(I am writing this entry the day after since I slept early yesterday)

Lately I have been spending the majority of my time studying for my last university exams. I have been preparing for these exams for at least two months without breaks, and until recently I followed all the lessons diligently. In general, when I study something I want to be completely immersed in the subject and I want to get as many inputs as possible: youtube videos, books, exercises, I keep thinking about It day and night. Hence, I never really take "breaks" from studying, just change or limit my inputs. It comes no surprise that sometimes I feel exhausted, so I give myself some minutes off to slow down the pace.

After a while, this routine of studying from morning until I am too tired is not healthy and I need to take more time off. Lately I went too far and now I have a great headache and I have problems sleeping, consequently I don't have a lot of energies during the day and I have difficulties concentrating. Always thinking about the same things made my mind kind of stuck, I needed some kind of distraction. To be totally honest, I am doing other things such as reading a book about economics and another about hacker culture, I am learning the lean programming language and in general I have been reading a lot of math books, or just taking a walk or trying to sleep more. I found these activities ineffective to "unstuck" my brain, I needed more powerful distractions that could take me off my studies. So I thought about video games.

I thought that playing a fast paced, online FPS game would be the solution. I have not played a game like this in 4+ years and I wouldn't say I am the type of person to play these types of games. I also wanted something that could run on very cheap hardware and on Linux. After some research, I found xonotic: a free classic arena shooter similar to quake or unreal tournament. I have to say that I really had a great fun playing this game, I was fully concentrated and my senses were 100% active in order to react to the fast movement of the enemies. I haven't felt this adrenaline in a while, additionally the chat and the soundboards were hilarious and made me laugh. Even if I was not at the top of the leadeboard, I gave my best and had fun, I even recorded my matches on a new youtube channel.

Playing this game changed my day and I had more energies to do other things. As someone that really rarely grants himself some time off, this was a good reset. Most of the time It is difficult to stay focused on something and I think you should render all distractions at minimum, that's what I always try to do. Yet a dose of distraction can also be beneficial, and this experience is a reminder of this.

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Travel: Ephemeris, Index