Tag Archives: goals

Games and Game Development, Personal Blog

Vacation and Goals

My visit home to Louisville has been splendid thus far! Nick and I hit up the Speed Museum, Science Center, and Slugger Museum. We ate at Dragon King’s Daughter, Ramsi’s, Old Spaghetti Factory, Coco’s Chocolate (fondue!!) and Nord’s Doughnuts. We met Ian’s puppy and played many games with friends and hung out with my family.

Now he’s off to Sarasota so we can spend Christmas with our respective families, and then I’ll join up with him again in Florida afterwards. Josh checked in on Mr. Davis for me at the Cat Hotel, and apparently he’s settled quite nicely and made friends with the other cats! Yay!

Meanwhile, I’m starting to ponder my goals for 2011. Last year the goals were: get a cat (check!) and go to Japan (check!). I already have a few goals in mind financially, but I’m molding some others in the meantime.

First, I’m feeling purge-ish again, and every time i get in the mood to get rid of stuff, the circle of influence of my grip shrinks. This time it’s the old game consoles that are feeling invasive to my space. I’ve been really thinking a lot about the way I consume media. Earlier in the year I borrowed games to try them (offering pies in exchange) and I liked the way it felt. I felt motivated to finish the games because I had to return them, and didn’t feel any guilt over a game half started and then sitting and staring at me from the PS3.

I find myself drawn more and more to Steam and PSN and investigating Wiiware titles because of the lack of physical “stuff” that comes attached to them. Perhaps I will pick up the borrowing habit once more in the New Year.

Which leads me to my second goal of consuming more games more regularly. Right now I play games in long stretches and revel in them, such as Starcraft and WoW and Minecraft. But as has been pointed out time and again, one of the flaws of my industry is how much really good content is pushed out so frequently. I feel like everyone knows someone who has a mountain of unwrapped games that they haven’t even touched yet.

I’ve attributed this need to keep up with games to be like practicing an instrument, and I think this year I need to buckle down on that and really set aside time each day for games. NEW games, I mean, not just the ones I’m in love with and playing anyway. If I can work it into my routine I think I can pull it off, but new routines are very hard to get rolling!

We shall see what the new year brings.

Personal Blog

Back in Kentucky

Ah, to be back in Kentucky once more, it feels wonderful!

Shortly, Scott and I will be off to do some adventuring, which may or may not include going down to the river to take photos. Either that, or scouring the Goodwills for picture frames. Or maybe just lunch. Who can say!

Anyway, my goal this break is to do more soaking in of Louisville locations. Last visit’s trip to Cavehill Cemetary was wonderful, and I want more of that.

In unrelated news, I’ve been playing around with formspring. It seems like it has potential to be a fun little application, especially since I often enjoy memes but am usually reluctant to post them in my journal. Anyway, check me out.

http://www.formspring.me/wertle

Personal Blog

Back in Pittsburgh

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My first thought as I unpacked my Corolla’s-worth of belongings from the summer and piled them into the middle of my room, looking over all the stuff I’d left behind and done perfectly well without, was this: “I own too much stuff.”

In the past few years, I’ve often made notes about the purging of stuff, how I’d like to own less, how I need to get rid of things I don’t use, and the like. But this being my final year of school, I’ve decided that I need to take action in order to rid myself of excess belongings.

My goal this year is to get rid of at least one thing each weekend, be it big or small, thrown away or donated, or whatever. Some things will be easy (my old desk, for example, will be easy to disassemble, set out in a box on my porch and say to craigslist, “Free desk, first pickup gets it.” Other things, however, will prove tricky to get rid of.

I have, for example, a large number of art supplies crated up in the basement. This is everything from oil paints to casting materials for mask-making. Part of me wants to keep it, as art supplies are an expensive start-up and generally last pretty long. But another part of me looks at the last time I was able to devote time to an art project (in undergrad, really) and thinks that perhaps it would do better as a donation to someone who has chosen an artsier path in life.

I’ve gotten better about detaching myself from sentimental belongings, and before the summer I did manage to gather up a good number of old stuffed animals for donation. But I have, for example, a dresser given to me when I was young and a couch that once belonged to Nancy. These things, I suppose, I should hang onto. My bed, however, I could probably do away with, having found that I can sleep perfectly well on a Japanese-style futon. And let’s not even get into my kitchen stuff, yeesh!

If anyone has tips or advice for getting rid of belongings, please share!

Personal Blog

Biking

Today is a special day!

This is the first time I’ve ridden my bike to work every single day of the week. I ride my bike to work often, but I’ve never made a straight week for various reasons (rain and storms, illness, having to go somewhere far straight after work, etc.)

On Sunday I noticed the weather was supposed to be good all this week, so I set a goal for myself to ride my bike every day. I have achieved my goal!

I really enjoy biking to work. The mornings are blissfully cool, I’m brave enough to ride on Bardstown road without any problems, the exercise to and from work gives me energy so that I don’t want to crash and take a nap in the evenings, and everyone at work who sees me on my bike treats me like I’m the coolest kid in school (it seems that half the faculty and staff here are environmental nuts and the other half are health nuts). All in all, riding my bike is great.

There is only one thing I dread about biking and which keeps me from automatically riding all the time without question, and that is carrying my bike up the stairs to my apartment at the end of the ride. It’s only 3 flights of stairs, but I have yet to figure out a way to lug the thing up that doesn’t absolutely kill my chest and my hands and my wrists. Nothing’s perfect, I guess.

So, to reward myself for reaching my goal, I am going to go and buy a tent! This is because I’m going camping on Saturday, and my brother and sister-in-law have decided to go (I was initially going to borrow their tent). Camping is exciting! I haven’t been camping since I was a freshman at Centre, and I haven’t been to Mammoth Cave since I was 4, so that’s practically having never been at all.

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Personal Blog

Painting

My parents are planning to move out of their house, so the last few weeks have been a huge ordeal of cleaning and purging excess junk (most of which seems to belong to me).

I brought home a couple of boxes of glass and paintings the other day (which is to say, I brought them home and they are still sitting in my trunk until I muster the energy to carry them upstairs) and I’m rearranging my own apartment to make room for a little bit of storage.

Most of the paintings I brought home are figure studies, mostly on masonite but a few on canvas. I’m wondering what to do with them. They are just rough studies, some in preparation for larger works, some just as exercises, and I don’t feel they’re very impressive. As in, I don’t think anyone would want to buy them.

I’m thinking if anything I can just paint over them, so as not to waste good masonite. It would be a nice goal for myself, “You have to make this number of for-real paintings in these pre-decided sizes. Go!”

A few of them are fairly decent portraits that I would feel kind of guilty painting over. I dunno, it’ s a debate, one way or the other.

In other news, 3 months ago I rearranged my room, and made a policy that if I could keep a particular corner totally clean for a month, then I would buy myself a drafting table and easel to put there. 3 months later and the corner is spotless, so I guess I should follow through with my reward, yeah?

Personal Blog

Drawins!

Inspired by Denali’s recent postings about successful artist tips, and the fact that I hadn’t drawn since the 2 week workathon on Jam Ja…ah..i mean the secret project, I have put my foot down and developed a strict drawing schedule from me.

My goal is to draw every day, like I used to, only more work drawing. This is how it will work…

Every weekday I will wake up at 5:30 and draw, because that is when I am in work-mode, and if I try to do work-drawing after work, it just won’t work! Of course. I will need your help in reinforcing this habit!

The deal is so: if I am a good girl and do my daily morning drawing, I get to take a nap after work. I will post proof of my deserved nap in my AIM away message (Wertle1 is my SN). If no proof exists, everyone who stumbles upon me between the times of 4:30 and whenever I go to Kempo or Tuesday Night Basketball is free to IM the crap out of me to wake me up (I promise I will leave the volume high).

I’ll be posting my work-sketches at ConceptArt.org. This will be boring stuff. Copies and figure and drapery studies. Oh GOD I hate drapery studies! Bleeeh! But yeah, I need it, then maybe I’ll play around with the daily sketch group? I know not.

Anyway, that’s that. Help me out if you can be enforcing my nap rule.