bite sized: slumping it

Hey, guys, it's nate and it's time for another bite size breakdown. So I'm flying solo tonight. Just kind of. Just kind of doing this. Yeah, just a bit of a monologue here. It's. This is. These bite sized, like, doing them solo is a lot, just harder. I like to have a conversation and frankly, like, this is probably going to be a pretty low energy one. I don't know how long we'll go here. Um, I'm tired. It's late. Um, I meant to do this a couple days ago and I kept kind of putting it off and because. Because, you know, frankly, I don't really have much of a topic because I've just more or less. I've been in a slump, uh, where it's just kind of hard for me to want to play, um, to have the time to play anything. And then when I do have the time, it's almost like I don't have the energy. Uh, things have been kind of just really pretty intense at work. There's a lot of political mail going on. Uh, we're coming off of, uh, prime week. So it just like had had an absolute, uh, garbage week last week at work. It was just tough. Byron had to stay home, uh, pretty much all last week. So Megan took a couple days and I took a day or two and stayed home with him. And, uh, that kind of actually upset some plans because I was going to get some stuff done around the house. I was going to, you know, try and get some time in on. On some games and, yeah, it kind of just the whole. He was actually supposed to go to daycare for a couple of those days, just again so I could get some stuff done around the house. And, and, but then he, he got hand foot in mouth for the second time, which was not awesome. Not awesome. It was. It was. It was pretty tough because, you know, frankly, I mean, like any, anybody out there with kids, it's like, it's just really tough when. And your kids struggling and, uh, and you're tired and, and they're tired and they're in pain and you're just kind of like, you just feel like you're running on fumes. Uh, so. But yeah, it's uh, it's been a bit of a. Like, just a slump kind of couple of weeks. Uh, this is like, this. The. The timetable is kind of all screwy because we, we had actually recorded an episode with Mark about Mark Erickson, about the outer wilds. And so like, I put a bunch of energy into that and I'm trying currently to kind of get through the evil within, which I didn't, you know, just, like, real quick thoughts on that. I didn't start out liking it, but the more I've gotten into the game, the more I'm kind of enjoying it. And I'm. I'm only, like, in the third or fourth chapter, it definitely has, like, a pretty rough opening, in my opinion, but overall kind of enjoying it. And probably here in a few days, hopefully, Josh and I will sit down and we'll talk about it a little more in depth. But, yeah, it's just kind of been. It's just one of those weeks, and it's. There's kind of a weird energy there. Right. Because, like, one of the things that Josh and I talked about at one point in time was just, like, we didn't want the show to become a burden. And I'm not saying that, like, oh, playing. Playing evil within is a burden or anything like that, but it's like, we really do want to put the emphasis on saying, like, just like, hey, this is kind of secondary, and our lives, you know, just the demands of life, that they do take precedent. Um, and it's just, it's been a while since I've had a season where it's just I really do feel kind of, like, stretched. Um, I had actually talked to Josh at one point in time just because, like, you know, things were getting a little busy at one point in time, and this is a while ago where I just, I wanted to take, like, a month off and just kind of, like, you know, not have to worry about recording. And that didn't really pan out the way that I wanted it to, and that was mostly my fault. But. And I guess the thing is, you know, like I said, I don't, I don't have any really profound words of wisdom, but I did want to just say to, like, people, like, you know, kind of ask, well, two things. Like, you know, maybe talk a little bit about my process through, like, getting through the slump, and then, you know, just sort of end on just saying, like, hey, what do you guys do when. And it's. This isn't even, like, I don't want to play video games. It's just like, I'm just kind of in a weird space where it's hard to do much of anything. And maybe that's, like, you know, I'm a little depressed or kind of just worn out. But I think, you know, one of the big things is just, like, trying to simplify and really make sure that I'm majoring on the majors and not letting the minors sort of, like, dictate it. I've been listening to some productivity stuff, and so, like, some of this is going to talk about that on an, on a fairly recent episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, which is not like an always recommend for me. There are a lot of episodes that I don't listen to and I don't really care about. And then there are some which I just think are really, really solid. But he had a productivity guy on there. You had some interesting things to just talk about, like, you know, task management. And there was this perspective thing where he was, like, talking about, like, looking at your to do lists and your tasks as more of a river versus sort of like, objects, like, to be defeated or conquered and just understanding that there's always kind of going to be there. And it's like, it's funny because he actually, in that episode mentioned, like, things called, like, he was like, actually, people have backlogs of all sorts of things, including video games. He's like, and I didn't think. And I kind of just laughed to myself, which I thought that was fun. It's like, yeah, that's the entire premise of this podcast is, like, dealing with the backlog. And of course, we have, like, the backlog beat down meta, which is more of a tool to just help us to think and about this. And it's less of sort of this, like, rigid structure to, like, beat, beat yourself up with. Right. But it's. It's kind of like, yeah, we do want to promote and encourage people to play the things they already own and to maybe not buy so much stuff, but understanding like, that it's kind of like a river or it's kind of like a pond. Like, there's always going to be more stuff there. There's always going to be more games that you could play or should play or want to buy or whatever. And so instead of putting this, like, hard line on all this stuff, like, look at instead, like, hey, like, I have time now. I can sort of, like, dip into these things. And there was actually, Mark Kozlowski shared some stuff in the discord that I thought was really interesting, too. It's just like, which kind of echoed a lot of this. But, like, there's always going to be more, like, with to do list and productivity and everything else. Cause, like, I think part of it is, like, where I'm at is just, like, there. It doesn't always feel like we're making headway at home like, you know, we, we have this kind of like, mountain of laundry that we have. It just feels like we've been chipping away at forever just because we haven't had time at home to just sit down and deal with it. Because we have a two year old boy. And, like, props to people who manage, you know, two, three small children all at once. Because I'm telling you what, this two year old is giving us a run for money. Now, to be fair, my wife and I are both, you know, we're not as young as we used to be. You know, we are firmly sort of entrenched in, like, the middle aged parent. Dumb. But, but it's, it's kind of been like I'm in this process where I'm just trying to strip out the, the unnecessary. And it's just kind of hard, too, because, like, I think one of the other things is, like, my schedule tends to be nothing super regular. Like, when volume is heavy, if I don't get help on the route or whatever, like, I come back later. And so the things that I want to get done for that day, sometimes they, they just get put off. Like, I've been meaning to mow. And, um, it just hasn't, hasn't really materialized. Like, um, like it like an afternoon to do that. Like, we've, we've had the weather, but it's like, Megan has had plans a few, few nights out of the week. Um, over the last couple weeks, she just had some stuff going on, and so she's kind of been out of the house, and it's just been me and the boy, and he's not big enough where I can, you know, it's. And then it's dark. So, um, yeah, it's just kind of like, it's, that's, that's the rhythm. But coming back to it, it's like, a couple of things that I've been trying to do just in the last, like, week or two is like, again, major on the majors and just say, like, and understand that even though there's, like, this pile of stuff that just constantly needs done, like, just pick some of it and do it. But don't, you know, don't kind of. There's a way to enslave yourself to all of this, to all of the busyness and all of the insanity. Like, there's like, you know, I have a few hundred games on my backlog. I did it like a spreadsheet kind of word document kind of thing. And then I still need to go back and fill out some values and update and all that. But there's a way that like maintaining and managing all that can just be really, really cumbersome and can kind of become its own master and or its own sort of distraction and time and energy vacuum. So I guess like I said, I'm just, I'm trying to really just say like, hey, these are like, I've got like two or three things. Like I've got bandwidth for like maybe like one or two things today and try to do those. And, and when you don't, just, there's tomorrow. And if it never gets done, well, it couldn't have been that important anyways. But I think the thing is for anybody else who's in that season, I just wanted to offer a bit of encouragement is like, I think there is a way that you can health like in a healthy way recontextualize those things and sort of wrestle with them in a way that, you know, and again, the example I would use is with the backlog is a lot of people have said, like, the meta just kind of stresses me out and I'm just saying like.