And here I am… 33 now.
While I have don’t have any major goals or plans for this year, it’s fun to have some “it’ll be cool if it happened, but I won’t be disappointed if it didn’t”
I am having a more relaxed birthday this year.
Last year, I was in London for the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival. I had an amazing time and met some cool people, including a friend who I have not met in the 12 years of knowing each other.
Today, I am planning to have lunch with my mother in a restaurant and discuss something that we are planning together. A holiday!
My mother is an Irish mammy as they come. She has been outside of Ireland to go to Spain a handful of times (Ibiza and Tenerife mainly)
The last time, that I was on one of those holidays was to Ibiza, and that was in 2008!
It wouldn’t be until 2016/17 that my mother and father went on another holiday, and that was with my half-brother and sister. I didn’t go on that trip.
Since my father’s death and the pandemic, I have moved back home to be with my mother. We initially spoke about a weekend trip to mainland Europe (either Amsterdam or Germany) but those plans fell through.
We never really spoke about going on a holiday since it fell through… Until last week, my mother was watching This Morning. They had Jeff Brazier in New York City, highlighting the city and some of its landmarks.
My mother started talking about it more and more. After a couple of days, I blurted out: “How about we go to New York, then?”
She hasn’t stopped smiling. She is really looking forward to going. We’re planning to go in February so we have time to plan things out and more importantly, get our passports renewed.
This wouldn’t be my first time in NYC. I was there with a friend in 2018, and while I enjoyed my time then, there is much more I wanted to see and do, and now I have a perfect chance to do it this time with my mother.
We are adamant on actually committing to this. Once we have 1 element of the holiday booked (Flights and/or hotel), then we are committed.
And this is the start. I have already said to her, that we should do weekend trips to European cities a thing, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Other than that, I would like to lose some weight. I have been a big guy since the pandemic. I am not looking to get a 6-pack or anything, but just lose some of the weight. If I can drop a size or two in trousers while I am at it, that would be cool.
What about online stuff?
With the changes that are happening, I am no longer going to be using Twitter. I am not a fan of the changes that Elon has made in the last few weeks regarding the AI and the “blocking”.
As you all know, I am on the Fediverse (mainly on Mastodon.ie) where I have been since November 2022 and that will continue to be my main place to go to for posting.
Bluesky has received a surge in users after Twitter was blocked in Brazil and another surge this week regarding the aforementioned AI and blocking changes that were made.
Check out the footer at the bottom for the links to my profiles.
I am also available on Telegram or Discord (Just search for crakila) if you want to chat to me on those platforms.
I have taken a step back on doing projects as I feel I was stressing myself out. So I am cutting down on the amount of websites that I am running, and I am looking to improve the ones that I have and make the existing ones a bit more lively. This would apply to padraig.blog, pf.ie and 39.ie, especially the last one!
Gaming
To the shock of no one, I am still playing Final Fantasy XIV, and I will probably be continuing to play it for another year. During some downtime of the game, I have been dabbling in other games, including but not limited to:
Let’s see how this year goes and let’s hope that my post for 34 looks back at this post, and I am able to reflect on a what a good year that I had!
