My Review of the Nokia Lumia 920

The white model is pretty good.

I've been looking into replacements for my poor old Samsung Galaxy S3, which has taken quite a bit of punishment as of late. Being submerged in water, then taken apart and baked at 200 degrees Celsius for a while can do that to a phone (I may document my motives for this torture as well as some other crimes against circuitry in a future post). I got the S3 solely for its superior hardware at the time and impressive bench scores, but now that we are moving into the age of full-HD screens and 1.7 GHz quad-core processors the fact that I have money in the bank and a craving for the feats of engineering spurs me to ever-greater smartphone aspirations.

I'm a bit ashamed to admit it, but I had been anticipating the launch of the S4 since mid-February. My rampant consumerist chip goes crazy at the thought of the next big hardware offering, and the rumours were tantalising. I even fucking camped out on the live-feed of the S4 launch, frantically masturbating the refresh button for the sweet, sweet nectar of the big reveal. That the new offering disappointed me probably fueled the embarrassment. Even though I was fond of my S3, already it looked ugly to me. I did not notice how much more ergonomic it was, just that the rounded, pebble-design made it look like a 1980 sci-fi render of the future instead of the much-more-relevant present.

The S4 looks so much alike its predecessor that at a glance it's difficult to tell them apart. It's built almost exactly like the S3, too - flimsy plastic and chrome-plated edge, albeit slightly blockier and sturdier-looking. Given that every drop onto tarmac gifted my S3 with an edge-dent showing off the magic of chrome-plating, I wasn't particularly keen for more of the same.

The Galaxy S4 has an impressive processor but it's fugly, has a dim screen, gimmicky and not a great camera either. Samsung reportedly stuck with the plastic form-factor because of pricing, and the advantages of a removable battery and back cover. I've equipped my S3 with a 4200mAh battery before, and while it definitely removed all my worries about whether or not my phone would last the day with heavy usage, it made it very heavy and blocky - something I only came to de-appreciate after I had no choice but to use the stock battery and cover.

Not that I'm really impressed with any of the latest phone offerings, either. I was set on buying an Xperia Z since it had pretty design, nice screen and is waterproof, which would be useful for my frequent waterboarding of my phones, but I was discouraged at its noisy, washed-out photo samples and reported poor daylight visibility. The HTC One is pretty with a nice screen but its low-res camera gimmick failed to impress me, and its bloated Sense interface overlay isn't something I care for in a phone.

None of the phones listed above were particularly good at daylight visibility, something that is very important during my phone usage. Ideally I would be willing to shell out decent money for a nice, premium phone that I am happy with. I would not be happy paying out of my nose for an iPhone, especially for its woundable body, unimpressive facial design and small screen. When it comes to phone design, I am happiest with a form factor that resonates with me. It's fairly arbitrary and arguably not important enough to override the hardware internals, but for something I use every day I would like to be able to marvel at its design for more than a day. This is first-world as all fuck, but it did factor into my decision to migrate to the Nokia Lumia 920.

After reading some glowing reviews detailing the strengths of the 920, I figured I could give up my fetish for the fastest processor with the most cores and RAM-hungriness if it meant that the OS running on it would be better at managing the resources. I figured I could give up super-large camera photos if it meant better picture quality from a better sensor. I figured I could deal with a slightly-smaller-than-I-am-used-to screen if it meant greater pixel density (an almost-trivial dichotomy, I know). I figured I could deal with losing the ability to tinker with the OSes and hardware settings, losing the joys of playing the "Let's think of an app concept and see if someone has implemented it" game if it meant the OS I was given out the box wowed me and allowed me to use the phone without overexciting my tinkering nerve. This potent mix of pain and pleasure lived up to almost all of those expectations.

Almost.

 After 4 days with my Nokia Lumia 920, after burning through my new-gadget fever, here are my findings.

Pleasure

•  Very impressive resource management
•  Beautiful, smooth interface. Did I mention this phone was a beauty to behold? Both software and hardware aethetics have been designed to look effortlessly elegant, at least in my opinion.
•  Solid, non-slip build. Awesome form factor. Durable as all fuck.
•  LiveTiles is a very nice way to organise your homescreen apps that keeps everything visible - Fantastic camera with hard shutter - even the front camera at 2.0 mp does a solid job. Shines particularly in low-light conditions, but is very good for regular light, with excellent colour reproduction
•  Completely visible under direct sunlight
•  Excellent reception and call quality - I have more luck browsing with this device than any others I have owned
• Screen is absolutely stunning. No pixels to be made out unless you slap yourself in the eyes with the  phone. Repeatedly.
• Built-in wireless charging disgustingly convenient. Because of the relative inefficiency of wireless charging and the fact that you have to put it on a charging pad, I had thought it was a gimmick right up to when I first used it. I don't know about the other SA carriers, but I know that Vodacom will give you the charging pad free with your purchase of your phone. It makes keeping your phone charged (when you have the pad) second nature.
• Touchscreen sensitivity can be adjusted so that you can use the phone with gloves on

 Pain

• Status bar sometimes hidden - including the time. No way to see battery status at glance, or if your connectivity is on at a given moment
• Keyboard has no haptic feedback, so its usage can feel flimsy and inaccurate
• I had wanted the cyan model, but if you are in a country other than the US you are SOL. Even if you are in the US, the cyan model locks you into the deathly embrace of indentured servitude under AT&T. And no, you can't fuck with the baseband.
•  If you are using your device heavily, your phone will not last the day
• Hardware API does not support turning off screen rotate or disabling the accelerometer, so have fun trying to use the device in bed or on the couch
• Music API has disabled touch-seek, or any sort of seek in Nokia Music
• No control over OS - can't root phone or flash custom ROMs
• No file browser or on-the-fly file deleting off internal SD.
• Only uses MTP so no transfer of files onto phone for recognition with Ubuntu. If you are using any operating system other than Windows 7 or Windows 8, expect to have a bad time.
• My phone doesn't recognise the files I dragged-and-dropped onto the internal storage in Ubuntu. I had an extra drive with Windows XP on it, but because of some unresolved MTP issues in XP the attempt was akin to passing a kidney stone, only not as fruitful. I hear Mac users have some trouble with this also.
• Internet Explorer poorly designed; no alternatives except for experimental Nokia browser, which is also poorly designed
• It's almost impossible to download files directly onto your internal storage via your browser. Almost, because maybe there is a way and I missed it. Either you view them in the browser, or you download it to SkyDrive. 
• Forced to use Bing with capacitive search button. No way to disable this, so if you're using the device one-handed you may be doing a lot of accidental searching
• HUGE data hog; better pray the background process gods are merciful and turn off SkyDrive Sync, all locational services and Nokia's online radio
• App store is small, sparsely reviewed, and if you want a good app you may as well as get into the habit of paying for it
• Pitiful support for GTalk
• No way to close all your background processes all at once; took it for granted on Android
• Phone is very heavy. If you like heaviness in a phone you'll enjoy it, otherwise it will be quite cumbersome
• No way around any of the software issues because nobody has managed to unlock the bootloader. You're at the mercy of MICROSOOOFT

Q&A With A Friend

I expected there to be minor irritations here and there; did the irritations outweigh your overall user experience of WP8?

Sort of. I tend to be fairly forgiving when it comes to interfaces, but WP8 brought to light a great many things that I tend to take for granted on an Android phone. Some elements, such as not being able to see the time, battery or connection status at all times could be said to be part of a different user experience paradigm, but personally I don't like it. The biggest thing was forcing me to use a Windows Live account for the default chat exchange services. I don't use Windows Live. I have no friends on Windows Live. I don't care about Windows Live.

There is all of one (1) decent app for GTalk, and it has very serious timelags and sync problems with your actual GMail app. It is also difficult to toggle WiFi/Bluetooth etc., which can get inconvenient. But I never find it to be on when I don't want it to be, which happened a lot in Android in my pocket.

When you say data hog, how bad are we talking? Is it legit, or due to bloatware? My current phone was also a data hog until I rooted it and installed a firewall app. I then also flashed it to be safe. With WP8, this isn't possible (yet), so I'm keen to know how bad a problem it is.

I'm not sure. My data (about 300MB) was sucked dry the first day. I don't know if that has improved after I painstakingly switched off all the locational services - oh wait, yes it has. 100MB a day with light browsing. WP8 is somewhat dependent on locational services. Other than that, it's a little harder to manage background apps in WP8 (not in terms of memory usage, but data usage), but not impossible. There is no way of monitoring your overall data usage like on Android, so it's tricky to answer this. It's also pretty frustrating if you want control over your usage.

WP8 has integrated SkyDrive syncing, so if you choose to use that it will definitely slice through your data like a hot knife through butter (I did not).

I mostly use my phone for browsing, IM, Evernote, photos and Dropbox. Games, music, series, PDFs, ebooks, etc. are handled by my iPad. So reading that IE is poorly designed is a fairly serious issue to me. What makes it poorly designed? From the pics and reviews I've seen, it's quite minimal and somewhat customizable, so I'm keen to find out. I'm less of a power user than I imagine you are, so would you recommend WP8? I am mostly in the Apple ecosystem, but have never fully adopted one ecosystem only. I think WP8 has a lot of potential, and i really like the UI and design elements. Is it worth it, or - in your opinion - would it be a waste of my time and cash-moneys?

Firstly, there is no nice Dropbox support for WP8. Which gets to the crux of the woes of WP8, really - 'there is no nice support for X on Windows 8' is one of my chief gripes as a previous Android user. So about IE, there are a few things I noticed that I didn't like, though they are personal preferences:

• You cannot see the status bar when browsing in IE. If you REALLY want to, it will pop up when you use the keyboard. but otherwise if you're wondering if your connection is on, or what the time is, or how your battery's doing, you can't just glance at the top to find out.
• The address bar button can be used for one of three things: Tabs, Refresh/Stop or Bookmarks. If you pick the one, should you want to use any of the other two you have to pull up the menu, which I think is fucking ridiculous and distracts from the flow of browsing.
•  If you want to scroll right to the top or right to the bottom, there's no nice way of doing that short of grinding the slide. This is something I was used to in Android browsers, so the absence was frustrating. - The back button does not take you to the previous page; it takes you to the app you were running before IE. Which is pretty annoying for me - if you want to go to a previous page there is no one-touch solution, you have to go to "Recent" and get it from there.

One nice thing about WP8/IE though, is that you can pin your favourite webpages to your homescreen as a LiveTile.

There is an experimental browser from Nokia Xpress that does a similar thing to Opera - intermediate parsing of webpages to save you on data costs. It suffers from much the same problems as IE though, with one exception: IE lets you choose your default search client, Xpress locks you to Bing.

Also these search choices are independent of the capacitive search button, which will use Bing no matter how much you yell at it.



In the end, for all its faults and frustrations, the Lumia 920 is a very difficult phone to hate. For all my frustrations, I think...I think I still love it, because of the hardware and the better parts of the interface. I watched District 9 in the sun on it with headphones the other day and it was mind-blowing.

Even so, since Microsoft is stopping support for it in 2014 and there are so, so many problems with it, I can't help but long for the days of Android where I did not have to worry about any of this shit; only about resource management. The Lumia 920 has two parents - I love the one (Nokia) and love and hate the other (Microsoft).

The Nokia Lumia 920 is like being in a relationship with an amazing partner with lots of adversities. It's simply not possible to hate it, only to be disappointed in it and forget about it the moment you feel the rush of the smooth, pretty interface, LiveTiles, amazing screen and holy-shit camera. When you get your hands on it, you will shit bricks at the beauty. Even with all the gripes, i'm still shitting bricks every time I pick up my Lumia.

That being said, I'm keen to sell it as soon as I can see a reasonable Android alternative on the horizon.

It was only natural to laugh.

I remember it very clearly. It was midnight and I was on something; it kept the dull buzzing down and replaced it with a stillness, like wood. Through this, I could hear the soft rustle of the rain, gentle and persistent against the walls and the roof and the ground outside.

I kept the door unlocked those days, for visitors. They would have been welcome regardless, but it was only polite. So the water pooled into the house, slowly, as the doorframe caught the drops at a certain slant of the wind.

At the end of the trail of rain and lightning, your shadow was stooped in the dimness of the corridor. You were drying off your feet. I didn't get to see your face, not again, but the slope of your shoulders and the arch of your back let me know that your eyes were the colour of tea. So they were, and it was only natural that you wore nothing.

"How is the weather?" I said loudly. You made conversation. Of course, it was wet. And it had been a long journey here, so long, the route winding and mazelike, the kinks turning to dead ends. The road twists and turns, you see.

"There's hot water in the geyser, if you want."

I watched, fumbling with my nightshirt, as you picked up your towel from the rail and traipsed to the bathroom. As the steam seeped from the open door, it carried with it the smell of that dust-scented shampoo I was so fond of. Dust-scented shampoo, and soap flavoured in soil. When did I buy it? I must have gotten it because I liked it.

I went into the kitchen, brushing the cobwebs from the table with my hand. There were still five beers left from the six-pack in the crisper, and I brought two out, uncapping them against the counter edge. When you came to join me, I had already finished half of my beer. You thanked me, and we sat in the greyness, with the moulding table between us, your hair weighed by your shower and dripping into your drink.

"I thought I'd try a microbrew," I said. You told me that it tasted like sand, which I disagreed with, but the beer was definitely bitter. It stained the lips. You told me about that time we went to the fair together, the funny story about the draught and the beer tent and the ambulance. It was the first time I heard that one. It was only natural to laugh.

After a while, I noticed that you had turned your head towards the kitchen entrance. I thought you were getting ready to leave, and reached a hand out to your silhouette.

"It's too windy. Will you stay a while?"

You wanted to know if I was going to finish my drink before we left the kitchen. I shook my head.

"It's not a good idea for me to have more. I shouldn't even be drinking."

So we went to my room, where the bed was made. You on the left and me on the right, as it was. I turned so I was facing your curled body. Closer to you, the pillow was already wet, and the low buzzing returned and became louder. Sometime then, it became very loud, because I could see it clearly, even with my eyes closed.


In the morning, I took the two empty beer bottles outside, and set them on the ground next to my doormat, next to the other one. The rain had stopped, and the rising sun lit the flat plain with the pink light of the dawn. I had stood there for a while, hoping you'd get home safely, as there were no footpaths.

But of course you had. You had come at midnight.

I had woken to an empty bed. You must have made your side before you left. The pillow on your side was still damp, and smelled faintly of dust.

You passed away two years ago. I know, because you told me.

South Africa and the 2010 Soccer World Cup

"I knew you were something special from the moment I set eyes on you."

South Africa blushed, and felt the summer heat rise in his cheeks as he looked up at the 2010 Soccer World Cup straddling his hips. The clocked ticked December and his growing excitement throbbed, anxious for the Soccer World Cup's touch. The Soccer World Cup smirked, and reached forward to unzip South Africa's jeans, fingers brushing lightly over the neatly-trimmed fynbos shrubbery of South Africa's southern regions.

South Africa's breathing quickened. "Soccer World Cup...please..."

Soccer World Cup pulled off South Africa's trousers and leaned down, brushing his lips over South Africa's in a light, teasing kiss. South Africa moaned and kissed back, embracing the Soccer World Cup fully as he writhed in drunk anticipation underneath the sporting championship.

"You know what I like about countries like you," said the Soccer World Cup devilishly, as he kissed down South Africa's neck, "is that you virgins are always so fucking eager..."

"I - I was molested by the Dutch and the English when I was a child," gasped South Africa, barely able to keep his thoughts together as the Soccer World Cup's hot mouth grazed his overwhelmingly sensitive ecosystem, lingering over his delicate flora and fauna.

"Doesn't matter," said the Soccer World Cup, and he disrobed, revealing the massive economic promise that until then had been hidden inside his pants. He flung his clothes aside with a flourish. "You developing countries are all the same. Always dreaming, always craving, always hungering for thick, hard financial gain, with no regard for the consequences..." He bent over South Africa again, resuming his actions on South Africa's attractive geography.

"God, you're so beautiful," he breathed, leaving his carbon footprint on South Africa's natural environment as he trailed lower and lower, until he finally reached South Africa's stiff public sector. He wrapped his fingers around the shaft and flicked the tip of his wet tongue across its swollen head, swirling it around the tip as he took it into his mouth. South Africa moaned and arched his back, longing for more of the Soccer World Cup's ministrations.

The Soccer World Cup grinned at South Africa's reaction and bobbed his head slightly, letting his lips slide down just enough to cover the top before sliding them up again with gentle suction. South Africa groaned and panted at the teasing gesture, before the Soccer World Cup's mouth left his hard public sector, leaving a string of saliva trailing to its tip.

"2010 Soccer World Cup!" South Africa let out a strangled yell, wanting more - but the Soccer World Cup had other plans.

"A - ah!" South Africa cried out in pleasure as the Soccer World Cup took him deep in his throat and slipped a finger into his private sector, his other hand reaching to pump his shaft to the rhythm of his oral assault.

Time passed as the clock ticked to June. South Africa panted heavily, desperate for release as the Soccer World Cup stimulated his public and private sectors with the skill of one experienced in his years.

Suddenly, the Soccer World Cup stopped. South Africa nearly cried in desperation, before he felt something big pushing against the entrance of his private sector.

"You want it," the Soccer World Cup's voice sounded, and the country looked up at him, upright in all his glory. "You want this, don't you?"

"Please," moaned South Africa feverishly, "Please give it to me. I'm ready. My people are ready. My road infrastructure - "

The Soccer World Cup cut him off. "If you want it," he said with an evil grin, "beg for it..."

"Please." South Africa was on the verge of tears with wanting. "Please, Soccer World Cup...I want to feel your massive profits inside me. I want your long, thick investor's confidence to stimulate me...please..."

The Soccer World Cup laughed, and plunged into South Africa suddenly. South Africa gasped at the pain, unprepared for the foreign intrusion, as the Soccer World Cup fucked him, bringing in a new wave of tourists with every thrust.

South Africa screamed as the Soccer World Cup held him down and ravished his susceptible infrastructure, violating him in a mix of pain and pleasure.

"God," panted the Soccer World Cup, unrelenting, "So close - "

And with a shout, the Soccer World Cup came, flooding South Africa's insides with soccer players as he pulsed inside him. He withdrew himself roughly, and got off the bed.

"Serves you right, you whore."

South Africa lay there, weak with economic downturn as the soccer players dripped out from inside him, and watched the Soccer World Cup leave his apartment, never to return again.

Tapering

"I don't know any others, apart from this one."

Our legs are almost touching. Leaves, pavement, leaves. You're wearing that blue parka again, and today it is as crisp as the ripples of air between my fingers.

I asked if you knew mine. I did not expect that you would be as short with me as you were then, and your words struck me with their dispassion.

"I said already. I don't know any others, apart from this one."

So not even me. That was strange, because I knew what your hands were doing in your pockets. You were winding the loose threads around your fingers and breaking them with the force of your tugging. Slowly. I wondered if you noticed it too, that you would do this when you were irritated.

You do it often.

So I followed your eyes, onto the grey pavement. I wondered what you were thinking. I wondered if you were thinking at all. I smiled a little and tried to be wry. It was working, and now your eyes were narrowed as you faced me, your stare as hard as your words.

"If I closed my eyes, if I walked away, if I unsaw you, what would be the difference?"

For the first time, I was at a loss, and against the dead-end of your question all I could think of was how your hands were writhing, snapping those threads. Even without seeing them, I knew how they were moving; your palms folded and your fingers tense with urgency. If there was none, I thought that it was odd that you took my silence for agreement.

Cross, uncross, after which your feet were pointing to mine. You had an interesting way of sitting. On this bench, in this cold, your neck and your shoulders sloped gently to meet with the curvature of your spine. I looked up, across the road, and made a remark about the trees. You agreed, and we talked at length about them. You had a nice smile, and spoke with your hands. You liked trees. You were fascinated with their self-similarity.

Pause.

"You're shivering. Why don't you go home?"

Perhaps I should have, but I shook my head.

"Well, I'm going to go. Maybe if I'm alone, I can stop pretending."

Pretending?

"That I'm not."

I opened my mouth a moment before you got up from the bench, so that I was balking at your legs, face-to-face with your knees.

"Maybe I'll see you around."

In that sudden rush of air as you straightened, I lost what I meant to say. I looked up at your retreating back, trying to remember, until you disappeared.

You avoided my eyes as you turned to leave, so I could only look at my palms and tell them that they were everything to me.

Another day of numbth

Sunny weekend at the start of a Capetonian spring. The weather is fantastic.

...I am sitting in my underwear in front of the computer. I don't remember why I took my clothes off. I think I was getting ready to shower and forgot to leave my seat.

I fit through the window in my balcony. This is fucking ridiculous. I am half-naked in my apartment half-listening to Anthony and the Johnsons, half on my way to the shower, and all I can think about is how it would feel to fall out the third story of this apartment complex. It would probably hurt. Or halfway down with air friction in my ears I'll regret what I did when it's too late.

Almost on my fourth week of bupropion. Before I took it I laughed off the black box warning about suicide risk as inherent to the study group. If you're depressed enough to take antidepressants, it makes sense that you'd consider suicide more than your average Jane.

I am not laughing anymore. This shit feels BAD. I don't know if it's the drug removing some emotional mechanism that damps my suicidal thoughts, or if by some action is inducing the suicidal thoughts, but either way, the change is real, and it's getting more and more difficult to restrain myself.

Suicide isn't something I would plan out. If I have enough rationality left to plan a suicide, I have enough rationality left to dwell on the reasons I shouldn't go through with it. It would almost certainly be a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. It's laughable, walking home at night and staring into tens of headlights, into truck carriages, and thinking about momentum. Then the cars go past me and I flinch. Playing chicken with the traffic. It's laughable.

I wonder if one day I'll read back on this stuff and be ashamed of what I wrote. I appreciate the optimism that comes with the assumption that I'll live that far into the future. But yeah, probably. I know I'm ashamed of all of this now, about how meta and cynical and rueful I am. I don't know how anyone could form any sort of lasting bond with someone who has no drive to live. Those who do do it out of the hope that things will change one day. I'm not sure about this myself.

The fuck kind of life am I living? I feel like some comatose guy on life-support. I'd love to get closer to people but I'm so fucking scared I'll hurt them so much by virtue of being like this, and they'll lose hope and move on. I don't blame them, but it's painful nonetheless.

I wish I were normal and happy and productive or I wish I were dead. Not like this. Living like this is like being in limbo. I hope the drug works properly soon. I've been getting some pretty shitty side-effects, so hopefully that means that I am a typical case and the situation will improve in a week or so.

If I say that I hate my life and why, there's always the question of "why don't you do something about it?". I am. I spend every waking moment trying to change what I hate about my life. I try to go home less. I try to eat right. I distract myself. I take vitamins. I try to see people more often. I try to study harder through the fog. I go to therapy. I am taking antidepressants. I walk everywhere. I have limits, though. I think I feel hopeless because I am trying everything I can think of, and I still feel like this. I hate this. I have no fucking idea if this is a losing battle or my perception is just clouded at the moment, even though everyone tells me it is the latter.

I wish I could give my assets away to people who'd appreciate them and just fucking disappear. The things that I have to live for, like my skill with language, problem solving, making people laugh, dressing up, sharp pitch sensitivity, ability to fake confidence and a body in reasonably good condition, it's all wasted on me. It's sad to think that people wish they had some of the things I have, who would use it to its full potential in life, while I squander it all fantasising about death.

Please drug, work. Work like you mean it. For fuck's sake, work.

Not subtractive, but additive.

There is the age-old adage about life being too short for x, where x is some compromise, or unfelicitous action, or undesirable attitude. I wonder if the length of the life in question is the average human life expectancy, or if the length is as variable as each individual is, in which case the premise of the adage is a mockery. I don't know why I expect truth in idioms.

I can't shake the feeling that I don't have much time left. The years have left their mark. I'm tired of restraining my impulses, although I'm still fully capable of doing it. All I can hope is to distract myself from the sinking feeling, and the fear of being swallowed whole by the void. Every moment distracted is another moment I am alive. And at this point, it is another moment closer to when these drugs will work. If there will be such a moment.

I like Scrabble. There is something comforting about scanning for the optimal play in a game with so many restrictions. It eliminates some of the uncertainty that is inherent to life. You play with the hand you are dealt with, within certain universal constraints. Plays are not acataleptic in the way that humans are. All you need to do is to respond to the plays of your opponent, under these universal constraints. Humans don't work that way. People restrict themselves in different ways, at different times, with different strengths. Even the social structure that arises from a group is not enough. You do not lose by default if you do not subscribe to them. And even without this problem, reality still has too many variables.

I wonder how well I can play with my hand. It's a bad hand, but I am not a weak player. Sometimes the feeling is overwhelming, the challenges that I perceive to be insurmountable by myself. Rationally, there are none.

I am not a perfectly rational being.

I wonder if I am buying into the gambler's fallacy, or if my outlook is clouded by my depression. Come to think of it, there's no reason why it couldn't be both. It doesn't matter how much I intellectualise all of this. The truth is that I want to die, but I can't, and I won't. The rational reasons for why I should not is one of them, but I also made a promise not to.

That is my restriction. To keep playing. And in a way, I like restrictions.

I am not counting down to the day I die. I am counting the days that I stay alive. Not subtractive, but additive.