The Weekly Vlog Returns - Pre-Gencon Goals: Social Media, Cleaning Up & Things I've Been Pushing Off

0:00 Hey, I'm Alex Raffle from Board Gameco. And this is the return of the weekly vlog. Uh the weekly vlog, which I haven't done in a year, basically roughly a year. I think it's been uh maybe a little less than a year, maybe around 11 months. Uh so around this time last year, shortly before Gen Con, I started this thing. Uh you might remember, you might not, where I was like, "We're doing a weekly vlog." And then I filmed every day for like 5 to 10 minutes a day, and then at the end of the week, put them all together into a roundup weekly vlog. Um I'm kind of happy with what I did with it. I definitely made some changes to my life in small ways that part of that was the goal. Like I had this 30-day, you know, trying to get off social media thing that has not gone well. It did go well when I did it, but there's a variety of things like that that I think I think it building up habits. It's a process. It's a never- ending process, honestly. But I think that there are things that I have tried to do over the years that I have very successfully made into habits and stuck with and that I've been doing for forever. something like, you know, something I've talked about a lot on the channel is the idea of this weekly gratitude thing. I probably had it in my list last year. Not weekly, daily gratitude. Daily, every single day, there are three things that I want to write down, things to be grateful for every single day. That's something I I wanted to do and it's something that I've made a habit. I don't necessarily do it every day to be fair, but I would say I probably do it four out of every 5 days, something like that. I get I get to it a majority of the time. And building up habits takes a lot of time and a lot of trial and error, a lot of failure along the way. Uh you sit there and say, "I want to do X, whatever X is." You want to drop a few pounds. You want to be kinder and nicer to the

1:31 people in your life. You want to spend more time with your kids, play more games, play less games, whatever it is you're trying to do in life. Building up habits takes a lot of time. And so, a year later, we're back with our weekly vlog. Now, to be clear, I think a big thing in life in general is making making reasonable goals and setting expectations that you think are meetable and just being just being generally realistic and honest with yourself. So, for example, I don't plan on doing this as a, hey, I'm doing a weekly vlog every single week forever. That's not the habit we're working on. This video is documenting the habits, but the video itself is not one of the habits just because honestly, I don't know if I'll keep it up. I assume I won't. I assume I won't honestly. And I just don't think that I think part of this is that I want to pick things that are important to me.

2:16 To me, the video is more about enabling the other habits I want to build through documentation, through talking to you, and it's less about the video being the habit itself, if that makes sense. This is a good time to note that this channel is sponsored by Allplay. If you go to allplay.com, you can do a variety of things, including getting yourself a board game bag, which is a very good habit to build up when you're going to a convention because honestly, uh, carrying a lot of games around in an awkward, hard to carry whatever bag situation you have going on is not nearly as convenient as using an allplay uh, bag, putting on your back, and carrying them around in a backpack. Although, you do run the risk of them becoming that person in a crowded convention, swinging a giant backpack full of games, and nobody likes those people. So maybe just get the all play bag and skip the back part. At least if you're at Gen Con or somewhere crowded. Anyways, back to the habit situation. So I'm going to have to remember not to do that every day because I'm doing one video out of all these little segments.

3:08 So what are the habits we're trying to work on now? It's been a year. I did it for 5 weeks. Then I got some cats. Life got derailed. Well, I got a cat. Life got derailed. Got two more cats. Life got derailed more. So what are the habits I'm trying to work on now? The first and probably the habit I've had the hardest time really cracking. I've made incremental degrees of progress in, but I just don't think I've cracked it in the year and a half, maybe two years now that I've been trying this. I've not been working on this forever, but I have been trying it for the past year and a half, two years. And that's staying off social media. I find social media adds a lot of benefit to my life in small ways. Um, and social media is variable like YouTube obviously has a lot of lot of benefit to my life. Uh, even Instagram I think I mostly enjoy, but I don't love the doom scrolling facet of it. But I think Instagram when I'm trying to at least be particular and make meaningful progress where I want when I think about it critically, Instagram has pros and cons. More pros than cons when I think of the value it adds. And then there's some degree of trying to improve upon it. And so in the effort of being mindful of not taking on more than is reasonable and being setting myself small little uh smart goals. A smart goal is it's a business term I think but like it's a small measurable achievable um realistic and timesensitive or something like that. The basic idea is you don't just set these overarching goals. You set specific goals with specific metrics to them and then you make them more manageable as opposed to like I'm going to do this massive thing in life. You're like this is the small thing I'm going to do incremental.

4:36 Anyways, so in the effort of trying to be mindful and realistic about my social media, I think for right now the goal I'm going to give myself is I want to stay off of Facebook, like off of Facebook. And the tricky part is I almost want to go cold turkey cuz I think it might be better. But for right now, I'll allow myself to click on links that people send me. I'm going to allow that, but I'm not allowed to simply go on social media without clicking on I'm seeing a dog over here. This is a little dog interaction going on. These two dogs are a little bit like, you know, wary and there's a dog cross. Oh, they're barking now. Okay, dog situation. So, there's a little bit of a cut there cuz I kind of ran into a dog situation where a bunch of dogs, not me, not me. The dog's horrible. Well, obviously I'm not a dog, but I mean there a bunch of dogs barking not at me, but at each other. So, um, random cuts so you don't have a ton of dogs uh barking at each other.

5:25 Anyways, so what I was saying is uh for right now, I'm going to be picking three goals. I probably lost all focus, so I picked up in the middle of nowhere. Whatever. Uh anyway, so for the three things, social media, saying that I saying that I want to keep my social media goal manageable. And so for right now, that goal is going to be no Facebook unless I click on a link that someone sent me for some reason. I'm allowing myself that, but I'm not allowed to go on Facebook on my own. I'll see if or how Facebook comes back into my life in any way. I don't know, assuming I even successfully do this. But I really think that Facebook and whether it's Facebook itself, whether it's the algorithm knowing how it can set me off because it shows me all the rage stuff. It shows me all the things that I'm like, "Oh my gosh, why are people like this?" And then I look at it and it continues to show it to me. And so it's just this endless cycle of just stupidity that the algorithm has learned to capture my attention. So I think social media adds so much more, at least Facebook specifically, adds so much more negativity that for right now, Facebook is out. I cannot click on Facebook. I'll be reporting back to you every single day how I do that. That's number one.

6:22 Number two is I want to build into my life 10 minutes a day of cleaning up stuff, whatever that means. Not big projects. Cuz I find right now the way I tend to work is things build up until they get to a point where I'm like, "Okay, it's crazy." And then I sit down and put it all I I clean it all up. I get it all cleaned up at a certain point. But until then, I live with smaller and incremental piles of things getting worse and worse. A few more games stacked on each other, a few more things in the corner, a few more things on the table, and then it's cleanup day. And I'd rather build into my life 10 minutes. I'm going to turn around cuz I'm reaching a main road, and I don't need you to have that audio. Um, I'm going to build into my day. I want to build my day 5 to 10 minutes of cleanup time every single day. And again, we'll see how it goes. Uh, if you remember from this vlog, I actually started with a major house clean up. Fortunately, I don't need to do that. My house is not that way these days, but 5 to 10 minutes a day in the morning, at night, something I want to specifically build just tidying up time. I also know myself, and I'm pretty sure when it needs to, that 5 to 10 minutes will turn into 15 or 20 if it's needed. Uh, but I just have to start. I have to be like, not just, okay, I'm just doing the other thing and the cleanup will happen later, but I want to do that. And then number three is actually going to be a little different. Number three is gonna be along the same lines, but every single week, I want to pick something that I've been pushing off and do that thing. And so that's not a daily thing, which is slightly harder. Um, I don't know how to incorporate that as a daily thing, but I just don't think I think sometimes the things I push off are larger projects.

7:47 They are not small 2cond tasks, but they're also not like 17 hours and they could be pushed off for 6 months. Um, because, you know, I'm just not going to get to it until I do. Although, some things like painting could actually be 17 hours. Although, I'm trying to look into home insulation right now. So, I'm actually pushing off painting because they poke holes in the walls. It's better to do the insulation first. We'll see. I'll figure that out. Anyways, point is, uh, those are the three things for right now. Uh, how long will this, uh, process last? Well, different things. Last year when I did this, I kind of set the goals in the first week, but then the rest of the month was like a touch base as I went through it. I think it would be very boring for you if I spend the next 17 vlogs. If this last 17 weeks, I don't know. I don't think it will. I I think it'll be very boring for you to talk about all that stuff. So, for right now, for week one, I will be focusing on those things. That's going to be my main goal. Uh for today, though, speaking of gratitude, while I have you here, I might as well think of my three things that I'm grateful for today. So, number one, the first thing I'm grateful for is that I'm doing this vlog. There's different kinds of content that give me passion. And something that I've really been working towards over the past year or whatnot, is trying to do the videos that I want to do and not the videos that are good for the algorithm. There's a reason you've seen less things like top 10 lists or who knows what. Because as much as I love a good top 10 list when the mood strikes, there's other times where I'm trying to figure out a top 10 list to do for content. And over the past year, I've been not focusing as hard as trying to find content, but rather focusing on the content that gives me joy. So, number one, I'm happy I'm doing this vlog.

9:18 Number two, I'm grateful that board games still give me joy. Like, this is the thing about a gratitude list. A gratitude list to me shouldn't be the same three things every single day. It shouldn't be like I'm happy I have my kids, my job, my whatever. Like, it shouldn't be things like that every day. But when the mood strikes you, it can be. And so, for right now, given the conversation, the mood does strike me that I'm grateful that I still like board games. Like I was thinking about this earlier when I was thinking of the kinds of content I enjoy and I still enjoy doing like review content even though that's never been my passion. But the thing that I mean reviews specifically have not been the things I'm passionate about. I enjoy conversational stuff more. Uh but for a longer conversation we could have another time. Some of the conversational stuff I feel a little bit more burnt out on. Some of it not all of it. And so those have been a little bit less you know a little more few and far between. Whereas at the end of the day the reviews are just consistent because when I find a game I love I want to talk about it. And so I'm grateful not just that I love board games still. I'm grateful that I still find games every single year that I love. Recently I did a video of, you know, I've given more five out of fives this year than I have any year recently in like the past four or five years. Like it's been a while since I've had a year that's been this good for me as far as new games that I've found and discovered and give me joy. It's been a good year for reward games for me. Some of them are games that are universally acclaimed. Others are more just me finding joy in those.

10:32 But I'm glad that I have that. And for number three, the problem with doing the top gratitude thing on the fly. Again, I do try to think of things that are unique to me each day. Something that is doesn't have to be unique unique, but something that happened, a moment um that was like specific. What is something that has happened in the past 24 hours that I'm grateful for? I guess I'll give you this one. This is like a small one. Uh but my kids and I are going to go see um Spider-Man. Spider-Man, what's it called again? Not Brand New Day, something. I think it's called Brand New Day, actually. Spider-Man Brand New Day. Uh, we're going to see that in theaters when I get back from Gen Con. Uh, they recently, my kids have not fully been into Marvel movies. One of them really wants to, the others don't. Uh, but because of that, it's been hard and challenging to figure out what are we going to like, do we all watch them, do we not? How do we handle that? Um, but specifically Spider-Man: Bring New Day. Spider-Man is a series they've enjoyed. And so, we all agreed we're going to see Spider-Man: Brand New Day in theaters despite the fact that they don't know most of the cinematic universe going on there. But, we'll start there. Anyways, I'll be back tomorrow with more stuff. That has been day one. It's Wednesday, July 22nd, and I'm going to keep today's update relatively short. I say relatively short. Sometimes it ends up being short, sometimes it's not. But basically, so here's the deal. I'm doing three things this week. This is my three things. I'm trying to stay off social media. I'm trying to do 10 minutes of cleaning a day. And then I'm trying to do something that I've been pushing off as a singular project throughout the week. Uh I haven't figured out that one yet. I haven't decided what it is that I want to do as the thing that's being pushed off. There's always a million things. I can find something for sure, but I haven't actually found out what that thing is going to be yet. So, we'll see.

12:01 Uh, as far as social media, social media wise, so I've mostly been off Facebook the past 24 hours since I last spoke to you. It's actually been a little more than 24 hours. Uh, but occasionally I have to go on for Facebook Messenger, which is that I'm allowing myself with no issues at all. And then I still find myself trying to open it um before force myself to close it. So, like instinctively I'll type in Facebook in my browser or my phone, pop it open, and then immediately close it after. So, I've not been doing the doom scrolling. I have been only on with uh actual intent. So, that part's all going well. So, currently we're 24 hours 98% off Facebook, which is honestly all I really need. I My goal is to avoid it as a doom scrolling, not to like treat it like actual um something I'm allergic to. Uh, as far as cleaning, cleaning wise, I'll show you what I'm starting on because what I'm starting on is basically just my studio area. This is my studio area over here. Ignore the t-shirt that I use as a light dampener. It's very professional. Um, we got our other light there and we have our camera, our overhead, all the usual stuff. This is where I sit. So, you know, this would be the usual shot of Hello, my name is Alex Racker from Board Gameco, and this is my video shot. Uh, but uh over here, the floor has been a mess. The floor is always a mess. It's always just like usually the pattern the floor goes with is uh things kind of build up and then I clean it up and then it builds up again.

13:12 So, that's kind of the situation. Nothing too crazy. I think this is a good 10-minute work. I mean, Master the Universe has to be organized there. It's another story. Uh the Tracy board, I need to figure out where that's going. Uh but this is basically uh you know, kind of where things are. Nothing again, nothing too crazy. Just just enough stuff that uh I think this is a 10 to 20 minute job. It's 10 minutes to put it away or less. It's 20 minutes to organize it. That's basically where we are. That is today's um update. Uh we'll be back tomorrow with a longer update. Maybe I'll have figured out what I'm actually doing uh for my project. Day three and no cleaning today, but I didn't get my 10 minutes of, you know, tidy something up. I might still try to. We'll see. There's there's plenty of time. And by plenty of time, I mean an hour and a half left in the day. Uh, but I did get my projects. In fact, I got a bonus project. So, I'm going to give myself a 10 minutes. Uh, that the 10 minutes of cleaning grace comes because I did a bonus project. So, if you recall to just catch up where things are, I wanted to do a I realized when I catch you up, it's been like a full day, but in your perspective, it's been like 30 seconds ago. So, I'm trying to find the projects that I've been pushing off. And today, kind of not really planned. I just ended up doing something that has been an issue for a long time. But, it wasn't even something I was pushing off.

14:20 It just was something I wasn't going to even fix. Long story short, I've been in this house at least two years now. Don't know exactly when I moved in, but at least two years. Uh, and the front screen door, the the screen part was kind of pushed out at the bottom. So, it was open. Effectively, if I open the screen door, it was already open, which is particularly problematic when you have three cats who will take the opportunity to run through to go outside. So, the front doors always had to be treated as an open shut kind of thing right away as opposed to something you can kind of open and have the screen open because the bottom part was just open. And for the longest time, I just didn't even look at it. It was just open. And then today, I was like, you know what? Longer story to why. Someone's by the door. The door's open. Cats almost ran out. Whatever. Um, but I looked at I was like, I probably should fix this or hire someone to fix it. It's been 2 years at this point.

15:06 It was easy to fix. I've even done it with screens before. I just never thought to look at it because it's not something I typically do. Basically, screens have a kind of a little rubbery piece that you kind of push into an indent that holds the screen in place. And it was there. The piece was there. The part that was weird, by the way, the part that was really weird is the rubbery piece that was kind of missing that the bottom part was kind of flapping open was just on the front porch kind of pushed to the side. But that means it's been there for 2 years through winter, through rain, through who knows what wind. It's just been sitting there for 2 years because this issue has has existed since I've moved in here. And unless somebody dropped off that piece of rubber, that means the rubber has just been kind of sitting towards the side of the front porch. It's the weirdest thing. I'm still kind of a little blown away by it. Either way, fast forward around 10 15 minutes of work cuz it's slow going. I don't have the right tool for it. You This is officially a tool you use. I didn't have that. So, I used a um flathead screwdriver and just kind of pushed it in. But you do it bit by bit. Took 105 minutes and now my screen door is good as new. Only took two years and just glancing at it. So, that's bonus project. That's not even the project I have. And the reason it's not the project I have, I would have counted. I totally would have counted as the project. But by the time I did that, I already had thought of what the project I want to do this week, which is um for the past six months. This isn't two years. For the past six months, I've wanted to put a uh sink filter, a water filter, and I have the water filter. I bought the water filter. I don't remember when, like Black Friday, Prime Day, one of those things. I bought the water filter. Um it's an under sink install where all you really do is you just kind of hook it up to the water line and just you screw it to the little wall and the sink. Pretty straightforward. I've done it to one of

16:36 my sinks in my house already a while ago and I want to do it to another sink for a long time and just haven't done so yet. So now I want to do that. It will probably be a 10 to 15 minute job. Maybe 5 to 5 to 10 minute job. Even possibly 10 to 15 minutes is giving a grace period. Uh it's something I'm pushing off for 6 months and that's going to be the thing I do this week. Uh we're going to get a bonus round in because again I did the screen door. So that's my you know project I'm trying to do. I'll report back. I might try to do it tomorrow but really just by the end of the week is good enough for me. Outside of that, um, as far as being off Facebook, I'm doing great at that. I still kind of semiopen it at times briefly, but I close it right away. I only use it for intent right now. I go on, I check Facebook messages if I have them. Outside of that, I'm really not scrolling, browsing, doing any of that. And that's the whole point is taking it off my feed. Um, Instagram still has the grain of the the drama that it knows that I like to watch, but Instagram, I get far more entertainment value, and it's much easier to just swipe by something that's not working for me uh to go to the next thing because, you know, there's that ADHD aspect. Anyway, and then just specifically training the algorithm. I don't want to see the things that trigger, you know, disagreement, rage call, if you will.

17:42 Oh, there's a rule book there. I have a rule book kind of just off to the side just over here um on that couch over there. You can see like over there. That's a rule book that uh from a game I played earlier today. Oh my word. I played Oh my word. And kind of fun. It's from Cosmos, I want to say. Feels like it's trying to be um what's not teleustrations. What's that game you tapple? It feels like it's trying to be tapple but different. I think they did a good job with it. I liked Apple. I like my work. Probably shouldn't have that rule book out there. Anyways, as far as being off Facebook, that part's going great. Um, as far as cleaning up, like I told you, not doing that today because I did that other thing so I can count it. Um, and then lastly, just not officially part of this thing, but just here and there, I'll kind of mention the gratitude for the day. Uh, gratitude for the day has three things. Uh, number one is I 3D printed my son a Warhammer uh, blaster. Basically, what we call a bolt gun, a single onehanded bolt gun. They have like big ones, small ones. I printed them a bolt gun. I did a few colors. I went outside and I kind of just coded it for some like weird interior kind of look to it. I love the look of it. I think it I think it's great. It was his birthday last week and he's still getting another birthday present, but I was like, you know what?

18:44 I'm going to give He loves Warhammer. He loves Space Marines, specifically Space Marines. He's obsessed with Space Marines. I don't know why. I don't know how this started. He's obsessed with Space Marines. Uh, and that kind of made his day. I think it looks phenomenal. I'm very happy with it for the minimum amount of time and effort that went into it. Um, it's like amazing how a little bit can get you to a good chunk of, you know, what you're trying to do. Anyways, [clears throat] uh I'm very grateful for both being able to do it and also his reaction to it. And it was very cool. I kind of liked it. Like it was it had a nice look and feel to it. Anyways, that's number one. Number two is going to be I played Dune Imperium two days in a row now. Two days in a row I played it. Uh which is kind of rare for me to play games that I'm just doing for fun two days in a row. Usually it's uh a lot of games that I'm doing for work, for coverage, whether crowdfunding or just retail, but review stuff I'm doing a lot. And I get those games in that are just for fun. But in terms of a bigger game that's just for fun, maybe once or twice a week and rarely back to back.

19:33 Uh, two days in a row of playing a game that I really enjoy just for fun. Uh, as oppo, again, don't get me wrong, games I'm doing for review purposes are still fun most of the time, but there's something nice about just diving into a game that I just pure and simple want to play. So, that's number two. And number three, number three is I am experimenting with more foods. Like I I've done this whole food talk a bit about about how to find macroofriendly foods that are good for me maintaining my weight and uh but also enjoying life like like being able to eat a lot because you're making the right choices. Uh and so I'm constantly experimenting with new things. But for the first time, I tried making my own orange chicken at home. Like usually if I'm going to get orange chicken, I'm just going to get from like a restaurant or whatnot. It's going to be way too high in calories, taste delicious, and I'll feel bad the next day. Uh not just because of the calorie aspect, but because like often it bothers my stomach. Tastes delicious, bothers my stomach. For the first time, I'm experimenting with um some orange chicken at home. Uh right now, I'm starting with some regular rice, some lower calorie orange sauce, and then some just basic chicken bits. Pop them up, stir fry them, all that. I want to throw in some pepper flakes next time, some red pepper flakes for a little bit of a kick. Uh and also tomorrow, I want to experiment with I don't know tomorrow some point. I want to experiment with rice cauliflower instead of rice. It's one of those things that when you're when you are dabbling with food that isn't um when you're dabbling with trying to find macrofriendly food that works for you, uh there is a balance because you want to find the delicious foods and you want to find the lower calorie foods, but you don't want to find lower calorie foods that make you just rather eat something else entirely.

20:54 So, there's a balance. So, like with cauliflower rice, being able to save like 300 calories on rice in the meal is amazing. I could have more chicken or just nothing at all. That would be great. Um but only if it works. If it works, great. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But even before I get there, I'm just grateful for the fact that the orange chicken that I made at home was already good. Like I was able to have a good portion of orange chicken, probably like, you know, 5 to 700 calories, somewhere in that range as opposed to if you go out, it's like twice that with a good amount of food out of it and much healthier and didn't feel bad after. It was a good start to like trying another food and I like getting more things in the rotation. So those are the three things I'm grateful for. Orange chicken, orange chicken at home, I should say. Um, and I'll experiment with general sour, sweet and sour. I'll experiment with all of them. I'm just starting with the baseline. Uh, so orange chicken at home, making my son a bolt gun on a 3D printer, and then what was the last one? Oh, Juniper Rice and Row. Anyways, I'll be back tomorrow with more. Uh, that is me tapping out and maybe I will clean for a little bit.

21:49 We'll see. I'll let you know if I did tomorrow. I'll keep this to a relatively quick update, especially because I realized my camera's low light settings for outside not great. This is just my my phone. I'm using my phone as my camera. It does the job. Not the best for low light. Anyways, uh rice cauliflower. So, I had the rice cauliflower. Uh it's my first time having rice cauliflower or my first time that I can recall having rice cauliflower. One of those two things. Um but anyways, it did the job. It did the job. Wasn't it wasn't hot rice to be very clear. There was no mistaking. You know, I had specifically orange chicken with like some extra red pepper flakes thrown in. So, some spicy orange chicken together with some rice cauliflower. uh it was pretty good considering that the same amount of rice would have been around, you know, I don't know, 350 400 calories and the rice cauliflower was like 40. Uh considering that tradeoff, uh I think I'm pretty happy with that trade-off, but I would say that sometimes you just want rice. So, uh for I think it'll probably enter my rotation as a general basis and when I just want to splurge a little bit, I'll have a little extra chicken and a little bit of rice and just have a slightly more, you know, traditional. Anyways, just to update you on that. Outside of that, as far as general, you know, repetitive updates for things we have. Yes, I'm doing still fine off of social media, specifically Facebook. Uh I am still I managed to again give that 10 minutes of cleanup time. Uh the tricky part about cleaning up and the part that makes it so hard is very often what I call 10 minutes of cleanup time is literally just making sure the house doesn't get worse. It's not making sure it gets better, it's making sure it doesn't get worse. So, for example, today I had a

23:21 bunch of packages arrive throughout the day. Uh, and then they kind of made the way to the dining room table. A few things were here, a few things on the floor there, and I just took my 10 minutes to just really properly put things away that had come in. So, I made a mess and then devoted my 10 minutes to making sure the mess wasn't there the next day, which is fine. That's kind of the point. The point is that the house shouldn't get worse. In theory, if you can get the house to your perfect state and then just not let it get worse, that's good enough. So, part of me feels like I didn't really do the 10 minutes because I didn't clean up something and make it better. I just stopped it from getting worse. The other part of me is like, "No, that's good enough. That's the point. That's part of what you're supposed to be doing here." Um, and then lastly, project-wise, haven't done the filter yet. But again, that's once a week. I still have like two more days uh before I'm late on that project. So, we'll see how that goes. Anyway, that's your short update. Nothing too long for today. I'll be back tomorrow. This is the last video of vlog batch one. And I also kind of disappeared for a week cuz I was hoping to get the last video in right before Gen Con, but I didn't. I'm getting the video in right after Gen Con. It's currently Monday, the day after Gen Con. Uh I just got back well at 3:00 in the morning. Got 5 hours of sleep, then unpacked the car in the morning. Um and now um I'm trying to get started on the day. It's a lot. It's a lot, but it's fun. It's a lot of fun.

24:35 We're going to be we're going to be moving into the post Gen Con vlog. This is something I did last year that I really enjoyed and I want to do it again. So stay tuned for the next one which is going to kind of be all about uh the process of trying to learn 65ish games as much as possible. Stay tuned for the next vlog to see more about that. But to kind of catch up where things left off and I might repeat myself a little bit because um I don't remember exactly what I said in the last video. It was a week ago. But long story short, this first batch was kind of had a few goals. Uh number one was getting off of Facebook. I was reasonably successful about that for a week. Not like for the rest of my life, for a week. Um, I did let myself go on it a few times doing Gen Con, which I do find is useful for like news and finding things. I think I'm okay with that. Uh, but it's post Gen Con, so back to not being on Facebook. Uh, again, as long as this weekly vlog series kind of continues. I will, uh, kind of briefly update like at the end, oh, how was my Facebook time? But I'm not going to be doing it every single video every single day. The first week was done. The main goal with any habit is to keep it up for as much as possible, but ideally at least 30 days. 30 days is the kind of thing that builds habits. Uh, less than that is just a blip, frankly. So, we'll see how that goes. Uh, outside of that, one of the things I wanted to do that I will be continuing throughout this vlog series is finding something that I've been pushing off and then doing that thing. And sometimes I might let myself choose things that I would normally push off. We'll see. We'll see how that goes.

25:53 Uh, so I will be trying to get going on that. Um, but well, I'll be trying to continue doing that. Uh, this last week I did several things. I fixed a screen door that had been kind of sitting there for a while, not working great. Uh, I also I have an idea. I have an idea. I fixed a screen door that was not going great. Uh, I also um I I I put a water filter under the sink that I had been pushing off for a long time. And I installed a shelf that had kind of not been properly mounted a few months ago and I had been pushing off getting done. So, I did three things last week. Then Gen Con happened. So, Gen Con was Gen Con week. I'm allowing that. Which means next week I have to find something else to do with my project of the week and we'll see how that goes. And the little I had an idea a second ago was I might look into cuz I'm realizing this as I like shake the camera. Sorry for those that made you dizzy. Uh I might try looking into like a proper stabilizing system for my camera. I do find that sometimes when I do hall chores, uh I do find that I can swing the the camera stick a little too fast at times and it can make people dizzy and that's not the best. So I want to see if I can possibly look into upgrading my um equipment setup for vlogs. Another thing that I do think I need to work on because I I go into every convention. Every convention I go to, I go in with the idea that I'm going to go ahead and um I'm going to what's it called? Film a vlog. And some I do, some I don't. But one of the challenges I have is I'm not proactive about it. So, we'll see how that goes.

27:14 We'll see. We'll see how things can I I want to get a little better about managing that. But I don't The next convention matter is Dice Star Retreat. And honestly, I don't even know if I want to vlog that one as much. I think that one's kind of more laid-back. So, we'll see. I might I might I don't know. I'll figure it out. Uh, I need to figure out that balance of of being able to pull out my camera at the right times and capture the footage that's helpful to be able to show you and to also have my own little story while not ruining the moment. And I found that I can't I not can't I haven't yet mastered that talent and something I want to work on. That's going to be for another day. Uh, the last thing I wanted to do was uh keeping the house tidy and that worked last week. Uh, but I just unpacked I I literally just unpacked the car which means everything is everywhere. This entire floor in this basement that I literally just cleaned up is back to being a mess. It's chalk full of games. All these games from postgenom that I'm kind of semi-organizing and need to um get coverage on. It's kind of in that zone of, you know, of of everything's a mess on the floor. So, I need to I need to manage that and I will I will get to that as kind of the cat thing's in the way here. Anyways, so that kind of wraps up week one. That was week one. Week one had a good amount of progress. Uh, but I need to continue both on the making sure I get things done, maintaining a 5 to 10 minutes of clean up a day just to ensure that the house doesn't constantly get worse and it's always maintaining or getting better. Uh, and then to continue staying off of Facebook. That was how week one went, which means I'm going to go ahead and wrap things up because I'm going to be jumping straight in from this into week two, which is going to be a combination of several things. Uh, but we will see that in the next video, which should go live in a week or so, I

28:44 imagine. We'll see. I don't know the schedule. We'll figure things out. Anyways, I appreciate you all being here. Thank you so much. Uh and we will see you next week with vlog segment number two. Vlog week two.