Work, Play, And Even A Little Fantasy
The work week that was kept me especially busy, which is not a bad thing. Being that I’m so behind and have months-worth of work to still complete, I like the way that I’ve been productive. I’ve pretty much reached a point where Christina is now coming under fire for what is being perceived as my lack of productivity and I can’t leave her on management’s radar because of what I am and am not doing. This means that I’m getting early starts and I’m leaving the office much later than the majority of my co-workers. I’m working 12-hour days easily, often starting my days as early as 5am. I’ve been doing the 5am start thing for a couple of months now and sadly, it has become my new normal. I say “sadly”, though truthfully, I don’t mean it. I’ve always been an early bird and a morning person, so getting up at 3:55am to get to the office before 5am does not bother me in the slightest. At this point, getting these ridiculously early starts has become a necessary evil. I’m hitting the road as early as 7:30am, after spending just over two hours writing and getting my reports written, and I’m trying to get as much as done before sunset. At 5:30pm, I might consider sniffing the door and returning to the outside world, leaving for the day before preparing myself mentally and eventually physically to do it all over in a matter of a few hours.
Working as much as I have, it has not left me much time to dedicate to all of the gaming that I used to do. Even before I was working all of this overtime, I wasn’t in the habit of gaming for hours on end during the week. Still, I find that I’m not gaming as much as I was did, which does not bother me, being that gaming has slowed down for me for a couple of years now. Whereas I used to buy games on almost a weekly basis, I find that lately, I might buy a game once every two months. I know that the gaming landscape has changed in the last couple of years and as is the case with seemingly everything else in life as I get older, this is nothing new. Change is inevitable and I guess the best we can do is adjust accordingly. The world of gaming is no different.
Briefly though, I will say this as far as the state of gaming as I’m seeing it. I’ll buy a game remaster any day, being that these are such a common thing now. I’m a sucker for those. I just am.
Sports gaming has been sketchy for the last few years, and I’ve refused to buy the annual iterations of Madden NFL and NBA2K. I’m still playing the hell out of MLB The Show 21, a game that is almost three years old.
I’m fed up with microtransactions, overly-priced DLC, and incomplete releases at launch. I hate that PlayStation Plus had to go up in price. I could go on and on, but we’ll save all of that for another entry.
As I mentioned in my previous entry, the NFL season is going to finish today. As busy as I have been, I barely had time to follow the league, though I was able to pay enough attention to compete in three different fantasy football leagues and make it to the championship game in two of them (winning one of the two). My Cincinnati Bengals finished the year at 9-8, which I guess is of some consolation, being that this is still a winning record. Of course, I would have preferred a playoff berth, but I guess I’ll take a winning record. Besides, with quarterback Joe Burrow on the shelf for the rest of the season and messing up his wrist, I can’t vouch for how competitive the Bengals would have been in the post-season anyway with their current quarterback play. I guess we’ll head into the off-season looking to retool and regroup. Burrow and Company will be healthy and ready to go for the 2024 season.
I look forward to the coming week, as I look to continue my streak of productivity at work.
Maybe I’ll get a little more gaming in as well? Maybe I’ll give Madden NFL 23 another whirl? Maybe I try to compete in NBA2K23? Baseball could be a thing too. Maybe I play Spiderman 2 (PS5) for the first time? So many options really, but with such limited time, I don’t know if any of this will happen, at least not this week. There’s just never enough time in the day, that’s for sure.
I’ll be bidding farewell to the NFL season, being that I won’t be watching any playoff games. Without Cincinnati in these playoffs, I have zero motivation to tune in. As I typically do nearly every season, I won’t be watching the Super Bowl either. As far as sports go, I’ll focus our sights on the coming MLB season.
The earth continues to rotate and life as I know it moves on.