We’re now halfway through 2020, so it’s time for an update. Holy hell, things have been wild this year.
Coronavirus has killed over 100,000 Americans so far (over 380,000 people worldwide) and that fact doesn’t seem to faze anyone. I’ve been working from home for the past three months. My only trips to the world outside of my house have been riding in a car, but not getting out of it, to pick up carryout food from restaurants. In hindsight, our trip to Disney World this year was timed perfectly.
The pandemic isn’t over, but people seem to have forgotten about it as states have loosened their shutdowns. People don’t seem to realize that states opening back up don’t mean that it’s safe to be around other people again, just that hospitals will probably not get overwhelmed by new cases at this point. We won’t be safe again until we naturally develop herd immunity or we artificially produce a vaccine, whichever comes first.
On top of that, protests are flaring across the country in outrage at police violence against people of color. A power-tripping white officer needlessly killed an unarmed black man (again). These protests are totally justified and necessary if we are to ever see justice and equality, especially for black Americans, but the timing of them is so terrible. The virus does not care about race, or morality, or justice, and I fear that we are going to see a massive surge in coronavirus deaths with so many people out in the streets right now.
I haven’t played Final Fantasy XIV in months. The last time I was in the game was the first time I tried it on PC. I don’t understand how to play with a mouse and keyboard at all. I walked around Limsa Lominsa a little bit and just logged out. I wrote a large chunk of the draft for my FFXIV memorial page, but I haven’t finished it, and haven’t been interested in getting back to it. Maybe I won’t make that page after all.
Instead of FFXIV, I’ve been watching anime and playing other games. Lots of cool stuff.
I finally beat Final Fantasy X, as previously mentioned, and Nier: Automata and Journey. Nier: Automata and Journey are some of the best games I’ve ever played, especially Journey. I’m currently midway through Yakuza 0 and I love it. I think Yakuza is a great improvement on the Shenmue concept, and I think it is going to be one of my favorite game series to play, since I have 6 more numbered games to play and at least one more that stars a different protagonist.
On the anime front, I’m in the middle of Cowboy Bebop, which I’ve never finished and decided to finally tackle. I also finished FLCL, which was a similar started-but-never-finished deal. The most breathtaking anime I’ve seen this year has been Your Name by far, but I’ve also watched some other great titles like Madoka, Hi-Score Girl, Toradora, Himouto!, Demon Slayer, and some others. I may not make that FFXIV page, but there will definitely be an anime page one day, with short reviews of everything I watch from this year forward.
On diet and exercise, I’ve lost 10 more pounds since my last update, bringing me to 21 pounds lost since the beginning of the year. I’m a few pounds below my stable weight from five years ago. I’d like to lose at least another ten pounds. My current BMI puts me in the upper range of a normal weight for my height, but I was 15 pounds lighter than I am now when I moved away from my parents at 22 years old, and I’d like to prove to myself that I can get back to that weight. When I look in the mirror without clothes on, I can see a massive improvement from where I was at the start of the year, but I can also see that I still have plenty of room for improvement. I think I’m on a path to get there.
My weight was stalled essentially from March all the way to May. Around mid-May, I did some investigation into intermittent fasting (IF) and became convinced, not just of its potential effectiveness to lose weight, but also to possibly extend life. I’d like to make a page about fasting to explain what I’ve learned. I think writing an essay like that will help me in the future to articulate IF to other people. Since beginning IF, I’ve lost 6 pounds, and that’s after a 2 month long weight plateau where I was dieting and exercising.
About exercise, I’ve been jogging. In March, I attempted to start jogging at a pace I would have considered a starter pace in my 20s. Within two minutes, I felt sharp pains in my hip sockets that I’ve never experienced before. I did some Googling and believe the issue was that my psoas muscles (which run from the spine through the pelvis via the hips into the legs) have shrunk due to inactivity and extensive sitting. After a week or two to heal, I dialed my run speed down, just barely over my walk speed. Slowly I’ve been creeping the speed up. I haven’t experienced that hip socket pain, so I think my strategy has been working. I still haven’t turned the speed back to that starter pace yet, but I’m close now. The next time I increment the speed, which will probably be in a week or two, it will be to that pace. It’s been humbling, for sure, and proven to me in a small way the danger that I’ve been putting myself in by being inactive. I don’t believe it is a consequence of aging, since I know plenty of people in their 50s that run at a faster pace than I ever have.
I’ve decided that because of the coronavirus that I will not be participating in the half-marathon at the end of the year like I intended, but I will continue to train as if I will. It’s not worth the risk to join to the marathon, but it’s also not worth the risk to not train for it.
I haven’t started making 3D art yet. I’m thinking about starting that after I beat Yakuza 0. Of course, I said the same thing w/r/t FFXIV. I just keep pushing it back.
I’m still thinking lots about arcade stuff, but not taking any action on it. For a short while, I was designing a retro Japanese mini cabinet, but I lost steam on that as I dealt with some issues with my CAD software and when the art I was assembling for it wasn’t coming together the way I wanted it. I don’t know why I don’t have more enthusiasm for this, considering how much time I squander on arcade forums.
I spend a lot of time thinking about this environment theming I want to do in my sunroom, where I dress my arcade area up like the outside of a traditional Japanese building. But it wouldn’t make sense for me to even start planning that until I have the stuff built that would go in front of it.
So that’s it so far: great progress in weight loss and abstaining from FFXIV, but bad progress in arcade and 3D art hobbies. I’ll make another progress update in another three months.