A Dearth of Creativity

If I was going to complete my Blaugust challenge this year I knew that I'd have to make some kind of plan and generate a structure to work within, as without something to focus on each day I quickly lose enthusiasm for the project. My plan has Saturdays earmarked for 'creative projects'. Unfortunately, all my creativity lately has been going into a couple of secret projects or into things that fit nicely into the categories for other days of the week, leaving me without anything pre-planned to talk about today.

That'd normally be fine, I'd draw a little cartoon or write a little poem or something, but I'm just feeling a bit blergh and utterly devoid of any creativity today, I suspect I have a little bit of a man-cold thing going on. When I have days like this I tend to hide from everybody and just curl up in front of my computer and either watch something brainless that I can fall asleep to, or I play a bunch of brainless computer games and wait for the feeling to pass.

Thus, I present to you my list of brainless entertainment that I enjoy partaking in when I'm feeling blergh, because I'm not giving up on what has otherwise been a rewarding experience so far just because I'm having one lousy day.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

I pick this one up in the last steam sale since the price was right and it said something vaguely Tolkien related on the cover. I am a sucker for something Tolkien related, even if the link is...pretty tenuous. I'm slowly playing through this, and despite the fact I've never been a hack-em-up player, I find beating hordes of orcs senseless and then disappearing back in the wild again extremely cathartic. I'm pretty sure that this is a pretty terrible game, since pretty much all you do is mash the mouse buttons to win prizes, but when I'm in a miserable mood being the immortal scourge of an evil empire is apparently exactly the sort of thing that I'm into.

Mini Metro

To be honest, this simple little game works for me when I'm in pretty much any mood, but for some reason I only tend to boot it up if I'm feeling a bit woozy. It's a very calm semi-puzzle game about delivering circles and triangles around a map, but the semi-random nature of it means that it always feel new and I can happily waste a couple of hours on this one. Possibly the best thing about it is that every time you finally lose a level it will save a GIF of your efforts for you. That's just classy.

BBC Test Match Special

Test Match Special has always been legendary in the cricket world, but as an Australian fan I've only been able to listen to the British equivalent of ABC Grandstand Cricket when the ashes have been on in England, in the middle of the night. It's been great to sit and listen to the boys ramble along and even mention the cricket now and then, in the fine tradition of cricket commentators everywhere. It's better on days like today when England is being demolished, and they start savaging their own team, though. They can be a little parochial when their boys are winning, but it's all worthwhile every time one of them uses 'cracking' to describe anything. That one could make for a dangerous drinking game.

Star Trek Enterprise

One of the joys of having Netflix here in the UK has been catching up on a lot of television that I never saw the first time around. I've seen the original series and TNG and bits and pieces of Voyager and DS9 over the years, but I've never sat down and watched Enterprise. I'm only a few episodes in, but so far I'm finding it to be a perfectly respectable, not particularly mentally taxing addition to the franchise. I kind of look forward to seeing what parts of the Star Trek universe they play around with, actually, but I'm aware that most fans don't think much of it, so I wonder if it will get around to irritating me into not watching it any more any time soon.

University Challenge

Undoubtedly my favourite non-human-interaction time of the week is sitting down to watch University Challenge, the mother of all quiz shows. Sadly, the BBC is about to start requiring me to have a television license in order to use their iPlayer service come next month, which is a pretty expensive prospect, but until then I intend to keep following along. This current series is just as good as the last couple, and given that we're still in the preliminary rounds I can still answer a few of the questions as they're yet to take the nasty step-up that comes with the advent of the quarter-finals.

So hey, at least there's things to do around here without resorting to doing housework to keep myself busy when I'm not feeling creative or even sociable. Sorry for this nothing of a blog post, let us hope that normal service will return tomorrow when we get back to the more structured part of the week. If you come up with a clever idea for what I can do on Saturdays, let me know?

Blaugust Writing Prompts
1) How do you like to recover when you're feeling under the weather?
2) What's a word that makes you smile?
3) If you were going to appear on game show, which would you want it to be?