I'm Feeling Better!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand breathe.

Last week wasn't good. I was burned out, I was sad, I was stressed but now I'm feeling a little bit better. I tried to take it easy, take it slow, and above all do a lot of socialising.

I spent Monday moping around a little bit, but the rest of the week got a lot better.

On Tuesday we got a visit from a colleague. He taught French at our university for a few years, and he'll be teaching English Writing part-time with us next year. Me, him, my wife and another colleague all went on a little drive along the coast and had lunch at a cute little cafe called eCru.

I was feeling like something more savoury so I got a cheese bagel, but Anna got a slice of a strawberry cake that was amazing. You know how how you try a taste of someone's food and instantly realise "Oh, I ordered the wrong thing ..."? Yeah, it was like that. We had a more substantial lunch (leftover beef and broccoli) and watched some Community. This is a nice routine we have, eating our lunch with Community. Anna's been trying to get me to watch that show for years, she's shown me a few random episodes but now we have a specific time to watch together.

Anna also got her application documents to take another semester's worth of Japanese classes at Gaidai so we get to keep this ritual going for the rest of the year!

Thursday was a little less fun work-wise. But during the evening we had a friend over and got to spend the night chatting and chilling out and making future plans. He's coming with us to see Project Hail Mary next week.

Friday was another boring day, but it was one I at least got to socialise in. Me and a coleague are working on a "How To" guide for our university for new English teachers, it was nice to get to chat and talk to someone rather than just sit in my office moping. I'm also adding my lesson materials for Open Campus's to a share drive for other teachers to use if they need to. If anyone's interested I can do a blog post about those too.

Saturday we had our Japanese class, I'm pretty sure I convinced my teacher to watch Project Hail Mary too. After class we headed to our friends house and played Dungeons and Dragons. During this session my character got absolutely hammered and then we had to fight a giant winged monster, followed by a battle with two hags and an air elemental and then a bunch of crab monsters (that last one was my fault).

Our main game got called off, but as I said before, playing in other games often gives me ideas for how to run my own. This combat-heavy session is giving me a few ideas on how to run the climax of the current "arc" in our game. It's going to involve an arena fight with a monster.

This week was so much more relaxed and less stressful than last one and I'm feeling so much better.

I've been trying to get into more hobbies as well, me and Anna have been playing Minecraft together, on my own I've been getting into Spartan Assault (a ten-year old Halo spinoff) that might be my new favourite pomodoro break activity and trying to work on the Thunderbirds models my friends got me for my birthday.

Engaging in hobbies (before I go a little nuts from work) seems to be keeping me sane, so let's keep going with that.