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Week in review: Week to 14 June
. My experiment in journalling this week was to take it offline and write my journal in a plain text file instead of on the 750 Words website. The theory was that, without having to worry about 750 Words policing breaks and interruptions, I would be more inclined to start journal entries even if I wasn't sure I'd have time to write the whole entry in a single sitting.
It worked once, and then I didn't touch the journal again for the rest of the week.
What I'd failed to take into account was the other thing doing it in 750 Words provided: if not exactly a requirement to write it every day (I've been taking shameless advantage of 750 Words' laxity in allowing retroactive vacation days), then at least a requirement to make a conscious decision each day about whether I was going to write a journal entry or not. Without that reminder, it's always turned out that I have more interesting things to do with my time.
The question becomes: What am I writing the journal for? It was useful for a while as a method of self-reflection, but I seem to have had enough of that for now, or perhaps I'm getting better at doing the self-reflection in the moment instead of retrospectively. And it was a source of reminders for what to blog about each week, but most of what I wrote was irrelevant for that purpose, so if I can just remember to make better notes about things to mention in the blog, I won't need it for that.
I did keep my 750 Words streak going, by the way, just not with journal entries. I've written scraps of narrative, drafts of essays, and several sections of this blog entry. It consistently takes about half an hour, which is much easier to find time for in the day.
. At board game club, we played Dark Tomb, described as a dungeon-crawl-in-a-box. The box is small enough to fit in a pocket, and includes map tiles, premade characters, monster stats, etc. for an adventure in four increasingly-challenging locations. There are several different boxes with differing scenarios; we did "The Ice Chasers", which involved travelling up a snowbound mountain in search of a missing person. We did pretty well on the first two locations (a tavern and the open mountainside), but in the third location - a narrow mountain pass with a dragon in it - we got picked off one by one and the game ended there.
It was an interesting idea and I'm glad I tried it once, but I'm not sure about the replay value: the story is so thin as to be practically non-existent and I feel like playing it again would be basically the same experience with different numbers. The blurb claims Every Play-Through Is Unique, by which it means that the map cards for each location might be dealt out in a slightly different order next time and the monsters and loot will be in different places, and you can choose to play as a different character, but it doesn't seem to me that that would result in much difference in how the scenario plays out. There might be the occasional synergy where your new character's special ability does something cool, or you find a piece of equipment at exactly the moment when it would be most useful, but I wouldn't count on it.
. I finally got around to setting up the work table again and starting one of the jigsaw puzzles I was given for Christmas. I'd forgotten how nice it is to be able to spend a few quiet moments working on it, or just to put in a piece or two as I go past. It also gives me something to do with my hands when I'm listening to something or watching a long video that doesn't engage my full attention. (If I'd set up the puzzle straight away after Christmas, I probably wouldn't now have a six-month backlog of Natural Six videos to catch up on. On the other hand, by now I'd be out of jigsaw puzzles again.)
. I haven't started any new computer games, as such; this week, I've been trying out demos of a few new and upcoming games. These included Word Play, a make-words-out-of-letter-tiles game from the creator of Game Maker's Toolkit; Star Birds, a resource-gathering game; and Deck of Haunts, in which you play a haunted house luring in hapless passersby to their doom while trying to build up your resources enough to withstand the eventual torch-wielding mob.
Of the three, the only one I'm considering buying the full version of is Deck of Haunts. Word Play is okay, but sufficiently not-quite-my-thing that I wouldn't want to pay money for more of it. Star Birds actively annoyed me; I found the controls difficult to work with and the cute humorous cartoon bird characters irritating. (And maybe, to be fair, that kind of resource management game isn't really my kind of thing to begin with.)
. I refuelled the car and took the opportunity to clean the front and rear windscreens, both of which needed it. I had a slightly weird feeling as I was driving away, because I'm used to there being enough grime around the edges of the windscreen to visually confirm its existence, and now I couldn't see anything between me and the outside world.
. I was poking around in my old Tumblr posts, and found a limerick I wrote years ago. I've been trying to decide if I should put it on AO3 with the Coleridge limericks; maybe I should try my hand at a couple more first? (Hmm. Looking back at the tag, there's also the Shelley limerick...)
It worked once, and then I didn't touch the journal again for the rest of the week.
What I'd failed to take into account was the other thing doing it in 750 Words provided: if not exactly a requirement to write it every day (I've been taking shameless advantage of 750 Words' laxity in allowing retroactive vacation days), then at least a requirement to make a conscious decision each day about whether I was going to write a journal entry or not. Without that reminder, it's always turned out that I have more interesting things to do with my time.
The question becomes: What am I writing the journal for? It was useful for a while as a method of self-reflection, but I seem to have had enough of that for now, or perhaps I'm getting better at doing the self-reflection in the moment instead of retrospectively. And it was a source of reminders for what to blog about each week, but most of what I wrote was irrelevant for that purpose, so if I can just remember to make better notes about things to mention in the blog, I won't need it for that.
I did keep my 750 Words streak going, by the way, just not with journal entries. I've written scraps of narrative, drafts of essays, and several sections of this blog entry. It consistently takes about half an hour, which is much easier to find time for in the day.
. At board game club, we played Dark Tomb, described as a dungeon-crawl-in-a-box. The box is small enough to fit in a pocket, and includes map tiles, premade characters, monster stats, etc. for an adventure in four increasingly-challenging locations. There are several different boxes with differing scenarios; we did "The Ice Chasers", which involved travelling up a snowbound mountain in search of a missing person. We did pretty well on the first two locations (a tavern and the open mountainside), but in the third location - a narrow mountain pass with a dragon in it - we got picked off one by one and the game ended there.
It was an interesting idea and I'm glad I tried it once, but I'm not sure about the replay value: the story is so thin as to be practically non-existent and I feel like playing it again would be basically the same experience with different numbers. The blurb claims Every Play-Through Is Unique, by which it means that the map cards for each location might be dealt out in a slightly different order next time and the monsters and loot will be in different places, and you can choose to play as a different character, but it doesn't seem to me that that would result in much difference in how the scenario plays out. There might be the occasional synergy where your new character's special ability does something cool, or you find a piece of equipment at exactly the moment when it would be most useful, but I wouldn't count on it.
. I finally got around to setting up the work table again and starting one of the jigsaw puzzles I was given for Christmas. I'd forgotten how nice it is to be able to spend a few quiet moments working on it, or just to put in a piece or two as I go past. It also gives me something to do with my hands when I'm listening to something or watching a long video that doesn't engage my full attention. (If I'd set up the puzzle straight away after Christmas, I probably wouldn't now have a six-month backlog of Natural Six videos to catch up on. On the other hand, by now I'd be out of jigsaw puzzles again.)
. I haven't started any new computer games, as such; this week, I've been trying out demos of a few new and upcoming games. These included Word Play, a make-words-out-of-letter-tiles game from the creator of Game Maker's Toolkit; Star Birds, a resource-gathering game; and Deck of Haunts, in which you play a haunted house luring in hapless passersby to their doom while trying to build up your resources enough to withstand the eventual torch-wielding mob.
Of the three, the only one I'm considering buying the full version of is Deck of Haunts. Word Play is okay, but sufficiently not-quite-my-thing that I wouldn't want to pay money for more of it. Star Birds actively annoyed me; I found the controls difficult to work with and the cute humorous cartoon bird characters irritating. (And maybe, to be fair, that kind of resource management game isn't really my kind of thing to begin with.)
. I refuelled the car and took the opportunity to clean the front and rear windscreens, both of which needed it. I had a slightly weird feeling as I was driving away, because I'm used to there being enough grime around the edges of the windscreen to visually confirm its existence, and now I couldn't see anything between me and the outside world.
. I was poking around in my old Tumblr posts, and found a limerick I wrote years ago. I've been trying to decide if I should put it on AO3 with the Coleridge limericks; maybe I should try my hand at a couple more first? (Hmm. Looking back at the tag, there's also the Shelley limerick...)
My gal's eyes are not like the sun.
In fact, if you take time to run
Her past ev'ry cliché
That romantic folk say,
You will find that she fits not a one.
(But I love her anyhow.)