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  • Archive for January, 2015

    In for a lot of Dungeon Crawling…


    2015 - 01.24

    Another tough week, but at least there’s been some positive action come out of it, if only because of an unexpected attack of anxiety as well. I don’t normally feel anxious as such. My Depression generally manifests without it. But this week I began to get caught up in a being in a maelstrom of Depression & Anxiety with seemingly no hope of escape.

    However I managed to springboard off to another chat with the GP and up the Antidepressants for a period of time until things become manageable again. I’ve also organised to talk with the Bank about rejigging the mortgage to fortnightly payments and suck up the last of my credit cards into the mortgage to focus all my debt in one place with a much lower interest rate. That will make a huge difference to me by the end of this year. I’ve also hooked up with a new Psychologist since my last one has retired and I’ve been procrastinating about organising another one. Just need to get the workplace sorted out for the time being and try and settle in for the ride again.

    However with all that good work done this week, I had a bit of an emotional spend. Of course I blame the cat Chemoux; I reckon she’s worse than Tigga, it must be the Kitten in her still. In the cat’s defence, all of them were reduced by 20% or more.

    So really what’s happened now up to this point tonight is a spending spree consisting of the following: Descent ver. 2 plus a couple of expansions and additionally the unrelated Battle of the Five Armies. All of these from Games Paradise. However they didn’t have some of the expansions in stock. Then, a quick trip to Ozgameshop and picked up a conversion kit to convert the Descent Ver. 1 characters and monsters for play with Ver. 2. Then slipped over to Bookdepository, and picked up the expansions I couldn’t get at games paradise or ozgameshop. It’s concerning for me that book depository are now selling boardgames.

    All in all a good shop, and I can’t actually remember the last boardgame I bought, it’s been a while. I’d say it must have been the final expansion for Arkham Horror being the Miskatonic Horror. This was an expansion for every previous expansion and the main game. I do love my Arkham Horror too.

    Amongst the Waves…and Waves…and Waves…


    2015 - 01.18

    It’s been a tough week for me with only managing two days of work while wrestling with this seemingly stretching bout of Depression. Still two days is better than none. Hopefully this week I’m going to make it back on track, with a long weekend at the end of it.

    An interesting question struck me while I have been delving amongst the difficulties dealing with pulling myself out of this round. “What is this sense of feeling trapped” about? What is the key to breaking out of it? There seems to be a sense of criticalness about this question for me that gives me hope that it may open a door to a more positive space.

    More to come I guess.

    Head Up and Looking Forward…


    2015 - 01.11

    Well another weekend is coming to an end, I didn’t get out for a shoot this weekend, but did do some work towards the business. As long as I’m doing something each day towards preparing or growing the business I’ll be satisfied that I’m making progress towards that freedom down the track.

    Caught up with a few friends by phone & email, which I make an effort to do each Saturday morning usually. But now I’ll spread that out a bit more given that I’m scheduling quite a few of the maintenance tasks for the business such as ensuring the preparation of stock and the supplying of stock to the various sites I’ve now got to manage. Other preparations have gone well too, but they’re not to be actioned for quite some time yet.

    I’ve also decided that the Camera shop downtown does the best prints of all my options here: Fuji processing and it really “pops”. So that will be my Stock choice for the orders; despite the increase in cost, I think it will be a better product for the purchasers from the Etsy Store.

    The Lucky Dip of Hope…


    2015 - 01.06

    Whatever I tell myself, it could be far far worse…

    At the very least I still have someone who will tell me that 🙂

    And sometimes I just need to practise patience and discipline (of the non BDSM persuasion)!

    Out of the Blocks…


    2015 - 01.06

    Well I’ve got through the Alamy.com Quality Control without any hitches, so I can upload stock anytime. Have to get a “swift code” from my bank though. Or I can get paid by paypal. Haven’t made up my mind yet.

    On the Bank with My Feet Dangling in the Stream…


    2015 - 01.05

    Well I took another step towards testing the waters from the photography business side of things today. I signed up to Alamy.com today and submitted some images to the Quality Control Assessment in the hope of getting a portfolio of stock photos up there. Hopefully I’ll get through that and be able to put some stock up and see how it goes there too.

    They are one of, if not the largest Stock Photo suppliers on the internet. If I can start making an inroad there, something may happen in the next twelve months. I’m not expecting to make sales yet, but these are the avenues for sales in the sort of work I’m planning to sell. Anything that comes from this for the first year will go straight to debt reduction. Anything that can reduce my need for my current job is a good thing.

    Feeling Proactive Again…


    2015 - 01.04

    Well I’ve made the time for the WordPress update to 4.1 and got my arse into gear on making sure I have current backups of all the blogs, databases and images involved. This definitely relieves my concerns a bit about the future for my photography, as I’d really hate to lose any of the blogs, but particularly now Shards Of Arcadia. Only took a couple of hours to complete all the tasks. I really must get about to automating as much as possible. Still manual is better than none.

    As unlike me as it sounds, Shards Of Arcadia had not had a backup since it went live! I know, insane! Also Tigga was unhappy that her blog was not backed up. Apparently her busy paws don’t like to repeat themselves.

    Of course that then prompted the discussion from Chemoux about when she was getting such a thing also. She certainly has plenty to say, so I guess that won’t be far off. Probably configure that for her soon on a Friday night with nothing else to do.

    A Gem in the Sand…


    2015 - 01.02

    Well the Akismet subscription for the Shards of Arcadia blog is definitely money well spent, it’s saved me sorting over 300 spams to that blog in the last few days. Clearly it’s been heavily targeted since it’s been connected with the online shop. Anyway, it’s well protected now it seems, and I’ll consider such a subscription for the others if necessary down the track.