Liralen's Adventures Through Life

I think the most frustrating thing about trying to heal from overuse problems is that the list of things that I can't do basically makes up most of the "therapy". Given that most of my life has to do with what I can do, not with what I can't, it puts the focus on the wrong thing for me. And sometimes things affect the central condition that had nothing to do with video games. So, I have a better understanding of what exactly is happening, but that doesn't make it any better. I seem to have a combination of tendinitis issues in the left wrist and hand (and forearm and elbow and shoulder (top, back, and front)) along with a cervical curvature problem in my neck that is pinching the nerve bundle that goes to my entire left arm. When the narrowing in my neck gets bad, my entire left arm hurts. This also means, however, that when I ice my neck most of the pain in my left arm goes away. Except, of course, the pain that is actually due to the tendinitis. All of this ...

The hard part about resurrection is having to die first. I seem to be in the that Easter frame of mind, and my body has taken matters into its own hands. Around March 10 my left arm felt like it was on fire from my fingertips all the way to my neck, and I stopped playing all my video games. The week before I had been playing frequently, on the order of 6 to 8 hours for many of the days. There were just so many people I wanted to play with, so I was playing with the European guys in the morning, some of the night shift guys in the afternoon before they went to work, and then with Jet and his friends in the evening. Sometimes, if I was feeling restless, I would hang out with the late-night crew as well. I would take stretch breaks between matches with people, and I usually took the weekends off, other than when Jet wanted to play. Yes, that is a lot more hours than I have played for quite some time. But on the most part, I thought I felt good. I was icing and staying on top of the te...

One of those myths of competitive gaming is that you have to be "good enough" to play competitively. Sure... it's scary and it feels crazy to try out for a team if you think you're terrible at the game, and it's important to try out for a position that you really enjoy playing; but the secret is that you don't have to be that good. What you have to be is willing to get better. That's not a small thing. You have to be willing to dedicate the time and effort, be willing to destroy your self-perception about how "good" you are at the game, and be willing to do whatever it takes to learn how to be better at the game with your team. And no matter how good you get, you have to be willing to try and do your best to get even better. Especially at the top tiers. You have to be willing to destroy what you thought you knew, get creative, and get even better. And you will get better. Playing against others who are dedicated to being good gets you ...

I’m adrift, still. Still haven’t found a direction and a reason or a passion or a thing that I have to go out and do. And I’ve been wandering for a while, and I realized, today, that it was all right. A friend of mine, someone whom I’ve admired and interacted with with great enjoyment had a son who suicided in the last month, leaving behind a baby son, a wife, his friends, his parents, and all who knew him in sorrow. He did it violently, too, and it’s scarred a great number of people who loved him very much. And I realized that as much as I’m without direction, rudderless, I also don’t have a huge hole in the bottom of my boat, either. I have a sail and the sun and plenty of provisions and water and a crew who is waiting in the wings, understanding in some way that I really just need some doldrums for a while, a rest that will actually heal the deep tiredness from the last few voyages that were fraught with dangers, storms, lost souls, ...

One of those odd things, that I've been wanting to write about for some time, has been about gender boundaries. About the spaces where I've been walking that seem exclusive to one gender or the other. And I'm talking about a 100 to 1 ratio, on the most part. In fanfiction nearly everyone involved was female, or they were males who were transgender, they'd been born female and were moving toward what they felt was their true nature. The odd thing there, for me, was that they were firmly embedded in an all-female community and had few if no inclinations to move away from it. They might have to deal with everyday life as a male, but their online social life was nearly completely with women. Gamers are nearly all male. I know of three or four women who play, but they're few and far between, and I know more transgender females than I do ones that were born female. And, just like the transgenders in fanfiction, they're happier staying in the community that they ...

I spent nearly fourteen hours on ramen broth, yesterday. *laughs* I should have taken a picture or three, but it's a slow process. Momofuku Noodle Bar has a cookbook out that details it's exacting process for making ramen broth, and I follow all the bits but the bacon and I use bonito shavings instead of bacon. I also probably skim a little more fat off the broth than they do, but it's all to the good, and I don't put any salt in it so that when we eat it with our noodles, we add it then. I have a smoked salt that we love in it, along with the usual mirin, soy, and, when I have an extra chicken carcass leftover from making fried chicken or whatever, we do get tare of a sort. I needed the long slow process to get through more profile, and through a bunch of Rainbow 6 videos teaching me about how to learn maps and how to flank and how to play a more vertical game on the various maps. That's one of those things about Rainbow is that a lot of the floor can not ...

I'm on a search committee for our church and I basically can't talk about much about who we're talking with or some of what we're doing, but the basic idea is to find a pastor for our church and to present our church to pastors so that they can figure out if they'd like to serve us. And we can't talk about them, at all, because they might be working or doing things with their church and no one knows, yet, that they're looking, as that's just how it's done. But while going through all the profile, someone was incredulous about the number of introverts there were as candidates, and I thought about it a lot. You want an introvert because of the nature of confidentiality, you want someone who will think about every word they say and cannot slip about things that they shouldn't be talking about. Besides, introverts listen very very well; but the other searchers were right about the fact that pastors do have to deal with people, and lots of people ...