David's Boring Blog

 I didn't get fat all at one time. In fact, it was such a gradual process that I barely realized it was happening. I really would love to blame it (fully) on my glands or one really epic trip to the buffet. A few years ago I had lost my gut and that didn't happen overnight either. I did not turn into a gym rat. I didn't make big sweeping changes. I held firm to a few simple things and did them every single day.  The universe has been talking to me about consistency for a minute. I have not been listening. I have always loved telling the story about the time I weighed nearly 450 pounds and I jumped on the treadmill and decided that I was going to walk five miles or die trying. I huffed. I puffed. I made it to five miles eventually.   I defined that as my transformative moment. It wasn't. I was just recognizing the start of a bigger thing. I rarely ever talk about walking for an hour every day after without fail for the better part of a year. Literally, I skipped taking d

 I enjoy trying new things. Some time ago I wrote about discovering Moleskine Daily Planners. Back in the early 2000s this was a surprising innovation. I didn't have need of a date book exactly. Instead I used the daily pages to keep my journal entries in chronological order. Undated journals get the same usage as the dated planner. The saving grace of the dated pages is that I don't forget to put the date on them.  This has worked for me for over twenty years. I used Moleskine Daily Planners to jot down passwords as they changed. I wrote down contact information for people. I made lists. I wrote entries. I filled up book after book and prided myself on them.  Then I realized what a massive vulnerability these journals were. I had the experience of someone snooping very thoroughly through my things. I began adding passwords to all of my devices. Then I realized those passwords weren't stopping the snooping. With dawning horror I realized that I had an entire shelf full of d

 My great grandmother had a stroke when I was a little boy. I didn’t really know her before the stroke had happened. I spent quite a bit of time with her after when she moved in with my grandmother. I loved my grandmother a great deal. Still do though she passed away nearly 28 years ago. Her Mom was a pretty neat lady both before and after the stroke. What I remember most about her was that she loved to be contrary and argue with me.  I absolutely ate that up when I was a kid. I couldn’t tell you what we argued about specifically these days. I feel like it was mundane nonsense like why the grass is green or why the sky is blue. She enjoyed getting the better of me. It never felt mean spirited or ugly. She absolutely shaped me with those little arguments. I got to be a contrarian who loved to fuss, debate, and argue.  These days you cannot get me to engage in debate or an argument. Several years ago I got to a place that trying to argue about anything just felt like wasted energy. I qui

 I was never a fan of slasher flicks. I can do without Friday the 13th, Halloween,  or Nightmare on Elm Street. There are exceptions of course. I don't hate the Scream  franchise. The original Evil Dead trilogy was pretty neat though I admit that is mostly because I enjoy Bruce Campbell. Most of the time I am just not into "scary" movies unless it is a creature flick.  Creature features are a pretty broad category. What got me thinking about it was finally sitting down and watching The Meg. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie though it is little surprise since there are so many of my favorite actors in it. I mean Jason Statham is obvious, but I really enjoy Rainn Wilson, Page Kennedy, Ruby Rose, Masi Oka, Robert Taylor, and Cliff Curtis. The visuals in the movie were excellent.  I started thinking about the fact that I really love creature feature movies. I cannot get enough dinosaurs from Jurassic Park . I jump for Godzilla, King Kong, and Pacific Rim movies. Even Cocaine Be

 About a month ago now I killed my entire D&D party. It felt like a moment of failure. I saw the moment when the group stopped having fun. Like literally I looked around the table and saw that everyone had a look of horror on their faces.  Evoking emotion is a good thing. Watching a train wreck unfold that wasn’t the result of a player saying yes in response to me asking,” Are you really sure that is what you want to do,” is a lot worse.  I haven’t run a game since. I wasn’t emotionally up to it on my birthday weekend. Mother’s Day was two weeks later. I was glad of the excuse to not run. I am avoiding the table a bit. Part of that is that party wipe was a failure on my part. I should have pivoted the encounter. Yes, this is me ruminating on a failure.  It is an interesting time to be a gamer who loves role play. Paizo is actually cutting officially away from the Dungeons and Dragons roots that birthed it with a remastered release of Pathfinder 2E. I am in for the change. I have be

 I avoid thinking about Mother's Day. I have since the 2018 when Mom passed away. This year I decided that I had my head wrapped around it wrong. Yes, I am sad that my Mom isn't here to be celebrated. Still, she deserves to have her memory honored. I had a really amazing Mom, and the last thing she would want for me is to have me sitting around feeling sorry for myself.  I opted for a few ways to honor my Mom. One of her favorite meals was chicken alfredo. I wasn't a huge fan of it. I don't like white sauces as much as I do red sauce. I am just a spaghetti sort of guy. It is probably funny then that I have mastered my own blend of Chicken Alfredo. Ironically, my least favorite part of the dish is the chicken.  This is the simplest dish to make up. Brown the chicken. Add the Kielbasa. Apply a liberal amount of Cajun Seasoning. Add cream. Bring to a boil. Add parmesan cheese and noodles. Stir a bit. Serve. It is amazing. The funny part is that I use "Slap Ya Momma,&q

 I love more than a few people than face mental health struggles. In doing the mental inventory of writing the last sentence I really should amend that to all the people I love have mental health struggles. Maybe I am the common denominator, or much more likely  mental health struggles should be an understood part of the human condition. I believe we all face depression, stress, anxiety, and a laundry list of other things throughout the course of our lives.  I know that I have. If it isn't absolutely obvious from my blog, I struggle with depression, anxiety, and stress. I have never felt compelled to seek a diagnosis mostly because I don't want to self apply a label that will impact the way I look at myself.  At various times in my life I have been in therapy, taken anti-depressants, taken anti-anxiety medication, and read an absolute metric ton of self-help books.  When I first went to college back in the day I considered psychology as a major. When I spoke to an advisor they

 I have come to believe in quite a few superstitions over the course of my life. I believe the full moon brings about crazy or lunatic (lunar, lunatic, get it?) behavior. I don't believe in giving a blade as a gift unless you are willing to risk the severance of the relationship. I believe strange things happen on Friday the 13th which is when I will buy lottery tickets. I am starting to believe that there is something to this whole Mercury being in retrograde thing because the past two weeks have felt as if strange things are afoot at the Circle K.  I rarely stay stressed, anxious, or in a bad mood. About a week before my birthday I started feel very off. My anxiety skyrocketed. I didn't really want to celebrate my birthday. In fact, I wanted to run and hide for that whole weekend. That wasn't an option, and I am glad of that because the day came off pretty well.  Plenty of things have been off. I have friends that are sensitive to shifts in the collective unconscious like

2023 has been a year of struggles. It is no 2018 full of catastrophe and trauma *knocks on wood*, but I have not been on my game for the majority of the year. The blessing of this is that I have been able to address and overcome the struggles as they happened. There have been plans put into motion to get back to "normal," whatever that is.  One of the things I realized that I haven't been doing as a result is digging in to my own growth and personal development. That "me" time has been shoved aside for damage control and addressing problems. Sometimes you thrive. Sometimes you survive.  To combat this I decided to make personal growth more accessible. It is a lesson I took from Atomic Habits  by James Clear. I haven't had the motivation to sit down and invest a chapter per day into a book on growth. To make that easier I bought The Maxwell Daily Reader  by John C. Maxwell. I may not feel up to investing a chapter a day in myself, but I can read a single page