Not Dead Yet – The Inactivity Report

• Consoles
• Musings

• Horizon Zero Dawn
• The Last Of Us

I was trying yet again to think of something interesting to write, when I saw Roger talking about Blaugust this morning, which led me to Gevlon talking about Blaugust, where I found out that I’m no longer an active blogger.

I mean, sure, I haven’t posted in a week, whereas I normally try to post something once or twice a week. But man, talk about a tough room.

Also I’m a little puzzled by his methodology. He reported I posted 5 times since Blaugust. I just counted 21, not including this one. Even if we limit it to game-only posts, I count 10. I can only assume he meant 5 posts in October, ignoring September, though he didn’t say that. (And besides I posted 6 times in October before now.)

The main thing that happened during this long gulf of silence that was my inactivity, a period so long I might as well be dead I guess, the eternal span of one full week-oh god! A full week without a blog post! Such a tragedy! I’m so ashamed I’ve fallen short of the lofty realm of the greats, just out of reach of that brass ring where I could rake in millions of dollars of cold hard cash from the lucrative blogging circuit, if only I’d tried just a little harder-the main thing is I hurt my back, yet again.

Last Thursday tropical storm Michael came through, and on that day, I felt my back “go,” which is a very familiar but indistinct feeling that is hard to describe, yet very much a certainty when it happens. I was sitting in my desk chair in front of my PC about noon when I suddenly felt that old familiar discomfort running from my neck down through my right shoulder blade. It isn’t even necessarily “pain”-it’s more of a weakness or spasming or tightness in the muscles, and suddenly turning my head or even holding it up is not terribly easy, and sitting is uncomfortable, and standing is uncomfortable, and lying down is uncomfortable, and pretty much everything is uncomfortable.

So while the tropical storm winds were flinging sticks and leaves into my house making scary crashing noises in the night, I was pounding down ibuprofen and hoping I wouldn’t overdose or have to deal with any sudden storm emergencies. Fortunately, the entire storm passed by in about three hours, the fastest tropical storm I’ve ever seen, and I didn’t experience any damage. (A house for sale up the street had a pair of small trees fall on their white picket fence, though.)

Normally my back returns to a semblance of normalcy in a day or two, but as I write this a week later I’m still not quite 100% yet. During the recovery time I basically can’t sit at my PC, because that chair has become a torture rack for my back. I have a bad habit of buying chairs that I think are great at first but turn out a year later to be the worst things imaginable. I’m not sure where to go from here with chairs. I think I might have no choice but to buy one of those thousand-dollar super ergonomic desk chairs of last resort. But I can’t quite wrap my mind around that concept, because what if it doesn’t work? What am I supposed to do then?

I didn’t really want to write about yet another physical ailment, because I feel like that’s pretty much all I’ve been talking about in 2018, the year my body apparently decided to fall completely apart. The point is that since I haven’t been at the PC in a week, so I haven’t played any PC games in a week either, which means there’s not much to write about there.

Lacking any PC activity, I started Horizon Zero Dawn on the PS4, which is a fun game. I can see why everyone likes it. I’ll probably write a post about it someday. I put Last of Us away, which will probably get another post someday. Great as the story might be, I got incredibly tired of having to sneak around through the zombies, and having to restart from the last checkpoint with every wrong turn, which happens a lot with me. I’m just don’t have the mental fortitude for stealth games.

Of course the big problem with playing PS4 games, going back to that whole body-falling-apart thing, is I can’t play more than an hour a day with my gimpy left thumb. Even that much causes an ache, so I’m trying to avoid PS4 games on consecutive days. I actually use my left index finger to work the left analog stick most of the time, outside of combat. I wish I could figure out how to clamp the controller onto a stand of some kind, so I don’t have to hold it up at all. Once you start playing with gimpy hands, it’s very easy to see how the game controller in general is just an awful design for an input device. I wish I had the means to make my own game controller.

Being confined to the living room chair much of the time, I’ve also watched a ton of Netflix shows in the past week, The Haunting of Hill House being the best dramatic one (it is much more of a family drama than a horror), and a million different Monty Python shows being the funniest ones. The only Python that isn’t on Netflix right now is the first movie, Holy Grail, and Meaning of Life, which happen to be the three movies I really wanted to see. I’ve never seen the first movie (yes I know it’s the same as Flying Circus, but it’s important to compare and contrast every word, gesture, and inflection of every version of every sketch they’ve ever done), I think I’ve only seen Meaning of Life once in somebody’s basement when I was like 14, and I haven’t seen Holy Grail for about 10 years. (I think I’ve only watched the entire thing from start to finish once, otherwise I’ve seen the same clips that are always referenced over and over again about a bazillion times.)

I’m also getting ready for NaNoWriMo next month, which is going to be a plain old sword and sorcery adventure. Except with a twist! Which, um, I haven’t thought of yet. I wrote down a bunch of scene ideas on note cards for the first time ever. (Usually I just type notes into a document on a computer.) I also started writing new material for last year’s NaNoWriMo manuscript that I’ve been trying and failing to finish all year.

Oh and I stopped my cat from killing a mouse outside last night.

So now you can see why I haven’t been posting anything, because when I force myself to write a post when there’s nothing to talk about, you get a post like this one.

UPDATE: Just for the record, I wasn’t particularly upset about Gevlon’s post, I just thought it was funny, and a good way to start a post about basically nothing.