All the Escapism
Jul. 18th, 2016 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeI'm off work for another month. Well, technically, three weeks now. I saw my doctor last Wednesday, and she is Not Pleased™ with how I'm doing, so I'm off until mid-August for now. I just got off the phone with Health Services at my work, and apparently I have to be seen and assessed there before they'll let me back to work anyway. The nurse I spoke to was very nice, and listened with understanding to my rant about the lack of structural support for mental health issues at our workplace. My employers launched a Mental Health Awareness campaign last year, which pays a lot of lip service to the issue, but doesn't at all address the systemic problems that are at the core of so many employees suffering from burnout or PTSD or other stress-related disorders.
What have I been doing in the interim? Well, for a week or so I stayed in, napped a lot, and did a lot of gaming. I've slowly been crawling out of my shell to venture outdoors again, and visiting the vegetable garden a bit more, and mostly trying to reset my brain back to normal parameters.
The veggie garden is doing beautifully.The plants I have on my back patio... aren't. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong with them, but they are quite simply refusing to thrive, and it saddens me. Maybe I'll have to resign myself to building some raised beds next summer, and not do container gardening. Possibly the soil I used didn't have enough nutrients, or the pots were too small and didn't give the roots enough room, it's hard to say.
These pictures are from a week ago, but I went to the garden yesterday (forgot my phone, so no recent pictures) and picked two cucumbers already.
I am going to have a bajillion tomatoes, too, which is very exciting!
After this photo was taken, we had several days of thunderstorms, so the poor dog was very unhappy, but the garden is so lush and green, it's a joy to see it grow. Poor Sergent is getting a tiny bit better about thunderstorms, because now he knows he gets treats when the thunder claps, but it's a tiny consolation, as far as he's concerned.
The rest of my time has been spent playing computer games.
What have I been doing in the interim? Well, for a week or so I stayed in, napped a lot, and did a lot of gaming. I've slowly been crawling out of my shell to venture outdoors again, and visiting the vegetable garden a bit more, and mostly trying to reset my brain back to normal parameters.
The veggie garden is doing beautifully.The plants I have on my back patio... aren't. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong with them, but they are quite simply refusing to thrive, and it saddens me. Maybe I'll have to resign myself to building some raised beds next summer, and not do container gardening. Possibly the soil I used didn't have enough nutrients, or the pots were too small and didn't give the roots enough room, it's hard to say.
These pictures are from a week ago, but I went to the garden yesterday (forgot my phone, so no recent pictures) and picked two cucumbers already.
I am going to have a bajillion tomatoes, too, which is very exciting!
I planted these sad-looking little orange flowers whose name escapes me right now at the beginning of the summer, and now they are huge and so excited to be alive! I put them in simply to attract pollinators, but I confess that looking at them makes me so happy. :)
And, of course, a photo to keep you all updated on the progress of my blooming husky. It requires a LOT of water to keep it happy. ;)
After this photo was taken, we had several days of thunderstorms, so the poor dog was very unhappy, but the garden is so lush and green, it's a joy to see it grow. Poor Sergent is getting a tiny bit better about thunderstorms, because now he knows he gets treats when the thunder claps, but it's a tiny consolation, as far as he's concerned.
The rest of my time has been spent playing computer games.
I've logged dozens more hours on my favourite, Borderlands 2, because I've been playing co-op with my friend S. who lives in the UK. Her sleep schedule is even wackier than mine, so we actually end up spending a lot of time online together, in spite of the time zones. She enlisted her friend A. to come co-op with us, too, so we've been playing up a storm. Over three weeks we managed to beat the main story and do one and a half of the longer DLCs, and we're still going strong. Co-op is even more fun than playing solo, I must say.
S. and I have also been co-oping on Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. We'd already played through once together, and so we picked a different set of characters to play and are playing through again. This time I'm playing CL4P-TR4P, and it is turning out hilariously. We often play just to see what wacky new antics the game will throw at us when I use his "special skill." It's invariably entertaining, sometimes useful, sometimes utterly disastrous. Last time we played, it ended up giving me a rubber duck float ring that made my character bounce around crazily for 30 seconds. Hysterical.
Then there's Don't Starve, and Don't Starve Together. I tend to play DS when I kind of want to turn off my brain and do something entertaining but not mentally very taxing. I love the overall feel of the game, the Tim Burton and DST, however, is a co-op game which I've been playing with S. (she's my crack dealer, basically), but also with several other Twitter friends. (I hang out a LOT on Twitter. If that's your jam, feel free to hit me up! My username on there is ratherastory)
I've also rejoined![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fearsclave online with two other friends for a few nail-biting rounds of Left4Dead, which had long ago been my very first introduction to FPS. L4D also has the dubious distinction of being the only game for which I've ever written fanfiction (based on the decorative graffiti on one of the sets). It's been nice to get back into that game, I love the atmosphere and the panic-music when the zombies attack.
Last but not least, I have joined the gajillion people playing Pokémon GO. Full disclosure, I have never been all that into Pokémon, but it was so much fun to see all my friends getting excited on Twitter (it's been out for a few weeks in the U.S. already, and a few Canadians "cheated" and got early copies), so I decided to give it a shot. It became available in Canada yesterday, so I downloaded the app, and then took the dog for a walk long after the sun went down and temperatures were manageable.
The net result? It's pretty much just as fun as everyone has been saying it is. I tracked down Pokéstops (local landmarks where you can get new Pokéballs, which in turn allow you to catch new Pokémon), caught a bunch of Pokémon, and most fun of all got to meet about a dozen of the neighbourhood teens, all of whom were positively thrilled to find a n00b player. They gave me lots of tips and tricks for the game, showed me how various bits of the app worked, and seemed pretty pleased to have a Grown Up™ defer to their knowledge and experience. There's a good bunch in this neighbourhood, and it was fun to hang out with them for a while.
That concludes Phnee's Adventures In Electronic Gaming for now. There's been a lot of it, as you can see, as it's my main form of escapism at the moment. I've watched a fair bit of Netflix, too, but that'll wait for another post. For now, the plan is to continue as I've been, and to try to balance things a bit more toward recovery rather than total escape from reality. I do plan on going to see the new Ghostbusters movie, though.
S. and I have also been co-oping on Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. We'd already played through once together, and so we picked a different set of characters to play and are playing through again. This time I'm playing CL4P-TR4P, and it is turning out hilariously. We often play just to see what wacky new antics the game will throw at us when I use his "special skill." It's invariably entertaining, sometimes useful, sometimes utterly disastrous. Last time we played, it ended up giving me a rubber duck float ring that made my character bounce around crazily for 30 seconds. Hysterical.
Then there's Don't Starve, and Don't Starve Together. I tend to play DS when I kind of want to turn off my brain and do something entertaining but not mentally very taxing. I love the overall feel of the game, the Tim Burton and DST, however, is a co-op game which I've been playing with S. (she's my crack dealer, basically), but also with several other Twitter friends. (I hang out a LOT on Twitter. If that's your jam, feel free to hit me up! My username on there is ratherastory)
I've also rejoined
fearsclave online with two other friends for a few nail-biting rounds of Left4Dead, which had long ago been my very first introduction to FPS. L4D also has the dubious distinction of being the only game for which I've ever written fanfiction (based on the decorative graffiti on one of the sets). It's been nice to get back into that game, I love the atmosphere and the panic-music when the zombies attack.Last but not least, I have joined the gajillion people playing Pokémon GO. Full disclosure, I have never been all that into Pokémon, but it was so much fun to see all my friends getting excited on Twitter (it's been out for a few weeks in the U.S. already, and a few Canadians "cheated" and got early copies), so I decided to give it a shot. It became available in Canada yesterday, so I downloaded the app, and then took the dog for a walk long after the sun went down and temperatures were manageable.
The net result? It's pretty much just as fun as everyone has been saying it is. I tracked down Pokéstops (local landmarks where you can get new Pokéballs, which in turn allow you to catch new Pokémon), caught a bunch of Pokémon, and most fun of all got to meet about a dozen of the neighbourhood teens, all of whom were positively thrilled to find a n00b player. They gave me lots of tips and tricks for the game, showed me how various bits of the app worked, and seemed pretty pleased to have a Grown Up™ defer to their knowledge and experience. There's a good bunch in this neighbourhood, and it was fun to hang out with them for a while.
That concludes Phnee's Adventures In Electronic Gaming for now. There's been a lot of it, as you can see, as it's my main form of escapism at the moment. I've watched a fair bit of Netflix, too, but that'll wait for another post. For now, the plan is to continue as I've been, and to try to balance things a bit more toward recovery rather than total escape from reality. I do plan on going to see the new Ghostbusters movie, though.
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Date: 2016-07-19 01:43 pm (UTC)Second, we'd love to get together again when you're up to it. :) We're headed out of town tomorrow, but we'll be back Saturday. Maybe next week?
Take care of you, and take the time you need to heal. *hugs*