It’s about time I post an update on my 2020 goals.
MAGFest was cool. Disney World was pretty cool as usual.
I haven’t been updating this site as much as I think I should, but I figure a little is better than none.
I haven’t been super diligent with my diet and exercise for a couple reasons:
- The mother of one of my housemates visited with us for nearly a month, and she spoiled us with lots of tasty breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. Part of my diet strategy is to skip breakfast, so the gravy and biscuits, French toast, etc. in the morning didn’t help that, but were most appreciated.
- I haven’t been exercising for the past month or so. I stopped when the housemate’s mother arrived because I prefer to use the treadmill in my underwear and didn’t want to subject her to that. Also I managed to injure my right foot at Disney World from all the walking I did in poor fitting shoes.
Surprisingly, despite my setbacks, when I stepped on the scale this morning my weight was down 11 pounds from the beginning of the year, putting me more than halfway to my old normal weight. What’s interesting is that when I entered the weight into the health app on my phone, I saw that not only is this the lowest weight I’ve recorded so far this year, but it is also lower than my weight was at the beginning of 2019. I suppose I’ve been carrying around extra padding for longer than I realized.
I think I will be ready to get back on the treadmill starting next week. My foot throbbed for weeks even with just minor amounts of walking. I think I’m at a point where I can start testing its limits again. I don’t know when I am going to start jogging, but it definitely won’t be soon. Perhaps April. That should still give me enough time to train for the half-marathon at the end of the year.
I have been doing a great job avoiding sugar, for the most part. Like my previous sugar ban, I make exceptions for breakfast (thought I rarely have it) and alcohol (once a month or less anymore), and I also allow myself to go sugar crazy when I’m at a Disney park. This time, I’ve raised my target maximum daily sugar intake to 25g instead of 15g, which makes food tracking much less tedious and opens more flexibility, and I also allow myself to eat fruit and basically ignore the sugar it contains if it’s a good source of fiber (therefore fruit juices and certain fruits like grapes do not qualify).
I am effectively finished playing Final Fantasy XIV, but I’m not done with the game yet. I achieved all the PlayStation trophies a month ago, leveled all of my jobs to satisfactory levels, collected all the mounts and minions I want, and completed the Shadowbringers Main Scenario Quest line. It’s interesting; I haven’t needed to wean myself off of the game at all. I went from playing everyday, achieving all of my goals, and now I basically have no interest in it. I haven’t logged in in days, go days between logging in, and I don’t think about the game or miss it.
I don’t have anything to do in the game that is not work for the tribute webpage that I want to build. Right now, that means watching all the cutscenes from the story to decide which ones I want to include in a video montage of my character. That’s taking me much longer than I thought it would. I still haven’t finished watching through the pre-Heavensward content. Next, I want to rip my model from the game. I bought a cheap copy of the PC version off eBay: $7 and it even includes an extra 30 day subscription, so buying it actually saved me a few dollars.
I started a new hobby: collecting physical copies of shmups on Nintendo Switch. I had a couple before, but now I have more than half of the titles that have been released for the system. I also just ordered a copy of DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou for Xbox 360. I didn’t realize how rare the arcade PCB is in the wild (sells for $10,000+ these days), the Xbox 360 release is getting more and more uncommon, and there’s no guarantee that CAVE will ever port the game again. Better to get it now before it’s possibly gone for good.
I haven’t touched ZBrush or Blender yet. I watch a lot of YouTube videos on both and browse their subreddits, but I haven’t committed to either yet. My plan was to wait to start trying them out until I wrapped up FFXIV.
Last thing: I’m finally getting back into my arcade projects. I wonder how long I’ll stay interested this time.