Make at least 8 blog posts during April.- Level at least one more character to 70 in World of Warcraft.
Participate in #PlatforMonth- Play and write about one title purchased in March 2023.
Participate in the group review of the April 2023 Humble Choice.Read or listen to at least four books.
Every single one of my goals this month should have been an easy win, and I still didn’t get through them all. Which is to say, it’s hard sometimes to guess where your whims are going to take you.
GAMING
This month wasn’t so much about the drop in gaming hours (although they’re a bit lower than usual), but in the gaming variety. Three of those games were entirely on the Steam Deck (LIMBO, Here Comes Niko! and Tumblebugs), but even the allure of gaming in bed didn’t motivate me much during April. Doubling up on Sun Haven as both my co-op and main solo game of the month meant it blew away all the competition for time spent playing. Clearly, I’m a cozy phase.
I’m not at all surprised I’m in a cozy phase.
I didn’t get back to either of March’s Deck games-in-progress (Potion Permit and Aurora Bound Deluxe), and I wasn’t really terribly excited to start much new this month.
World of Warcraft
I really feel like I wasted my sub this month. I managed to log on for one whole and one partial raid, and then was scrambling to finish up my monthly Trading Post activities just under the wire. The only other times I logged in all month long was for a few minutes here and there to do crafting orders for guildies. I was uninterested in the Forbidden Reach, I didn’t want to do any leveling or gearing or world quests or anything the whole month. I even missed the Darkmoon Faire, and I never miss the Darkmoon Faire if I have an active sub.
I’m not sure yet if this is end-of-tier slump, or if I’m getting ready to take another break from the game.
Gaming-Related Spending
Not being terribly interested in playing games certainly didn’t stop me from buying games this month. I picked up two newish releases in Moviehouse and Homestead Arcana, and I was gifted a copy of Dredge, which I had been really excited about but didn’t buy myself. Everything else was either bundles from Fanatical, or impulse purchases (mostly from the just-about-to-end Steam Puzzlefest sale).
Of course, instead of playing one of the many new-to-me games I bought, instead I immediately installed Tumblebugs, a game I’ve played to death in the past on other platforms, and have been using that to wind down at night on the Steam Deck. At least I’m playing something from my new purchases?
In total, including my Humble Choice and World of Warcraft subscriptions, my gaming-related spending for April 2023 was $111.00. Including the games I immediately activated from Humble Choice, I added 28 new games to my already too-large library.
OTHER NERDSTUFF
Reading
I finished 8 books – all of them audio – during April. In fact, because I was on a hefty reading kick at the end of March as well, I managed to critically limit my Scribd account before it came up for renewal in April. As much as I love Scribd for what it does offer, I really wish it were a little more transparent about how the limits work. As it turned out, I had to put on series on hold due to the last book going unavailable, and as soon I as I listened to the first title from another, the rest of those books went unavailable as well.
It was at this point that I remembered that I had a library card and could get audiobooks that way as well, so I finished out my month with a couple of library titles. I have holds on a handful of others, so maybe I will do a better job alternating between services in the future. Maybe.
Watching
I also remembered this month that I do – on occasion – enjoy the company of the TV. So in a month that I skipped over this particular goal, I managed to watch one new-to-me movie, in Ratatouille, and two new-to-me seasons or series. I’m not counting the current season of Next Level Chef since it’s still being aired on network TV so I haven’t watched all the episodes, but I did watch the entirety of season 21 of Hell’s Kitchen and all six episodes of Wreck, which is a comedic horror series that originally aired on BBC. I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about the whole dark humor / slasher mashup, but it really worked for me and I binged the entire series in one night.
Stitchcraft
By far, the biggest turnaround for me this month was in the category of crafts. After almost two full months of not picking up a needle, I finally – very belatedly – figured out that the probably was not with stitching overall, but with the project I had been working on. Once I decided to pull it off the frame and pull something else from my stack of works-in-progress, it seemed like I was at my craft desk every time I could sneak a few minutes.
All in all, during April, I completed over 10,000 stitches, taking this project from 8% completion to 33% completion. Obviously, I still have a ways to go, but I haven’t really slowed down any, so I expect that I’ll continue to plug along at it without difficulty.
For anyone interested in the results of the sit down I had with myself earlier in the month, these were the conclusions I came to for what I’d like to work on.
First is that I’m giving myself the month of May to decide if I need an MMO break, or if it was just end-of-season slump. I don’t even mind paying primarily to raid-log if that’s the part of the game that is giving me joy, but I barely even did that this month. So, we’ll see what my play time looks like in May and how I’m feeling about it, and make a decision before my early June subscription renewal.
Second is that I would really like to cut back on how much time I spend mindlessly scrolling the internet, or taking forever to choose my next book / movie / tv show / game. The time that feels wasted as soon as it’s gone. I still have plenty of time to do just about everything I want to, and I’m starting to get closer to having my energy managed, but I am still losing a lot of time to figuring out what I want to and/or can do at any given moment. This might mean even more planning and lists, sure, but at least those things feel constructive when I’m doing them.
Nerd Girl Thoughts 