Welcome back to the Contributor Spotlight Series, where we interview amazing members of the Habitica community! Today we’re chatting with Blablux, a Linguist and Linguistic Scribe who has also done some contributions as a Blacksmith, helps to coordinate the French translation team, and has been a member of Habitica since 2014!
How did you get involved with Habitica?
As far as I remember, I first discovered HabitRPG (as it was called at the time) on Lifehacker back in 2014. I signed up almost immediately because I loved the ideas behind it, but to be honest, I didn’t stick with it right away. A few months later, a friend invited me in her party, and it totally changed the way I got involved. Finding a party is the first advice I give to any newcomer, it really changes the way you use Habitica.
What’s your proudest contribution to Habitica?
I guess I made Habitica a welcoming place for french-speaking people. What I found when I first joined the main french-speaking guild is that many people struggled with the english parts of Habitica. So I joined the french translators guild, I became the leader of quite a few french-speaking-guilds, I began to create challenges in french, I encouraged other french-speaking guild-leaders and tried my best to advise french-speaking newcomers. I have to say that it’s exhausting…, but almost 6 years in, I can also say it’s really rewarding.
What are your secret superpowers?
I have grown some powerful organizing habilities, thanks to Habitica and my full-time job. At almost anytime, I can see in my head, hour by hour, what the next tasks are. And when the unexpected inevitably trample my well-crafted planning, I can rearrange everything whitout even thinking about it.
I also happen to have otherworldly capacity to NOT otherthink the tasks on my lists. I just begin working on the tasks without any “what if… ?“, dealing with problems as they happen (but then I sometimes miss things along the way).
What are your secret weaknesses?
When I’m really invested in a task, I tend to lose track of the time. It’s not unusual for me to work on something, and then realizing that I should have had lunch two hours ago (that is when replanning really fast comes in handy).
I also have a bad habit of NOT wanting to stop until a task is finished, or to “do one more before I stop“. I almost lost a finger to it at the beginning of this year, when I wanted to rapidly cut one last piece on the table saw… Well, sometimes I learn things the hard way.
What are your favorite Habitican pets/mounts?
Pet wolves ! This has something to do with me playing a tabletop game in my youth, where I was leading the Space Wolves. Although I stopped playing this game years ago, I still have a thing for its lore, and it translated in me favoring the wolves above all, anytime I have the opportunity to do it. As simple as it is, my favorite pet wolf is the base pet wolf. Its colors strike me as just right. But I like that there is always one wolf that goes well along with most of the equipment I wear.
What are some things you’re tracking in Habitica?
At the end of each year, I take a time to reflect on what I have accomplished, and what I want to do the next year. I choose areas where I want to improve, and these become my yearly goals. These generally revolve around six concept :
- improving my social skills,
- building my knowledge,
- improving my crafts skills,
- improving my environnemental impact,
- improving the ecosystem around me,
- working on my creativity.
Then I create real-life objectives based on these, and translate it into habitica habits, dailies and to-dos. And aside from a few tweaks and some challenges-related tasks, I tend to stick with it for the whole year.
What do you like to do in your free time?
My friends tend to say that I’m exhausting because I do way too much things. I’m a maker, so I build a ton of things, and I recently got an interest for electronics. I’m about to teach vector-graphics at my local makerspace. I’m a gardener, and grow many fruits and vegetables at home. I love to bike around, and I recently became a hiker. I read a lot of books, enough that I struggle to find space to crank them in my house. I also like to dip my toes in many, many crafts. Sometimes I paint, sometimes I do some cross-stitching, … at this moment I’m learning about paracord bracelets (useful when hiking). As said, I’m exhausting…
What are your top Habitica tips and tricks?
How you write your task is important, people ! I usually give my own example to newcomer to explain it. Long ago, I struggled to keep my indoor plants watered. So I made a daily worded “Water the plants” that repeated itself every three days. But not all plants needed water that often, and depending on the season, they may need it even less. Unless I was willing to change the repeat cycle on a regular basis, that wouldn’t have worked. So I changed the text to “The plants have been watered enough”, but that wasn’t good either, because it was about me watering the plants, and sometimes there was just no need to. I then rewrote it to “The plants don’t need anymore water”, and that hit the sweet spot for me. Your tasks have to carry the sense and the importance that you put in them, and spending some time to find the right wording is some time spent right.
Where do you like to hang out in Habitica?
Without any surprise, you will find me on most french-speaking guilds, mostly the main hub, guiding newcomers and providing some fun ideas to the community, and the french translators guild, trying to guide the translation efforts (our wiki really need some love right now…).
get organized. stay motivated. have fun. 