End of Year Retrospective - 2016

For all that 2016 was a tough year for politics, entertainment, and my personal financial situation,  it was a good year for the blog (so that makes it all right . . .) I reached three significant milestones - My hundredth game, getting to the bottom of my challenge list, and having only sixty unplayed games remaining.

All told, I averaged a game a week for the entire year - fifty-two and a half games in all. If I keep this pace up, I could be done as soon as February 2018 (or three months later if I also acquire new games at the same pace and get 11 over the course of the next year). It may be a distant glimmer, but it feels like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Which is good, because I've started to feel ambivalent about this project. I really enjoy playing the games and writing about them, but all of my other hobbies have fallen by the wayside. I've had some interesting fiction ideas I want to develop, and Exalted 3rd edition has a lot of room for homebrew patches, and I kind of want to make a dozen different Magic: the Gathering decks. Focusing so exclusively on video games has narrowed my horizons.

I  comfort myself with the idea that it's only temporary, but it's the sort of temporary that's been going on for at least a year by now. I think I've got two options. Either I can chill out and slow my pace. If I played a game every two weeks, I'd have a lot more time for reading and writing and card-sorting. Alternately, I could try and power through, picking up the pace and getting through my list as a fast as possible. I'll probably settle for an ineffectual compromise between the two.

My immediate goal for 2017 is to finish all the games from my initial list. I've got fifteen left, which should take 4-5 months, and then, at least, I'll be able to say I technically accomplished what I set out to do. After that, maybe I'll tackle the remains of that Star Wars bundle. Ideally, I'd be in a position to finish the blog by June 21, 2018, its four year anniversary.  By that time this year, I'd gotten through 25 games, which means I need to play at least 32 games in 2017. That should allow me to pursue a fairly relaxed pace and maybe get some other shit done this year.

Or maybe I'll just play a ton of games and get a strong start on 2018. That would be a pleasant surprise.