I like Dark Souls, I just don’t have the fortitude to learn how to play it.  Quite simply, my days are extraordinarily draining of late.  After work (where I’m doing 5 jobs for another 2 weeks), eating, playing and putting the kids to bed, then exercise, I have very little brain juice left.  Dark Souls requires a lot from the player and I just do not have that to give right now.  Maybe in a month or so.

Hack n Slash

That said, I’ve gone back to some ARPG staples.  D3 is off the list since I played the crap out of season 4, and season 5 isn’t really a season.  Path of Exile is on the list to go back to, but I wanted to give Grim Dawn another shot.  One of those few “kickstarter-like” projects that actually released something of quality.  I picked it up before the full launch and there have been some QoL/balance tweaks since.  I like the build diversity without the complexity of PoE.  Plus the game isn’t as dark, so I can see what the heck is going on.

Tap Tap FarAway Kingdom

Version 2 was released.  I wrote some more about it.  The long tail was (getting to floor 3000) was put in the realm of achievable with the most recent patch.  Before the path, it was about a day’s worth of effort to get to 2700.  Now I can get it done in an hour.  I find the game strikes the right balance between strategy, gameplay, passive play and reward.  Plus it’s the only tapping game that doesn’t make my battery drain within an hour.

Exermecise

Still running Strong Lifts, though I’ve modified it slightly to include some ICF accessories.  My problem with SL is that it is too short and lacks isolation.  I fully realize that as a novice lifter, compounds are required for foundation work, but there are specific items I need to have in the program.  ICF is too long, somewhere between 60 and 120 minutes, depending on how you get your supersets integrated.  I do not have anywhere close to that amount of time – that program is for people who are dedicated and working out is their primary hobby.

So a small modification with a couple accessories is what I’m doing now.  The linear progress is a good feeling and I’ve reached the point where there’s some decent effort involved in the movements.  I had opted to take a low starting weight in order to focus on form for the first few weeks.  That had be plateau at a given weight.  Moving into the heavier stuff has caused the numbers on the scale to drop consistently.  I’m just a few shy of the target weight, so a few more weeks of cutting before maintenance begins.

It is surreal the effect of working out has on my stress levels.  All the above may be gobbledygook to some, but the net effect is that pushing and pulling heavy things unleashes a torrent of hormones that drastically improve my mood.  I have missed this tremendously.