Blog: Games of December 2019

2019 was a long year (long decade?). So it was really nice to be able to chill at the end of the month and the end of the year.

My top five games (by play time) for December were:

1. Chrono Trigger - I was a little bit inspired by Chuggaconroy playing this during the year, but also there's just something about the December break that calls for SNES games for me. I'm pretty fascinated at the number of things I've learned about Chrono Trigger, having played the game pretty consistently over the last two and a half decades.
   
   

   

   An adventure awaits.



2. Dragon Quest XI - Continuing along, I enjoyed playing, but the game does feel a bit slow.
   
   

   

   Fight! 



3. Cursed Treasure 2 - I love tower defence and out of all the free tower defence games available to play while avoiding marking this is the very best. I think I'm going to try to make my own TD game this year.
   
   

   

   In trouble, but happy.



4. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - The tradition continues.
   
   

   

   Last concert of the year.



5. Super Mario Odyssey - Out of all the games I played this year (more on that soon) this one is the one that calls to me the most to pick it up again. The game play and flow are enticing and it just always a joy to play.
   
   

   

   A game with a view.

Here's my total play time chart for December:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Blog: Books Read in 2020

Family.

I'm on Good Reads

Blog: Books Read in 2019

Joining. Sundering.

I'm on Good Reads

New Year's Resolutions 2020

In 2019 I finished my PhD which has been a goal for a very, very long time. I’m finding myself in a space right now where I feel a little frustrated that everything hasn’t fit perfectly together. To some extent I feel like there’s a lot of things I should do right now, but also I’m slowly realizing that happiness is going to be a mental state I put effort into achieving and not a “thing I’ll get to when my PhD is done”.

via GIPHY

Other than that I have some general things I want to do next year:

1. Finish the thesis - Waaaait a minute.


2. Accept life as it is - As I said, I spent a lot of the end of my PhD feeling like I’d be “happy” once I finished my PhD. And then I did and then realized that my mental state was going to be something I had to manage on my own. So I want to try to take a bit of time and a bit of energy each day to being happy.


3. Go on more adventures - Big or small I want to have a stream of interesting things I’m doing and planning to do. I want to organize my life and work in such a way that I have the flexibility and freedom to see things and people that are important to me.


4. Read more - I gave my students advice to read more at the end of a System Administration class and I should take that up myself. I want to schedule time each day to read.


5. Move Projects Forward - I want to get things done for my personal projects and my home and I want basically to try to work on one or the other of those each day. I’m also not quite sure how yet, but I need to find a way to handle those projects that have stumbling blocks that need to be moved past. I set numbers to this last year, and didn't really follow through, so I'm just going to do my best to keep moving.

via GIPHY