Finished Reading: Dead Happy by Josh Silver 📚

This sticker seemed appropriate for my new #bulletjournal

2024 in the bin where it belongs

Not surprised to see Skyrim and The Witcher on here, but I am kind of shocked at how much I played Enter the Gungeon! I got it while it was on sale, I think, and it’s not really my kind of game. And I’m definitely rubbish at it. But I do find it quite fun to play now and again, and looking back at the games I played on the Switch this year, I actually think this might be my favourite game of the year. What a nice surprise find.

This is my tracker for January in my #BulletJournal.

I want to start off slowly, not put any real pressure on myself to do anything I wouldn’t normally do, and also test out a little theory. When I drink alcohol, I notice when I go to bed that my heart is beating pretty fast, and it makes it harder to fall asleep. I also get to thinking, like, I’m not an expert but surely hearts can also take so much, and having mine race while I’m literally just lying in bed can’t really be a good thing. So whether it leads from those things or whether there’s more to it, I think that alcohol might be making my anxiety worse. This is where this little tracker comes in.

Each day is represented by a rectangle, the top half of which is for tracking alcohol, and the bottom half is for tracking anxiety. At the end of the day I’m going to draw a line in pen that separates the two halves, then mark each half as appropriate.

I kind of wanted to be able to keep ‘alcohol-free’ as the cleaner-looking mark, but I think leaving alcohol-free blank and having a pen mark for the days I do drink is kind of having to record that you ‘failed’, rather than having a mark for an alcohol free day to record that you succeeded. So it’s just a dot, to try and keep it as clean looking as possible.

For the anxiety side, I considered having the ‘bit stressed’ icon have the lower bottom half of the square filled, that way it might resemble a kind of bar chart once the tracker is finished. But considering it’s over several lines anyway, I don’t think this would achieve much. Plus, I’m quite likely to be a little messy and it might look uneven. Cutting the square in half diagonally is easier to draw precisely so the final tracker might look a little bit more uniform this way. And the colour ‘density’ will still represent high, medium or low states of anxiety.

This time, the ‘not stressed’ mark is the cleanest one, which I think makes sense. I don’t think that colouring a square or half a square when I’ve felt anxious is like ‘admitting defeat’, so I don’t have an issue with it here. To me I think it’s a little bit more like being aware of, and expressing that anxiety.

I built in the ‘draw a line to separate the two halves’ rule so that if I miss a day, it’s easy to spot. Imagine a day where I drank alcohol and didn’t feel anxious - that would be denoted by blank boxes both top and bottom. Having the additional line means that this scenario looks different to the scenario where I just miss a day.

Overall I wanted to have the tracker look a little like a calendar. I usually don’t go to the effort to do this and just put everything in one vertical line instead, but I think work days and days off have an impact on both of the things I want to track and so being able to easily compare between days of the week will be useful in this case, I think.

I am hoping that just writing down the ‘week commencing’ date on the left will be enough to keep me oriented while I’m filling this in. With the days of the week across the top I think it should be okay. I know other trackers write the individual dates in each box but since I don’t want to use additional colours I think that could make it look a lot more cluttered. Not to mention that it’s just more work to set up too! I feel like the overall design isn’t too hard to redraw, if I want to use it again in later months.

Look at this handsome A6 notebook. I’m going back to pen and paper bullet journaling.

This time I’m armed with a bit of self-compassion, to remember that if a task isn’t done or an idea isn’t acted on it’s actually okay.

I ordered some stickers off Redbubble so I might use some of them on the cover. I still have a ‘proper’ journal that lives elsewhere so this is just for the short, snappy, get it written down before it leaves your brain forever kind of stuff. Looking forward to relearning what works and what doesn’t, and what is and isn’t important to me.

Finished Reading: Wastelands by John Joseph Adams 📚

Slowly made my way through this over several months. A couple of the stories made no sense, a few made me say ‘well okay’.

My favourite stories were Waiting for the Zephyr and The End of the World as We Know It

Finished Reading: Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix 📚

I love Ikea, I like scary books. This was fun

Renewed my domain name just now. Reminds me that I should be blogging a little more. I mean, I enjoy it, why don’t I try and find a little more time at weekends and stuff?

Finished Reading: Cocoa Curses by Erin Johnson 📚

Between this and Meltdown in Christmas River, I… guess I like cozy mysteries? The Christmas theme is definitely optional though. Are… are there any gay ones?

Finished Reading: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig 📚

I read Notes of a Nervous Planet by the same author a few weeks ago, and in that book he talks about how much he likes the film It’s a Wonderful Life. Totally agree by the way, considering it’s December now I will have to find somewhere I can watch it again. The Midnight Library is a very similar story. I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. Actually thinking about it, maybe It’s a Wonderful Life is a kind of reverse-retelling of A Christmas Carol? Hmmm…

Anyway, lovely to have the idea taken and put in a more relatable, updated setting, and always with Matt Haig books maybe it’s a bit corny but you do come away from it feeling comforted and feeling a little bit better about yourself

Hit my goal of 25 books in 2024. I’ve aimed for 25 for a few years now and usually manage it. I think I might increase it to 30 for 2025. Reading seems to becoming more of a habit for me now 😊📚

Finished Reading: The Butcher’s Masquerade by Matt Dinniman 📚 I am kind of addicted to this series!

Finished Reading: Plague by Graham Masterton 📚

Well, this definitely was a break from reading Dungeon Crawler Carl. I think I was expecting something a little bit different (not sure what exactly) but what I got was a badly-aged book from the seventies where all the guy characters seemed to be dickheads, and all the women characters didn’t seem to be actual characters at all, they were just a pair of boobs. Seriously, every time a new female character is introduced we get to learn about their boobs, and basically nothing else about them. Mate.

Some scenes were really gross and definitely didn’t need to be there and that’s all I’m saying there. I’m not gonna get into the way that Black and LGBTQ+ characters were written. I can’t figure out if it’s a product of its time, if the author actually believes that shite or if he was trying to make some commentary. No idea but it wasn’t good.

So I ended up just kind of hate-reading it all the way to the end. Several years ago I read a book called Night of the Crabs which was just as terrible, but it knew it was terrible, plus it was pretty short, so it actually was kind of entertaining. Plague was old-fashioned in the worst sense of the word.

I borrowed this from the library and have since read on Goodreads that it got a re-release in 2020, because of Covid( so maybe that’s why it was on BorrowBox). I… don’t get why anyone would choose this book to re-publish in 2020. Very strange.

Finished Reading: How to Make the World Add Up by Tim Harford 📚

I got myself a library card the other week. Then idea started when I went with my sister and 4-year old niece to collect their cards. Our local library is actually tiny but there’s a kiddie section with a few bookshelves full, plus a little table where you can do colouring in, so my niece is in her element. Anyway, that visit is what spurred me on to get my own card.

So our local library is tiny but the card is valid for every library in our county, which is nice, and it also gets you access to this app called BorrowBox. Holey moley, there’s ebooks, audiobooks and magazines. I borrowed the latest issue of Stuff just to test it Out, and the app asked me if I wanted to subscribe to make sure I get new issues when they’re available. You know when you kind of flinch as soon as app uses the word ‘subscribe’? I flinched, but then, I thought like, no, actually, this is really free. My mind was blown.

So yes, I know none of this is new, this is how libraries have always worked but wowser I’m really excited to dive in. I’m trying out my first ever audio-book (‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig) and looking forward to browsing through magazines.

(I’m a little bit less enthusiastic about the ebooks: there’s plenty there but I’d need to use my phone or iPad to read them and I’d much rather use an e-reader. Still might check a few books out some time. My library also does Libby, which I
can read on my Kobo, but the selection of books is MUCH smaller. Still though, awesome that all this exists, isn’t it?)

UPDATE since I discovered this draft never got posted: I can read all of the ebooks on my Kobo! Borrowbox uses Adobe Digital Editions so I have to go via the laptop and transfer the books over USB but, actually I find I’m kind of liking the change of pace from that at the moment

🎮 A Short Hike (2019)

This was on sale recently on the Nintendo eShop so I grabbed it. Played for an hour or so and finished the game (although I didn’t complete everything). What a cute funny game, and there’s no padding or anything at all, just get started, get exploring, and see about getting to the top of the trail. Getting more and more movement options is awesome, gliding around is lovely, being able to climb to skip sections is nice to be able to do, and the boat, omg.

I wish there were more games like this, tiny ones that you can play through in one session. No padding, no messing you around, you just explore and, soon enough, get to where you’re going

Finished Reading: Notes on a Nervous Planet by Matt Haig 📚

I kind of feel like this is the book equivalent of a packet of biscuits. very comforting, maybe not as substantial as might like, and, admittedly, kind of repetitive. But comforting, and very nice, and will help you feel better if consumed alongside a nice Cup of tea.

I’ve played a few hours of #Factorio 2.0 this week. I’ve bought Space Age but since I’ve started a new game I haven’t seen any of the expansion content yet. Looks amazing so far though!

The way the world generates seem cooler now. On my map I don’t have little cliffs all of the place getting in the way, but rather the occasional ledge that makes you think ‘oh I could put my chemical plants on that cliff’, kind of prompting a bit of thought when you’re planning things out, rather than just being an obstacle. Same with the water. I drove around in my little car following the shoreline and I discovered a little sort of land bridge fairly nearby. No idea what I want to build there but it was much more interesting to explore than previously.

I’ve built my first train and I’ve had a little look at the new train menus. I can’t wait to try having my trains drop what they’re doing to go and refuel and stuff.

I’ve only ever finished the game once and that was with biters turned off. This time around I have them on, but with all the sliders turned down so that they shouldn’t cause too much trouble. Gives me an excuse to actually look into Military science this time. I wonder if I ever will actually make it to the other planets - I hope so, they look really cool

Finished Reading: Gate of the Feral Gods by Matt Dinniman 📚

Time to have a break from this series now. The last part of this book brings in some new perspective though, but if a teaser for the next book and I am pretty intrigued. I feel like I shouldn’t like this series, it’s either gross or it’s dumb internet humour. But I’m not gonna lie, I’m having fun reading them