This is hilariously late but I have good reason because I helped with my boyfriend’s move in December (a whole state away) and so my whole reviewing schedule went out of whack. But now I’m back and handling my own stuff again, and while I’m at it we can also do the monthly review for January!
There hasn’t been a year I was ready to say goodbye to as much as 2021 since 2015 or 2016. The latter half of the year was terrible in a very personal way, and so I languished in a lot of my personal goals. But what I can lean on is that I’ve gotten my video game mojo back! I hope next year will be a marker year in decimating my To Be Read pile of books.
I’ve done this on Instagram the last few years but I’m ready to be done with social media as well so I’m writing it here now.
2021 Media Goals:
Games – 15
Books – 30
Movies – 52
TV – 20
And the results are:
Games – 47
Books – 51
Movies – 101
TV – 42
I demolished my Playstation 3 backlog this year and I’m so happy to finally have that off my back. But I still have PS4, DS and PC games to play. I finally have a gaming PC too, so there’ll be a big slice out of that backlog in 2022. For books, I actually updated my goal once I hit 30 and I hit 51 by finishing two audiobooks on December 31! Movies and TV have always been the easiest goals to hit since they take only attention span and time to complete. But I still feel like there are meatier shows on my list that should’ve been crossed off this year so next year I aim for getting through stuff like Star Trek The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and The X-Files!
I also didn’t get to much of the personal non-media goals I wanted because suddenly I had no house to clean and none of those projects I’d started could continue here (I’m back at my parents’ with their own rules and all!), my career has taken a turn and so development is up in the air until I decide a path to continue on, all the restaurants I wanted to try are useless without a partner to try them with, and travel is still a big fat TBD because of the Omicron variant.
I am learning more about my car, livestreaming, and blogging and feel comfortable working on my car when I need to. Although it definitely needs a cleaning once the snow is over for the season! And as for writing, well, I’ll be at home so much now that I’m sure I’ll get into a routine and be much more active even on this blog!
And so, what we have ahead in 2022 is
2022 Media Goals:
9 books a month – 108 a year
8 movies a month – 96 a year
3 games a month – 36 a year
3 tv series a month – 36 a year
Books and games are set because that’s what’s remaining on my game backlog on HowLongToBeat and my To Be Read piles on StoryGraph. TV is harder to set because any one series can have different lengths of seasons and episodes. But TVTime (well, now I’m using Trakt but it’s harder to see personal stats there) allows me to set shows I’m watching currently and tell me how long it’ll take to finish those. Setting a goal of shows I want to watch this year, it says it’ll take me about 6 days of time. However, I have never hit more than 60 hours a month of TV so I expect that to be a struggle. But it’s also a goal I’m not struggling with because I got a lot of hefty shows done during the start of the pandemic last year. So the actual backlog is small and there won’t be many new shows added since newer shows have not drawn my interest. Movies are always a goal I hit so easily that I have to actually curb my viewing of those! But two a week should be reasonable for me, especially if my focus across a month is weighing heavily on books.
Of course I have other personal goals such as career advancement and traveling but both of those are so uncertain still in the looming threat of this COVID world. In lieu of that I have to focus on smaller things to bring me joy, dopamine, and a productivity boost. It’s tough because even as a homebody, I want to do anything else after being inside all of 2020. But it is what it is.
And now for the end of January review!
January 2022 Goals
Movies – 26 of 8
TV – 6 of 3
Games – 5 of 3
Books – 3 of 9
You can see a clear imbalance in what I do in my free time. I ended my Netflix subscription and I was finishing a month of on HBO Max. And that explains those numbers. But in February I will be focusing more on games since I’m soclose to finishing that PS4 backlog. I may focus more on PC games once I get through the PS4 backlog since the idea of paying full price for more games on PS5 isn’t so thrilling. On Steam and Epic there’s sales all the time which makes buying on PC a lot easier on the wallet.
The communities I’ve found on Twitch has been tremendous for my mental health. Honestly as someone whose friends all live in different states (drivable distances but still hours away) and works from home, I now only leave the house to turn on my car and having someplace to discuss things… turns out social networking has a use! I’d forgotten how much my own living online was keeping me afloat, but also when you feel like you’re speaking to a void, it can feel so lonely as well. Discord has been helpful as well in keeping me motivated to get things done and get through these backlogs.
But the solitary enjoyment of books will also be returning this month. I used to “read” so much on my hour bus commute! But now with a car that gets me places in a third of the time and no daily work commute at that, it’s harder to focus on books, even with an audiobook. And yet I’ve found a cozy way to destress while surfing the internet while listening to audiobooks instead of music (there’s just not really anything happening in my world of music right now). So we’ll see how that works out come March 1st!
