on my blog, but I still stay loyal to the base commitment to you. I kept writing even after a lot has happened in my life and this is no different.

As I see it, the last week will be the last bits of my Cities: Skylines gameplay on my YouTube channel. There may be more videos loaded up but I wouldn’t be around to published them until I get back around August. Therefore, I will be taking a hiatus doing videos and I may come back to do some other games if I can finish my Cities: Skylines series. Nothing in stone yet but I am hoping Space Engineers.

As for my WordPress, I will do my best to load on some pre-written material to be published on the weekly so I don’t lose my commitment to you guys. Some of you have been here since the inception and some have just joined us on our journey. Regardless, we will be travelling along the road together. If not together, then in spirit. Of course, you will be missed but when I return, I hope you folks can tell destroy my comment section with all the things you did.

Four weeks and counting.

Re: Help me out here, please.

Response to http://ramblingsfromawritersmind.wordpress.com/2015/01/04/help-me-out-here-please/.

Hello Paul White, marketing isn’t my specialty. However I would like to offer my views on blogging and social media platforms.

For the past few years, I’ve been ranting on about games, people and anything that touches a nerve to me. Thus far, I have seen a small trickle of readers. In the early months, I wasn’t too sure what to do or say to generate traffic. However there are a few things I’ve kept in my mind when I posted something onto my blog.

In terms of content, I do my best to leave the profanity at the door. I swear more than a sailor in real life, but my blog gives me the opportunity to back up and cool off to look objective but still have a fire burning to the point. I’m a personal blogger so I like to be open to my readers, however there are exceptions to this. As a personal prerogative, I keep information that’s very personal and intimate away from my blog. I try and not talk about the people I know by name nor do I try and describe them.

As for “exposure” you kept mentioning, I do think it’s a good thing to have your blog seen by others and have them provide their point of view. WordPress.com is a community of thousands of writers, bloggers and hobbyists. For your content to be seen, you have to write something worth talking about. Write something provocative, informative or opinionated; you will get the attention of a few readers. Importantly when producing content, you should know how to generate viewership. With WordPress, you can use tags to attract other users to your blog. The more tags you attach to the post, the more likely it will be seen based on a keyword search. The kicker to this with WordPress.com, some tags usually overused. Meaning there are a lot of people using the same tag for their post and therefore your post might not be seen and could be buried. If they are patient, they will stumble on your post. Importantly, keep posting constantly. Create a schedule and try to stick to it. When I first started my blog, it wasn’t (and still) is not aimed to generate views. In fact, it’s my own personal platform to release. There are things to be just said and let go rather repressed deeply. I try and aim for a post once every 7 days because it feels natural for me to post at that rate. I subscribed to some bloggers that post every day and some do it once a month. Find your speed.

In a way, we are competing indirectly for viewership through what we tag. This is where social media comes in handy. If you have other media platforms to share, you can bring traffic from other sites towards your site. Of course not only you should be letting the world know what you are producing, at the same time you should be engaging. Doesn’t necessary mean you have to be passive aggressive with bloggers and guest writers where you post a small comment to redirect them to your site, but more towards on building a rapport with others to keep them from coming back. Rather than shake hands and part ways, try and find some common ground where both can benefit through generating traffic rather than having guests redirecting their viewers to your site to generate a viewership on your site.

In case you nodded off with me mumbling on. Here’s the “TL;DR” (Too Long; Didn’t Read) version:

• Constant content
• Tag everything like a graffiti artist
• Reach out on other social media platforms
• Hope you’re 1 of the many 1000’s people are reading and sharing
• Don’t be selfish, contribute back

In the end, success just depends on what you have created. If it’s something the same and something that has been done, then it wouldn’t take off as quickly. Doesn’t mean to give up, just means you have to keep going. Soon or later something good will come to it.

Trailblazer

Over the past month, it has been a moments of up and down. There were days I felt demoralized and alone. And there were moments I felt calm and better than I was the moments before. As Christmas approaches, I feel a sense of mental fortitude should be necessary for the holidays.

Over the past decade, my body went through highs and lows. Not only the physical but the mental drive I had was slowed and then rebuilt. The toughest part about it was going at it alone. The hardships one can endure alone is the most difficult to overcome. The way I see it, loneliness in times of need is the bedrock bottom of any hole anyone digs for themselves. In the past year like many years in the past decade, I felt like I dug myself into such a hole while trying to climb out the darkness I’ve sent myself. Recently I feel I stopped digging.

With a job with me and hoping for more coming my way, I feel things are going upwards and outwards. Here staring at my ceiling, I reminded myself about the words that helped me through so much and has taught me to never give up. Find purpose. You see after struggling through so much in high school, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of myself. I never found a niche, never found what I truly wanted to do, I never found what I really wanted most for myself personally and professionally. Perhaps I never was meant to find something specific and maybe I was meant for more than an accountant, a technician or a labourer of sorts. Unlike video games, we aren’t given a difficulty selection; we play the game as it is whether it is easy or hard. There will be days when you can drift by like you can sit down and relax, then there will be days drawn out to where you want to drown it all out. Regardless, I have to play the game as it is on the knowledge and wisdom I’ve earned. I don’t know where this stage of my life will lead, but I will find my own way. Finding purpose to what I want to be maybe hard, then perhaps finding a purpose for the future is not my purpose. If I’m unsure what I want for the future, then maybe my purpose is here and right now. I should strive for something I want right in the moment and fight for it at this very moment.

I don’t mean getting food when I’m hungry or napping when I’m tired, but do something different and new. My life doesn’t seem to follow a path and it doesn’t have to as long as I can make my own. I’m getting old but I’m getting wiser with every experience I can expose myself towards and perhaps this is my purpose. Sure stumbling in the dark not knowing where to take a step is not what people feel comfortable with, but perhaps try. You will find yourself unafraid and a bit more confident in the dark. You will see something new, different, or see the dull things as interesting. Perhaps gain some respect and perspective on something you never thought yourself you could need, be or want. Finding purpose isn’t just a materialist or forward thinking idea, I think it’s more about being here in the present and exploring yourself and your surroundings. We should find some purpose in that and make our path.

Until next time, let’s be trailblazers together. Thanks for 3 extraordinary years on WordPress!

Post-Christmas, Pre-New Year’s Eve and Desktop Design Idea…Also Belated Anniversary

Addicted to video games, and still addicted to video games. It’s been about a few weeks since I really enjoy a good gaming session. Of course I’ve been logging into Star Trek Online for daily nudies from Q, but it’s not what I really want in terms of playing a game. On a laptop especially, gaming is pretty low quality or boring. What makes it worse is I can’t stream YouTube on my laptop but I can on my phone. First world problems; can’t stream YouTube in high quality. I have to admit, I’m quite fidgety awaiting for my next fix. I somewhat regret cracking open Blacklight Retribution before travelling for Christmas. Even with all this, I have a week and a half to go before I return to my desktop. Ugh, when I do; I will do and do it all night long (maybe).

Enough about me, I hope everyone had a good Christmas. Either opening present or eating Chinese food – or both! If none, then maybe New Year’s Eve will be interesting. Unfortunately, I will be alone for New Year’s; I’ll be joining the lonely few to drink, watch TV or hanging out on the internet. Okay to be honest, I’m counting days right now. I do think I’ve overstayed my welcome in the great land of the United States of America. I want to get home, get on a bunch of job listings and play video games non-stop.

In desperation, I’ve been sitting around the internet looking for small form factor desktop computers. Specifically that can be modular to handle upgrades like a regular sized desktop but designed to video games. Pretty much all I want inside a tiny box is a gaming PC that fits inside my backpack and will work everywhere where a monitor and internet is available. Follow up to that is a mouse and a foldable or super compact keyboard. I guess that’s what I should wish for next Christmas. Seriously, is it just me or does PC gaming should become a bit more mobile? Even just the desktop tower, it would be pretty neat to play wherever I go. In my head, I think it just needs to be in a small box containing nothing more than a power supply, hard drive, graphics card and the smallest motherboard with one of each video, a few USB, ethernet, audio, 2 PCI connectors. I may have described something already available but I would like something to be built towards playing desktop games than being a multimedia centre. Meaning higher processing power and the modular chipset so I can replace particular parts or adding parts. Get on it, PC manufacturers!

Though a possible compromise would be somehow to turn a briefcase to into a desktop. There is a few downsides to that idea but it would maintain the idea of a powerful mobile PC. The only downside I can see is if you leave it somewhere unattended, it may scare some people since people see bombs in movies as being hidden in a briefcase. In these days, I think people would rather fear for the worse. Regardless, still want to see a PC equivalent of the console. I’m really hung up on this because I miss playing my games for fun than just keeping up with daily grinding.

On a lighter note, this blog is now officially a few years old. That happened 23 days ago without much fanfare. I only noticed when WordPress.com sent me a notification. Surprisingly, it’s probably the third longest ongoing project in my life. The journey here is more or less a love/hate relationship. Days I never wanted to share my thoughts and the days I can write until my wrists and fingers go sore. In the last few years, I remind myself that this blog is about me and my ramblings. Not for sale for the highest bidder but a reflecting pool for myself and maybe for some of you. This blog is about the good times and the worst I can experience. For the highs and lulls and my small repository of wisdom and knowledge, hopefully it is how it reads. No matter how hard 2013 was for us and those who just subscribed, look back on it and think about how that changed you. Regardless of the pride or regret, the experience of every passing year is an opportunity for the future. Without your past, there is no future. Without an outlook for the future, the past means nothing. So for all of you, all +120, I would like to thank you for being on my journey. To think of it; if my blog is a commercial airplane, you would all be my passengers and I would be the captain and pilot. After a few years in service, I’m pretty happy I haven’t crashed it.

Until next year readers, happy new years!

My blog in 2011 – How time just flew by…sometimes.

Happy new years, first one for 2012. WordPress looks back on my blog and some fascinating stuff about what I’ve done.

Also to people that are counting, it’s not a competition.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,600 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 27 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Fireworks are a nice touch to the start of the year.