I had a plan for this year. I promised myself that I was going to devote 2020 to experiences – get out more, do things that previously I hadn’t been able to afford or hadn’t been healthy enough to do. I was even off to a fairly strong start – in January, I organized a big group dinner outing with friends, February I went to my first Paint Night, and I went to a concert in early March with my husband and my parents.

And then, there was a pandemic and I’ve spent the last six weeks either at home, at work, or very very occasionally at the grocery store. Even as someone who falls on the side of pretty extreme introversion, it’s been trying. There’s a lot of things about the time before COVID19 that I miss, but shopping – and I mean shopping for fun – has got to be one of the things I miss the most.

I fully admit that retail therapy is one of my greatest vices, and even though I don’t need anything (and yes, I understand how lucky I am to be in that position), I’m finding myself craving the endorphin rush from … getting something just because I want it.

I had initially hoped to alleviate some of that (as well as some of my chronic back and neck pain), by ordering a swank new chair for my desk from Amazon. Of course, being a non-critical item, it’s not going to be here for at least another week, but I’m still really looking forward to a whole bunch of comfier gaming time in my future.

But I’m still struggling, and I hate that I’m struggling when really, things here haven’t been all that rough.

After giving it an absurd amount of thought, I’ve decided to allot myself $100 in Stay-At-Home gaming spending outside of all my other parameters, with an intention to primarily purchase games from more independent developers. For me, that’s a win-win – I get to shop, and I get to feel good about how I’m spending my money because I’m supporting creators and not corporations.

I had to remind myself that this was a challenge I set myself, and the parameters I was anticipating for the challenge have changed drastically, and changing my plans to accommodate that isn’t a failure. Besides, it’s not like it’s the first time I’ve changed the rules; and it probably won’t be the last.

If you stayed with me this far, you’re probably wondering where I’m going to toss some of that money, right?

Well, first off, I want to buy a couple of games to support the Sokpop Video Game Collective. I’m definitely going to grab Simmiland and Sproots. Simmiland has been on my wishlist for awhile (a god game that’s also a card game? Brilliant!), and Sproots looks too adorable to pass up. I could use more adorable in my life right now.

I’m also going to pick up Eastshade, even though I fully expect it to be featured in a Humble Choice sooner or later, because the current sale and the concept of just exploring a peaceful and beautiful world are both calling to me.

The catch is this – I’m not going to let these games just hang out in my library. I’m going to buy them, and within the next few weeks, I am going to play them. It sounds mad, I know, but I think I can do it. Maybe this will be the beginning of a new way of treating myself to the occasional “non-essential” purchase – if I want to buy it, I will make it a point to actually enjoy it for longer than it takes to click the add to cart button.

My plan for a low-spend 2020 is weighing on me. A year without buying anything new suddenly seems SO VERY LONG INDEED.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve picked up a handful of things, some of which were planned purchases, and others that really really weren’t.

I did finally pick up The Witcher 3 GOTY during Black Friday sales, and I grabbed a copy of Sunset Overdrive for my library when a physical copy was available on Amazon for around $10. So far, so good.

However, in the last week, I’ve also picked up a handful of things that caught my eye that weren’t anything I had been looking to closely at before catching a good sale. Anthem was only $6 on Amazon – it’s a physical copy and I haven’t opened it yet, but I’m going to hold onto it in case the big changes that are rumored actually make an appearance. I grabbed FTL and Where the Water Tastes Like Wine on a Humble Store sale, and Rocwood Academy and Master of Pottery were an impulse purchase on Steam, but all in all, I dropped less than $20 on the whole batch.

And then today, Chrono.gg put the Plantinum collection of Civilization VI on sale for under $30, so I scooped that up, and then I grabbed Autonauts on Nuuvem for $5. Somehow, I’ve managed to spend about $50 before even looking at the Steam sale, which is supposed to be my last spending hurrah until 2021.

Which is, I guess, both good and bad news, because the Steam sale isn’t really blowing my skirt up this go around. I’m not saying there aren’t any good deals, but none of them are ah-mazing. Originally, I had planned on picking up a couple of bigger titles, and now, the more I look, the more likely it seems that I’ll grab a couple of smaller ones (Crest is looking particularly appealing at the moment) or skip buying on Steam altogether this time around.

I also plan to keep any eye on Epic’s daily freebies, and take a closer look at some of the bundles Fanatical is dropping as part of their winter sale. There are some really fantastic deals out there – but I am already finding myself saying “But you don’t need that!”

Less than two weeks before I have to depend on Twitch Prime, Humble Choice, and sheer will power for a whole year.