On
Tuesday, the 2nd of June 2026, I sustained an injury to the ass, I
won't go into detail (it was largely my fault), but the result was that I was
heavily advised to not sit down (say, at my desk) until it healed up. Initially
this was a somewhat daunting prospect, I usually spend a solid 70-90% of my day
sat at my desk, using my modern macbook, docked to my monitor and mouse.
Certainly I wouldn't have done this if I hadn't been forced to by these stakes,
but I took it in stride and made one of my biggest lifestyle shifts in years
(yes really), this blog post is about that experience, and the lessons learnt
from it.
My
daily routine initially didn't shift too much, I would play youtube videos on
my laptop, scroll bsky and check in on discord. The main difference I noticed
was that because I was using a singular monitor, I generally focused on
whatever video I was watching way more intently. On a dual monitor setup it's
so easy to put something playing on the top screen then switch your focus to
the bottom screen. Sure I still had the option of multitasking (macOS' virtual
desktops feature proved very helpful for that), but I had to choose to do that,
and often I'd just pause whatever video I was watching so I could better focus
on whichever task I was more interested in doing, that need for constant
background noise seems to have diminished (doubly so since I've been watching
stuff so much it can often feel like there isn't much left that I want to
watch).
I
noticed that I was generally using my Bluetooth headphones way more often than
I would have at my desk. Even though my audio technicas and AKGs have long enough cables, lying down
made a fully wireless system more preferable, however I also noticed the
battery life on my headphones a lot more because of this. Previously it was
basically a nonconcern, I'd just use them as much as I wanted (maybe 2 hours a
day, more if I was heading outside now that my phone doesn't have a headphone
jack grr) and plug them in once every month or two when the robot voice started
saying battery low. Now I've had to plug them in maybe once or twice a week? Still
pretty good and I've never had them die on me, but still not ideal. Likewise I
actually had to consciously plug in my macbook to charge for the first time in
ages, previously it'd sip juice whenever it was docked but that obviously
wasn't an option anymore, I still wasn't super precious about it's battery life
but I think I was charging it once every day or two? Pretty good for a laptop
as smooth and powerful as that one to be honest.
But
that wasn't all I got up to, I'd started a playthrough of bravely default on my
3DS back in may after recommendation from someone on bsky, which I'd
already been doing on my bed instead of sat at my desk (a habit I'd formed from
playing stuff on my steam deck in this room in October), and that continued
here, but I started up a couple other habits too, namely booting up my
dreamcast to play some quick burst games once a day.
Specifically
Cosmic Smash and Capcom VS SNK (the first one). These games use the arcade
model of starting from scratch each time but with experiences from previously
plays helping you get further in newer ones (cosmic smash relying more on
memorisation and technique, while CVS is just a fighting game so it was mostly
just getting a feel for how it played). It'd been at least months since I'd
last gotten into a habit like this, I wanna put it down to my high levels of
stress from uni work (and uni life) that had pushed the idea far back into the
depths of my thoughts, but I honestly hadn't really been playing much of
anything for a while.
On
Thursday I was able to head outside to attend a HRT appointment, which marked a
level of healing for me, and on Friday, with little over 24 hours before the
last submission deadline of the year, I was able to lock in just enough to get
my last assignment (a video essay about representation in cars 2 yes really it
wasn't very good) over the finish line of just barely good enough. I submitted it at 8:58 on the
Saturday (I had the deadline as 9am in my calendar) and was ready to kick back
for a bit. Then on Sunday evening, while in the process of stripping and making
my bed, I bumped into my chair which knocked over a glass of milk I'd left on
my desk, spilling it, right where my open macbook was. I know people say it
isn't worth crying over spilt milk but boy was I tempted!
After
cleaning it all up the macbook was alive so I dried it off and wiped it down as
best I could and turned in for the night. I then woke up the next morning to a
very much not alive macbook, it would make the charging noise when plugged in
but would not turn on. Greattttt
So I
wiped it down again but more thoroughly, left it to dry, tried turning it on again
to no avail, drained it even more (you'd be seriously surprised how much milk can be contained in
a keyboard and some USB ports), but no dice, it was thoroughly dead jim. So, I booked in an appointment
with the apple store and switched to a different device, my steam deck. Why not
my desktop PC? Well besides the fact I'm just really not a fan of using windows
for daily computer stuff, I'm still meant to be avoiding sitting at my desk
remember! And I hate living out of a phone (especially with how bad youtube ads
have gotten recently, so the steam deck it was!
So for
the second week of this experience, I was forced to branch out even further
than I had before, and this is where I really noticed some of my older habits
starting to unravel.
This
week I had nothing to worry about, no videos, no work, just a lot of time to fill
with relaxing without a choice in the matter. So let's get into it
The
biggest shift I noticed this week was that I was watching youtube videos and
scrolling social media even less than before. At least when I had the macbook there wasn't much
friction to flicking between a fullscreen video and the rest of my desktop when
I wanted to, not to mention the raw speed and efficiency of accessing my desktop
through a modern mac. Now? Sure I could watch stuff on desktop youtube but it
was just
slow and unresponsive enough that I didn't get much of an urge to look through
my recommendations very long, if I was on there I'd put on a video and watch it
through to the end with even more focus than before. Though watching videos
just became less appealing to me on the deck. Whenever I wanted to use it in
desktop mode I'd have to hold it in two hands and flick around with the
trackpad and click with the triggers, and sure that works but it adds more friction,
that combined with the smaller screen meant that often if I didn't know what to
do in desktop mode I'd just boot back into the deck's gaming mode and fire up a
quick burst type game there.
This
was a double edged sword, on one hand it meant I was more likely to spend time
playing something than watching or scrolling, but it reduced the likelihood of
me switching to my 3ds or TV, so my bravely default playthrough, already
strained after 20 hours, slowly fell down my list of priorities. But what was I
playing on the deck? Let's get into that
The
first game I wanna talk about is Nubby's Number Factory, I'd been recommended
this game a while back, downloaded the demo and then never played it so I
decided on a whim to check it out and almost immediately afterwards bought the
full version. This game has been my quick hit instead of social media I'm
barely even exaggerating, each playsession starts you from zero, with only the
knowledge gained from your previous experiences carrying over, on the surface
that isn't too different from the arcade games I'd been playing but Nubby's
also has so many random chance elements that have such a heavy influence on a
playthrough that I'm quite sure it would be considered gambling if it wasn't a
one-time purchase, yes it's one of those games.
I'm
not especially keen on the idea of getting hooked on a game like this that can
drain a lot of my time (I specifically avoided balatro for that reason), but my
thought process here is that I already have a lot of time to fill, and I'm
generally only doing one or two plays per session before quitting the game and
doing something else, such as the next game I'm smoothly seguewaying into
<Parking
Garage Rally Circuit> is a game I'd already spent a decent amount of time
with around when it first came out. A fun, if at times frustrating racer which
scratches at a lot of my specific itches that come from a childhood spent
playing Mario Kart DS. Since it was installed on my deck and relatively high up
the list of recently played games I decided to fire it up only to realise Oh
yeah that's right they recently put out an extra set of tracks as DLC that I'd
bought but never played. So what could've been a quick single playsession turned into a
week+ of regularly visiting the game, playing through all 8 of the new tracks in
the 3 different vehicle classes, then more time on top of that for pushing the
leaderboards on endurance mode (my preferred way to push myself in this game),
as well as having some fun with custom tracks (which were also new to me as I
think that feature was added after I'd previously stopped playing).
This
game felt a lot better to be playing than Nubby's but at times did prove quite
intense, meaning I'd sometimes leave sessions a bit more tired than I'd
started. But the immense particles of Nubby's and general fightinggameness of
CVS all fucked up my eyes in one way or another so this wasn't really much
different, just meant that I'd have to watch out for that kind of thing and
keep my playsessions short and sweet.
Yeah
so on top of the recent developments with my ass, my eyes (vision?) has been
majorly fucked for a while now. It started around late 2023, crescendoed in
summer 2024 and then kind of disappeared in 2025, only to come back in march of
this year. What am I referring to specifically? Well it's hard to pin down. I'd
have a big scary incident where my vision would rapidly worsen to the point where
if I looked down at my hand I couldn't see all the fingers there, then after
the incident I'd get into a routine where whenever I noticed my vision getting worse
I'd panic and discontinue whatever activity I was doing to rest up (usually
lying down on my bed, often with an audiobook). This obviously massively sucks,
it's incredibly debilitating when it's in effect, and horrifically anxiety
inducing when it isn't, so if you wanna know why I haven't been out to the
arcade nearly as much in 2024 and 2026, there you go.
What's
the cause of all this? Fuck if I know. I have a history of migraines but I'm
quite sure it's unrelated, I've seen copious eye doctors and none of them could
see anything wrong with mine. The best lead I got was that it might be a weird
manifestation of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? I saw a doctor who said the symptoms
I had back in 2024 matched up with that but my issues seem really mild compared
to most of the people I see online talking about CFS so I don't wanna coopt the
term for my own (admittedly still incredibly debilitating) issues.
That's
the weird thing right? I'm massively affected compared to most of the people
around me, I can't just go out or watch a film without intensely worrying about
stuff, but compared to a lot of the people I see online I have things way
better (especially back before I was forced into this not sitting rule).
This
vision shit is also why I'm so outspoken about photosensitivity and flashing
lights, which sucks when you're friends love live music and your own hobby is
rhythm games but now I'm getting way off from my Lessons Learned from this new
experience. If you resonated with any of this and would want me to write about
it more Please let me know
As
things stand right now, my body is on its way to healing but it is taking its sweet
time. I'm about to finish up my second week of this experience, and I've got another
6 days to heal up before I'm moving out of my uni halls.
Obviously
nobody wants
to see their health get worse and be prevented from doing stuff, but I also
think I'm gonna look back and massively value the lessons learned from this
time (and hopefully apply some of them going forwards!). It's been really nice leaning
to (literally) lean back and take things slower. It seems summer is always a period
of rest and media for me (hell I got up to so much last year I did a video
about it), so hopefully this year continues the trend. I'm hoping I make more
use of my bed than usual (which is to say actually lie on it during the day by
choice instead of only using it for my eye rests and sleeping), I hope I'm more
comfortable with hopping around between my devices, and making use of more than
just the web browser on my main laptop.
As for
you reader, well, I don't know exactly what you'll take away from this. If you
know me in person hopefully this might explain why I've been a bit different
lately. If you know me online hopefully this gave you a bit of a glimpse of
what my life is like. And for anyone else, I hope you're able to take away some
of the lessons I learnt, without nearly as much hassle.
Thanks
for reading!
(Incidentally
this was written entirely on my PowerBook G4, running Microsoft word 2004
(which surprisingly can export straight to a .htm file!). The keyboard on this
thing is really nice to type on and I appreciated the calm of having an offline
device that let me focus on writing (with some music playing in the
background). I will say this thing is hot and slow, I don't think I've ever seen
a word processor lag like this before, and that M3 Macbook Pro has seriously
spoiled me in terms of heat so swapping to this thing has taken a bit to adjust
to. If I can get over the performance issues I might genuinely put this into
service as a dedicated little writerdeck, I'd recommend getting one but they're
super hard to find working these days.)
Okay
that's actually everything now, take the <back> button and leave.