Natelovesboardgames

Day four One thing that has always helped me when I've struggled with depression is to just get social activities on the calendar. If I know I have something already planned then I don't have to get stuck in just wanting to sit and play video games and feel worse. Today was day two of the game convention. I ran a 12 player game of Mega Civilization. It was epic! It lasted from 9am until 10pm with two hour long breaks for meals. Everyone had a great time building their empires and wheeling and dealing in the chaotic and lively trade grounds. Today was a very fun day and I'm definitely tired. If you like board games at all then I highly recommend board games and card games. It's a very social activity and there are games that suit everyone's tastes from light card games and party games to really heavy strategy games. I like a large variety. If you ever want game recommendations, advice about how to start hosting your own regular game night, or how to try to find games cheaply by shopping at thrift stores, yard sales, ebay, and elsewhere feel free to ask. Generally the only time I ever play board game by myself is when I was trying to learn the game from the rules. Otherwise I'd play a video game. I bought so many games that I haven't read the rules to so another project I have is to read rules and figure out how to play a lot of these games I own and haven't played or get rid of them. Alright bedtime. Goodnight all!

Day three done Goofed around a lot this morning on Facebook and Youtube. Went to the gym. Came home had lunch decided I would find one job to apply for before I left for the gaming convention that started today. Found another job where my jaw dropped open and I said OMG I want that! Shot off two emails to guys who I know that work there one here in Oregon and one in San Francisco both of whom I met through the board gaming hobby. I asked them for informational interviews about the company to get some insights and see if I can find some other information I'll need. The game convention I went to - Gamestorm - goes through this weekend. It's always fun to meet new people. Best way to be sure to play the games you want is to run them and teach them to other people. I did a pick-up game this afternoon of Roll for the Galaxy and ran a game this evening of Star Trek Ascendancy. I was the Federation and the Romulans took over the Earth but the Cardassians won. I'm off to bed. I'm running a game all day long tomorrow. It's going to be epic!

What part are you needing help with? How to apply? How to look and what to wear? How to ace the interview?

Day two - made it through I overslept this morning. A saying I learned from Al-Anon a few years ago is "when you're Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired then HALT and take care of it". I'll be getting to bed earlier tonight so I can get up at 7am as planned. It hasn't usually been a problem. Just.. lately. I goofed around a lot on Facebook and IM'ing a couple friends and had lunch before I finally got down to the day's work of looking for a job at about 1:30. I looked up a company that I'm interested in working for and saw a job that made my jaw drop and I thought OMG I want that! My qualifications were perfect. I spent about 1.5 hours researching on Linkedin finding the name of the hiring manager so I could put it on the cover letter that I could include with my application. The cover letter wasn't required, but in order for my application to get through the HR barrier I have to stand out from the hundreds of others who will likely apply. The other good thing that happened today is I talked on the phone for the first time with a guy I met on a dating app. We talked for 1.5 hours. The conversation flowed easily and we'll meet up sometime soon. In the past either of these things would result in me really getting my hopes up. I've been disappointed so many times in the past that I've learned to be cautiously optimistic and to just focus on the moment and the process. It's still really hard though. Too often in my life I've been stuck in the past or planning a future that was speculative at best. I'm a lot better than I used to be. The job I applied for is in Seattle so I would have to move if I'm successful. I've always lived in Portland so the idea is thrilling and terrifying at the same time. My brother and his family live near there and I have several friends who live there as well. Portland is only 3 hours away and the distance to my parents' house will be the same. Basically I'm at a huge turning point in my life I feel like. I was tempted to play a video game but managed to avoid it :) The time flew by today really fast. The next few days I'll be attending Gamestorm so I'm not sure exactly when I'll be blogging. Stay tuned!

Day One I spent about two hours writing my introduction last night. Then I read some forum entries and finally went to bed around 12:30. For some reason I couldn't get to sleep. I kept tossing and turning. This happens maybe once a year and when it did normally I would get up and play some game on the computer for an hour or so. Finally I managed to nod off. Slept in woke at 9. Got my butt to the gym around 11am and had a decent workout. One of my goals is to start doing better at planning my workout and what I'm going to do. I often get to the gym and have trouble deciding what I want to do. I worked with a couple personal trainers a bunch over the last four years as recently as last Summer. Having a mentor really helped me because I didn't have to think about what I was going to do they did it for me. Plus a good trainer becomes a friend who is interested in your success and that also becomes extra motivation. Alas, Chris changed careers and Nick moved away and I needed to cut expenses. I need to utilize more of what I learned. I did some job searching online but only applied for one job. I managed about a 90 minute effort. Right now I have one phone interview scheduled on the 17th other than that I'm waiting to hear on some applications. Part of my problem is I never really quite figured out what it was I wanted to do when I grew up. Keeping up the effort and not taking rejection personally when I spend so much time on a cover letter, job submission, and skills assessment to not even make it past the human resources barrier is going to be key for me. Because that's when I know that I don't want to think about my life anymore and just lose myself in some game. I chatted a lot with a couple good friends this afternoon and evening. I need to hang out with my friends more. I definitely love hugs and the endorphins you get from them. Books I'm reading right now: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse #1) by James S.A. Corey. I saw season one of the Expanse on Amazon Prime and told a friend how much I liked it. She said the books were great and loaned me a pile of them. I have a ton of board games in the basement I need to get listed online and sold so that's one project I'll be working on. I've been writing a book. It's like a memoir but instead of a boring linear autobiography it's about a lot of the lessons I've learned in my life the hard way and what I've struggled with. There will be a chapter about escaping into video games I decided. I figure I'm half to 2/3 done with the handwritten draft. Then I'll start typing it up and asking trusted friends to read a chapter and give me feedback. I have a bunch of Lego that I've picked up at thrift stores and yard sales over the years. I want to start trying to make some microscale city buildings and as I find those fascinating. Last of all I'm looking forward to going to a local board game and role playing gaming convention going on here in town this weekend. It'll be fun hanging out with friends and making some new ones. Alright I made it through day 1. I'm off to bed.

You sound depressed Conor. I recommend a change of scene even if it's just for a week. Go somewhere different and meet different people. Travel does wonders for me. Sometimes just driving 12 hours to San Francisco or 6 hours to Vancouver BC is enough to make me feel very much alive and renewed. Of course the trip back isn't as much fun but before that happens just going out and getting a change of perspective makes it all worth going.

I like to read while eating. If I'm in the middle of a good book I'd rather read that than peruse Facebook on my phone. I'll write too on occasion but then I sometimes get pizza sauce or ketchup on my notebook. I have no problem going to a restaurant by myself to sit outside on a nice day and enjoy a nice meal with my book. It's also easy to put down if I do end up talking to someone.

Hi everyone, Today was my last day of gaming for the 90 day detox. I'll start the blog tomorrow. I'm not procrastinating this anymore! I started playing video games in 1979 or 1980 I think it was. That's when my cousins got the Atari 2600. My family got their own Atari in the Summer of 1981 with four games - Asteroids, Adventure, Super Breakout, and Combat. I had just started the fourth grade and I told my friend John we got an Atari. His eyes bugged out "you did??" and he was then over at my house after school every day to play. Fortunately we also started playing board games, Lego, Dungeons & Dragons, and other things as well. I'm grateful that he is still a good friend and we're both really into the board game hobby today. I was never athletic and I felt like I struggled socially. I am very extroverted though. I wasn't bullied, just harassed some for having really thick glasses, braces, and acne. I was labeled as a nerd by some. I was fine with that because I was absolutely terrified of anyone finding out I was gay. I had very little self confidence. My family didn't have a computer at home. I had planned on getting one after graduating high school but never got around to it since I started working part time. I continued to live at home with my parents when started Portland State University here in Portland while John and many other friends left town to go to school. This was the loneliest time of my life. I struggled to connect in meaningful ways to others at school. This is also when I really started struggling with depression. At PSU they had an arcade. I would go there during breaks and lunch. One day there was a new game that drew a crowd - Street Fighter II. I started playing it several times a day and occasionally skipping classes to do so. This continued through Street Fighter II Turbo, Champion edition, champion turbo, X-men Children of the Atom, and Marvel vrs Capcom.. I was able to do well in classes where I had to read a book and take a test. I started struggling really bad with sleep apnea. Later on in my college career when it came to some really awful reading combined with researching and writing papers I procrastinated so much that I started to fail classes. I was tired and depressed but I always had energy for video games. I ended up on financial aid probation and dropped out in my senior year. John graduated college and moved back to Portland. His brother had a PC so I started playing Civilization 1&2 and Master of Orion on his computer. In 1997 John and I became roommates and played a lot of Master of Orion 2, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and Total Annihilation. I got my own computer in early 1998 that my first ex-boyfriend built for me. In 2001 I did something really stupid at work that somebody said was sexual harassment. It was, and I was terminated. I collected unemployment but often slept 12 hours a day because of the sleep apnea. I stopped taking prozac when I started going without health insurance. I played MOO2 and SMAC a lot. I looked for a job a little. I started buying board games at thrift stores and garage sales and started selling them on Ebay and started hosting friends over for board game nights so this time of my life wasn't a complete disaster. Financially it took me a long time to recover though as I was unemployed 10 months and drained my 401(k). I had to sell my car to stop sinking further into debt. I restarted my career by temping two years at a company and then was hired on permanent end of 2004. I started getting the depression and sleep apnea treated in 2005. I started going back to PSU in 2005 and finished my degree in 2007. I managed to get promoted at work in 2005, 2008, 2011, 2014, and 2015. I joined 24 hour fitness in 2005 and went periodically but when I started working with a personal trainer in 2014 that's when I made some great progress. I knew I needed to make changes as I was still struggling with depression while even on medication. I was starting to have some back/neck/shoulder pain from sitting too many hours in front of a computer playing MOO2, SMAC, Civilization IV, a MMO called Astroflux, and Skyrim. My shoulders had started falling forward and I didn't have a chest really. I went from about 195 lbs to 181 in about 1.5 years and felt great for the most part. I was fired in November of 2017. I saw it coming for about a year but I did not have a good exit strategy because I was constantly depressed. I was able to work from home a lot but since I didn't have more than 4 or 5 hours of work to do I was often playing SMAC. I did go to Europe for the first time ever in April/May 2017 for 2.5 weeks and didn't play any computer games once during the trip. I was high on life the whole time so I didn't miss them! After I got back from Europe and having the time of my life I became even more depressed. After I became unemployed it's gotten really bad. I told myself I would do better than I did in 2001 if I became unemployed again. I have, but I really need to do better. I read Johann Hari's book Lost Connections - Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression and the Unexpected Solutions when I saw something about it on Facebook. I read it and it was really eye opening! In chapter 8 titled Cause 3: Loss of Meaningful Values he discusses the difference between extrinsic goals and intrinsic goals. Extrinsic goals are pursuits that you spend a huge amount of energy, time, and/or money to achieve them so that others will see you as successful. But once you've acquired one of these objects of desire you often feel the same (relic weapon of incredible power, anyone?). Intrinsic goals are things that actually add to your happiness and quality of life. These include actually creating something, or perfecting a skill, or spending quality time with friends and loved ones. I realized that video games were creating extrinsic goals for me and not really adding any happiness to my life. They were just allowing me to procrastinate. I need to work on my intrinsic goals. I could tell you about how my former boss is a narcissist and was gaslighting me but ultimately it's up to me to stop dwelling on the past. I finally realized I was feeling victimized but it's now time to get over it, move on, and find that new job. It's hard because job hunting makes me feel unwanted and like a failure. So I need to do the things that will make me feel successful. That includes the 90-day detox, finishing the book I'm writing, spending more time with friends & making new ones, losing the weight I've gained in the last year, and finding a good volunteer work opportunity. I have so much to contribute and I need to get started. Thanks for reading and for all your encouragement! Nate