Some Sad News

So sadly I'm going to have to end this. I wish I could continue because its been so much fun but I just reached a point where I'm struggling to do everything I need to do, let alone fitting challenges on top of it. I had to cancel my concert tonight that I've had planned for months because I am just so overwhelmed with stuff over the next few weeks.

It was great and it would be great to continue but I guess what I don't need right now is added things to do. I made up the challenges as a way to keep my occupied and motivated when my life was stagnant earlier this year, but now I have a job, I have a new house, I have a visit coming up, I have forum responsibilities, and I guess its served its purpose. I would recommend something like it to anyone feeling in a rut, it worked wonders.

I suppose there's nothing stopping me from doing those things now, but I won't be able to do them daily any more. Maybe I'll just put it on hiatus and resume it when things calm down. Right now its just too much.

But I did get 166 challenges done, so I suppose that's a positive! I made it far longer than I thought I would!

I'll still keep this and maybe just put it on pause for now. Later readers, I hope you're all doing great

Watch a kids movie I've never seen

So I rented a movie a while ago but I've been putting off watching it forever. Finally got to it today!

Watch a kids movie I've never seen
So I wanted to watch one of the Studio Ghibli movies I'd heard so much about. Sadly, my first two choices didn't pan out. But I did end up getting Howl's Moving Castle.

It was an okay movie. A bit weird and hard to follow at times. But it was certainly theatrical. I enjoyed it enough to watch once but I don't think I'd watch it again.

Attempt to play an instrument

Alrighty, so I don't have any instruments, but that hasn't stopped me before! So not qute the same but I did find some online help for this challenge!

Attempt to play an instrument
I found this cool online piano that is very easy to use:
http://virtualpiano.net/

And it even has sheets for you
http://virtualpiano.net/tag/easy/

Press the letter on your keyboard marked in the sheets and it will play the notes on the piano! I had a lot of fun and tried out a bunch of different songs!

Some I was definitely better at than others!

Write 10 pages in one day

Alrighty so this one was originally intended for a book I plan to maybe some day write, but I ended up using it for something else.

Write 10 pages in one day
I came up with a new story idea and thought maybe about writing that instead, but in the end, I decided to instead use it to help me with one of my future challenges! One of my challenges is to write a top games list, so I wrote 8 game reviews, 10 pages worth, for that future challenge!

What games were they? I guess you'll have to wait and see!

Send out 20 resumes

So not exactly what the challenge was but I suppose I should count this for this here.

Send out 20 resumes
I got a job! A friend of my boyfriend's said he could put in a word for me and that started the application process. I head back on Tuesday but they wanted to do a background check and I wanted to be 100% sure before doing this one, but there you go!

I suppose no need to send out another 19 resumes since I now have a job!

Educate myself on an opinion I disagree with

So I came upon a discussion of an article that was basically critiquing arguments from youtube videos, so I decided this would be good for this challenge.

Educate myself on an opinion I disagree with
I read an article about a woman who was being harassed for her opinions on sexism in video games and general media. So I started watching her videos to see what they were about. There were some things I agreed with and some I did not.

Today I found this article:
http://nastythingssaidabout.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/the-terrible-misogyny-in-the-games-industry/
Basically critiquing her arguments about sexism in video games.

Now while I do think sexism is present in video games, I also didn't agree with how much the woman mentioned. So I was interested in reading what this writer had to say. I agree with his points that there should be no harassment of people in general, I did find his arguments lacking.

In my opinion, instead of taking the points the woman he is complaining about made and arguing them in a well presented and thought provoking way, he seems instead to just be rather upset at the state  of current affairs and using her as an outlet. Some of his arguments I downright disagree with. I do think sexism is very viewable in video games and as a huge video game player, I see it quite often.

Overall I was disappointed. Not necessarily at his opinion, but at the way it was presented. He had the opportunity to give a voice to the other side, to examine and critique what was being said, and to make us think. Instead it felt more like he was hurt and being defensive.

So I am sad to say I learned nothing from that article, but I did learn an entirely different lesson from this challenge. I had been thinking about what opinion to educate myself on for a while until this came along and it made me realize something important. Thinking about learning of opposing opinions made me very uncomfortable. It made me realize that I would sometimes rather stick my fingers in my ears and go LA LA LA instead of opening my mind and learning new things. This is something I see present in myself and others and this challenge has helped me to keep this in mind for the future. Overall I would say it was a positive!

Play Bingo

This one I happily stumbled upon by chance when we went to dinner at a pizza place not too far from here.

Play Bingo
Coincidentally, Mellow Mushroom Pizza has a Thursday night Bingo, which explains why it was busier than we had seen it before!

We stayed for three out of six of the games and got close to winning two, but no dice! I still had fun anyways and it was a happy coincidence!