Recollecting myself

 I missed posting anything the past two months, which I don't think has ever happened before two months in a row.  In June, I had planned on talking about playing Guilty Gear Strive, PSO2: New Genesis, Samurai Shodown and Scarlet Nexus as well as all the games announced during that month.  But some stuff happened that felt too personal to post about.  I was emotionally and mentally fatigued.  I was supposed to spend June relaxing and playing games.  And while I was able to play games, they were only a slight distraction from what was happening in my personal life.  I spent July picking myself back up and trying to get back into productivity with language learning and practicing music.  July is kind of a blur for me, but I do remember getting through a lot of games.  August has also been kind of a blur, and I only completed two games.  I spent a lot of August practicing piano, exercising, and trying to get better at Guilty Gear Strive.

Guilty Gear Strive has been a rollercoaster ride of learning something new and getting better, maybe performing more consistently, and then getting beat by everyone I go against and realizing I've already fallen behind.  I am having a lot of fun with Guilty Gear Strive, but I think it also came with some frustration as everyone is getting better faster than me while I tried to improve since I'm really putting the effort this time around to get better at a fighting game.  I think the frustration comes from the fact that no matter how much I try to learn and improve, it never seems to be enough to keep up.  It's ironic because it's also part of what makes it fun since the game keeps evolving and changing so there's always something new to learn or do.  As for all the other games: I played quite a few hours of PSO2: New Genesis, but haven't played much since June.  I played a few rounds of Samurai Shodown on Arcade mode and do enjoy it, but it does feel a bit lonely not being able to play it with anyone.  I played about 10 hours of Scarlet Nexus and haven't continued in a long time, but plan to soon.  The reason for that was I picked up Blaster Master Zero 3 last month and have spent all my free time playing through it in August.  What usually happens is whenever I do have free time, I end up playing Guilty Gear Strive because I have that drive to keep improving.

Aside from that, I got to spend some time with friends in August as my family and I are finally fully vaccinated and I feel less paranoid about seeing people now.  I haven't seen some of them in 2 years and some of them haven't seen each other in over 5 years.  Two of them moved back home, so I have a higher chance of seeing them and hanging out than we have in the past decade.

Over half of the year is already over and I'm just wondering if it's right for me to keep stalling my main objective of finishing my portfolio and applying for jobs or even just working on more audio work.  I keep finding other ways to occupy my time, probably because it's the first time in many years where I'm learning new things and experiencing different activities rather than just constantly focusing on music composition/production.  I'm almost done with all my short term goals that I wanted to do and will continue on my main project soon.

Heavy Distractions, Incoming

I am so behind in everything.  I still haven’t recorded the music cover I’ve been working on, I haven’t learned all that much in my language study sessions, I only finished 2 games this month (maybe a 3rd tonight?), I’ve gained back a little bit of weight because of the few times we went out to eat and missing exercises a few days, and all that effort I made being able to sleep early and wake early has been slowly undone as I struggle to sleep at earlier times.  I finally finished the drawing of the Under Night In-Birth characters, but it took up the first half of the month to complete it.  I’m mostly satisfied with it, but it does have a few problems I noticed after staring at it for so long so I might go back to fix it.  I haven’t recorded the song I’m learning on guitar yet, but I feel like I’ve made a decent amount of progress on practicing it.  My left wrist hurts from practicing on the guitar, so I’m probably going to rest for the weekend.  I’m trying to complete so many things before June hits that I feel like I won’t be able to get anything done.

There’s a lot that’s going to happen in June this year.  Guilty Gear Strive, Samurai Shodown on Steam (FINALLY, AFTER 2 YEARS!), Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis, and Scarlet Nexus all release in June.  Multiple game announcements will be made through digital streaming events in place of in-person E3 events.  Steam Summer Sale starts at the end of the month.  There is just so much going on next month; I’m not sure how I’m going to handle it other than possibly dropping everything I’m doing just to enjoy the games that are coming out.  I really want to go back to working on that big project I started back in October, but I know it’ll be a lot of work and won’t be done that quickly.  I suppose I can work little by little on it throughout June.

Setting aside all my worries, I am SO excited for the games next month.  I keep thinking about Guilty Gear Strive these past months that it’s been difficult to focus.  I’ve been watching a lot of clips of beta gameplay, listening to the music, and trying to learn as much as I can about this newest installment in the series.  Depending on how SNK packages Samurai Shodown for Steam and what they price it at, I may or may not pick it up right away.  As excited as I am to play the game, I’m not too keen on spending $110 ($50 for base game; 3 x $20 DLC packs) especially when we’ve waited 2 years after its initial dated release.  I’m also not sure if I’ll have anyone to play it with, whether if the single-player mode will keep me playing for very long, and not to mention the amount of money I need to already spend on all the other games.

I potentially have one more week left for any productivity I want taken care of before I dive deep into playing Guilty Gear Strive, PSO2: New Genesis, and Scarlet Nexus.