Now

I've been listening to a bunch of new albums recently, along with a couple old ones in anticipation of concerts later this year:

I'm back on the Final Fantasy XIV grind. I'm not really sure why I come back to this, but I think a lot of it is that it's a game that I never feel bad playing for 10 to 15 minutes and putting down. Austin Walker has a great article from a couple years ago about replaying Dragon's Dogma, and he touches on the concept of "Maintenance Games" - a game that is "sort of quiet self-care enabled by the clean repetition of enjoyable motions." I feel this strongly with XIV, something to just throw on, put on some music, and rotate through the motions: e-2-3-r-f-e-q-1-f-r and so on.

Besides that, I've been working my way through Skin Deep. I've always loved Blendo's stuff, and this one's hitting that level of craft that I love out of their games.

For the past few months, my wife and I have been trying to watch at least one film a week. The Letterboxd watchlist feature has been a godsend for this; I'd forget so many good films if there wasn't a good way to jot them down. First Reformed is my favorite film I've seen this year, really wish I had seen it sooner.

In December, I decided to start trying to lift consistently again, and it's become a near-obsession for me. Each week has some sort of discussion with my wife about who gets to go to the gym when, and evenings and weekends have to plan around making some time for getting in there. During Covid, we set up a bit of a small home gym, but it's just not the same somehow.

Overall though, I've really enjoyed it. I've not been able to run like I used to for a variety of reasons, and it's nice to have something with pretty clear measurables to work towards. Turns out that squats still suck though - hated them in High School, hated them in College, hate them now.

I have a bunch of random, half-complete things going on.