Good morning, dear friend, reader of this post! Happy Saturday! How are you? How is the weather? Here, it is the final moments of fall and into winter we go. It hasn't been rainy enough for my taste, at least the less abrasive weather means I can use my slippers more frequently, you know I love my slippers. I appreciate when I buy something, and end up using it to no end, instead of buying something and never touching it again. And I love when a chance I take pays off. Be it on that ice cream I had on my last trip to the mall, or just a music I decide to listen to and it becomes as far as a confort song or trusted musical source. And speaking of which, I think this ties well with what I did write afterwards, given I wrote the main text of this post before the introduction. More as follows...
It has been a bit hard to return to reading, and it is odd, usually these moments of reading block are caused by the books that are not that big, just big enough to cause me to get discouraged, and on a topic not exactly on my radar. It happened once with Murder At Orient Express in 2019, when I spent over a year or so without reading properly, because Agatha Christie kept me hostage. I did not want to move towards the next one, but I also did not want to read the short novel. Just did not fired my interest. Right now, and I hope this does not move on this bad direction, I am on the book about Trivium, written by Sister Miriam Joseph. And it is not that Trivium does not wake my interest, but it is the fact this is a niche topic, on a dense book that is more of an introduction manual, and that I think I am not taking much out of. As such, it causes me to struggle on reading, advancing on a work that is interesting, but also very dry. I don't want to abandon this read, because I paid for the work, but I also have been having trouble going out of my way to read. Frustrating. And over a book that is less than 300 pages long. It is not always the size of the work that matters, as one finds out.
Apart from books, I have been facing again, which is a major issue with me for a while, a gaming rut of sorts. It is my main hooby, so I play Anno, for example, or Victoria 3, or Sims 3, or Civ 5. But, I have been a bit burnt out on those, specially when I lost my progress on Anno due to a vicious glitch, that I kind of am partly responsible of: essentially I have too many mods on my game, and my laptop has been strained. The computer can run Anno very well on the most part, but the amount of mods have been causing the performance to tank. The loading time at the very beginning is also huge, which causes me fatigue. I worry about the meaning of things at times, a very dangerous path for my mind to follow, and that afflicts me specially when I don't feel joy or fulfillment in my activities on the daily basis. Not all is bad, but the satisfaction I get from, say, Victoria, or Civ 5, is not obvious and it does not come immediately. It is usually later, sometimes days later, when I think of what I did, and how cool it went when I see a new perspective on the matter. But immediately after, I feel drained, exhausted, defeated. I don't want to pull the plug on them exactly, as I did with Europa Universalis, unofficially, but I did have those games under the category that I create "take a break from those, please" as to discourage me a bit from going to that path.
I don't know exactly how I will proceed today. Maybe I will see opportunity to try a new game, finally, I have the title MemoriaPolis in mind, though vaguely, and if I think too much on any alternative title, I run away from them. It is a reason that discourages me to purchase new games, the fact I usually don't play them. As a creature happy on being in s routine, I do not thrive changing titles every moment, rather preferring to explore the titles I already have, and specially because games such as Anno or Victoria invite replays. I also have close to no money anyway, so the game I play, it better provide me with so much happiness as to make my life more pleasant. The prices of games have skyrocketed as well, and I am borderline hostile to the idea of purchasing a title of the cinematic kind, one of the walkthrough rpgs. Games are being put out left right and center, many feel entirely mechanic and empty, while they charge so much for them. It is a problem I have with music these days as well. Everything feels devoid of meaning, merely performative, easy to skip, weightless. There are no stakes it feels. People just listen to one title or the next without a care. Eclecticism is the norm rather than the exception. Such a hard balance, you know, because I did mention with nostalgia of a time where culture was more cohesive, when today it does feel more fragmented, but I myself am very much a part of the fragmentation. I am still working on this one subject: why today, in comparison to some years ago, we seem to have more options, but much less fulfillment in them. Even if there is a tendency for fragmentation, for more subgenres and niches, things feel empty and grey. I often have been thinking of this contradictory scenario, even if I aknowledge a frustration and dilusionment with it all.
Fun how it goes, I start writing on videogames, on issues close to my own home, my mind, and end up going sideways, as I talked some posts ago, Writing does feel like a maze. Should I wrap today's ramblings here? I think it may be time for putting the final point in this text, and continue another day, real soon. Hopefully next week before the next weekend. We'll see. In any case, I appreciate you and your company! Wish you the best!!! Hope we can talk again next time, too!!
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