I was completely in the mood for a short and sweet YA contemporary romance and something a little more on the nerdy side was just my thing. Dungeons and Drama is a cute high school romance with fake dating to full on flirty swooning. I had some real laugh out loud moments throughout my read, I read it in two sittings because it was addictive and I really liked the characters.
Riley is loud, assertive and a musical theatre enthusiast trying to save the Spring musical with her best friend but she got in a whole lot of trouble resulting in being grounded for two months and having to work in her dads gaming store so that parents can keep an eye on her. There she meets Nathan, a co-worker and totally nerdy but incredibly flirty (who she knows from school but didn’t really associate with) games lover that takes part in a regular Dungeons & Dragons campaign with his friends at the store. A slip of the tongue from Riley ensues the two start fake dating but lines get crossed and feelings happen.
I have nothing negative to say. I haven’t read a book so fast in absolutely ages and I really loved this one. It was cute in all the right places, the flirting was tame but very swoon-worthy and the two main characters are really fun to get to know. Readers spend most of their time with Riley as the book is written from her perspective so you feel all the things she’s feeling as they happen and I like that. At 293 pages it is a great summer read, ideal for cosy days at home or throwing in the bag for the beach. It’s also a floppy paperback and we all know they’re the best kind.
Dungeons & Drama by Kirsty Boyce is ideal for any contemporary romance readers, is suitable for the YA audience with kissing and flirting only. Some trigger warnings to think of would be divorce, reckless driving (mentioned), hospitalisation, overbearing ex boyfriend and jealousy. There is a queer relationship with one of the male friends which is nice to see but the romance aspect of the book focuses on a male/female relationship.
For the longest time I have been trying to figure out a way of getting back to being myself, that I have been just kind of existing in time and space being a parent which hasn’t left a lot of time to really focus in on what I love and what fills my cup so to speak. But I am craving it. I miss being creative in those little ways of taking photos of books and trying to improve, of moving my body, of having something interesting to say in those rare and fleeting moments of adult conversation that isn’t just about kids.
I am trying to reclaim a little bit of me back. In some ways perhaps that’s getting older talking too, like wanting to live as authentically as I possibly can and realizing now more than ever that it’s really only about me and my happiness (that, of course, and the safety and wellbeing of my children but that goes without saying surely) that matters. That I am the only one that is possible of giving myself the life I want to have and for the longest time I have felt so stuck, in such a mental block. I really want to try and step forward, find more joy and awe in the world around me and start doing stuff for me because it feels good.
I got a tattoo in April and I am so in love with the art of it and that it is on my body. I got a pretty sizeable chest tattoo which is something I specifically asked to have designed and has a little touch of my personality in an image. I choose to get it on my chest as I’ve always been self conscious of that area. Being relatively busty has perhaps drawn attention to me in ways that I’ve not felt too comfortable with in the past but now I feel like I don’t have to cover up or find jewelry to sort of take the attention away a little bit even if it hasn’t really worked. Plus I struggle wearing high necked clothing or necklaces that are too small or too tight as they feel quite restrictive. I have been waiting so long for another tattoo telling myself over and over that my body is not right or small enough for art but there’s a chance my body might not ever be what my brain or society considers small enough. So I got the tattoo.
Speaking of body image there’s another thing I’ve recently done for myself and that is signed up for a pole dance fitness class. I love dancing, although it’s very much just me dancing around in my living room other than the variety of Zumba classes I’ve taken in the past or dance games I’ve played at home. This is something I’ve wanted to do for absolutely ages. I love how controlled the movements are, how fun it looks, how strong pole dancers can be and it just looked like so much fun. So I did a taster class and signed up for a full five week course and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. Years and years ago there was a beautiful plus size lady on Britain’s got talent that did a pole routine and I loved it. She was so confident and strong and seeing other plus size bodies do these amazing movements, spins and tricks whilst looking comfortable in their own skin was really inspiring.
The taster class was fun despite the aches for days afterwards and so worth it to find a form of exercise that I can hopefully really benefit from. Another thing completely for me, to build my strength, confidence and a chance to dance and have joyous movement. I was so surprised with how much I could keep up with the routine, the rest of the class and do all the movements with some degree of co-ordination. I managed to put the moves together into a routine and time just flew. It was really fun and having the pole to use to assist in the movements that I found tricky made a big difference. I can’t wait to get back to it and see how I feel after the full five week course.
It’s a pretty coming trait amongst ADHDers to have time blindness. The concept of time is unfathomable to me. I sit here writing this having already procrastinated and distracted myself from writing this post several times, knowing I need to be ready to leave the house at 9.10am this morning, knowing how long it takes me to get ready so I’ve given myself enough time to sort my stuff out. Morning appointments are absolutely better for me, providing I’ve woken up at a reasonable time, because they feel like they pass faster. If I have to leave the house at 9.10 then I will have more than enough time to get ready if I shut down this computer at 8am. That gives me just over an hour to do hair, makeup, clothes, get Felix ready and be on time in theory. The reality is I will either underestimate how long I need for all that and be waiting impatiently for twenty minutes ready to go and not being able to or I will be running late. There is no such thing as on time in the world of ADHD.
Morning Waiting Mode is never really that bad because it’s always kind of a rush to get out the door for 8.10am (it’s usually closer to 8.20am) because I have more things to do. Afternoon waiting mode is incredibly frustrating because I spend the entire day waiting for the appointment, clockwatching, flitting between doing stuff to try and pass the time but not being able to really commit or focus on anything other than clockwatching simply because I have the absolute FEAR of being late so I am obnoxiously early for most things.
Then comes waiting mode for something releasing, like a video game, like say, FF7 Rebirth…a sequel to a game that came out four years ago. A game that is a remake of not just my favourite Final Fantasy game but probably my favourite game of all time. Something I am equally excited and anxious for. Something I am hopeful will surpass all expectations. Something I have obsessed over since the PS3 tech demo and the 2015 confirmation that FF7 Remake was being done. Something I have waited a very long time for. I know I can predownload the game in a couple of days, I’ve played the demo and experienced all that had to offer, I’ve replayed FF7 Remake to familiarise myself with the story and gameplay. I’ve played and completed Crisis Core for the first time to make sure I was fully up to date with everything I could be from Zack’s point of view. The thing is I did all of this in the coming months to FF7 Rebirth coming out knowing the release date would be 29th February. I have been excited and keeping busy for what should be the shortest month of the year, has felt like the longest and it’s not even over yet. I am literally days away from finally playing this game and yet I am stuck in this perpetual waiting mode because my stupid brain can not think of anything else to focus on.
There is all of this talk on how neurospicy people hyperfocus and it’s true, we do, but we don’t control the hyperfocus, it controls us. There are times when it works it’s absolute magic, when I have been able to read through huge books in a day, where I’ve got so much housework or paid work done in a short space of time because I can just zone in and get it done. When you are hyperfocused on something but you literally can not do anything it is brain breaking. I am fidgeting, restless, I can’t sleep properly, I can’t play other games because I’m getting annoyed with them too fast, I can’t read because I can’t focus. I can not force myself to focus on anything else right now. I am simply stuck, waiting until 9.15am on Thursday so I can play my little video game like the fangirl I am. I joke, slightly, at that because I am allowed, as an adult and videogame enthusiast to get excited about something and to plan out my time to play it. It is instead this very frustrating period of time where I can’t do the thing I want to do but equally I can’t do anything else either. In fact, writing this rambling post is the most productive thing I’ve probably done in the past few days.
This is one of the things that I think people don’t really get when you have ADHD. I have something I’m looking forward to, yet I can’t really focus on anything else. But my brain is currently telling me how stupid that is, how immature I am, how other adults don’t do this, how much of a failure I am because I can’t keep busy for a few more days. Because what I’m looking forward isn’t a ‘normal’ thing for other women, or mothers, my age to get excited for. This is the hyperactivity that people don’t see. How my mind is constantly against me when I’m excited for something by not letting me enjoy other things enough and by criticizing my want and desire to be excited for something. It leads to so much self loathing and frustration. It’s exhausting. What other people see as an ADHD person being lazy and procrastinating is often someone that is really struggling in that moment because they are seriously lacking in dopamine and unable to regulate themselves. They are stuck in this void of waiting mode where they just can’t get other things done properly.
You can’t switch ADHD on and off. You can’t just have the ‘quirky and fun’ part of ADHD that people often see or stereotypically think about. You have to deal with all the difficult parts of it too.
Having never played any Yakuza game in my life, picking up Yakuza: Like A Dragon with very little context on the series was a choice, largely dictated by the availability on Game Pass, seeing two odd screenshots in a discord server and exactly one commendation of someone saying they liked it. I remember seeing many memes following release footage of Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth and Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth including a trailer full of random features that did intrigue me but probably more along the lines of ‘that looks like a weird game’ rather than ‘hey I should play that sometime’. Here I am, just short of 55 hours of playtime later, having finished Like A Dragon and actually being quite surprised with how much I liked it.
I did read a few mostly spoiler-free reviews which gave me the impression that Like A Dragon is new-to-the-series friendly, and it is but also had some pretty scathing comments about combat. Not an issue for me, I like turn based combat, so it didn’t really affect my opinion when starting the game. One issue I’ve had playing, which is more of a performance problem rather than gameplay is that the game did keep shutting down, sometimes at very frustrating moments when I wasn’t able to save, so a lot of repeat progress had to be made. It was not an issue with my PC, my specs are more than capable of running Like A Dragon and I made a few adjustments that did prevent that from happening too much. I was, however, going through the very last chapter with no where to save and kind of wanting cutscenes and things to speed up so I could save my clear data and not have to do the end for the second time.
I played Yakuza: Like A Dragon subbed with Japanese voice acting which I liked. All the emotion came through incredibly well. It isn’t unusual for me to play JRPG’s like this, I’m used to enjoying Japanese voice acting and reading subtitles when playing games although I’m not a purist either, and have enjoyed English voice acting just as much. I managed 43 achievements which was pretty good going for a first playthrough and think I managed to beat the game with my party around level 58 without too much level grinding. It was challenging enough but not rage inducing.
There were times during the main story that I was a bit lost but not because I didn’t understand what was going on or didn’t have much context due to a lack of knowledge from previous games in the series. I just felt there were some points where the plot was a bit weak or didn’t really get full explanations as to why things happened. Perhaps that’s me being a bit picky or I missed something but overall I did enjoy playing. Like a Dragon’s charm is in it’s characters and their interactions with each other. Ichiban Kasuga became a pretty easy to love protagonist with unwavering optimism, loyalty and kindness to others he interacted with. He was charming, goofy and wasn’t afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve or show what he was really feeling. There were some interesting opinions I’ve read about him being the inverse of Kiryu, with his choice of suit representing that most obviously.
Kasuga’s dialogue options were a good mix of heartwarmingly wholesome, goofy and maybe a little outrageous at times. His delivery was usually pretty charming and I just found him incredibly likeable. He draws people to him pretty effortlessly. His way of seeing the world like an RPG and getting to play the Hero, and all of his Dragon Quest references made his character feel fun to play. Other party members where just as engaging and offered fun dialogue and what really felt like strong friendships developing between them all. I particularly liked Saeko, who made for a great female party member which an interesting range of jobs to choose from. She was a constant in my party. She was cute, headstrong, funny and completely on par with the rest of the characters, rather than just there solely to fuel the main protagonist’s ego. In fact, her introduction is that of her shutting a conversation down about a particularly unsavory character which made me like her instantly.
There are so many minigames to choose from when you want a break from fighting and I found some of them really fun. The business management minigame was something I did really quite enjoy, because I like making money, and it gave me a lot of satisfaction shutting down shareholders because my sales and net worth wasn’t as high as it could be because I was paying employees a fair wage, giving them bonuses, pay rises and promotions all the time to keep morale high. Who doesn’t want to run a business with a chicken called ‘Omelette’ as it’s mascot though? I also did all of the quizzes at the vocational school for many academic achievements and watched a few of the movies. I even tried my hand at Dragon Kart racing which was pretty fun. Too much of my time was spent not winning cats at claw machines much like how my time is spent in actual arcades in real life.
For someone like me, not just unfamiliar to the series but someone that does tend to gravitate towards more cutesy animation, cozy games or quite high fantasy RPG’s this was pretty fun. I hard my reservations, not everything was to my taste, there were plenty of cringe moments with some more lewd and crude content but overall Yakuza: Like a Dragon was engaging, fun and full of emotion. There were a fair few moments I had chills and felt myself tearing up. I’m glad I gave it a chance.
I got a planner for 2024 that encourages monthly full moon illuminations and new moon reflections. It’s an interesting idea and something I’d like to try and stick to as a way of journaling. I probably won’t write a blog post for each and every one but I’m also feeling a desire to write so it makes sense to go with it. With the moon at it’s fullest it’s a time when things should be coming to fruition, or realisation. It’s a good chance to get ready to, prepare and let things go as the moon falls into it’s waning phase. With a full moon in Leo comes with the message to acknowledge self worth exactly as we are. Leo is a brave, proud and loud sign of the zodiac.
I recently did a birth chart for myself, something I’ve never actually done before so I took the time to figure out my Sun, Moon and Rising signs. I am a Capricorn Sun, because I was born in the sign of Capricorn in late December, with a Libra Moon and Leo Rising. Reading more about this has given me my own illuminations and reading the first full moon of 2024 is in Leo, I think listening to that message and affirming for myself that I am worthy of love, of joy, of happiness is what I have needed to hear.
For such a long time I have been struggling with the many facets of self, my self confidence, my neurospicy diagnosis and my image. I have struggled to accept and believe in other people’s positive opinions of me yet I’ve constantly found myself looking for my self worth in the opinions of others. I think there is nothing more empowering than being able to create an unbreakable shield of acceptance for yourself, and I’ve often envied the ability to do so in others. I may not be able to create that shield instantaneously but I am going to start working better on the foundations a little more.
Self acceptance comes in many forms, not just of our good qualities but what we consider our shortcomings and limitations too. I think it’s important to understand our struggles and to build boundaries from them instead of letting them get to us and creating this spiral of low self worth. I have trauma, and many anxieties and issues I need to work on but the desire for me to do so is there. The other day, I did my makeup, I put on a dress I love and I wore a perfume that I like. I felt good about myself. I’m not completely happy with how I look but I took the time to just appreciate what I have. I looked at my face, one that is textured and aging with creases and I thought for the first time in a long time that as far as faces go, mine is alright. My makeup may not be as flawless as other people but I like the style I’ve developed for myself. I am complemented on my bold choice of colour in my hair and clothing. I have, in small ways, started taking up space in a world that wants voices like mine to be squished.
I have also struggled with writing on this blog for the longest time. The desire was there but the energy and inspiration was not. For the longest time I’ve been told to focus on building an audience, to write for that audience and that audience only. The trouble with that is that I lost a bit of myself there. This space started out as a personal one for me to just write and connect with other people. The content and topics have changed as I’ve gotten older because this space is over a decade old now. The 35 year old me is quite different to the 23 year old me yet a lot of it’s foundations have stayed the same. Writing about what I like, what I enjoy and trying to reach out to people that struggle with things I have done. Sometimes that’s been parenting, sometimes that’s been my health. I’ve always written about my hobbies and interests as varied as they’ve been. I’ve been lucky enough to earn money writing here too which has been a great privilege.
My content, the words I’ve wanted to share, have always been dictated by my interests at the time and with the mindset of writing for an audience that has been hard to capture. Right now, and for the last couple of years I have been playing a lot of video games. That’s not been an uncommon presence of my blog as I’ve always written about games but there’s always been a small niggle in the back of my head that ‘this is not your audience’ and it’s true, it’s not. My best post is still about Disneyland Paris. I don’t write video game write ups with the intention to hit big on google. I just write them for me, and I share them occasionally with people that might be interested in what I have to say. I wouldn’t really even call them reviews, so they aren’t the most informative or instructional pieces of content. They’re more about sharing my experience of playing something rather than giving a constructive critique.
In a very long winded way I think my self acceptance is that I am fine in what I do and who I am. That I don’t need to do any of those things for anyone else, for external validation. That I should, really, focus on doing what makes me happy, even if it’s small or irrelevant to others or doesn’t really serve any other purpose than because I want to, and because I can.
