As most of you know, switching interests is just something I do. Kinda sucks…but I can’t imagine myself settling for the same thing for too long…I go nuts.

I’ve tried for the longest time to fight it. It was one of the reasons I joined the Navy…to have some sort of uniform set of beliefs…to live a life of a singular purpose. It didn’t turn out quite the way I expected it to. My depression was bad, and my anxiety went through the roof as the times I tried to get into gaming, art, or writing…the pressures of qualifactions…the fear of having Chief walk in and yell at me for enjoying a hobby was just simply too much to handle. I didn’t enjoy qualifying in stuff because it didn’t interest me, and the hopes of a creative life was what pushed me through…if only just barely. The fear of having that taken away from me was a prominent stress, as well as mundane repetitive motions that still linger feelings today. If someone orders me to clean the workshop, for example…it triggers an anxiety (PTSD?) attack that brings back emotions from the Navy. Yet if I do certain tasks on my own free will, I have no problem at all.

Probably that’s why I’m so happy at work. The flexibility is what drives me to succeeding in what I do. Finding new solutions to difficult problems is what I’ve enjoyed even when I was a kid trying to find a way to create a makeshift antenna out of a hangar to get better TV reception (when my dad would get cable cut off). I’d look inside a VCR and examine the inner workings of it. I’d open up a tape recorder and figure out what makes it spin. As a teen I would tinker with my parents computer and find out how to make it run faster…how to overclock it…how to make the old CRT monitor work when it started flickering (by flipping it upside down). How to make websites, how to create CSS scripts, create IRC macros and scripts, how to make graphics, how to create art…and so forth.

But that’s that. What is new?

I’m taking flight sims for a break for now. X-Plane is going through a beta period for a new 10.50 patch. The first few patch revisions so far have crashed the sim, prevented plugins from working, and have major issues. I figured it was a good time to take a break and wait it out instead of spending hours waiting for an update to fix the sim.

Taking a break from sims was in good timing. The Steam sale started last week. It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed a good game and I picked up a few games, as well as catching up with some old ones.

One of the biggest surprises was Doom. Despite NVidia’s app suggesting I turn all settings to minimum, I decided to keep the game as it was, and still enjoy an average 45 fps. I’ve been enjoying Elder Scrolls Online a lot…the exploration is a huge aspect…and it gets rid of the repetitive quests of “Kill 12 monsters”, “Find 15 bails of wheat”, etc.

Also getting back to Crusader Kings II/Europa Universalis. I’ve been waiting for a sale to catch up on all the new DLC. Now that it’s finally here I can enjoy the ahistorical recreations of the Medieval and Renaissance periods. I’m at the same time playing through some of the Total War games to get a more close-up perspective on the battles and action.

As with hardware, I added a new 1TB SSD for gaming specifically. Filling up my primary HDD with games wasn’t something I was willing to do…too many flashbacks of blue screens and losing all my games, saves, and data from a nasty hard drive crash.

I’ve also been tinkering with ordering a GTX 1070 or 1080. Having the most powerful video card in the market creates security for the next few years in having maximum performance for all my games; especially X-Plane, Star Citizen, or whatever the next big-budget video game comes out.

It was frustrating, I originally was lucky to order the GTX 1080 but the wait time was very frustrating. At least “2 weeks”, then a week later checking on the status it still said “2 weeks”. I opted for the GTX 1070 but ran into the same issue. Yesterday decided to check again and finally got an order for the GTX 1080. It’s shipping right now!

Despite the high performance I’ll be getting, I’m sitting away playing Nekopara. It’s some weird cat-game I found on the Steam sale. You are the “master” of these two humanoid cat-like creatures and there’s a lot of strange suggestive text. I’m strangely entertained by it?

Which brings me to my next topic: Japanese gaming.

It’s been a few months since my Japanese phase. I picked up Tokyo Mirage Session for the Wii U  and Digimon Story Cybersluth for the PS4. I’ve played a couple hours of Tokyo Mirage yesterday and I’m enjoying the similarities from the Persona series. I’d love to get into Digimon but my knowledge from the old series is sketchy at best…although I did have a cool Tamigotchi-like toy I got as a kid. At the time the series started, I felt it was a lame Pokemon rip-off. But it has grown into something more…

I’ve gotten back into Japanese studies again. No particular reason, probably to better understand and read a lot of the text. Despite my interests in German or French or whatever…I find Japanese more interesting so I’m going to go with that.

Hopefully sometime in the future I can get back into programming. Along with many other interests, there must be a “Reason” to get back into it. I’m not quite ready to start off in some new direction yet, and I’d feel like I’d be wasting my time. Similar with drawing.

I have the tools to get back into my interests, and that’s very important.

That’s about it for now…some good thoughts for this month.