At least 10 posts for #JustOnePercent.At least 6 posts unrelated to #JustOnePercent.- Hit level 50 in CSD2 with all gold medals.
- Finish Lacuna.
Try out at least one game in a different genre on the Steam Deck.Read / listen to any 6 books.Complete at least 75% of my project with the mid-July deadline.- Get my in-progress yarn projects organized.
- Watch at least 3 episodes of a new to me TV show.
The early weeks of June felt like they were super-focused and I was feeling really good about everything. By mid-month, the majority of my mental and emotional energy had started to be used up on things that were Decidedly UnFun, as it felt like everyone I know decided to battle their demons all at once. This then went directly into a scary week of sleep deprivation and pet illness – thankfully, both of my girls are back to their normal lazy dog selves now.
So, in the end, June turned into a month where instead of struggling to figure out what I wanted to do, I struggled with finding the energy to do anything at all. I’m fairly sure the only reason I met any of my goals this month was that I got a jump on a lot of things during the first third of the month, so I never got to the point where I was actually pushing up against deadlines until this last weekend. Having both Wholesome Direct and Steam Next Fest to talk about in the first half of the month made my 6 non-project post goal almost trivial.
Everything I failed to complete this month was something I didn’t even attempt to start.
GAMING
What I was very successful at this month was keeping my spreadsheet up! I lumped together all my demo playtime into one category, as even the demos I spent the most time with were right on the edge of an hour of playtime, which is my normal cut off for the chart. Overall, a huge chunk of my gaming time went into my go-to game to play on the Deck: Atomicrops.
#JustOnePercent
Non-Project Gaming
Almost all of my non-project gaming time was spend on demos or Atomicrops, although the nearly 9 hours I spent playing demo games doesn’t even come close to the more than 60 I put into this silly little roguelite. I will say that I dabbled in other games on the Deck – I spent a little less than an hour and a half with Endless Fables 3: Dark Moor, tried out a puzzle-platformer in Planet of the Eyes and even played a very short session of Torchlight III before deciding the text size was just a little too small for my middle-aged eyesight. I also played three demos (Potion Permit, Alchemia: Creatio Ex Nihilo, and Dome Keeper), as well as one of my project titles (Outsider: After Life) from either my couch or my bed.
Having the Steam Deck was a huge boon this month – there were several points in the month where my pain was such that sitting at my computer or craft desk was out of the question, but I still had the mental capacity to be doing something that was engaging rather than just wallowing. I will admit to having some small pangs of buyer’s remorse back in May, but after this past month, I feel really good about my purchase.
We also finished up our Terraria run around the middle of the month, and despite my initial hesitancy after bouncing hard off of this one in 2016, I did mostly enjoy my time with the game. To be sure, I still prefer my games to have a little more guidance built-in, but playing alongside someone who really really knows the ropes countered almost everything I didn’t like about it.
Gaming Related Spending
This was a spendy month for gaming, which isn’t terribly surprising as I usually budget an obnoxious amount to spend during the many Summer Sales that tend to pop up in late June. Early in the month, I picked up a few individual games (including two specifically for #J1P purposes) and a bundle from Fanatical. I plan to do a more in-depth look at my Summer Sale buys after the sales have ended and I’m safe from any last-minute impulse buys, but my total June gaming-related spending was $93. This includes – as usual – both my GamePass Subscription and the Humble Choice bundle.
EVERYTHING ELSE
READING: Here again, the first part of the month was great – I flew through the first three books in just over a week. The fourth book – which wasn’t actually appreciably longer than the previous two – I spent almost two weeks on, and then couldn’t make myself pick something new for a couple days afterwards. Finally, I decided to indulge in a re-read / first listen of some very early Ed McBain novels, which I’ll be honest, often feel really problematic 65 years after publication.
STITCHCRAFT: Another place where a good early push saved my bacon this month. The project I’m currently working on has four distinct sections, and I flew through the first two despite my reservations about it being a more complex pattern than I’ve been used to. The third section, however, was just problem after problem. I had to dedicate an entire evening to ripping out several hundred stitches because my count was off by one somewhere that would have made a huge difference. Once I managed to finish that section, however, the fourth is going pretty much the way of the first three, and I’m well past my 75% completion goal, and expect to be fully done before the end of the weekend.
WATCHING: I’m still in a television and movie funk, and other than a handful of episodes of Guy’s Grocery Games, nothing I saw this month was new to me. There were a couple of days when my dogs were feeling poorly that I just sat with them and watched comfort movies – Happy Feet, Disney’s Hercules, and Ice Age, but they were really basically background noise for me. I’m sure this current disinterest is due in part to my aversion to giving all my focus to something that’s non-interactive, but mostly due to the fact that I can now play a game pretty much anywhere so I don’t need the entertainment provided by the TV right now.
Nerd Girl Thoughts 