Today, I got to thinking: what are some of Lemmy’s“go to” ways of maintaining focus, or getting their focus and concentration back after becoming distracted or being pulled away by other things “demanding” attention?

I really struggled with work today. Just an overwhelming amount of outstanding projects and assignments and client deadlines. Felt stressed and that resulted in me being avoidance and procrastinating and mindlessly doing everything BUT what I needed to do to stop feeling stressed and get stuff off my plate.

When you get stuck in those types of situations, what do you find are the best strategies to “snap out of it” and get back to work or being productive?

Looking for those games that you may have heard about but never tried until you got a Deck. Or old games on systems you never had that you’re trying for the first time. Or new AAA games that just released in the last year or two that you picked up for the first time specifically to play on Steam Deck and have kept you glued to the device.

I’m trying to reinvigorate my old, nostalgic love of gaming and hoping to find the perfect Steam Deck + addicting game combo.

As title says, once Valve announced the OLED deck, I saw the refurbished originals go on a deep discount and figured it was time to buy in. So I ordered a refurb 512GB and I’m so excited for it to arrive! Been in a gaming rut for a long time now and, having never been a PC gamer, I’m look forward to checking out a bunch of games I’ve never played before.

What tips do you have for a first time Deck owner?

Any essential games I should be sure to get?

And finally, is it possible to get games I own on the Epic Games Store (I collected all their free games over the years) or Xbox Game Pass PC games on my Steam Deck?

Here’s our weekly thread!

What have you been obsessing over this last week? What have you been listening to? What have you discovered, that you’ve found yourself drawn to?

Share something cool with someone else, and hopefully find something new for yourself!

So excited to hear the upcoming album! Check out Purple by these guys if you haven’t heard it before.

Here's our weekly thread!

What have you been obsessing over this week? What songs have been stuck in your head? What do you find yourself singing over and over again, or always hitting that repeat button on?

Share something cool with someone else, and hopefully discover something awesome for yourself!

Share your favorite live records with us!

Here are some questions for discussion:

What performances really stand out for you? What is unique about the way the band performs live? What draws you to the live performance? Do you prefer a live version of a song over the recording? Why?

Here’s the weekly music thread!

Share your discoveries, what songs you’ve been obsessed with this past week, and that you want to check out in the days to come!

Share something cool with someone else, or hopefully discover some great new music for yourself!

Sorry for the late post this week! What’s been stuck in your head this week? What songs or albums have you been obsessed with?

Introduce someone to something new and awesome or maybe discover something new yourself!

I, like many gamers, grew up playing Pokémon Red and Nintendo 64 and was obsessed with Nintendo products. I graduated to a PS2 and PS3 and became super into Metal Gear Solid and Call of Duty and Fallout. Also spent a ton of time with the Guitar Hero series. I loved the escape gaming brought me and it genuinely helped me relax.

Fast forward a few years and I hadn’t really played a video game between the years of like 2011-2017. College, moving cross country and busyness of life kept me from gaming. Finally in 2017, I bought a Switch and Breath of the Wild and felt the same magical feeling I remember when I first started playing Ocarina of Time, or the first time I booted up Metroid Prime, or Metal Gear Solid 4. I started to get into online gaming and made a lot of friends. I played my Switch frequently for a few years.

During the beginning of COVID lockdowns, I turned more to reading than gaming and my Switch gathered lots of dust. I ultimately ended up buying an Xbox Series S when it was announced because I’d never owned an Xbox system and Game Pass really intrigued me. I went through a phase of being very into Destiny 2, Halo, Gears of War, Forza Horizon…a bunch of games I had never played before.

Then, a divorce, a new job change, another cross country move brought new levels of stress to my life. I lacked an attention span strong enough to focus on a video game. FPS’s seemed boring, online games couldn’t keep my attention long enough to get through a match, and eventually I’d just leave a game on the pause menu while I messed around mindlessly on my phone. Gaming wasn’t even a way for me to decompress anymore, it seemed more like a chore I was procrastinating—which sucks.

I’ve fallen deeper into this lately, as more life changes have come along. I work a stressful job with long hours. I’m now a stepparent to two young boys. The little free time I have I spend walking the dog, reading, and trying to just let my mind settle and decompress. Let alone, if I try to turn the Xbox on or have the Switch on my lap, it turns into a whole event where the kids want to sit and watch and participate and ask tons of questions (which is fine, but sometimes I just want to do something by myself for me!)

I miss the time of my youth where gaming was a relief and a release for me. I miss how I felt when I first got a Switch and felt so excited and so nostalgic and reinvigorated and looked forward to playing a game! Now…I feel like I can’t even consider myself a gamer.

So. That’s a long winded way to ask if anyone else has gone through similar ruts, or fallen away from gaming, and if so, what games helped you get that spark back? What games brought you back to that nostalgic feeling you had when you first got into gaming? What games help you decompress after a long day? What games have you recently become obsessed with in such a way that you look forward to playing them and are always thinking about them?

I want to get back into gaming. I want to feel the magic again.