Lost Letters

With it being hotter than 27C/80F all weekend, it really felt like winter is finally behind us. On Saturday, we gathered enough friends for a whole softball game, and I spent the rest of the weekend hobbling around due to plantar fasciitis. Despite the heat and my aches and pains, I still had an awesome time learning lightsaber stage combat on Sunday. I mastered some fancy saber flourishes and force choking. While this was a particularly fun weekend, most weeknights are not filled with fun plans, so I’m really trying to work on that by learning Magic The Gathering to attend a friend’s weekly cube draft on Thursday nights. I think I have to practice for a few more weeks before I can join though, so I welcome any beginner resources folks want to send my way.

Most days I don’t have plans and end up scrolling tiktok for hours. I really need to get into the habit of acting on the creative and inspiring tiktoks I’ve saved like the chain mail ones that have taken over my feed. I’ve been wanting to get into making chain mail jewelry and accessories. I think it’s because we’re coming up on ren faire season, but all my other works in progress (primarily knitted ones) are screaming at me to be finished, and I don’t need to be spending a ton of money on new hobby supplies after I just spent more than $200 on events to attend at Gen Con.

I haven’t mentioned on here that I’m going to Gen Con yet, but I am for all four days. It’s my first real convention, so I’m grateful to have veteran friends who have helped me understand the hotel and event registration processes. When event registration opened on Sunday morning, I was bummed to see that all the Dungeon Crawler Carl (DCC) events I wanted to attend (except for two) sold out before I could get tickets. My friend who was 200th in the queue said they sold out before they could even buy tickets, so there was no hope for me at 4121 in line.

I think the DCC hype at Gen Con was drummed up by the 13 million dollar (and counting) backerkit campaign for the TTRPG and boardgame as well as the recent release for the eighth book in the series, A Parade of Horribles. Even though I’ve been stuck on book four for over a year now and have forgotten almost all of the characters and plot, I still really enjoy the series and attended an awesome midnight book eight release party last week. The event was so much more fun that I could have possibly expected. It started off well because I recognized a person I had met before and invited them to join me and my neighbor at our table to form a party. She ended up being very chatty with some great anecdotes, so the conversation was flowing all night. Next, my neighbor found a secret code to tell the bartender to receive a legendary loot box, so we got a pair of Carl’s heart print boxers with an offer to add a free side car to any drink we got for the next hour if we wore the boxers. Then, my new friend answered a borough boss trivia question and won Princess Donut’s tiara that granted 50% off her tab. She then went on to win the raffle for the legendary loot box at the end of the night, so we were the most decorated party of crawlers by the end of the night. The custom menu of drinks and food, themed pachinko game with DCC stickers, and cosplayers also added to the immersive atmosphere of the Desperado Club bar theme.

Despite missing out on all but two of the DCC events at Gen Con, I’m happy with my schedule as I think I struck the right balance between playing/participating and listening to performers and talks so my brain won’t be a gelatinous cube by the end of each day. Now that everything is booked, I’m just hoping for uneventful flights and decent vegan options at the food trucks. This is the only fun trip I have planned this year, so I’m really not sparing any expense. I think I’ll be safe from spending too much at the con aside from food because my stationery no buy year in 2022 kicked off a persistent hobby frugality mindset shift that has persisted to this day. I also never want to be a Game Master, so I can’t justify buying games at the event’s expo hall. I think that’s for the best considering I made a pretty big purchase of a Switch 2 + Pokopia on April 1st and rolled credits on the game after just three weeks. I feel a little bad that I haven’t really touched it much since. I wanted to unlock all the pokemon, but I also wanted to house them in cute custom homes for which I lacked the requisite material recipes. I was not about to grind time traveling or pay for Nintendo Online to get more recipes, so I think I’m effectively done with the game. Sorry to all my pokemon living in shacks and fugly prefab housing.

For this mid-March update, I wanted to share my enjoyment of gardening, video games, learning to code, peloton rides, and my current favorite Hobonichi Weeks layout. It’s kind of a random roundup of updates, but I like documenting these things, so I can look back on them later on.

New Hobby Unlocked: Gardening
This past weekend, I went to an excellent and informative seed sowing event where I learned all about starting seeds and how to help them grow into hardened, productive plants that can endure outdoor conditions. All the seeds I started will reside in their starter trays for eight weeks before they get planted outside on Mother’s day, which is typically a good bet for occurring after the last frost in my region. I’m supposed to harden the spouts by putting them outside for a few hours daily, starting a week before Mother’s day, so they won’t be shocked by outdoor conditions once they are planted in their final homes. At the event, I was able to start a ton of bunching green onions (5-6 seeds per cell, 4 cells total), four cells of red onions, and four cells of rainbow lacinato kale all for free! I’m not really the biggest kale fan, but recipes I choose occasionally call for it, so I wanted to have it on hand. The plan is to use the hanging baskets off my balcony for these plants, then get two tomato plants going in my mini raised bed since that’s the only deep planter I have that can support two tomato cages. I’m really worried we won’t be getting enough sunlight, but the pepper plants the previous owners grew last year in the mini raised bed did really well, and they needed six to eight hours of sun. Tomatoes optimally need eight or more hours, but can still produce with only six hours, so I’m hopeful. Even if my gardening fails and my heart is broken a little, at least I will have learned a lot.

Old Hobby Rekindled: Video Games
Out of a deep sense of stubbornness and frugality, I am dying of FOMO. I refuse to buy a Switch 2 just to play Pokopia because I don’t care how much free time I would love for this game to eat up, I am not buying a single game for essentially $600 USD with taxes. I was also really intrigued by the release of Slay the Spire 2, but couldn’t justify that either when I own, enjoy, and still suck at the original game. If I was playing the original at ascension level 20 and mastered all the different builds of the game, I could justify it, but I’ve barely scratched the surface of what the original has to offer, so I’ve been playing that a bunch lately to help keep my mind off these two new releases. My wife is excellent at card game strategy, so we’ve been playing it together, figuring out different builds and ascending often, which has been really fun. The new games still call to me, but I should probably wait to see if anyone is talking about pokopia in a month before I take the plunge and invest in buying a whole system.

Making Progress: The Odin Project & Peloton
I’m officially halfway through the month and the Odin Project’s Foundation Course, and I’ve got good news on both fronts! The drudgery of learning CLI and linux setup stuff is over (I don’t want to touch new files–I’m a GUI girlie, sue me!), and I’m onto the fun part of HTML and CSS, which is much more familiar to me. I probably should use those newly learned best practices to overhaul my website’s code, so maybe I’ll clean some things up under the hood after I finish this blog post.

Additionally, this month, I’m on track to hit my highest total kJ output on the peloton ever, which is awesome. I was worried I’ve been slacking because I’ve only been riding an average of four times per week, but all but one of those rides have been 30-minutes in duration, so I’ve been able to create more energy as compared to previous months where I almost exclusive rode 20-minute rides about five times per week. I’ve included a graph based on my data, which was tabulated today, the 16th of March, so you can see my mid-month progress. I want to keep ramping up the duration of my average sessions in preparation for our upcoming softball spring training season as I want to be in better shape for that. I’ve been good about stretching before and after my rides, which I think has helped with injury prevention, so I don’t expect any issues with ramping up the duration aside from my desire to take it easy.

Documenting: 2026 Hobonichi Weeks
Finally, even though my handwriting was bad in the week pictured below, I wanted to document how I’ve been using my 2026 Hobonichi weeks as of late. I’ve really settled into this layout with my daily recaps on the left side. I use them to help me backfill pithy daily memories for my monthly spread. On the right side, I have a daily weather stamp from Japan that I use to write down temperatures in freedom units because I’m trying to get familiar with those again. Then, I also record habits I’m trying to maintain on a daily and weekly basis along with tracking a bad one (drinking coffee), which I try to avoid. Any space left over is for notes and random thoughts for the week. They generally capture the vibe of what’s going on in my head any given week, which isn’t part of the story told by my daily accounts on the left side. I’ve been doing variations on this layout for three years now, so I think I’m pretty settled, but who knows if I’ll fall out of planner peace in the future.

In my previous post, I described myself as creatively constipated, but it’s deeper than that. I’m currently in a period of my life where I have an abundance of free time, and it feels terrible to spend it feeling uninspired to learn anything new. I’ve actually felt this way for over a year now, but it’s taken me a while to think through why I’m stuck here and what I can do to snap out of it.

I have a friend who told me that they don’t wait until they want to do something, they just force themself to do it despite a multitude of mental barriers in their way. This had me wondering if I just need to force myself to learn again. As I sat with the idea, I asked why is there mental resistance against forcing myself to learn again? Well, the last time I really tried to learn something, I was studying Japanese, which was a disaster. I felt like I was climbing up an impossibly massive hill that I’d never reach the top of, so why bother? I gave up in 2020, resigned to being only able to order vegan food in Japanese. That defeatist mindset has haunted me ever since.

No matter the subject matter, whether it’s learning JavaScript, sewing, or reading sheet music, I think everything is too complex or hard to even attempt. These excuses suck, and I hate that I’ve become so unwilling to trying anything new! I hate that I’m content with giving up before I even attempt something. It’s comfortable to just keep doing the easy, boring things I’ve already mastered, but I’m sick of being bored and boring!

Currently, there’s only one thing that I engage with on nearly a daily basis that’s truly hard and impossible to master: riding my stationery bike. I don’t ride to increase my proficiency. I ride because it’s good for me and my mental health. I need to translate this mindset to learning new things. Learning things is good for me; therefore, I should try to learn at least a little every day. By learning, I’ll be less bored/boring, and I might even discover a passion along the way.

Just by thinking through and writing this post, I’ve inspired myself to finally start learning some JavaScript. The goal isn’t mastery. I just want to learn enough to get passionate again and make something cool for this website. I have no idea what that’ll be yet, but I suspect that by thinking creatively about the JS capabilities I learn along the way, I’ll become inspired to make something cool. I started this effort by following The Odin Project’s curriculum, though I’ll be taking the Foundations course before I start the JS one because I’ve never studied web development before. Here are some other free resources I’ve found through the 32.bit Cafe to learn JavaScript in case anyone else is interested, listed purely in the order that I found out about them (not ranked on quality, etc.):

• Scrimba, the official recommended course partner of MDN
• The Modern JavaScript Tutorial from javascript.info
• JavaScript Certification from freecodecamp.org
• MDN: Dynamic scripting with JavaScript
• JavaScript Roadmap

If you have any other free JS-learning resources that you think are worth checking out, please feel free to drop a webmention or leave a comment on my Neocities profile. Thanks!

I’m not sure if the concept of a “Play Plan” exists, but I’m taking inspiration from one of my other hobbies (knitting) and the trend of creating a “Make Nine”, which is typically a gridded photo on IG of nine projects you want to complete before the end of the year. This is my TTRPG version of a Make Nine, but instead of projects I want to knit, it’s an arbitrary number of games I want to play, hence the name TTRPG Play Plan.

I felt inspired to do this after I catalogued the interesting majority of my digital TTRPG collection, which includes 34 core rulebooks, 2 hacks, 11 modules, and 10 resources for now. The vast majority of those games came from itch.io charity bundles, but it’s still ridiculous to own so many considering I don’t even run games for other people. After recording which ones I’ve played, I found out that I’ve played less than 30% of the games I own, so I have to do something about that. I wanted to focus on just games I could possibly play solo that I’ve never tried before, which leaves me with the following list:

1. Evergreen Wilds is a solo roleplaying game that allows a player to live and explore a season as a park ranger in a national park. I’m not going to lie, this sounds kind of dull (why imagine nature when I could just go out and be in it?), but it could help me work on my writing and creative thinking skills since I often struggle to keep solo journaling games interesting for myself, so I’ll try it.
2. Iron Valley is a cozy solo TTRPG hack for Ironsworn and Starforged that is inspired by Animal Crossing, Story of Seasons (Harvest Moon), and Stardew Valley. I’m honestly not a fan of real Stardew Valley–I feel like it requires me to do a lot of homework or research to know what to do when or how to optimize play, which is weird for a “cozy game” imo–but I’m willing to give this a shot.
3. Ironsworn: Sundered Isles is a solo TTRPG where you play as a rebellious seafarer undertaking sworn quests in a world that is equal parts Age of Sail and fantasy, with hints of emerging steampunk technologies and eldritch curses. Thankfully, this one seems action packed, and I’m very familiar with and enjoy the Ironsworn system, so hopefully this will be easy to get into.
4. LORDSWORN is a GMless TTRPG where you will be a fragile, shattered creature clinging to others for survival in the face of a dying world, inspired by Elden Ring amongst other things. Seems bleak, but I like it when I have to make tough choices in a game and the stakes feel high because survival is not guaranteed (probably why I lean to hard into OSR games).
5. Wanderhome is a pastoral fantasy game for which I found some worksheets that will hopefully help me get more out of the experience. I’m not always in the mood for gentle, story-rich tales, but I’m curious to see how the typical token-based emergent roleplay works in solo mode (if it’s not scrapped altogether). I have only ever played a similar game (Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, Jay Dragon’s other token-based game) as part of a group of folks who were excellent at improv.
6. The Lighthouse at the Edge of the Universe - In this game, you are the current keeper of the lighthouse. Whatever happens, you must keep the light running. Meant to be played before bed, I’m guessing this game isn’t meant to be a plot-driven, high suspense game, so I think my mileage will be low for this one.
7. Pirate Borg: Solitary Plunder - contains solo rules for playing Pirate Borg, which I haven’t yet checked out, though I have played Pirate Borg solo before. I’ve got a couple adventure modules I might be able to play through, including Trapped in the Topics (an intro adventure to PB), Cabin Fever (6 adventures included), and Meanwhile… Somewhere Deep in the Dark Caribbean.
8. Runecairn Wardensaga - is a lightweight, hard-hitting, combat-focused TTRPG set in a post-Ragnarok Norse fantasy world inspired by Dark Souls and Elden Ring. I’m not always a huge combat fan, but I do like action, and I’ve already got a 12-room tutorial dungeon adventure from Beneath the Brown Sword, so I’m excited to play this one.

While I listed the games in no particular order, I suspect that the solo journaling games will be the easiest to pick up. Therefore, I’ll probably start there with Evergreen Wilds and The Lighthouse at the Edge of the Universe. Then, I’ll probably play Iron Valley, Ironsworn: Sundered Isles, and Pirate Borg: Solitary Plunder next since I’m already familiar with their core rulebooks. Requiring the most effort because I’m unfamiliar with them are LORDSWORN, Runecairn Wardensaga, and Wanderhome, so I’ll probably get to those last unless I really feel compelled to read one day.

Since I haven’t updated my site aside from my blog in a while, I might record written playthroughs of each game for the TTRPG section of my site and link out to any oracles and tools used to facilitate play. I’ve found a ton of cool oracles online, and I think that might be useful in case anyone else wants to solo these games as well.

As with knitting Make Nines, I’d love to see what other folks have planned, so if you end up creating a TTRPG Play Plan, please share it! Also, if folks have any opinions on these games or tips for soloing them, please message me via Mastodon or a Neocities profile comment. My guestbook is still offline because I’m protecting my peace from anonymous opinions. Thanks for understanding!

When people catch up with me and ask me what I’ve been up to, I give the most boring answer ever. I have nothing of note to mention, no exciting goals I’m chasing or passion projects I’ve been working on in my mountain of spare time. The days pass by with daily walks, peloton, cooking at home, knitting, and social media with a sprinkle of TTRPGs throughout the week. It’s time to face the fact that I’ve protected my peace too hard, and now I’m boring–extremely comfortable, but painfully boring. I need to get out of my comfort zone more, and this is my plan to do so.

The most major way I’ve gotten out of my comfort zone recently is by booking a hotel and flights to a massive, four-day convention this summer as a solo trip. Spending a lot of money on personal travel always feels frivolous because I don’t need a vacation as my life is not stressful. However, I also think it’s so important to try new things and to have something to look forward to aside from retirement. I’m starting to get excited for the event despite all the stress that comes with sorting out travel and logistics (where/are there vegan options, how do I optimize my time for maximal enjoyment, etc). I’ll likely to get to play so many new-to-me games like jubensha, a Chinese murder mystery LARP, that I never otherwise would have, so this will be such a fun and unique opportunity.

On a more mundane note, I’ve settled into doing the bare minimum with my peloton efforts. Low impact 20 minute rides are my go-to nowadays. In the rare event that I complete a hard peloton ride or set a new personal record, I’ve noticed that I often don’t hop back on the next day or even the day after that. I know my body can’t meet or beat that hard effort again immediately, so I give up and don’t get on the saddle. Skipping rides further reinforces the story in my head that I’m weak and can’t do anything even though I just proved I was capable and powerful. It’s such a dumb line of logic. With running, I would always do an easy run the day after pushing myself to help flush out my legs, and I need to apply that logic to this as well. I’m still stuck in this mindset that pushing myself to hit new records feels detrimental to my continued progress, and yet the data is undeniable: I am progressing (otherwise I wouldn’t be hitting new personal bests each month). After reviewing the numbers, which I’ll get into in a second, I’d really like to see a continued upward trend in terms of my total output month over month, especially as we come into spring training season for softball. Even though I’m just playing in a softball rec league and the game hardly requires any running for a team as bad as mine, I definitely could improve my cardiovascular fitness, so I’m a more powerful sprinter with a bit more endurance.

Getting into the data, my average total output in kilojoules for a 20-min ride steadily decreased from November to January. From 91.8 to 84.67, 64.08, then bounced back up in Feb to 82.4. My average total output for a 30-min ride has been bouncing around each month: 133.57 in Nov, 123.5 in Dec, 135.33 in Jan, 121.5 in Feb. Based on this, I’m not seeing a consistent upward trend of becoming more powerful. However, when looking at the sum of total output across each month, there is some hope that I’m progressing in at least that dimension. In December, when I had to take a week off for the holidays at my parents’ home, my the total output sum was 1335. In January, I hit 1581 because I was consistent about getting on the bike and just churning out low output 20-min rides even when I was struggling mentally. This month, I need to ride daily 30 min rides for the rest of the month to beat my January output, which is painful but doable. This is the first time I’ve ever taken a look at my peloton data, and I finally feel like striving to hit a new personal best instead of just surviving.

With an exciting event on the horizon and a fitness goal to work towards, the only thing I’m missing is a passion project. I’m coming up completely empty on that front for now (creatively, I’m just so constipated), but at least I’m making progress on the list of things I wanted to do in my previous post. I said I wanted to become fluent in Spanish (placed a hold for Pimsleur level 1 audiobook from the library), experience vipassana (booked myself for a one-day retreat since the 10-day ones require a car), study Buddhism (borrowed a couple books by Thich Nhat Hanh from the library), attend a gaming con (all set!), go camping (no progress, too cold), and attend a multi-day LARP (no progress). Overall, I think I’m doing pretty well for February, but I’ll have to keep pushing myself to do these things otherwise I’ll settle back into my do-nothing comfort zone.

On yesterday’s long walk, I asked my friend, “What new skills did you acquire in 2025?” I was really impressed with how they dabbled in so many different things, and I realized that I hadn’t tried as much because I was getting settled in a new city after two moves; however, last year, I still managed to…

1. fight back against illegal abductions of my neighbors by educating myself, friends, neighbors, and local businesses about immigration authority protocols, how to document ICE activity, and our constitutional rights through canvassing and whistle packing events
2. volunteer with a local food bank, learning the picking process they use for packing clients’ grocery orders
3. sew my first garment, which required installing my first zipper
4. learn how to do intarsia knitting, which was actually so easy
5. learn how to spin yarn on a drop spindle, which I then steamed and thwacked to create my first ever handspun yarn hank
6. play softball for the first time, learning new rules at every game

I’m glad I stretched myself to try new things last year, and I want to try to get outside of my comfort zone a bit more in 2026. Creatively, I am somewhat insecure about my singing and storytelling abilities. I am already scheduled to join a choir and take vocal lessons this year, but I don’t really have anything to help me become a better story teller. If you know of any resources, particularly ones around crafting satisfying conclusions, please let me know. I also want to become fluent in Spanish, experience vipassana, study Buddhism, attend a gaming con, go camping, and attend a multi-day LARP.

While I think there’s value in setting up new habits in the new year, it’s also nice to plan things you’re looking forward to as well. Have you thought about which skills you plan to pick up in 2026 or how you will get outside of your comfort zone this year?

Every year, I use the level 10 life categories from “The Miracle Morning” to spark ideas for goals in various dimension of my life: Friends & Family, Personal Development, Finances, Fun & Recreation, Health & Fitness, etc. This year was no different except that I wanted to narrow my focus to just two goals, so I didn’t get distracted or set goals that were either outside of my control or too easy to achieve.

I won’t get into every category in this post, but for friends & family, I initially wanted to see my family quarterly at least, keep attending local TTRPG meetups, keep attending home games of fellow TTRPG players, keep attending my virtual campaign, and keep in touch with my friend in NY at least weekly. All of these are already deeply engrained in my weekly schedule, so there’s no point in codifying them or monitoring them; therefore, these are weak candidates for putting focused time and attention towards. For fun & recreation, I wanted to knit through my yarn stash / go on a no buy, attend one TTRPG convention like Gen Con or Gary Con, attend Bicolline LARP, and start streaming again. There’s nothing particularly wrong with these goals and they would all be nice to have, but achieving them probably wouldn’t make 2026 the best year ever.

Health & fitness is the one area I’ve struggled with the most in the past year. I’m still adjusting my medications with my doctor to feel fully asymptomatic, but I have noticed after just five days of daily cardio, I felt more like myself than I have in the past year. For goals in this category, I wanted to hit 200 rides on my peloton I purchased this month. I also want to maintain a daily or weekly streak of usage of the peloton as well because I’m playing $50 USD/month just for the subscription. I’m on a daily streak that’s already lasted more than three weeks, so I think this might be feasible. Finally, I also need to ensure I’m properly fueling myself, so I plan to also spend 10 minutes per week meal planning nourishing recipes from the Plant Based RD. Given the potential for good health to radically transform my life, I want to focus on health promoting behaviors the most, so I picked the peloton and meal planning as my two focuses for 2026.

There are a lot of ways to write “good” goals, so I took a hybrid approach to ensure my goals were NICE, using Ali Abdaal’s framework, but also had some of the Relevant why mixed in from SMART goals. Here’s what they look like after applying the frameworks:

Goal 1: Do the following classes each day: warm up, cycling, cool down or cardio, meditation, or yoga class of any duration, using your peloton bike and subscription to ensure that I am continuously enjoying exercise, protecting my ability to exercise with thorough stretching, and making the most of my expensive subscription and hardware.

• Near-term: Do the following classes each day:
• Input-based: warm up, cycling, cool down, or cardio, yoga, or mediation class - to allow for flexibility on bad mental or physical health days
• Controllable: of any duration - to allow for flexibility on bad mental or physical health days
• Energizing: using your peloton bike and subscription - I find the music, instructors, and streak gamification to be energizing and motivating
• Why: to ensure that I am continuously enjoying exercise, protecting my ability to exercise with thorough stretching, and making the most of my expensive subscription and hardware.

Goal 2: Each week, I will meal plan at least one recipe from the Plant-based RD website, honoring any food cravings (i.e. crunchy crispy, tangy, etc.) I may have to ensure that I nourish myself adequately to maintain a high level of daily exercise without wasting food.

• Near-term: Each week
• Input-based: meal plan at least one recipe from the Plant-based RD website
• Controllable: at least one recipe - if I can only find one meal I want to eat, it still counts
• Energizing: honoring any food cravings (i.e. crunchy, crispy, tangy, etc.) you may have - eating things I’m excited about helps me prevent food waste and ensures I actually eat the food in the first place
• Why: to ensure that I nourish myself adequately to maintain a high level of daily exercise without wasting food

The next step for me is to further anticipate possible failure points, so that I can adequately build in enough flexibility or resilience to help me through hard times.

For the first goal, I definitely could get injured somehow and not be able to complete this goal. Instead of simply saying cycle for this goal, I’m building in a stretching warm up and cool down to help prevent injury. I also know my energy day to day can vary a ton, so any class duration and intensity level counts. I am also allowing myself to exercise in different modalities, so if I need to recover and build back strength, then I can do a mobility session without compromising my streak. Of course, if a doctor orders me to do no movement at all, I’ll honor that, but if I can get something done, I’ll definitely try.

The biggest hurdle for my meal planning goal is that I don’t know what I’m going to be craving if I’ll crave anything at all, so I might have to go grocery shopping while hungry, which sucks and leads to snacking on junk while I cook, which ruins my appetite. I’ll make sure I keep buying fruit to have on hand in case I need to snack since that helps me hit my daily fiber goals anyways. Additional points of failure could include feeling uninspired or lazy, in which case I can always fall back on my Notion database of all the recipes I’ve cooked in the past, and let my partner choose one I should make. There are a lot of tried and true recipes there that aren’t the most balanced, but at least it’s healthier and cheaper to cook from scratch than to get take out.

Now that I’ve set my goals for 2026, I plan to run a weekly retrospective to see if any tweaks are needed to better align myself for success. The retrospective will be pretty similar to an agile or scrum retrospective because work habits die hard, and I’ve seen a lot of benefit from applying blameless postmortems and other work methods in my personal life. In the weekly retro, I plan to ask myself:

1. What went well over the past week? What were my wins?
2. What didn’t go well? What were the challenges I faced? Where did I get stuck?
3. How might I approach next week differently to achieve a better outcome?

Even with a weekly retrospective, I think it can be hard to motivate myself to follow through with certain goals, but I’m hoping having my “why” stated as part of the goal will help me stay motivated. If you have any tips for staying motivated though, I’m all ears. I’m always curious about how other people plan their goals/habits and any ceremonies to maintain or tweak them throughout the year.

One of the best things about moving back to the US has been finding a tabletop role-playing game community that doesn’t just offer tables for D&D 5E. As a result, this year alone, I’ve played 58 TTRPG sessions across 19 different games (15 were new to me), so I wanted to review them while they’re mostly still fresh in my mind.

After rating all these games, a few things became clear: I have a strong preference for Old School Renaissance (OSR) games, but I don’t think OSR games work particularly well for long-term campaigns because of how deadly they are. I’m open to having my mind changed on that front with the right game master at the helm as I do tend to prefer campaign style of play. I also strongly prefer games that emphasize exploration, so games that were mostly just roleplay didn’t rank as highly for me. Finally, I wanted to just add a little disclaimer that I do not want to throw any shade to any of the game masters who have run the low scoring games for me. I have the utmost respect for them. I just didn’t vibe with some of these games or GM styles, and that’s totally okay. I love that there’s something for everyone here in this hobby.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Mythic Bastionland | 1 one-shot
This game is dark and horrifying in a serious way (as opposed to MORK BORG which can get a bit silly). Every single hex we crawled held a situation or scenario so provocative and intriguing, we felt compelled to abandon our main quest at every turn just to try to understand and explore what was going on. Exploration, as compared to role-play and combat, is my favorite element of TTRPGs, so this was going to get me every time.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Brindlewood Bay | 2 one-shots
I was impressed by this murder mystery game where you collect clues and arrange them into a narrative that explains how the murder happened. The more clues you use, the easier the ultimate dice roll is to determine if you were correct in your assumption of how the murder went down. The game somewhat suffers as a one-shot because you can’t really do anything with clues you get when rolling as 12+ on 2d6 that get at a greater overarching mystery at work that spans sessions, which is why I’m taking off one star as I’ve not had the chance to play campaign style.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Troika! | 1 one-shot
Fellow emergent, whimsical fantasy lovers unite! This is still my favorite rules-lite OSR. It feels like nothing is out of play, and your creativity can just run wild here. OSRs aren’t perfect though, and I’m not really convinced they lend themselves to campaigns because they’re so deadly, but if you want a wildly good time, I’d recommend everyone check out Troika!, specifically The Stygian Library, which is a randomly generated dungeon.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ | CY_BORG | 1 one-shot
OSR with anti-capitalist, anti-carceral cyberpunks, what’s not to love? The world of CY_BORG is extremely evocative, and I have fond memories playing aquatic-human hybrid punks for a one-shot, trying to take down a loan shark. I’d love to play this again especially given how much creative momentum there is behind all the “BORG” style games.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Mothership | 2 one-shots, 2 campaign sessions
The OSR modules and bespoke adventures I’ve played really impressed me. I’ve never felt so ill at ease and worried when playing a game like when I’m at a mothership table. The stakes are high; the world is deadly; and you’ve got a mission to complete come aliens, interstellar parasites, yellow ooze, or whatever else your DM throws at you.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast | 2 one-shots
This game really opened my eyes to the breadth of what TTRPGs can offer. Before ‘zeeb’s, I had never played a game that was almost all roleplay without much emphasis on exploration or combat, which isn’t always what I’m in the mood for to be honest. I was a fish out of water at my first one-shot, but I caught on quickly and even purchased the game to run with friends at my home. I would love to explore more of this game in a campaign format, so I could unlock scenarios with prerequisites. I doubt I’ll get there though because it does require a full complement of folks to play the cast of characters, so it’s not something I could play solo.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Good Society | 1 one-shot, 3 campaign sessions (dating show hack)
I spent a lot of time with friends, thinking about how to make the dating show hack of this game work, but ultimately I didn’t think there was enough in terms of mechanics to make skill challenges, a classic for so much of reality tv, work. I got why Aabria Iyengar paired this with D&D on Dimension 20 for A Court of Fey and Flowers. I am a bit intimidated to play this in the pure traditional sense because I don’t have a ton of familiarity with the inspiration material (Jane Austen), but the dating show hack (with secret gay and pan characters) was such a fun time.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Blades in the Dark | 9 campaign sessions
Blades is such a classic, player-driven experience. I love it, but sometimes it feels like there’s not enough variety between heists. I fully admit though that that’s my fault for not coming more inspired and prepared as this game is our filler when we don’t have the full crew to play Star Wars: Edge of the Empire.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Star Wars: Edge of the Empire | 4 campaign sessions
I wish I was playing more of this this year. We’ve almost escaped off the first planet we crash-landed more than a year ago (in real time) because scheduling has been a nightmare for six folks across three time zones. This is an excellent game for long-term campaigns. Since we started in December of 2023, we’ve played 19 sessions, 18 of which were on the same planet because our GM is so wonderfully talented at making the world feel massive as well as creating intriguing plot hooks and quests. I love that Daggerheart took inspiration from the light and dark side points for the hope and fear mechanic. The Edge of the Empire dice system would be completely opaque to me without the online website that tallies things for us, so I’m taking off one star for that.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Mausritter | 1 one-shot + 4 campaign sessions
Another deadly OSR game, but I’m having fun playing it in a mini-campaign format using the Tomb of a Thousand Doors mega-dungeon. We’re still relatively early in the campaign, but I think this would be best as a one-shot. We’ll see if this one game can’t change my mind about OSR not being too deadly for longer-term play.

⭐⭐⭐ | Wildsea | 11 campaign sessions
Wildsea’s worldbuilding is evocative. It’s a post-fall fantasy game set in tree ocean with ships that navigate it with chainsaws. Combat is looser than I’d like though, and I haven’t spent the time wrapping my mind around all the rules as we’re playing a GM-less campaign. There have been many moments where we’ve referenced the rules and left just as confused, so I’m taking off two points for that.

⭐⭐⭐ | MORK BORG | 1 one shot, 4 campaign sessions
While I enjoy this game for one-shots, leveling up in such a deadly environment is nearly impossible, so I think I’ll stick to one-shots or short, solo campaign play for this. Every instance of this has been a bit too dark that it’s wrapped around to being too silly to have any stakes to things.

⭐⭐⭐ | Racoon Sky Pirates | 1 one-shot
Not intended for campaigns, but perfect for a silly one-shot with friends who enjoy shenaniganry.

⭐⭐⭐ | Dialect: A Game About Language and How It Dies | 1 one-shot
Really interesting role-playing game that requires you to improvise terms and phrases that get incorporated into your lexicon. I feel like conlangers would go nuts with this game. All roleplay, no combat or exploration as far as I can recall.

⭐⭐⭐ | Daggerheart | 2 one-shots
This probably shines as a campaign, but my one-shot experiences left me feeling like it was too adjacent to D&D to be emergent enough for me, which can obviously vary depending on how much time you have to play, how large the table is, and what the DM’s style is like.

⭐⭐⭐ | Beak Feather and Bone | 1 one-shot
This collaborative map and lore-making game has a competitive stake-claiming element to it as well. I could see it be really great for some foundational worldbuilding to set a campaign in, but this is best as a one-shot.

⭐⭐ | Triangle Agency | 1 one-shot
Unlike Brindlewood Bay, it seemed like there was a GM preferred or pre-defined solution for solving the situation (capturing the anomaly) that my team tried to creatively achieve, but ultimately failed. It was very unsatisfying, and I prefer emergent game play over pre-defined solutions. It could have just been that the GM’s style was different than my preference though. It would be generous of me to give this game a second one-shot chance with a different GM.

⭐ | Dragonbane | 1 tournament
I played this as part of a tournament where each table competed to solve or beat the same dungeon with various other dimensions about our creativity scored as well. Some of the dungeon puzzles lacked any scaffolding/clues to solve which was frustrating even though we got 2nd place in this tournament. The poor module design really soured things for me, so I’m not keen on exploring this one again even though I should give it a second shot as I normally like Free League games.

⭐ | D&D West Marches | 2 sessions
Due to the nature of everyone wanting to level up in West Marches, the sessions felt a bit cookie cutter: small fight -> boss fight -> loot -> update EXP sheets and done. I’m just over playing D&D at this point.

I’ve wanted to update this blog with something insightful or at least thoughtful for months, but depression and getting in my own head about it prevented me from actually writing anything until now. I’ve decided that from now on, you will get neither thoughtful nor insightful posts here (if you ever got anything even close to that in the first place)–this blog will be merely self-indulgent, trivial updates on what I’ve been up to, and today’s post covers the past two months of buying and moving into my first (and last so help me Goddess) home.

It’s been nearly two months since my last post, but I have some good excuses: I got hit with another depressive episode (I’m already back to baseline thanks to help from my psychiatrist, so don’t worry–I just don’t have as good a handle on my bipolar as I thought I did), and then we bought a house and moved into it. The move itself was a herculean feat of coordination with the brunt of it landing squarely on my wife’s shoulders given I was depressed for most of the time leading up to the move which is exactly when many logistics needed to be coordinated. Luckily, my wife is infinitely capable, determined, and optimistic, so she stepped up without complaint or issue. Not only can she drive a box truck across town, she can also whip up a discord to coordinate across 14 folks helping with a scrappy, DIY move. I’m a very lucky spouse.

Compared to my traumatizing move from Japan to the US where we each had to take some time to cry alone on the floor of our empty walk-in closet with the lights off, no one had a meltdown and nothing broke or got lost this time around. The actual moving day only lasted four hours, including U-HAUL pick up and drop off and two trips of loading and unloading the box truck. The first unload took less than 10 minutes, which was truly remarkable. We broke up the volunteers amongst two teams, and I was captain of the unloading team. We kept spirits high, getting to know each other (name, pronouns, astrological signs, fun facts). I even found out that one of my friends has seen two people die including their brains splatter (both were freak accidents), which is not quite a typical “fun” fact, but it was definitely on brand for them. I’m so grateful I was surrounded by friends because it’s hard, maybe impossible for me to be stressed when I’m amongst them. Even if I’m depressed, my extroversion just hijacks my brain and makes me feel better instantly. This and my ability to perfectly estimate which tupperware container will exactly fit leftovers are probably my only two actual superpowers.

Even with this positive experience though, I never, ever want to move again. Since we own this place now, or rather we owe a lot of money to a bank that owns this place technically, we won’t have to unless something extremely dramatic happens. This permanence hasn’t stopped me from still keeping the original boxes and styrofoam for all our fragile items like the TV and my desktop PC, a habit I picked up from renting and moving every couple of years for over a decade. It’s only been three days since the move though, so I’m definitely not used to homeownership yet, much less the creaks and quirks of this home. However, it’s all growing on me, and I know my partner and I will be really happy here long-term.

I’m currently in a very rare but exciting season of my life where I feel like I can and want to make commitments to myself again, so I’ve undertaken several: a new, fully remote job, The Artist’s Way (a book that covers a 12-week program to revive your creativity), and walking 10,000 steps a day. Since I’m ever wary of my ability to sustain my commitments, this post will cover what I’ve been trying to do to make them viable long-term.

To figure out how to make remote work work for me, I took to the internet, skipping over all those early 2020 videos that gave advice on how to adapt to a new pandemic reality. I looked for folks who had been working remotely for a decade or more, and primarily their advice boiled down to having a strict morning and evening routine to bookend the workday and taking breaks. I’m still figuring out the exact aspects of my morning routine, but so far I like to start out by making a fun-flavored coffee or tea to take on my 40-60+ minute morning walk before work. This walk helps me in a variety of ways:

• It psychologically replicates a commute to get me emotionally prepared for the work day ahead
• The long walk duration gets me close to my daily step goal of 10,000 steps since I’m not really doing any other form of exercise at the moment
• The sunlight helps wake me up fully (more about the neuroscience here)
• Seeing other people on their morning walks/runs and commutes takes me out of my head, reminding me that I’m not alone in my challenges nor in my persistence past them
• It gives me an opportunity to visualize my ideal self/life, practice affirmations, meditate, and read an audiobook, all of which come from the Miracle Morning routine
• It makes me feel like I’m taking care of myself first thing, which helps me trust myself to do so in the future

My evening routine looks very different. I try to have an evening event to look forward to after work, so I can fully detach. Before going to the event though, I like to make a list of what I need to work on the next day to give myself direction, log what I did that day for reporting purposes, put my laptop away, fully clean off my desk, and then get into my “Morning Pages” from The Artist’s Way. If you’re unfamiliar with morning pages, they’re three hand-written stream-of-consciousness pages to be written first thing in the morning. I found no value in writing them before work as I’d have to immediately shut off my creative side and power through my emails and task lists. I felt it was a much better use of my time and energy to start the morning pages as soon as I had time to explore creative pursuits after work. Thus, I settled on writing my morning pages in the evening. I also don’t write a full three pages. I fill two pages in my Hobonichi weeks notes section, using tiny cursive that fits within the miniscule grid paper. I felt like two pages was sufficient for me because I often get partially though these pages, and it still feels like a slog to complete. I also don’t sweat it if I can’t write my morning pages religiously every day. I’d rather stick with the program over 12-weeks than stop simply because I didn’t write two full pages one day.

Given that more adults than ever have had the experience of working or studying remotely thanks to the pandemic, I invite anyone to share their remote work routines and how they evolved over time. I’d love to learn from you! This post is meant to capture where I started out with my own routines, so that I can later reflect and iterate on it to make it even more helpful and sustainable for me in the future.

I’ve had a rough few weeks since my last post characterized by intensifying feelings of depression, loneliness, and anxiety. I’ve finally managed to get appointments with a new therapist and psychiatrist next week, so I’m going to be fine as help is on the way, but I wanted to document a few strategies I’ve been using to help me get through this rough patch. None of the following strategies are a substitute for qualified medical support though, and everyone should get crisis support if needed. This is just what’s been helping me:

Stopping the start of a spiral: stay off mainstream social media, especially at night
I’m more emotional at night, and I have no way to channel that productively when I’m supposed to be going to bed. If I get agitated during the day, I can at least use the 5 calls app to contact my reps, protest, volunteer, etc. I also find that the excuse of needing to doomscroll so I can stay plugged into the news doesn’t really hold water. When I volunteer, organizers inform me of the news and latest threats to a cause, and getting the news from them is much less overwhelming and much more actionable. Getting upset and feeling hopeless while I read news on my phone in bed late at night does not meaningfully advance any causes, so there’s no reason why I should be doing this. Better to spend all that scroll time getting actually involved in making the world a better place.

Getting back in control: temporarily halt overwhelming thoughts with meditation
Due to some glitch or oversight, I still have a paid headspace account, so I’ve been using that to find meditations relevant to whatever feeling threatens to overwhelm me in the moment. The app just keeps prompting me to bring attention to my breath, do a body scan, notice things with my senses around me, or send loving kindness to myself and others, which feels kind of like a grift; however, I’m not paying for it anymore, and it’s effective enough, so I keep using it. After just ten minutes or less of meditation, I usually feel that the overwhelm has diffused to the point where I can start improving my mental situation through movement. If I’m still feeling overwhelmed, I just pick one after another until I don’t anymore.

Short-term relief through movement
I haven’t been running lately, but weight lifting and walking have felt somewhat accessible. I’ve been following a free lifting program that’s based on a meta-analysis of the most effective exercises for building muscle. I followed the previous iteration of this workout based on research from a few years ago and created visible biceps for the first time in my life, so I’m excited about the updated version. Anyways, doing this workout requires me to focus on my form for about 30 minutes, and that shift in mental focus away from anxiety persists far beyond the last rep. Walking is a little less effective than lifting because I don’t really need to maintain proprioceptive awareness while doing it (thus allowing my mind more opportunity to wander back towards rumination), but I throw on an engaging podcast like Behind the Bastards and rid my mind of the bad feelings for an hour. Both forms of exercise create mental bandwidth needed to course correct the trajectory of my day away from sad bed rotting.

Longer-term relief by being in community
Whether I hang out in the chat of a friend’s stream, volunteer, or play games with friends over discord, being in community is the most powerful antidote to my loneliness. It turns my attention away from inner turmoil and toward the outside world and all the people and causes I care about. After being in community, I experience the strongest and most persistent mood boost that far surpasses what I get from solo endeavors.

I don’t really know how to end this post, but if you’ve read this far and you’re struggling right now too, I see you. It sucks so much, but you’re not alone. We’re not alone. These feelings are just temporary, and it’s going to get better. Let’s hang in there together. 🫂