Finally, not just a new month, but an entire new year! As someone who doesn’t really do New Year’s Resolutions, it probably means even less than it might, but I’m still glad to be putting 2022 behind me. While it’d be more than a bit of hyperbole to say that it was – for me personally – the worst year ever, there was still a lot of things I’ll be glad to be able to say were so last year.
GAMING
World of Warcraft
Now that the new expansion thrill is mostly over, and I’m settling into a more reasonable cadence, I’m not entirely sure what’s next for me in World of Warcraft. My guild will be stepping into normal Vault of the Incarnates in a few days, but with only five hours of scheduled raiding in January, I’m hesitant to set much in the way of goals in relation to raiding. I still have professions – I mean, characters, of course – to level, but we’re probably still about 6 weeks out from any significant new content. On the other hand, I still have enough to poke at that I’m not quite ready to dive back into old content either.
To keep me at least a little on task, I think I’ll set my goals for two more characters to level 70 and Loremaster of the Dragon Isles on a second character.
Community Game-Along 2023
With no big gaming or blogging projects on the horizon, I’ve decided to jump back into the Community Game-Along for 2023, in no small part because there are only a handful of themes all year that take me outside of my comfort zone. The theme for January is #PuzzleGameMonth, and I thought I’d pick out a couple of puzzle games from my library to play around with.
The three games I was most drawn to on a first pass were Gorogoa, Palindrome Syndrome: Escape Room, and Strange Horticulture. Although I’m not 100% committed to these particular titles, I’d like to play at least two puzzle games during January as part of the Community Game-Along.
Other Gaming
I think January will probably be a little bit about figuring out how much I want to pre-plan, and how much space I need to leave myself to spend time doing whatever catches my fancy. Goal-setting helps me to keep from getting overwhelmed by decision paralysis, but setting too many goals just turns me into a rebellious teenager who will do just about anything to avoid working on the list I made for myself. It’s a balancing act, and I’ve found that treating my line items as suggestions rather than must-dos helps quite a bit.
That said, I prefer to have something on my content planning calendar, but without tying myself to a single game or group of games that I feel like I must play. So, to keep it sort of flexible without being too flexible (I swear, I’m impossible to please!), I think I’ll try out some repeatable categories.
For example, I’d like to continue participating in UnwiseOwl’s group review of the Humble Choice, as well as sitting down to play and write about something I purchased during the prior month. I have a terrible habit of getting spendy and then forgetting I own something right up until the point I try to to buy it again. I also would really like to start making a point to write about what I’m playing on co-op game night, although we don’t always change games frequently enough for this to be an every month sort of thing.
Otherwise, I’m sticking to a play-what-I-want, write-what-I-want policy for the time being.
OTHER NERDSTUFF
Reading
I’m fairly sure I want to repeat my goal from 2022 and go for 48 books again this year, in some combination of print & audio. That averages out to four books a month, which feels doable even when I’m not reading a whole lot, and then I get on a kick and I either get way ahead, or totally caught up in a week or two. It’s not enough to stress me out, but it’s highly unlikely I’ll be done by March. It just feels right. Which makes my shorter-term goal four books during January.
In the shortest term, I want to get back into the reading before bed habit, because I have gotten outrageously sloppy with my sleep hygiene over the past couple weeks.
Watching
This past year, I was super inconsistent with my media consumption when it comes to television and movies. Either the TV doesn’t even go on for weeks at a time, or I slip into the familiar comfort of perpetual re-watching. Doing Discord movies nights has helped somewhat, but I still find myself gravitating to old favorites and not trying anything new.
Although it’s not really my focus here, my goals are mostly for me anyway. So I’d like to get into the habit of one new-to-me movie and one new-to-me season, series or mini-series each month. I won’t force myself to sit through something I’m not enjoying, but like you do with small children and food, I at least have to try a couple bites.
Stitchcraft
I am 100% absolutely not ready to start the giant project I’ve been looking forward to for what feels like forever now, and it wouldn’t be terribly satisfying on a “couple hundred stitches every other week” schedule that I’ve been doing for awhile now. I’m in the middle of reworking my crafting desk, and once I’ve finished that, I want to figure out a schedule and / or a goal around number of stitches or completion percentage or something that will motivate me. I have no idea yet what that’s going to look like, but the unfinished projects are just making me feel awful, especially since they were all intended to be gifts for dates that have long since passed.
In fact, I think it’s not a problem so much with the hobby itself, but with larger struggles I’m having around time management in general lately. Unfortunately, I’m never sure which of my polar opposite approaches to this problem is going to be more effective. Sometimes it’s more rigid scheduling and goal-setting. Sometimes, it’s going completely hands off for a few weeks, doing whatever strikes my fancy until I get annoyed with that level of freedom. All I do know is that this tends to happen almost every year around the holidays, and I should have most of the kinks worked out of it all by the middle of the month. I hope.
IN SUMMARY
- Make at least 10 blog posts during January.
- Play and write about two games for #PuzzleGameMonth.
- Get at least two more characters to level 70 in World of Warcraft.
- Get the Loremaster of the Dragon Isles on at least one of my alts in World of Warcraft.
- Participate in the group Humble Choice review.
- Play and write about at least one game I bought during December.
- Make a post about co-op game night.
- Read at least four books.
- Watch at least one new-to-me movie.
- Watch at least one new-to-me season, series or mini-series.
- Finish reorganizing my crafting area.
- Do at least 2500 stitches on any current project or combination of current projects.
Nerd Girl Thoughts 