1460: Flexitime

Where’s all the time gone?

I’m not talking about the year zipping by — we’re still in January when I last checked, so things are proceeding at about the right pace there — but instead I am talking about the time within each individual day. I know that reasonably speaking each day absolutely isn’t any shorter than it normally is, but it certainly feels like it at the moment for some reason. I feel like I used to be able to fit more things into the day, whereas now I seem to spend the majority of the day working, a little while chilling out in the evening and then before I know it it’s after midnight and I should be sleeping.

This is, as you might expect, somewhat frustrating. There are things I want to do, see. Lots of things. And, as any respectable human being in the 21st century will almost certainly tell you, there is rarely enough time to do everything you want to do. This seems to be a particular issue at present.

Perhaps I’m just trying to squeeze too many things into too short a space of time, and I should be more realistic about things. In fact, let’s try a little exercise: let’s list all the things that I want and/or need to do, and determine which of them can wait a bit and which of them I can probably squeeze in to the time I have. I am thinking out loud here, which is probably terribly tedious to those of you good enough to still be reading at this point, but eh. I’ve started, so I may as well finish.

I present, then, in no particular order, The (Possibly) Definitive List of Things I’d Like to Do (Perhaps on a Regular Basis), 2014 Edition, Not Including Things to Do With Other People.

• Finish watching the anime Clannad. (Eminently doable; I’m watching an episode with breakfast and sometimes lunch each day right now, and there’s only 20-something of them.)
• Watch the anime series Ghost Hunt, Hell Girl and whatever I’ve been adding to my Crunchyroll queue over the last year or so. (Also eminently doable; do not start until Clannad is finished to minimise confusion.)
  
• Study Japanese. (Currently attending weekly evening classes, and have just signed up for a second semester; in order to progress further, I both want and need to set aside some time each week for self-study, not necessarily every day, but at least two or three times a week, I’d say. Perhaps this is something to do in the morning.)
• Make my game. (Haven’t worked on this for ages, but still really want to get it done. At the same time, I find it difficult to believe I will ever get it done. Again, a case of setting aside regular time each week, I think; perhaps on days when I’m not doing Japanese self-study.)
• Play the visual novels and dating sims I have on my shelf that I haven’t even touched yet. These include Saya no Uta, Tokimeki Check-In, Yumina the Ethereal and a number of others. (Requires a think. How can I fit these into daily life? Should I finish some other games first, or treat them more like “books” and, say, read in bed or something? Or perhaps play them when I would “normally” watch anime?)
• Repeat plays of visual novels I haven’t seen all the paths of. These include Aselia the Eternal (super-long, lots of paths), Deus Machina Demonbane (quite long, few paths) and possibly some others. (See above.)
• Play the bajillion PS1, PS2 and PS3 RPGs I have on my shelf. There’s about fifteen years’ worth of games there. Fuck next-gen.
• Play more music. (Stop making excuses and set aside 30-60 minutes a day to do so. The piano’s right there.)
• Finish ZHP on PSP/Vita. (Need to not be playing any other RPGs first in order to concentrate on this, and perhaps even start again altogether.)
• Get my Final Fantasy XIV white mage to level 50. (Eminently doable at the rate I’m going.)
• Write something long-form, either a non-fiction book on some aspect of gaming (perhaps visual novels) or a novel, then publish it somehow. (The latter I’ve sort of done for the last few years on this blog each November, but more planning and editing is required to make something worth paying for.)
• Forgive the few people who have wronged me and for whom I hold grudges. (Never gonna happen. I don’t hold many grudges, but the few I do are, to me, entirely justified.)
• Get back into walking, running, fitness, some combination thereof, without getting demotivated that they don’t obviously make me any smaller.

I’m sure there are more, but I think that’s probably plenty to be getting on with for now.

Whew. I think I might need to go back to making myself a schedule and trying to stick to it again.