Vacation and Goals

My visit home to Louisville has been splendid thus far! Nick and I hit up the Speed Museum, Science Center, and Slugger Museum. We ate at Dragon King's Daughter, Ramsi's, Old Spaghetti Factory, Coco's Chocolate (fondue!!) and Nord's Doughnuts. We met Ian's puppy and played many games with friends and hung out with my family.

Now he's off to Sarasota so we can spend Christmas with our respective families, and then I'll join up with him again in Florida afterwards. Josh checked in on Mr. Davis for me at the Cat Hotel, and apparently he's settled quite nicely and made friends with the other cats! Yay!

Meanwhile, I'm starting to ponder my goals for 2011. Last year the goals were: get a cat (check!) and go to Japan (check!). I already have a few goals in mind financially, but I'm molding some others in the meantime.

First, I'm feeling purge-ish again, and every time i get in the mood to get rid of stuff, the circle of influence of my grip shrinks. This time it's the old game consoles that are feeling invasive to my space. I've been really thinking a lot about the way I consume media. Earlier in the year I borrowed games to try them (offering pies in exchange) and I liked the way it felt. I felt motivated to finish the games because I had to return them, and didn't feel any guilt over a game half started and then sitting and staring at me from the PS3.

I find myself drawn more and more to Steam and PSN and investigating Wiiware titles because of the lack of physical "stuff" that comes attached to them. Perhaps I will pick up the borrowing habit once more in the New Year.

Which leads me to my second goal of consuming more games more regularly. Right now I play games in long stretches and revel in them, such as Starcraft and WoW and Minecraft. But as has been pointed out time and again, one of the flaws of my industry is how much really good content is pushed out so frequently. I feel like everyone knows someone who has a mountain of unwrapped games that they haven't even touched yet.

I've attributed this need to keep up with games to be like practicing an instrument, and I think this year I need to buckle down on that and really set aside time each day for games. NEW games, I mean, not just the ones I'm in love with and playing anyway. If I can work it into my routine I think I can pull it off, but new routines are very hard to get rolling!

We shall see what the new year brings.