✅ How's it going?
Hello, it's been a few weeks. And quite honestly, at the moment I have very little mental space. I started a new gig, which is great of course! But its also summer holiday and my son is home from school, and it's been a bit chaotic. Most of the time I'm either feeling guilty because I feel like I can't fully be present with him, or I feel like I'm failing at the job I've been hired to do. And I was feeling like I was failing at this blog because it's been a few weeks since I posted. So I thought...well, I have a moment now, and I have been keeping up with my The Long Play list so why not give a little update about how it's all going.
If you've checked the Library page recently you'll see some books have been checked off. Reading is going much better than playing. Maybe because it's so much easier for me to carry my kindle or a book around and just read for a few minutes than it is to carry my switch around and play for a few. But yeah, good progress on reading, not much progress on the games.
I most recently finished A Psalm For the Wild Built and I had no idea what it was about going into it. In fact, I didn't realize that the author, Becky Chambers, was the same one that wrote A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. Honestly, I have no idea how I even found out about this book and put it on this list, but I'm glad it somehow found its way on there because it was really good. A novella, so it didn't take too long to read, especially after having finished Way of Kings before that. It was a good palette cleanser. I don't want to say too much about it because I think the experience I had going into the book without knowing anything really helped me enjoy it. I was just along for the ride. The book, unexpectedly, made me think deeply about purpose and satisfaction.
You are allowed to just live.
After days feeling like I was behind, reading this in the book made me remember... it's okay. It's okay to not have it all together. To not be the perfect mom. To serve pizza on a Wednesday because you didn't make time to do the groceries.
As for games...I haven't made much progress there. I finished Cat Quest 1, which was a joy to play. Easy to pick up even if you've dropped it for a while. I considered immediately jumping into Cat Quest 2 but then decided against it, feeling like I might want a new world to dive into. I jumped around a bit on the older games, like Kid Icarus and Mega Man on GameBoy but honestly, I feel like I can probably spend my time on better precision platformers and adding them to the list was really more nostalgia than anything. Looking at these two games it was super interesting to see how they created whole environments with the constraints they had at the time. As someone with zero talent in the drawing department, I found myself studying how these green shaded games used different shades of green to convey, well, everything. Proof that you don't need much to make a good game. Just solid mechanics and clear art direction.
I'm currently still playing through Pokemon Legends ZA, but that was a game that got added to my list, rather than being a part of it from the beginning.
As for me and my son? He's recently borrowed Mario vs Donkey Kong from the library and we are really enjoying playing through the puzzles together. I had never looked into this series before, but honestly, my brain right now is enjoying the puzzling side of it.
And I think that's probably where I'm at with The Long Play right now, too. I'm still making my way through the list, just not always in the way I imagined I would. Some weeks I read a lot. Some weeks I barely touch a game. Some games get finished, some get abandoned, and some new ones find their way onto the list. And you know what...that's okay. I am allowed to just live.
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