"Be not solitary, be not idle." - Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
My big problem with gaming so far this year has been anhedonia; the feeling that nothing is fun or worth it any more. I get that feeling sometimes, but despite writing in 1621, Mr Burton nailed it; one addresses this issue by meeting people, preferably face to face, and keeping oneself busy. Neither of those are necessarily gaming-related.
Of course, Mr Burton did not have to deal with social media or TV news, but then strictly speaking, neither do I. There are OFF switches.
Blogger
Since the move from Wordpress, I've used Blogger enough to get a feel for the pros and cons.
Things Blogger does better than Wordpress: Creating and editing posts is simpler and more intuitive. The default layout is closer to what I need. Above all, it doesn't randomly insert adverts every few paragraphs.
Things Wordpress does better than Blogger: You can 'like' posts - I can't see how to do that in Blogger at all. Once you've accepted a comment from someone in Wordpress, it automatically accepts all their future comments; in Blogger, you have to accept each comment individually, or accept all comments regardless of author.
Naturally, as soon as I moved across to Blogger, I found a free Wordpress host that doesn't stuff posts with adverts; but I've already moved twice this year and I don't want to move again for a while.
Campaigns
Solo: As I said above, this has been more fun for me since I moved the PC to a new and less constrained setting. I've been meaning to start a new All Things Zombie game, but so far I haven't been sufficiently motivated, so that will wait a little longer.
Group (GM): The Aslan Route has been a bit of a slog; the players enjoy it enough to keep turning up, which is a good thing, but as Marie Kondo might say, it no longer sparks joy for me. Maybe it will do so again if I power through the current malaise.
Group (player): I'm thoroughly enjoying Deadlands, as it's great to play SWADE after running it for so many years; interestingly, the other players seem to enjoy SWADE a lot more now someone else is running it. I'm also having a lot of fun playing in The Jagermeister Adventure under Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition; I can't see myself running MgT2, but I'll happily play it. Finally, Leaves of Chiaroscuro is teaching me how FATE works, which has always been a gap in my gaming knowledge.
Progress Towards Objectives
We're far enough into the year that my New Years' Experiments (as I think of them) are starting to show results.
- Intentionality. That's to say, no impulse purchases. Failed, due to an impulse purchase of the Giant Book of Cyberpunk Battlemats from Loke Battlemats.
- Play with 15 different people. Achievement unlocked; playing in The Jagermeister Adventure takes me to 16.
- No campaign reboots. Failed, rebooted the Arioniad. I regret nothing. Well, not that, anyway, it's been more fun since.
- Play 300 hours in 100 sessions. So far 208 hours in 71 sessions; ahead of target.
- Read 50 books, 5 in Italian: So far 32, 3 in Italian; on track.
- Videogaming. Complete two games this year. I'll probably fail this one. I haven't launched a videogame in three months now.
- Boycotting. This has gone as far as it's going to get; it's hard to be an ethical consumer, the best you can do is favour one reprehensible behaviour over another. I don't imagine my targets are quaking in their boots, but I'm doing what I can to slow them down. Hopefully it all adds up.
"All that said, I'm not actually doing anything with this information, so I might not bother keeping score in the second half."
ReplyDeleteUseful for me to see, at least. I'm suffering from the same anhedonia that you are. Fun to see how you try to combat it.