I am alive challenge / one day as a shark DAY 30

Just another rainy Monday

It rained most of the day again today. Now we've got flash flood warnings, but prior to the rain, it had gotten pretty dry. The grass in our front yard was looking pretty brown. I'm not the sort of person that will waste water on my lawn, though I suppose I'm not judging people who do.

I didn't work my more traditional job today, but I did work today. Read on if you want to know what I mean.

Milestone: 20,000 HP achieved!

20,000 HP on this account has been a goal that I've had for a while, and I'm finally there! I do have a lot of my HP delegated out, but I still vote with over 5000 HP.

Splinterlands update: Two Gun Pete is now at MAX LEVEL

Yesterday, I opened some packs. In those packs, I got a few of these cards. I had to take it off of the rental market, which I felt a little bad about, but that's also the nature of how it's set up. It can be canceled by either party, and at least it doesn't end immediately. They get the rest of the current day they paid for. I have to cancel the rental to upgrade it. Frankly, this card is a lot better at max level than it is at level 3 because it adds the stun ability in addition to redemption. That makes this card pretty powerful for only 1 mana cost.

So is Theorosa Nightshade!

I was lucky with my recent pack openings. It got me enough of some of these cards to get them to max level. I got some of all of them in the airdrops, but not enough to get them to max level. These cards are pretty cool at lower levels but possibly OP at max levels. You get a lot of abilities for only 1 mana. If you can keep it alive long enough, that is.

This is exciting, but real talk... these are probably the worst two of the 1 mana cards that came out. Epona seems like the best one, and I didn't get that many of those. They're way too expensive to just buy. I'll have to get some more packs (hopefully) and cross my fingers. If I don't end up getting every card at max level, that's just going to have to be the way that it is. There are certainly more important things in life than games or investments. Splinterlands is both.

Coming to terms with two things: Splinterlands income is not "money for nothing" and it's also legitimately my job

What do I mean? Well, it's easy for me to call Splinterlands "passive" income, and it sort of is, but not completely. I spend a lot of time each day on what I'd probably call collection and rental maintenance. When possible, I avoid canceling rentals, but if I want to upgrade cards, I will do it. Some levels of cards have significantly more value than other levels. Generally, I like to be at league maxes, and not in-between league maxes. If that makes sense. For example, a common card, I'd rather have it at level 8 or 10 than 7 or 9.

Typically, it makes me feel bad to admit how much time I actually spend doing Splinterlands-related activities, but I'm bringing in a very good income of new tokens and holdings every day without having to sell cards or even sell tokens. The DEC from rental income is a big part of that, and that's what I focus the most attention on. If card rentals ARE expiring, I try to take advantage of that as a time to look into the market prices again. Time and time again, I'm finding that the original % rate I was getting for the cards goes down because the value per card goes way up.

Doing that is very much like work, but I enjoy it. I think I stumbled into doing what I love for a living, which I always thought was a myth. You know, "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life."

It USED to make me feel bad. I've done some thinking and realizing and I know that it productive. I will be taking money out for a while to help out with some bills we've got (mostly relating to schooling I'll describe in the next paragraph).

It's not the only job I want to have forever, but it's working out right now. I'm working another part-time job for an employer I've had for years, who also happens to be an old friend. I've got a coding bootcamp school program starting in a few weeks and I'll be doing that for 6 months. After that, I was going to look for a job, but if I can use my newfound skills to just automate all of my Splinterlands activities, maybe I'll never need a regular 9-to-5 job. 😎 I'm keeping busy, even if I'm spending a lot of my day sitting in front of my computer and not driving a forklift (that's what my most recent "regular" job was) or whatever.

We will have to see where the future leads. I'm optimistic, either way.

I got artsy with my selfie today

It's getting boring taking the same photos of my face, so I did this today instead. I took a selfie sitting in my recliner in the TV room while my wife and I were watching the newer version of The Twilight Zone. The one from a couple of years ago. It was interesting enough. This was made in an app called Pixlr.