Stretching myself thin

This month has been extremely productive, but exhausting.  I finally got around to doing one last example track for my portfolio.  It took a week of research, experimentation and picking out the instruments I wanted to use before I actually started composing.  What I originally wanted to do was make a semi-longer track that transition between different ideas to kind of tell a short story.  The narrative and ideas came out to be a bit longer than I expected and the track I made inspired me to split it into six separate ones to tell a somewhat longer story.  I’m already working on the 5^th track out of the six, so I’ve been making good progress.  The problem is how I went about my days this past month.

I have stopped watching animé entirely this month because of how much time I’ve been putting into working, exercise, and gaming.  I’ve explained what I’ve been doing with work.  For exercise, I decided to pick up Ring Fit Adventure for the Nintendo switch and have been utilizing it the past 2 weeks.  Despite all the push-ups, squats, and resistance band exercises I’ve been doing, I still felt like I needed cardiovascular exercise really badly.  Ring Fit Adventure has been a great stand in for not walking outside or going to the gym (since air quality has been poor outside and gym is closed due to Covid-19).  I also wanted a cardio workout to improve my sleep since it’s been so difficult to fall asleep the past year.  I think it would have helped if it weren’t for the fact I kept staying up so late every night.

With gaming, Genshin Impact is out and I’ve been playing it everyday if not to just to do daily quests.  Along with that, I’ve been still doing daily runs for Guardian Tales and Phantasy Star Online 2.  Playing through these 3 games has been wearing me down and I haven’t been completing any games the past few months.  So initially, I was playing Genshin Impact at 2AM when it resets to do my dailies, but then I wouldn’t feel satisfied and end up playing something else right after up until 5-6AM before I head to bed.  It was becoming a really awful habit and so I’ve changed it where I do dailies during the day and play other games at night.  I still haven’t really fixed it since I still go to bed around 3-4AM, but it’s a little better.  Minecraft Steve and crew were released for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and I played a bit of that.  Cagliostro released for Granblue Fantasy Versus and I ended up playing quite a bit more of the game again just to try to get better.  I spent quite a few hours in RPG mode farming for materials to make weapons, reviewed and practiced characters I was already learning and figuring out new ones.  I discussed with a friend I was playing with that I was a bit disappointed in myself for having over 100 hours in Granblue Fantasy Versus and was still playing at a basic level.  So I’ve been trying to learn and expand my knowledge, abilities and understanding of the game.  I also did a bit of that in Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] since I wanted to learn a few new characters.  Besides that, playing games like Yakuza 0, Halo 1 in the Master Chief Collection, Tangledeep and Rivals of Aether with mods on has kept me up quite a few nights.

I really am trying to improve myself this month in every aspect: music composition/production, gaming with self-improvement and learning new things, and health with implementing cardio exercise and trying to sleep at more reasonable times.  It’s become a bit overwhelming, but only a bit.  While I don’t feel pressure or stress from it all, I do feel like my motivation is starting to wane in everything I do.  This is contradicted with the motivation to do more with all of them.  I already have plans on what to work on next after this current project, but I really have to focus on putting the portfolio together and start searching and applying for job.  There are a TON of games I want to play and get through, but a lot of time is taken from just doing dailies on the three main games I’ve been playing everyday (approximately 1-3 hours per day).  I want to work out harder and actually try to lose weight and get a toned body for once.  But when it comes time to do any of them,  I feel tired just thinking about it.

For November, I need to focus on really putting my portfolio together and get myself prepare for job applications.  Other than that, I should also focus on restructuring my daily life and finding a good balance between everything so I can be more efficient and enjoy what I’m doing more.  If thing go well, maybe I can enjoy a month of relaxation in December.

Stagnation

 It's almost the end of September and three months are left in the year.  As much as everyone wants this year to end so a new one can begin, a lot of what we're facing right now isn't going to go away.  COVID-19 is the biggest problem and threat that we're facing in the world right now.  Even if a vaccine is created, tested safe, and distributed throughout the world, there is the unfortunate chance that this virus could evolve and render the vaccine useless in the future.  I can only hope that life will be better for everyone in the near future rather than the far future.

I feel like I've really stagnated on all progression this past month.  With work, at the very least I finished the audio work I was doing with a friend on a game project.  But since then, I haven't really gotten anything done the past 2 weeks.  It doesn't help that I've been facing a LOT of computer problems the past week and possibly found the culprit.  My portable external hard drive that I use to store all my Steam games has been acting up where it's active 100% and stays pinned there.  Reading and writing data is slow and it might be the cause of the extremely slow game updates on Steam.  It's possible that it's also affecting the slow downs, choppiness and freezing in the games I play, recording, and the long wait time for the computer to shut down.  So I decided to buy a new Desktop external hard drive and have been focusing on transferring all the data to the new one the past few days.

Because I've been playing so much Phantasy Star Online 2 and Guardian Tales, I haven't been playing anything else, really.  I've only complete 2 games last month and 3 games in September, which goes to show how much I've slowed down on game completion and the limited variety of games I've been playing.  The problem with playing PSO2 and Guardian Tales is that I've been mainly doing dailies for them and never really progressing the story or playing the other content.  So even in the only two games I've been playing I have stagnated.  I've been trying to play games with friends a bit more the past two weeks and that has helped break through the monotony that I accidentally put myself into.

Right after I finished that anime rating post from last month, I decided to watch Ryuuou no Oshigoto!  I was expecting it to be cute and funny, but WOW I was left in awe by how dramatic, emotional and passionate the story would be.  The show is about a young 16 year old boy who became Ryuuou, the highest position in the competitive Shogi world where their thoughts and actions help shape the scene of Shogi as it moves forward.  He starts teaching young, grade school girls how to play Shogi with two 9 year old girls in particular who have talent in strategizing and planning far ahead their moves.  Shows like these often follow a similar formula in presenting its niche theme so that anyone can enjoy it.  It's very similar to competitive sport stories where the characters are passionate, love what they do, face insurmountable opposition, deal with defeat, and overcome their own doubts and inhibitions.  I know little to nothing about Shogi, but I felt that I would enjoy the show anyways as I've experienced something similar in reading and watching Hikaru no Go (which I never finished but really want to go back to).  Ryuuou no Oshigoto's story and characters moved me.  The intense emotions that flood over each scene is accentuated through its incredible background music (BGM) and is one of the best I've heard from all the shows I've watched this year.  I wasn't expecting to watch such a good show right after reviewing all the shows I've watched.  Right afterwards, I had remembered that High Score Girl finished its 2nd season.  I decided to re-watch all of the first season again, but this time in Japanese as I lead into the OVAs and the 2nd season.  WOW!  I knew I was going to like it, but I was expecting the story to get THAT much better in the 2nd season.  When I first heard about High Score Girl, I was honestly expecting it to be a slice-of-life comedy and not a romantic comedy.  But I'm very happy with that surprise.  The show was incredibly enjoyable and the best in catering towards its videogame loving audience.  The references really resonated with me as memories of the early 90s flooded my mind.  I loved the show and it quickly became one of my favorites.  I couldn't stop thinking about it, so I decided to read the manga.  I was surprised that the anime actually changed and added things into the anime that wasn't in the manga in the first half while it took things out in the 2nd half.  Overall, I actually liked the anime more.  I ended up playing a decent amount of older Street Fighter games because of all the Street Fighter they talked about in the story.  After that, I had started watching Ramen Daisuki Koizumi-San.  After watching two shows that were so passionate and story driven, it was quite a contrast when I was watching another slice-of-life comedy anime.  While Ramen Daisuki Koizumi-San didn't hook me, I did enjoy it for all the different types of ramen I learned about.  The comedic formula they had between the energetic Yuu with the stoic Koizumi just didn't work for me.  But I loved all the ramen they showed.  I haven't had ramen since March because of the lockdown.  So finishing three shows isn't too bad for a month, but I've definitely slowed down the past two weeks watching Ramen Daisuki Koizumi-San.  I just felt so lost in thought after finishing High Score Girl.

After I finish transferring these files to my new hard drive, I'm going to need to focus.  I want to do one more example track for my portfolio before I put everything together to start applying for jobs.  Genshin Impact released last night and I'm downloading it right now.  I'm hoping to play a lot of it, but that means having to balance it with PSO2 and Guardian Tales all while trying to complete more games.  I'm hoping to watch more anime, too.