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Staying Sane While Crazy Busy

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If you listen to the podcasts many of you may have heard that my life — although sometimes less adventurous than our other members — is crazy busy. Alexander even likes to make jokes about how I don’t know how to relax or know what a non-busy lifestyle looks like. I won’t say that my life is lacking things to do what with my volunteer work at local organizations, pursuit of higher education, my actual job (depending on the month), volunteer research assistant work at my undergraduate university for two different projects, maintaining a social life, maintaining a healthy relationship (let’s be honest, relationships take work!), normal week to week errands like grocery shopping, and whatever else is on my plate that week. When I look at that list of things it seems like a way more hectic schedule than I feel like I have, and there are a lot of reasons why I can handle the personal load I have.

I meticulously update my planner.

For me, a planner is a paper and ink experience. My google calendar is usually left alone and rarely updated because I prefer the experience of physically writing in items and checking off finished things.

I do use a fancy planner, but you don’t need to. I know people who use a notebook and simply keep a tally on what needs to be done. That works for them.

 

I am 100% honest with those close to me about my how busy I am.

And I don’t shrug it off when it’s a bit too much or having a negative impact on me. I don’t let my life get taken while silently suffering or maybe even taking it out inadvertently on those close to me. I try to be honest about when my schedule is a bit too much instead of forcing everything to happen and keep the ‘always together’ appearance that I apparently have (I don’t agree, but that’s a whole other topic).

Example: What I don’t do. – oh, naaaah. _Some activity that week_ is totally awesome and I’m perfect!” all the while thinking… “And it isn’t making me lose my mind because I now am unsure when I will be able to pick up groceries” in a clearly sarcastic manner.

Instead of claiming that I’m fine I’ll mention how I’m a bit stressed out due to overscheduling a bit that week. Often I’ll mix errands and social events, like inviting friends with me to go grocery shopping or even buying all of my week’s groceries with my boyfriend when we are at the store to pick up a couple of items for our date night dinners. This may sound a little silly to call up a friend and say “Hey! Want to go grocery shopping with me?” But for me this works because not only do I get to spend time with my friends (something I try to do regularly), but sometimes running an errand with them turns into us making dinner together and decompressing while we each work on something productive.

 

Another thing that I do regularly is I schedule self-care time.

Self-care for me usually means low-key activities with friends, bubble baths, videogames, reading for fun, and cooking.

These self-care activities are really cathartic and assist in letting me juice up my personal battery. For me, these are non-negotiable parts of my week and therefore they’re written into my planner so that I don’t forget to take care of myself.

A lot of the time when I am doing self-care I either turn off my phone or put it on vibrate mode and put it away from me. I can hear the vibrations most of the time, since I live in a small studio, but it takes some of the pressure off needing to respond at the moment.

 

These are the little things that I do to stay sane with my ‘crazy schedule’ and for me, it works very well! This may not work for everyone, but for me it makes a busy busy schedule feel a lot more manageable.

 

A Sellout – You Don’t Know What They Are and You Might Be One

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By Doc Von Derwin

I remember the first time I heard the word ’sellout’. I was in middle school and my older brother and I were having a discussion of the classic American Film Employee of the Month starting Dane Cook. My brother regarded Dane Cook as a sellout because he wasn’t the funniest character in the movie. I thought it was strange at the time but didn’t really understand why. Some years later, he and I were taking a deep perspective look into Saving Woodstock with America’s sweetheart Dimitri Martin. After I told him that the film was not a comedy, he eloquently replied with: “So he sold out like Dane Cook?”. Again, I was totally lost on what he meant but didn’t understand what was causing me discomfort. Since he was the older brother, he had to be right after all. So I started trying to identify sellouts as they started to appear. A Queens of the Stone Age song on a T-Mobile commercial? Sellouts! Ben Affleck in a romantic comedy? Sellout. Anything that Nickelback performed? Sellouts! Now that years have past and I’ve started reading books that weren’t written by R.L. Stine or Limoney Snicket, I figured out that I have been wrong the whole time.

You have to start by identifying what a sellout really is. A sellout is someone who compromise their current beliefs for opposing or conflicting beliefs for payment or benefit. Essentially, someone who will say or endorse anything for the right price. Some of you might be thinking that certain bands are sellouts because they started as indie coffee shop heroes and turned into global commercial success, with their new stuff not being pure as their old stuff. They sold their musical integrity to become famous, right? But bad music isn’t a sign of selling out. It’s a sign that artist has evolved into something else, often because their original music was fueled by being an artist who has a lot of stress and fears about where their next meal is going to come from but but when they’re rich and famous, that sort of fuel is gone and they need something else to drive them. Nickelback didn’t sellout for money, they’ve always been a terrible band appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Demetri Martin and Dane Cook weren’t sellouts for doing those movies I mentioned earlier. They were making business transactions in the pursuit of being actors. The more they act, the more work they get and with big movie productions it’s not like they have creative control in the movies they’re on. Its is similar to the Queens of the Stone Age where the music production company are probably the ones who greenlighted T-Mobile using their song in a commercial.

The people who are sellouts are largely people who want to make the most money they can get. A person who can hate what their business does but still do it for the sake of the paycheck. We don’t know artists or actors personally so we can’t call them sellouts. The only sellouts we can really label are ourselves. So ask yourself, are you a sellout?

Spring Break with Greek Life

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By Alyssa Pereira

Most of the time, when people think of college students going on spring break, they tend to think of crazy beach parties and non-stop drinking. If you add in the Greek Life factor, you get ideas like wild sorority girls doing wet t-shirt contests and frat guys who walk around in bro tanks and carry beer around 24/7. These are the first things that come to mind, thanks to the lovely stereotypes of Greek Life that are portrayed in the media, but there is another side to what we, sorority women, and fraternity men actually do.

 

To the surprise of many, one of the most predominate things that Greek Life members do is community service. Service is at the heart of what it means to be in a fraternity or sorority. Our chapters and national headquarters are constantly encouraging us to go out, into the community and make a difference.

 

For this reason, it was no surprise to me that the majority of students on the spring break service trip were members of the various Greek life organizations on campus. Each and every one of us chose to get on a bus for 9 days, mostly with people we have never met before, travel half way across the country, and sleep on church floors, so that we could make a difference in more than just our small community.

 

The adventure began bright and early at 6:30am on a Friday, as we all boarded the bus to start our journey to Washington DC, a casual 1,500-ish mile road trip. Along the way, we stopped in five different cities, completing a service project in each one, totaling just around 25 hours of community service. Each day, we would wake up bright and early around 6:30am, quickly eat breakfast (which pretty much only consisted of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or pop tarts), clean the church, and then load the bus andset out to our service project of the day. After completing four or five hours of community service, we pile back onto the bus and make our way to the next city so that we could do it all again tomorrow. All while on about 4 hours of sleep. Once we arrived in Washington DC, we were joined by 5 other buses from universities all over the Mid-West. We all teamed up and completed one last big, four-hour service project.

 

The first stop on our Pay it Forward tour was Madison, WI. In Madison, we had the opportunity to go to one of the state parks, and help cut down invasive plant species from the banks of a lake, so that more people would be able to visit the area and enjoy the wonders of Mother Nature. This personally was one of my favorite service projects because we really got to see how much of a difference we made. When we first got there and saw the patch of land we had to clear, I thought that there was no way we would be ever be able to make a dent. But to my surprise, and the hard work of everyone, we were able to completely clear the area. It was incredible to watch a group of complete strangers, buckle down and work together to get the job done. We were told that the work we did would have taken the set volunteers for the state park all summer. It was so rewarding to see how appreciative they were of what we did, and all it took was a couple hours of our day.

 

Then it was off to Lafayette, IN where we helped with repairs at a non- profit art museum. After that we hit Louisville, KY where we painted and updated studio rooms for a non-profit ballet school. Our fourth city was Charleston, WV. There we got to do our second hard labor service project at a garden that serves Manna Meal, a soup kitchen that gives two meals a day to anyone who walks through their doors no matter what.  We were able to help them move mounds of mulch and fertilizer to raise the ground level, weed garden beds, and sort through donated items. I have never had so much fun shoveling dirt and getting muddy before! The last stop before Washington DC was Harrisburg, VA. In this city, we got a really cool opportunity to help out in Shenandoah National Park, where we cleaned garbage off of two hiking trails that had not yet opened for the season! Fun fact, both teams got lost on our trails!

 

Washington DC was an eye opening experience. The service project that we did as one giant group was cleaning one of the rivers near the city. I have never seen a river with so much garbage before. We had people things as small as candy wrappers to garbage as large as tires, traffic cones, car parts, even weird thing like credit cards and state IDs. It made me so sad to see how polluted the water was but seeing how much we pulled out was mind blowing.

 

One of the coolest parts about the entire experience was watching the faces of the people we met along the way when we told them about what we were doing. No one could believe that 36 college students would ‘give up’ their spring break to do a total of around 30 hours of community service in cities that they didn’t even live in. I never understood why people said ‘give up’ because this trip was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Yes, it was exhausting but every minute was worth it.

 

Not only did I as an individual get to make a difference, but I got to do it with fifteen of my Greek Life brothers and sister. We are living proof that the stereotypes of our community are not the reality. Not once did I hear anyone complain or wish they had done something different. Of course it would have been nice to be on a beach relaxing somewhere, but it was more important to do something meaningful.

 

Just because we are in a sorority or fraternity doesn’t mean we don’t care about the world.

 

Spending my spring break serving in multiple cities was the only way I would have wanted to spend it. I am proud to have represented my sorority, Kappa Delta, in each one of the cities with my sisters by my side.

Changes to PLIS

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Podcast Lost in Space originally was started by Alexander as an experiment, to see if we could pull it off. One of the things that the team has learned was that we bit off more than we could chew right off the bat, so we are going to be making some changes over the next couple months.

The main Podcast Lost In Space podcast is shifting from a weekly to biweekly schedule, with Podcast Lost In Games podcast filling in PLIS’s off weeks – with a bonus podcast from one of the podcasts for 5 week long months! The Ben and Doc Show is going to still be weekly for the time being.

We are also debating if we will be maintaining our blog portion of Podcast Lost In Space. As it stand, we’re going to shift to a dedicated four posts a month, with week five being an off, or bonus week depending. We will be evaluating and debating whether or not the team/ PLIS will switchover only to podcasts due since our members all lead rather full lives outside of PLIS activities/duties.

 

Now, what can you do to keep us going?

At this point, let us know how you are feeling about the content we are putting up! Leave us Comments on the site, send us emails to podcastlostinspace@gmail.com or otherwise let us know what you think!

If there is a topic you’d love to see more of, love for us to talk about in the first place, or maybe go in depth on. Let us know! You can always email us or leave us a comment to let us know!

 

Thank you for your continued support!

 

Podcast Lost in Space.

Fast Friends to Lost Friends

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By Alyssa Pereira

Think back three years ago, who was your best friend?

Now think back seven years ago and ask yourself the same question.

Now ten years…

Were they the same person? If yes, go you! Hang on to that friendship for dear life.

For the rest of us, we are still in search of our forever person. We are the ones who have had at least had one person in our lives that played major role one moment and then in the next moment, they were completely gone. This happens and it is a normal part of growing up. Friend groups change because the people in them change. However, personally looking back, this aspect of life blows my mind because in that moment that person is your everything. They are the first person you think of when you need help or just need to talk. Every day of your life (for a period of time) is filled with things you do together. You become two peas in a pod.

Personally, I have had a few people in my life who were like this. But now, those people are gone. For whatever reason, our paths parted and we moved on from one another. Our pod split in two and we have become lonely peas. Life sometimes gets the best of relationship.

Luckily, my path led to a place where I met someone who is now my best friend and second half. I have found a new person who is truly better than any friend I have ever had or could have imagined.

But, then I think about the people before and I can’t help but wonder, is this just a never-ending cycle? Will history just repeat itself? Or did the fall of the last relationship lead me to my new one? Honestly, with the person who is my best friend now, I truly feel that we will be in each other’s lives forever. Yes, I know that sounds cheesy but because of what has happened in the past, I have learned what a true friend looks like and what is important.

The thing is can forever’s really happen?

I sure hope so.

The future is so unknown that all you can do is just enjoy today. This is just what I plan on doing.

It is still unfathomable to me that one second you can be so close to someone and the next second it is like you never even knew each other. You can think you know every detail about someone but actually know nothing about them at all.

What I am choosing to believe that yes, it might turn out to be a cycle but cycles can end. There is always a chance that some day someone will come into your life and break that cycle and start a new forever.

So for all those lonely peas out there looking for their new pod, stay hopeful. You will find your person and they will be ten times better than you could ever imagine. Sometimes you have to dig through some dirt to find a treasure.

How Boy Meets World Depressed Me

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By Alexander Pereira

Television, books, video games and Taylor Swift’s first album lied about Romance and dating to all of us. We were promised and taught to expect a certain type of future that was so incredibly unrealistic that it’s amazing any of us would’ve been stupid enough to fall for it. Except I did. This is what it did to me.

I’m an unfortunate mix of the bitter cynic, chronically shy person and a hopeless romantic all jumbled into a great bundle of angst and social awkwardness. I grew up with my head wedged deeply between the pages of Tolkien and Tamora Pierce, of Fantasy and Science Fiction with its might heroes and star-struck romances. I took to the idea of being a fantasy knight seriously. True love and fate became a part of my expectations for life in a way that still affect how I approach romance to this day. That stuff? Not really that bad. It makes things like casual dating or the idea of casual sex really hard to stomach for me personally but I don’t feel like it’s hurt me, just put me in hard mode.

The stuff I really want to talk about is the nonsense television shows like Kim Possible, Lizzie McGuire, and Boy Meets World ingrained in younger me. Those shows all promised you that no matter how awkward and social weird you were; you could find your soulmate in high school. Even more importantly, that soulmate was your attractive best girl/boy friend who you’ve known forever. The lessons were that you both know you like each other but neither of you wants to admit it. So I came to expect that the path to true happiness was to realize my soulmate was that best friend I’d grown up, fall in love with her, date through college with a series of sickeningly adorable adventures, get married after graduation and have 2.5 kids by the time we were 28. Simple. Easy. It’s exactly what everything society was saying happened after all. Now, I don’t know if I’m just an idiot or if this happened to a bunch of us but I got really invested in this model for life. I knew in my bones that I was destine for a story of true love and early life bliss. Everything would be perfect and we’d choose our colleges together, figure out our careers and build our life together. I became so married to this idea I could hardly conceive of a world where this wasn’t my life.

It goes without saying that this plan for a perfect life didn’t happen. It didn’t even come close. The first real love of mine broke up with me after three months (summer time fling), and we spent our entire senior year of High school sniping and claw at each other. It took us years to figure out what it meant to be friends and not ex’s and work through the anger and hurt but eventually we figured out how to be friends. We’re best of friends now. – Yes if you’re wondering, I wrote really bad angst blog posts and some fiction about it too here go check it out: redbreardsmusings.wordpress.com)  — This shocking state of affairs left me genuinely feeling like something was broken with me. It was as if I wasn’t a proper person because I didn’t have the same romantic arc of Lizzie and Gordon; Ron and Kim; or Cory and Topanga. I just knew that since I didn’t find that perfect happiness in high school, I’d lost that entire future forever. No family, no adorable daughter or beautiful woman to come home too (or hell, to have come home to me). Not even the white picket fence. I was heartbroken and I started panicking as I rolled into my freshman year of University because I didn’t know what my life was supposed to look like anymore. I thought my life couldn’t have meaning any more. There is another post to be told about me dealing with the depression I faced, and may still face, through my freshman year of university but I know for a fact that this helped contribute to it.

The older me, looking back at that time is really glad things worked out the way they have. I’ve seen a few classmates marry the high school sweethearts and it feels myopic. Like the people of Plato’s Cave ignore the existence of an outside world. Not that I don’t harbor a quiet mourning for that childhood dream but I know I’m a better me for having had to grow past it. I thought for years that I was the kind of person who’d be happy staying in the same town for ever. I thought about how wonderful it would be to raise my future kids in the same place. I’ve been slowly learning that this isn’t true. That I’m not actually someone who enjoys stagnation like that. I have a tendency to let myself become stagnated but I don’t enjoy it.

I’m also thankful that I didn’t end up falling in love with my childhood best friend because guess what? We’d have been (still would be) an awful couple. The things I’ve learned I need from a partner and the things I know she needs don’t remotely match. This post-knowledge didn’t keep me from confusing genuine, almost familial, affection toward her for romantic feelings several times over the years though. Every time I realized I was trying to force a square peg into the round hole of my expectations before I genuinely damaged our relationship but it was a near thing at times.

I’ve moved beyond the expectations for a high school soulmate, for obvious reasons of course, but I’ve also managed to uncouple my sense of self-worth and identity from the ideal.  I’ve become self-aware enough to figure out where other unrealistic expectations are come from. Things that Romantic Comedies have hammered in with their stalking ideation or even the idea that College is a sexual banquet for everyone. That last one did its own number on my ideas of self-worth but I’m running out of space. I’ve very careful to be mindful the media I consume, especially as we move in on Valentine’s Day because I know it can still knock me into a depressive cycle. I don’t like being single and the upcoming deluge of happy couples and “only couples are complete people” is always dangerous. For all of you, I hope this made you feel a little less alone.

Operation Respec

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By Alexander Pereira

Welcome to January! The month of new beginnings – well on the Gregorian Calendar, which is just the Roman Calendar with some holidays renamed. Other culture’s calendars may beg to differ – Sorry my anthro major got away from me…. Where was I? Oh right, the Month of the New Beginnings, a clean break from the slothful you of last year and a fresh healthy start… until March. And then everyone sorta just goes back to what they were doing before. I’m not making fun of them, not really. I’ve certainly been guilty of doing the same thing, going to the gym takes effort. Eating healthy is just so… so… well you know. All of which is to say, hey I’m taking advantage of this mental and temporal ‘fresh start’ myself! If you’re a fan of the podcast, you’ve heard me talk a bit about this on episodes 14 and 15 [Links] but I’m going to set it in stone, as it were, here.

Operation Respec is about me, Alexander Pereira, making myself into a better version of me, the version I want to be. This is bigger than a weight loss goal, or aiming to run a 5k, although holy crap if you can do that I worship you.

For years I’ve felt like I’m not quite the person who I am in my self-image. I don’t feel like I look like I should. To the point where I’ve written videos about how my mental image of a hero doesn’t, and can’t, match with who I am, physically — and racially — in the past. I have an ideal for how I should act that I regularly don’t meet, interpersonally or just in how I go through life. You’ll hear me say “cause I’m lazy” a lot and, arguments with mom aside, I hate that I do. I’m not actually lazy when I care about something, as this freaking WEBSITE proves but I need to break several years of bad habits. I also have an annoying social confidence issue that hits me at weird times. I spent the better part of my two years in university not thinking my school friends were friends with me, just friendly strangers. Because I was afraid to make an assumption and maybe weird them out. Now of course, they’re the biggest group of people I tweet at on Twitter.

As for who I want to be? Take Commander Shepard, Honor Harrington, Aragorn and Admiral Anderson, blend them up and throw in some healthy realism and you’ve got me. Or just check out my friend Giselle Gonzalez. I want to be living my life as fully as she is. Or my friend Keezy Young, who’s a badass artist who is really leaning into her art and that’s brave and awesome. Those two are the ones who are really inspiring me to push toward meeting my own bars. Wil Wheaton and Rooster Tooth are the ones who made me realize public accountability is something I can use to motivate myself and others.

So what does Operation Respec entail?

Be Healthier

  • This is traditional. I weigh 213lbs. I want to weight no more than 190lbs. I can’t keep the level of activity I used to be able to do. I want to change this. What does this mean?
    • Go to the Gym. No really, I’m a former black belt gone to seed 5 years running, I HAVE to get myself back in shape.
    • Eat Healthier
      • I’m not going to diet. I hate diets. I love good food. Calorie counting makes me mad.
      • I am going to modify my current diet to cut out the crap foods.
        • That means no more M&M packages a week, no McDonalds, try to cook and prepare my lunches better.
        • Instead of a diet, I’m going to work to be more mindful of my food.

Be More Disciplined

  • I procrastinate. I avoid work. I play games when I should be writing. I’m bad at scheduling things or planning ahead… in some very poignant places. I’m still going to do/be all of that. But I’m going to work on doing it less.
    • Write 30mins-1 hour a day
    • Apply for that job, or message that person on OKC with a day of finding it/them
    • Schedule the Website, Podcast and personal life better
    • I AM GOING TO LEARN TO BUDGET
      • I’m bad at money. I am so freaking bad it’s not funny. I’m going to actually try and change that this year.
    • Help with cleaning and cooking around the house more.
    • Be more helpful in general

Be More Social

  • When I was living in Calgary, I was rooming with my only friend in the city. I knew literally no one else. I had to go out to meet people because I need more than one friend locally. I got to know some really cool writer people in Calgary but my other attempts to meet people ran up against my own anxieties or a general freeze from the board game scene. I Started playing World of Warcraft again, I STARTED PLAYING WORLD OF WARCRAFT AGAIN.
  • Here, I fell back into the comfortable cushion of childhood friends and the network I’d grown up building. I mean I live with the family of my best friend. We hang out weekly-ish and play lots of games online together. It’s good, I love it. It’s also really safe and not helping me grow at all. So I’m going to try and change it up.
    • I’m going to find or found a Writer’s Meetup Group. It’s going to help me write more and be more social.
    • I’m going to try to find and go to a Board Game group or dabble in local board game store communities. Seattle tabletop gaming community is so much more diverse and welcoming than Calgary’s that I need to take advantage of it.
    • Participate in the communities I’m already in. My dance studio has a pretty healthy community that I’ve been sort of skirting around being a part of because there isn’t a lot of people my age there. I need to actually take up getting to know people there.
    • Find Friends to go on Adventures with.
      • Adventures are fun but a lot of my close friends aren’t the sort to want to go do random adventures and the few who are don’t live nearby. I need more friends to do adventures with.
    • SEE MY SCHOOL FRIENDS MORE.
      • COME ONE GUYS WE ALL LIVE REALLY CLOSE TO EACH OTHER THIS SHOULDN’T BE A PROBLEM.
      • I mean, yeah. It’s a problem. I might see them more than once this year. Or like, ever. In the case of Doc. Seriously, Doc and I haven’t seen each other outside of a convention in like 3 or 4 years.
    • Last but not least? I’m going to actually try and use things like OkCupid to meet some people… rather than use it as this weird pseudo-meat shopping site it seems to have a tendency to feel like to me… there is an article on this.
      • Am I admitting that I use a dating site? Yup. Is it a big deal? NO. Meeting people is hard after school. Hell meeting people was hard BEFORE school was a public thing. That was the point of all the nobles holding balls and parties in the Dark Ages.

Be More Adventurous

  • Given no push, I will stay at home and play video games, read or write before I do anything else. I don’t love travelling and I’ve been bad about going hiking cause summer camps are exhausting work. So this year I plan to:
    • Travel More
      • I’m already flying down to visit Newman in San Diego and I’ve already hit up Portland but I also want to plan a Vancouver weekend visit and go visit my friends in Bellingham. Maybe more? I want to remind myself to go see the world.
      • I’m not going to go on a crazy globetrotting tour because that’s not me, but I’m going to work harder to take even small trips outside of my own haunts.
    • Take Advantage of the fact that I LIVE IN SEA-FREAKING-TTLE!
      • I mean seriously. I live in Seattle, one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I’m going to try to go hiking more, maybe go kayaking again or find a trail riding place for an adventure. Things like this.
    • Work in fields I’m not intimately Familiar with
      • I’ve worked childcare/after school programs for most of my life. Maybe it’s time I try something else?
    • Do things I’m not comfortable with
      • Humans have a tendency to prefer things they are familiar with and know. I’m human. I want to do things that stretch my comfort zone.
      • If that means I’m doing things like taking a yoga class at my gym or going to see an opera, then that’s what I’m doing. I started this one a bit last year because I asked a freaking classmate out to do stuff. I actually talked to people.
      • I am doing the Spring Showcase at my Dance Studio.
        • I REPEAT I AM GOING TO PERFORM A WALTZ IN FRONT OF PEOPLE.
        • I DO NOT PERFORM. BUT HERE I AM

I’ve given myself quite a job, haven’t I? Yes. Yes, I have. But like I said, I don’t expect to hit everything here but I expect myself to try. Because if I don’t I’m not the me I know I am.

What can you expect from me?

Weekly Updates.

  • These aren’t going to be long updates or big ones necessarily. I will check in with reports about any social or adventures I manage and more importantly, I’m going to be posting regular updates about my Exercise, Food and Writing Habits. Those are the biggest pieces of public accountability I want from this program.

An Example to Follow… or a Warning learn from

  • I’m not an expert at any of this. That’s the whole point of the website. We don’t know what we’re doing but we know are doing something. This is just another example of that. I can’t promise this will go well, but if it does I hope someone decides they want to do a Respec of their own. If this crashes and burns, well the lessons we find can make the next go around better.

Are You Making New Year’s Wishes Rather than Resolutions?

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Each year, come December 31st, I hear people talking about their New Year’s resolutions. The most common ones center on weight loss, getting some aspect of their lives organized, or to find their other half. I’m not saying that these resolutions are bad. I simply question whether these resolutions are really made as a goal they are willing to work toward, or if they are simply made in the hope that, by simply declaring it, it will occur with little effort required on their part.

These resolutions seem to center around what is expected of us, unconsciously or not. The best example for this is probably weight loss, a resolution I hear at least twenty times before everyone clinks glasses and shouts “Happy New Year!” Weight loss is not necessarily a bad resolution to make, especially if you are making said resolution due to health concerns. But most people focus on the goal rather than the process.  They note that they want to lose twenty pounds by next year instead of saying that they plan on opting to walk more places rather than drive. They say they want to reduce two sizes in their clothing with no idea of how they will do so. If I heard my friends say they wanted to be more active or eat healthier, I could easily get behind their resolutions and even make suggestions from my own experiences if they appear open to them. But without forethought, without a plan, they aren’t likely to last. And if one gently asks about the same resolution they made last year, you might see a bit of shame in their face. That they failed, but must try, try again.

Frankly, I do not care if my friends are a bit fluffier than they think they should be, if they are disorganized, if they are single, or even in a relationship. I care that my friends are happy. Making resolutions each year and never seeing results is maddening, and we don’t need to create new reasons to feel guilty.

How do we a successfully stick to a resolution over the course of at least a whole year? The most important thing is to not only create a process towards a specific goal, but also to know what to do when the weather is at its worst and all you want is a massive blanket in which to hide under from it all.  If you live in western Washington state like most of us here from Podcast Lost in Space do, the tough time is typically the lovely wet, cold, dark month of March.

A few years ago I let one of my best friends in on a dirty little secret of mine about New Year resolutions. I make at least one “selfish” resolution each year. A resolution just for me, to keep me going throughout the year. I’m not picking out resolutions like losing weight or becoming more organized. I’m also not choosing to eat more chocolate or a larger blanket to hide under.  Instead I’m picking resolutions that will make me happier over the year, even if they may be a bit frustrating at first as I change my normal habits.

One year I made the resolution to find one evening a week to spend on self-care, because I have the bad habit of taking care of everyone else before myself. That one was difficult, but I managed to do it every week! How? I set specific days in my planner, where I had to find three to four hours per week for myself and stick to it, rather than just assume I would find it somehow, then reason my way out of when it didn’t happen. Another year I made the resolution to cook more of my own food from scratch, because I was letting my stressful schedule limit the time I spent cooking, an activity I enjoy very much. I kept to that plan by actively planning one recipe a week I wanted to make. Making an active effort to also eat only a set number of ready to eat meals, or going out to eat, per week also provided the need as well as the time for cooking at home. It became not only a way to de-stress from long days, but it also became part of my natural schedule.

This year my resolution is to make more plans, specifically for fun, with friends. At the time I’m writing this I still have a couple days to figure out the plan that will support my resolution and make it stronger than a wish.  By the time you’re reading this, I’ll hopefully have it nailed down.

This year I offer you a challenge, if you are willing to take it, even if you are reading this after New Year’s Day. Make a resolution, specifically for yourself and for no one else. Figure out something in your life that has been bothering you and make a full resolution with a bit of a plan as to how you will achieve it. Choose how best to make yourself not only better, but happier.

Extra Life: A Brief Primer

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If you’re a fan of the podcast, you’ve probably heard us (me) talking about the big Extra-Life Event coming up. Hopefully you’ve gone into the show-notes for the link to our extra-life team, but if not you’ll get it again. For those you who join us primarily on the blog, you have no idea what I’m talking abut and that’s what we’re here for now.

Extra Life is a charity that mobilizes thousands of gamers every years to help raise money for local Children’s Hospitals. Started back in 2008, the community has managed to raise over $14 Million for their local hospitals and this is one of a dozen major charity events and programs that the gaming community takes part it. The marque event of the Extra Life campaign happens on Saturday November 7th in a mass culmination of 24-hour gaming marathons. Much like the Relay-for-Life the idea is to raise funds and donations while providing entertainment.

So what are we going to do? Well, it’s all still up in the air but our rough plan is that we’re going to go live around 10am on Nov 7th and I go to bed around 10am on Nov 8th. Seneca will be around a bit on stream, making food (recipes forth coming) and playing games. We’re going to have former guest and friend of the show Joedor_ hanging out from something like the Start of the stream to bout 4pm when he goes off to do his own stream. Everything else, is a mess that we’ll figure out. Come watch us (me) slowly go insane and have fun, pass a few dollars on for the kids and get some entertain in the process.

Check out Our Team, and Donate!

You can watch us on Twitch!