true life: i have an addictive personality

yikes - almost sounds click-baity lol

Good evenin’ to ya friends.

Over the last week, i’ve just been getting back into the groove of returning to the regular 5 day work life. The holidays were so nice, having SO MUCH time off. Yet, i feel like.. what did I even do?

I journal often, so i know that i read a shit ton to meet my 2021 goal of 10 books, i spent a lot of time with Kuma per usual, and i fucking got stuck playing games on my phone. Actually, it’s singular.. A game, not games lol

Friend, i don’t play games for this reason and i feel like every time i get sucked into downloading one of those video games ads, it’s game over. I lose a lot of my life just to try and conquer a game which virtually has no end. But in my mind, i think “well, if i get to a high enough level, i’ll quit”. This is no bueno and if you know me, man i get real grumpy if i don’t try to get shit done for the day. I do a lot of learning and research on stuff like photography, story telling and other things that I’m into. But no, this stupid game... i spent on average about 4-5 hours a day (how embarassing) just leveling up for no reason, just to level up. So after work, i would do nothing but.. open up Age of Origins Z on my phone and click everything to build my damn city. Yes, i got sucked into a youtube ad and download this damn game.

I know, an app game? why don’t you play big boy games like League or WOW. Well buddy, let me tell you something. A kid once told me once on one of them League newb bot games that “my computer was running on a hamster wheel” and i feel like that comment threw me into the shadow realm. I never logged back onto League after that game because i got burned so bad (or at least i felt a 13 yr old was picking on me). So i resort to mindless phone games with no chat rooms lol Since i’m old, i’ve learned growing up that I have a highly addictive personality. For a few years, it was alcohol. We probably didn’t hang out much if you didn’t want to grab a beer every other day with me. In college, i’d get the damn milk tea from lollicup every other day until i realized i developed a lactose sensitivity. And well shit, I’ve been vaping for about 8 years now. Maybe one day i’ll stop, maybe one day I wont lol But generally, if i really enjoyed something, i’d really just consume or do over and over again for a long time until I burned it out for myself.

When I used to work at this lab, my friend told me about this dumb gardening game and we both competed on seeing who can level up the fastest. I lost two weeks of my life obsessing over that game even after my friend gave up. After some time, like i did with this damn Age of Origins game, I realized.. man, maybe this is too much. I was spending ALL MY DAMN time playing the game and not doing anything else. I realized it this week, when I went to the park and Kuma kept bringing me tennis balls to play fetch. I’d throw the ball, kill some zombies, pause the game, and then throw the ball again. I was taking quality time away from the poor pups, just to claim my daily reward on that game. Ang SOBRA, huh?

In Tagalog, sobra means extra. You know, like damn why you acting all extra for? or the classic, “I’m not extra, you’re just basic” lol Sobrang Sobra, extra extra or.. super extra? It makes more sense in Tagalog. It’s like saying you’re so extra, get over it lol A slight exaggeration on my part and perhaps a little projection going on there, but it’s the jist. Does being extra have a connotation where it kind of sounds like overdramatic? lol

So while it has taken me 3 weeks to wake up and smell the flowers, I’ve finally deleted the game off my phone. Last week, i was trying to practice this “self control” where i’ve set up my phone the same way I’ve set up Instagram - to only allow an hour of screen time with the app and shut it out otherwise. For the first few days, i was doing well, but after some time i just fuck it and over rode the screen time restriction, like who am i? So after a while, I was like man i’m already a week late to this blog, if i didn’t delete it now I would have skipped this entry and.. I didn’t want to do all that. So now that the game is deleted, I am now sleeping at a reasonable hour (instead of sleeping at 2-3am trying to figure out how to max out my recruits and kill the max amount of zombies to get a perfect skill score on the newb level lol) and I have not lost my mind staring at my to-do list. Now i’m back back to my regular schedule, i’ve FINALLY barely sent out my holiday cards and it is such a relief.

Because ..

ITS almost KUMAS BIRTHDAY! This big ol’ baby is two years old. We got him when he was a few weeks old and we used to guess that his birthday was Jan 1st or the 2nd. People i’ve met at the dog park tell me they set their dogs birthdays to the day they homed them. I had no idea.

On January 26, 2019, I came back from my trip to Seattle with a random person I met in Vegas. I walked in and saw the cutest little ball of fluff and fell in love. My best friend is half German Shepherd and half Husky. He is the first dog i’ve really taken full responsibility of and I spend at least two hours a day with him unless i’m out of town. He is my better half and my life has changed dramatically since I’ve met him. So since i’m late and tomorrow is the day, Happy Early Birthday Sir Kuma Bean Briones. While you are the biggest pain in my ass, I didn’t realize who I fully was until you arrived. You are the light of my whole damn life and no stupid phone game app thing will ever defeat that.

I could not stop crying looking at all the old videos and photos i have of this fool. I mean just look at the mug on that big ol’ ball of fluff T_T

It’s sombrang cute.

i love you guys, talk to ya’ll next week.

<3