This post will be somewhat random. I am tired. The boy’s sleep habits are continuing to evolve and change; last night it took him about 45 minutes to stop getting out of bed, which is better than most nights, but then he climbed into our bed at around 2:00am, and he does not necessarily sleep lengthwise. (Funnily enough, when our alarms went off at 6:00am and we turned our lights on, he very slowly climbed out of our bed and very sleepily walked back into his room and climbed back into his own bed.)
There is also a faint, weird smell in my office, hovering near my desk. The engineers have been here all morning; nothing’s on fire, but it has that dusty heat smell, like a space heater kicking on after a long period of dormancy. I am distracted.
I would love to offer up some insightful comments after playing bits of both Superhot and Far Cry Primal, but I can’t. The above-mentioned issues with my kid’s bedtime are interfering with my evening free time, and by the time he does finally go to bed I’m usually too exhausted to do anything. If I’m repeating myself, well, what can I say? It is what it is.
Superhot is awesome, and I am also not very good at it. I’ve tried playing it with the Steam controller (which is very, very bad), with mouse and keyboard (which is better), and with the good ol’ 360 gamepad (which is probably best), and I continue to get killed very quickly. I am tempted to wait on it until the XB1 version comes out, which is supposedly coming in a few weeks; I’m wondering if perhaps my couch and big TV might at least make the experience more comfortable.
Far Cry Primal, on the other hand… well, it’s basically Far Cry 3 and 4, but in the Stone Age. So it’s not exactly the same game – there are no guns, cars or gyrocopters, obviously, and you’re speaking in caveman gibberish – but in nearly every other respect it’s the same game I’ve played over the last 2-3 years. I appreciate the novelty of the game’s setting, and the game looks fantastic… but I really don’t know if I care enough to keep pushing through. It’s not like the game’s story is all that interesting, and in the meantime the game suffers from that ubiquitous Ubisoft-ness where the map is covered with so many different things to do that it’s nearly impossible to know what’s actually important. Mostly I gather flowers and light bonfires. I’m holding onto it for at least a few more weeks, because there’s nothing else on my radar until The Division, but I’m not feeling pulled toward it with any urgency.
I’m kinda racing through Foucault’s Pendulum, now, which I don’t like doing. It’s a book that I still have very fond feelings for, but it’s also somewhat tedious in its digressions; I didn’t mind that so much in my previous readings, but for whatever reason I’m finding it tedious now.
I’m wondering if part of this feeling of urgency is tied to the Goodreads challenge. I’m still 4 books ahead of schedule, but I don’t particularly like feeling rushed. And I’m reluctant to read some of the longer books in my to-read list for that specific reason; I don’t want to get bogged down in something enormous if I start feeling like I’m falling behind. I’m fully aware that this is a ridiculous, self-imposed neurosis; I don’t win a prize for beating the challenge. That doesn’t stop me from succumbing to it.
Two good reads to recommend:
- Holly Green wrote an absolute stunner of a piece about Firewatch and unrequited love; I only wish I felt as strongly about the game itself as I do about this essay.
- John Biggs wrote a pretty great piece about writing 11,000 blog posts. That essay is why I’m writing this particular post right now, even though I feel like I have very little to say.
I need to get back to the album. I took a little break from thinking about it, and that break got extended thanks to the boy’s recent adventures in stretching out his bedtime boundaries, but honestly I could come up with a dozen more excuses (Trump! Thinking about getting a new car! My day job’s impending office move!) and none of them would change the simple and obvious fact that if I wanted to find time to write, I’d make the time to write. Well, I need to make that time happen. So I’m logging off now.
Shouts From The Couch 