Things I love about #dreamwidth

I don't get flak about losing control over my English when it's late at night. (I mean, I can still talk and stuff, but I have to channel it into specific contexts, otherwise I start speak handwavium

And it feels great to not have that be an issue :))

Numbers, exercise, and levelling up

Note, so you can decide if you'd like to skip ahead: I'm going to be talking about exercise in this entry. I'm not going to be talking about weight or food or anything similar, just exercise, and I don't see this becoming a regular feature in this journal.


Okay, so when I was in university, I got hooked on an MMO. It was pretty bad! I'd play a minimum of four hours a day (probably reached six hours even most weekdays). I'd start playing as soon as I got home and stop a bit after midnight. I was very happy when finals week came along, because the lack of classes meant I could come home earlier and play more :D.

I kept up my grades and stuff like that by finishing as much as I could while I was at school and then fitting in the rest whenever I had to regen. Occasionally, when I was feeling very responsible, I'd go to places where I'd definitely need to regen, so that I'd have lots of time to do my homework. And, one semester where I arranged my schedule to make sure I would be able to go online during non-peak times so the lag wouldn't be so bad :D :D :D

Now! Unlike a lot of people who played to hang out with friends, or who played to get a good level or a good build or good armor, mostly I played so I could count numbers while killing stuff. It wasn't strategic: I wasn't crunching the numbers to get good stats, or trying to figure out how I'd need to allocate stats/resources for armor in order to get the optimal build. I just wanted to do stuff, and count stuff while doing stuff.

:D


At some point, I wanted to stop but couldn't. So I stopped this way: I got a Powerbook, which OS didn't support MMO client. And that was that.


Fast forward years and years to two months ago: I was catching up with a friend of mine, and he brought up WoW (which was not the MMO I'd been obsessed with btw!). He also mentioned that he was trying a "9000 exercise points in 30 days" self-program to challenge himself (1 point = 1 rep of any exercise = 100m run/walk/jog). And I realized how much I missed counting stuff while doing stuff in order to reach stuff.

Two weeks ago, I was at my grandpa's condo, and I realized that summer was over and I hadn't gone swimming. I had my swimsuit with me, it felt like a waste not to try out the water... I set myself a goal of 30 lengths of the pool (it was a small pool!), and to my complete surprise, I managed to reach that goal. By the end, I even kinda looked like I was swimming *G* (I don't know proper stroke or style or whatever it's called, but I can happily splash along in the water)

And at the end of that day (okay, the next morning. I was very contentedly exhausted and too sleepy to think that evening), I decided that I wanted to do something that involved counting towards something concrete.


( talk about exercise )