A little problem

It's a good problem, honest. I'll get to it in a bit.

Incidentally, it's probably related to me not posting much ... because I'm happily addicted to one of those games again ... I definitely should be posting another Alphabet post soon so I can finish that series before the next birthday.

Perhaps it's a little bit of wanting to hide from the world a bit, with certain exceptions like a very enjoyable Tuesday evening out. What has been happening lately ?

Over here we have political turmoil with our various leadership parties. Let's see :
Conservatives have been having a wrecking ball in the shape of Michael Gove who's constants are incompetence, idiocy and a tendency to stab people in the back. Or the front. That leadership contest ended much quicker than anticipated with Theresa May taking over from Cameron.

Oh there has been the excitement? of a cabinet shuffle that has seen some hated people kicked out (Gove, Osborne), some curiously incompetent people left in (Hunt) and encouraging signs from a few who will hopefully rebuild the country again after the failure of the austerity economy. Austerity doesn't solve anything, it just has things limping along on life support until they die of neglect.

Labour has been far more exciting. There are three levels of that party. There is the leader Jeremy Corbyn and his close circle. He's a throwback to the socialist Labourism, proper Red stuff, of the last century. Bit obsolete now but some of it has its place. The country is built on the work of the average people, not the elitist jerks who constantly break things. You have the middle level, or the Parliamentary Party or Red Conservatives, who all hate Corbyn and want him out. Then you have the actual party level, where the National Executive is looking to prevent them from voting Corbyn in again.

Labour will give us some amusement over the next few weeks in the manner of "Their people follow them out of curiosity". As in, how are they next going to trip up over themselves. Personally, not as a Labourite but as an observer of them, I think Corbyn will be reelected and this should be followed by a few hundred MP deselection procedures as the Parliamentary Party is totally out of step with what the general party wants.

Scotland have the SNP which enjoys almost total majority up there. They're happy to set the political agenda up there and the people are very happy to be led around by them.

Oh and then there are the also rans of GB politics like the now obsolete UKIP (who have no objectives now Brexit is happening) and the almost equally obsolete Liberal party who have fallen so far from their great heights into utter obscurity due to failing to honour any of their promises when they were in coalition government.

Uhoh - this wasn't supposed to be about politics. Oops.

I guess that shows that another constant of news is that whatever feels closest to you is what you concentrate on. So with me, my focus has been withdrawing to how I'm getting on. My condition has taken a few big backward steps but I'm encouraged that the little forward steps have almost caught that up again. I really need to catch up on rest though as the lack of sleep is taking a nasty toll.

Then you have the unbelievable events of Nice and equally bizarre notion of a military coup in a country like Turkey. Thoughts are with the innocent bystanders who wanted to enjoy those key national Bastille Day celebrations in Nice or who wanted to have a little peace and leaders they voted in.

Me ?

My attention is on the cricket at the moment. Woo hoo ! England just took a much needed wicket. The England vs Pakistan game at Lords is shaping up to be one of those great games. There have been a few excellent performances by the batsmen but it's a game where the bowlers have a chance. So instead of the draw being the most likely result, this one could go either way.

Come on England.

I have a cricket based post coming up actually, just need to take the pictures that it will depend on. It'll be ... batty :-).

I'm also half watching the gaming videos again (should read the various magazines I have stacked up). It's a game called Stellaris at the moment, which is the problem I mentioned ...

It's a great game !!! And I want to be continually playing it because it is so good.

The problem is one of posture. I need to clear off my cluttered desk and move the monitor forward. It's all the way back at the back of my desk, which means I'm leaning forward when playing the games.

This is having nasty effects on my shoulder and neck ... Oops.

I'm going to try avoiding the temptation of starting off another game in it today while ...

Watching the cricket;
Watching the gaming videos;
Trying to leave my outsides alone so they heal;
Having a generally chilled out time so I can regain some energy.

The gaming videos are mostly on games like Stellaris but another two have caught my attention :

Factorio - you crash land on a planet and have to build up a complex industrial operation to escape. Looks better than it sounds ! Although I don't think I'll be buying this one. The soundtrack is very chilled out though.
Hearts of Iron IV - This is a World War 2 grand strategy game where you can easily go down alternate history routes like Fascist Britain, Communist France, variations like that. Very curious and I've been mostly* enjoying the videos.

*(they can descend into boring setup instead of invasion action).

One curious thing with the gaming videos though, I'll watch a Stellaris video and I'll think I'll be able to do things better than the player. Strategic decisions, things like that. But the gaming videos aren't about that, they're about enjoying the personality of the person making the video. And that's changed for me lately ...

People I like more : Aavak, EnterElysium, Totalbiscuit as always, Heychrissa streaming, Scott Manley when he does an interesting video (they're getting rarer)
People I have very little time for now : pretty much all of Yogscast. Their emphasis changed around Xmas when they started firing some of the old guard. Totally uninteresting now and with people like Kim, whereas I used to watch all she made, not any more. Yawn and actually quite annoying. But she's still better than most of Yogscast.

Back to stuff to be enjoyed ?

Yep. If you find yourself being rather bored by something you were interested in before, change. Don't keep beating your head against the wall. It isn't fun !

Find fun stuff to do instead. It tends to be more fulfilling and it brings the smiles.

Smiles are very important.