Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

Unlike many people I know, today it is not a day off for me. Thus, like every Monday morning, I ready myself to go to work. I opened the garage door and the first thing I see is a very dense fog, not ideal. I get on the road and noticed there were “glassy” looking — not good. These days I am always rushing, and it is early enough in the morning — about 4:40 AM — that I barely encounter other drivers. At least until I get to the freeway, that is.

My car did slide a bit when I was turning right into one of the main roads. At that point I knew I need to take it slow and with caution.

Once I got merged into the freeway, there were more drivers than before but still not as many as there would be on regular hours. In normal conditions and like many of the other commuters, I would go over the speed limit. (I know that’s bad, sorry 😉) This time around though, I was doing the speed limit. When all of a sudden I noticed this car in the middle lane in full stop, making me having to make a rather abrupt change of lanes to the right. What I had noticed, when looking at my mirror is that a small pick-up truck had spanned and the bed of the truck had hit the barrier that separates the freeway 😳

This winter he hadn’t gotten much snow over here, which in many ways it’s a bad thing. What we have gotten though, are many mornings of icy roads.

Marley comes around with the iPad

Mar: papá, can I get a new game?

Me: which one?

Mar: this one..

I download the game for her

Me: Marley, we need to go through the games you don’t play anymore and delete them so you have more sapace

Mar: showing me the iPad’s Home Screen with empty icon spaces , I still have a lot of space, see!

😂

This game, Blasphemous, it had been in my Nintendo Wishlist since it came out and the other night, I finally bought it.

Blasphemous is a punishing action-platformer that combines the fast-paced, skilled combat of a hack-n-slash game with a deep and evocative narrative core.

I have been hesitant about buying this game, even after playing the demo, which it’s still available. The reason is because like many other games of this style, they tend to be somewhat difficult and a little frustrating.

But I can’t help myself, I love this genre of games, I love the pixel art and its style. Same thing happened when Shovel Knight first came out for the Nintendo 3DS. I fell in love with the pixel art and did play a big deal of it but never finished it. Same with The Messenger, although this one I stopped playing for other reasons, not because it was too difficult. And also with one of my most recent ones Katana ZERO, god knows I love this game but grrrr.

These games are my guilty pleasures. Mainly because, like I’ve said before, the pixelated art. I ❤️ pixels! But they aren’t the easiest games to play a lot of times and yet, I buy them, play them, love them and hate them!

Back to Blasphemous. I have played a few hours of it and so far I am enjoying it. And so far it doesn’t seem too difficult in the sense of the fighting style or the enemies but the gameplay itself. If you die, you re-spawn in one of these altar looking structures and just like Shovel Knight, you’ll have to track back we’re you died to get all your stuff back. These altar looking things are very self apart from each other so that can get annoying.

This game is as if Dante’s Inferno, Shovel Knight and Castlevania had a baby.

The pixel art is beautiful and so the background scenery. The story is creepy and very interesting and you encounter very weird and interesting characters along the way. But, I am afraid that I might not finish this game either, that I will get frustrated and rage quitting it but we will see.

Task managers give me anxiety! There, I’ve said it.

I know we all struggle with finding the best way to manage our life. Always searching for that tool that’s going to be our second brain and remind us of all the things.

I have struggled a lot with tasks managers, I have bought them all, tried them all, loved and hated them all. Always going back and forth between them and failing to stick to them too.

Now, in the job I have now, for the past year or so, I’ve got many plates to juggle with. Too many things to track of, many projects if you will. I know I can be very forgetful and easily distracted, so it was obvious I needed a system. Without a system, things fall through the cracks and if things fall through the cracks, I get in trouble. I love my job, I don’t want to get in trouble. I have a Windows computer and both a personal and work iPhone. Obviously, I need something that can work and sync between both platforms.

For the past few months, I have been playing around with both Todoist and TickTick, both having a Windows app and an iOS/macOS app — duh 🙄 I have two main areas, Work and Personal with different areas or categories within. All good and dandy! I am using a big widget on my home screen showing me all my tasks and to-dos for the day. Well, this started to give me some anxiety, I was seeing all my personal things along with all my work things. My “Personal” area only had a few simple tasks, whereas Work, are the bulk of them. It was mostly my work things what caused me anxiety, though.

Having realized that, I think what I am going to do is, not use any particular task manager for personal things, just Reminders. I have already been using Reminders for reoccurring things, like meds or taking the trash out every Monday night, etc. Just leave my task manager and anxiety at work. Use TickTick for all my work related things, still have it installed on my phone in case I need to reference something but not front and center.

We shall see how this goes.

Today, I closed my Instagram account. In a way, it shouldn’t be a surprise, this is something I have been going back and forth in my head for months. Some obvious reasons, it’s a Facebook owned service, no matter how much I love the app — or used to.

I had quit Facebook years ago, and I’ve been okay and happy with that decision. I had closed my Instagram account before, and always coming back to it. Usually under the excuse that, I miss friends and family and Instagram is the “less Facebooky way” to do to stay in touch. Then I promise myself that I’d keep it small and under control, friends and family only. The thing is, I have no control. I start with just family and friends, and then I keep following other things and all they do is add some kind of anxiety. Either the content or the time I spend on the platform, I’m not certain.

One day, I had decided to do an unfollowing spree, to see if that’d help, and it really didn’t. I was still anxious about it, also spending too much time doom scrolling. It started to feel toxic — for me.

Instagram, toxic, isn’t that Twitter’s role? Well, for me, Instagram became a little toxic. Even if I deleted the app from my phone, I would find any excuse to re-download it and go back to doom-scrolling and following more accounts just because. Recent events have also played a role in my decision. I was seeing too much, not necessarily on my feed but on my stories. But Gaby, just ignore the stories. I can’t, I have a problem, and it’s that I am a completionist. I cannot have those circles on top, so I go through each one and there’s where I’d see most of the stuff I really didn’t want to see. Maybe you’re just following the wrong people, Gabz, well maybe or maybe not.

Regardless, this has been a long time coming, and this morning, I didn’t think twice, opened my browser and closed the account. The people who matter know where and how to reach me.

I still have my Twitter, apparently I do a better job there managing my timeline. Always a third-party app so no circles with stories on top to complete 😁

“I think he did it but I just can’t prove it”

I think he did it but I just can’t prove it

I think he did it but I just can’t prove it

No, no body, no crime

But I ain’t letting up until the day I die

No, no

I think he did it

No, no

He did it

Yesterday in the Santiago-Ortiz household was cleaning day, as it is every weekend. In the midst of the chore, I decided to clean underneath and back of our sofa. We have a big sectional one and like many, it “eats” everything, things go missing and never to bee seeing again 😅

Please doing judge us, in our defense, it is a massive heavy sofa and we have two kids.

That being said, I was shocked by the number of things that we found and cleaned from behind and underneath the thing, it was bonkers. I even found my weeks-lost work iPhone 😅

Anyhow, I am glad it got done, it was way overdue. We also organized all the girl’s toys and got a bunch of others ready for donation. Yesterday was a very productive day here in the Santiago-Ortiz household.

Great Job Team!!

The next thing I want to clean is where the fridge is... 😬