got_quiet

I had a very good first half of November and a bit of a trash fire second half. Coming into the month I was relaxing, most of my work obligations were over, I thought I was looking at about 4 months straight of no crunch. I was playing the last few VNs in the BLM bundle, I was actually making some ok progress on hitting 50k words in a month, and anticipating using the Thanksgiving weekend to cinch things up. It was all very exciting. But then a few weeks in I got an email from a colleague saying broadly, "Hey, remember that committee you agreed to be on? Thanks a lot and here is the 100 hours of work we'll need from you by the end of next week!"

So the last two weeks have kind of been ass because I've been grinding work stuff suddenly again, but the committee thing is over an now I'm trying to tell myself that really, actually I have some free time. I even deleted a bunch of trash from my computer in anticipation of having to install Baulder's Gate 3 in the coming new year. I still haven't gotten rid of the eye tick I picked up from the surprise grind but I think some of that is also because I haven't seen the sun in a very long time now.

Anyway. Resolutions.

Maybe it's a bit early to be thinking about the end of the year, and resolutions, and all of that, but I'm impatient for the year to be over, and January 1st is such an arbitrary date, anyway.

Looking at my resolution from last year, which was a simple one to read more books than 2022, I passed that with flying colors, largely thanks to my new love affair with Libby, but even if I look just at the physical books read I hit the bar, so I'm pleased there.

My resolution for next year is going to be to minimize my wasted web time. I keep track of the time I spend after 7PM every day, and my calculated time just fucking around on the web totals about 260 hours, averaging about 30 hours a month (extracting a couple months that were not properly tracked due to travel and work). So the goal is that every month I will spend less than that fucking about on the internet I don't know if I'm going to succeed in that. It's so easy to get into a suck hole of complete nothingness and then realize 4 hours have passed. But if I can lower that somehow, even if I'm doing slightly equally lazy stuff, it'd feel good. My time spent fucking around doing gaming stuff is almost double that, because the Overwatch League is officially dead (may it rest in peace) that's a significant amount of that time already freed up for next year. Like, half of that time or more.

I'm cautious about getting overeager with the resolutions, since I usually can't maintain discipline, but I do want to lower my meat intake while simultaneously gaining muscle mass, which are both things that I have tried doing on and off and failed miserably at for literal decades at this point. So I'm trying to think of a decent, not very strict goal for those things. I don't know if I've come up with a good one yet. Maybe 3 days a week of no meat? Or just to keep track of that more formally. And to somehow... go the gym more or something. Just thinking about it makes me exhausted though.

There's a lot to look forward to next year.

There was announcement for the next season of Arcane, for November 2024. I really enjoyed the first season, but generally try to keep my expectations low for later seasons. How many big series have failed to stick the landing? Like, more than 50% right? I don't need the next season to be as amazing as the first, but it would be nice.

And I'm looking forward to the Hades II early access. My standard policy is slow gaming, hence why I still haven't bought Balder's Gate, but for Hades I made an exception last time and was rewarded, and I'm willing to do it again.

And Long Gone Days had it's 1.0 release about a month ago, meaning that the story is now compete. It underwent a significant rehaul in the process, so I'm a little nervous about picking it up again, but I really want to play it and maybe continue with my let's play so I can start cajoling people into writing more fic for it. I've been really wanting to play it for a while. I thought I'd get to it in November, but I ended up grinding paperwork instead. Hopefully I'll have the time in December.

And I'm almost completely done with the BLM VNs! The last page has unfortunately been a bit of a dud so far. The games are either actually kinetic novels or they're not great, but I was midway through one I liked when I had to put that on pause. Once I'm all done I'm planning on writing a recap post, and then give out some tongue in cheek "Awards" or something lol. I'm not entirely sure how I'd do it but it'd nice to put a formal lid on that whole project.