“I got no time in my life to get uptight, y’all” – Adrock
I spent much of the last weekend of 2017 with a vicious head cold, which, considering how shitty 2017 was, seems rather fitting. But I recovered in time to have a wonderful New Year’s Eve, and I’m going in 2018 with an attitude adjustment. 2017 was emotionally draining on just about every conceivable level, and while I don’t necessarily see 2018 getting any better on that front, I can at least prepare for it a little more.
I don’t know that what follows are “resolutions” as much as they are guidelines. In any event, this year I’d like to do the following:
- Get back down to a 32 waist. Which means: stop eating like an asshole, and exercise once in a while. Maybe set up the exercise bike in the gaming room.
- Get back into a creative mood. Write more music. Finish the album if I can; if not, just keep working.
- Stop spending money like the world is about to end.
- For example, stop spending money on power-ups in idle clickers, for fuck’s sake.
- Be gentle and kind to myself, but go easy on taking mental health days.
- Enjoy family time (more). Create (more) family time.
- Resist, resist, resist. But also take a break from the internet if necessary.
So I’m an idiot, because I bought that fancy new TV and yet I’m not necessarily in the middle of a new game that really needs it; I finished AC:Origins and Wolfenstein 2 and all the other hot newness when my Xbox One X arrived. So, instead, I’ve been revisiting older games in my Xbox catalog that have the “enhanced” tag. I’m gonna be replaying all of The Witcher 3, as an example, because (a) I never finished all the DLC on the PS4, and (b) those sweet, sweet ‘cheevos are calling my name. But Witcher 3 is a long time investment, and sometimes I just need some quick escapist fun. So last night I spent some time with Rise of the Tomb Raider, a game that I’ve already beaten thoroughly on 2 different consoles. But playing with the “enhanced” visuals on my new TV? Holy shit, it’s astounding. It already looked very good on the vanilla Xbox One, and then it looked quite spectacular on the vanilla PS4… but on the Xbox One X, in 4K and HDR? My goodness, it’s something else entirely.
Another reason why I’m an idiot – I may have mentioned last week that with this new TV came a few headaches, in that my consoles weren’t recognizing my TV as HDR-compliant. Well, in the case of the Xbox, I just needed to change the input setting – this wasn’t intuitive, but at least it was in the instruction manual. In the case of the PS4, it took at least 30 minutes of frantic Googling to realize that the reason my PS4 wasn’t doing HDR was because it was still connected to the TV via the PSVR unit, which is not HDR-compliant. I swapped that out and now Horizon Zero Dawn looks quite magical. Now, I don’t know if I need the PS4 Pro – the regular PS4 already looks really good, whereas the Xbox One X feels necessary because the vanilla One is so underpowered. (Plus I don’t know if I can go through the stress of swapping out the Pro’s hard drive with my super-big PS4 hard drive. I mean, I did it once, so theoretically I should be able to do it again, but UGH.)
I have not yet started the new season of Black Mirror, and that’s really just because it’s difficult to get excited about watching near-future dystopian nightmares when we’re already sort of living in one. I will get to it eventually. In the meantime, Dunkirk and Blade Runner 2049 are available for home viewing, and so I might give those guys a swing this week; I missed them both in the theater.
I don’t know if I’m 100% satisfied with this new blog theme; I may keep tinkering with it. In the meantime, I’m about to get busy with work, so I’m gonna sign off. Happy New Year, everybody; let’s do what we can to make sure that this one is everything that 2017 wasn’t.
Shouts From The Couch 