I got into Stardew Valley literally by accident. As in, I twisted my ankle during a winter vacation and got stuck indoors for a week while my family was having fun outside. All I had to entertain myself was my laptop and this farming game I recently bought on a whim.

I didn’t see the fun in it at first, but I liked the music and eventually the grind kind of clicked for me. Wake up, water plants, sell stuff, explore a bit, go to bed, repeat. It helped that my other choices for entertainment were a bit limited at the time :) But once the daily tasks become routine, you kind of zone out during that part and think ahead of what you want to do for the rest of the day. Maybe explore that cave a little more, or go fishing for that fish you need for the community center, etc.

But I can totally understand if it’s not your thing. I might not have enjoyed it so much if I wasn’t chair bound for an entire week with nothing else to do…
Erm…
That’s not the most glowing of endorsements when I write it out loud :)

What I’m trying to say is, for me it was a bit of a barrier to get through, but after that it’s such a cozy game to spend some time in. And it kind of has this nice reward cycle that makes me go “just one more day” a LOT of days :)

For a moment there I thought I was looking at a !sciencememes@lemmy.world post and was taking this seriously :)

Pff, that’s clearly a frog 🙄

Though a frog is called a kikker, which is kind of funny I suppose :)

Something I like about the language is the homonyms.
Like pad means both toad and path, but then you have a voetpad (foot path/ foot toad), fietspad(cycling path/ bicycle toad) or a zebrapad (zebra crossing/ zebra toad).

The latter ones don’t exist, just to be clear :)

My partner stresses too much with work and I wish I could help more. But all I can do is give comfort and urge to at least let things go when at home.
Any practical advice is always brushed off, which I can understand. Sometimes you just need to vent and I don’t mind listening about what happened this time. I just hate seeing them like this, it does make me worry a bit about their health.

PICO-8, though it’s more of an on-and-off again project of trying to teach myself to program again.
But I like the limitations you have to work with, and even I can create some crude 8x8 sprites :)

That’s a super cute little bus.

and straight

Maps and compass. I like the reliability of finding my way no matter where I am. Plus it’s fun!
Especially the trick of using two landmarks to pinpoint my location on a map makes me feel like an old-fashioned navigator :)

In Dutch it’s called a trouwring, which as a verb literally translates to wedding ring, but as a noun also to loyalty ring.
Which I find rather sweet.

I didn’t mind doing PE if it was gymnastics like bars and rings. I loved that, and I still feel like I benefit from it to this day. Having a sense of balance and knowing what your body can do is pretty nice. I hated the outdoor running though.
There was this small lake in our home town that the gym teacher often made the class run around during warm days. But a lot of us liked to cheat by hiding our bikes out of view. We’d run for the first five minutes and the moment he couldn’t see us, we’d pull our bikes out of the bushes and cycle for most of the way, hiding them again just before popping back into view.
It worked 9 out of 10 times and we only got a mild scolding when got caught that one time.
After that we only had one more run, me and a friend took our time, bought an ice cream along the way and ended up half an hour late :)

Yum, war fries :)

You might like Shadows of Doubt. It’s a procedural generated detective game where you have to solve murders. The entire city is generated, every npc has their own routine and you can pretty much go anywhere. There’s sneaking, hacking, talking, etc.

It’s still in early access, but it’s already a lot of fun.

No, I got a permanent contract for a well paying job in the public sector. The job security is great and there’s a solid pension plan.
It’s what my partner likes to call an “iron rice bowl” :)

Maybe not as fancy as the others, but I really like the little pink jeep. It’s boxy and cute.

Oof, I wouldn’t know about that. I was purely talking from personal experience. I don’t have a good picture of the job market in total, let alone in whichever country you live. If you want to get into the data-related IT fields (data analist, data engineer, business intelligence specialist, etc.) then SQL and data modeling skills are a must-have. But it’s just a small part of a much bigger discipline.

If possible, find some professional career counseling. Someone with better knowledge of the job market where you live might give you some good advice on which steps to take first.

For the better :)
I haven’t been active in online communities for over ten years. It’s been fun to contribute with comments and posts and I feel like I’m finding my voice again.

Maybe it’s because of the replying user’s name starting with “Classical Studies”.
But I immediately started reading X as a roman numeral and got quite confused :)

I’m still waiting for my $1000 from Bill Gates for passing on his e-mail :(

To my eternal shame, that really happened. I was young, gullible and stupid…
I guess there are worse ways to learn not to be so trusting.

Well it kind of is, isn’t it?
At least, I like to pretend it is :)