Games, Movies, Music

 I wanted to talk about some of my other 52 for 52s. These are the ones I didn't talk about in any previous blog posts because I was trying to keep the blog focused on art and creativity. But, a) I don't really want to limit myself like that anymore and b) watching movies, listening to music, and playing games is actually part of the creative process. It's part of the input phase. The things we experience go in and the creativity comes out. A creative person takes inspiration from all kinds of places and I don't want to discount that part of the process.

So, games. We have a lot of board games. This picture shows only some of them. Another couple of shelves were cut out of the picture. This picture actually kind of sucks, but I don't like to make a blog post without a photo, so...

We actually used to have more, but last year we did a challenge in which we played all of our games in alphabetical order (one game night per week, playing two each time--you can do the math) and we culled some of the ones we didn't like very much. We did that because we were feeling like we never got any use out of the games we had. We bought them, played them once, and then let them sit on the shelf gathering dust. And then when we did pull one out we'd say, okay now, how do you play this again? And we'd have to relearn it all over. (I mean for the more complicated ones--we do know how to play Uno.)

I was still feeling like I needed some structure to make sure that we made use of our game collection so I included it in my 52 for 52 challenge. One game played per week. Only, you know, I'm way behind. I'll get caught up by the end of June. Yesterday we played Uno and Scrabble. Today we played Tsuro, and in a few minutes we will play Kingdomino and Zombie Dice. When I say we, by the way, I mostly mean me and Pat (the husband), but occasionally our youngest joins in. 

Movies! I used to watch movies a lot more often. I have been feeling for a long time that I have let that particular pleasure of mine slip away. Maybe it's a problem of loss of focus due to too much social media. Maybe it's something else, I don't know. But when I was in classes at ASU finishing up my degree recently, I had more than one class that required me to watch some films and they kind of rekindled something in me. I have realized that I need to make time for watching movies. Time to appreciate the storytelling, the acting, the visuals. It can feel so good to just sit there after a good movie and let it settle in your brain. Again, I'm behind but working on catching up. Currently we have Apple TV (I like to rotate through streaming services) so I am trying to find films available there for these final days of June. So far, Pat and I have watched Outcome and On the Rocks. The first was okay, the second was better. To me, anyway. Pat thought On the Rocks was painfully boring.

And then there's music. We pay for a Spotify family account, but I feel like I don't listen to it often enough. Again, this feels like a thing that I used to enjoy more but that has inexplicably become something that I do less and less. It might have been a situation in which I listened to less and less over the years because it bothered the kids and the kids were who I was spending almost 100% of my time with for so long. But they've gotten older and I have more time to myself and listening to music isn't going to bother anyone, so I want to make it more of a habit. I'm trying to listen to both new-to-me music as well as tried and true stuff. I'm using the alphabet as a guide and listening to at least one album per week, with the first 26 weeks being albums whose title start with A, then B, then C, and so on, and the second 26 weeks I will listen to albums by artists whose names start with Z, then Y, then X, and so on. This is one 52 for 52 that I'm not behind on. I might list them all at the end of the year here, just for... I don't know, for the sake of something to post, I guess.