September 2010 Recap

Well, that was a bit of an interesting month. We led off with 17 posts in 8 days, on pace to shatter our old record with 64 posts in a month. But then all went silent for ten days and the pace dropped to a meager 30 posts. At the end of the 29th, we stood at only 23 posts. But then a ridiculous final day (kind of our specialty, I must say) brought us back up to 30. So all in all, not so bad. Neglecting recaps and "three sentence reviews," there were 25 posts on the month. That's our lowest total since 2009 when only Sweeney and I were logging and blogging. But if we're looking for someone to blame for the dropping numbers, we need to look directly at me.

My 8 loggings still led the way ahead of Marissa's 6, Sween's 4, Trevor's 4, and Webber's 3. (Keith's second consecutive month of 0 didn't help either, but blaming him would be like blaming a lost game on someone who didn't play - possible, sure, but still misguided.) But regardless of how I stacked up in comparison to everyone else, I very much paled in comparison to my former glory. After 13 consecutive months of double-digit posting, I fell hard this month. My 11 loggings last month were no triumph either; after averaging 21.4 posts per month in the first year of the Back-Blogged project, I've put up just 19 total in two months since. What, then, is hampering my efforts?

You can question a lot of things, but don't question my interest level. It's there. I swear it is. But I doubt it's coincidental that I began working a full time job in the last week of July and have since then put up my two worst performances ever. September, particularly, has been a pretty stressful month due to personal and familial reasons. Details aren't necessary, but suffice it to say that two cousins, a parent, a grandparent, and a great-grandparent all went into the emergency room at one point or another this month. One died, one almost did, and one is going to within a matter of months. So, yeah. September kind of sucked outside of this little blog as well.

But September has ended, and it's time for me to wake up! (Ugh. Had to. Sorry.) October is a new month filled with new possibilities, and as the days grow shorter and colder there will be all the more reason to stay inside and DVD, book, or game it up. September has reminded me that life is short and unpredictable - so I need to kill off this monumental backlog of mine while I'm young and still can do it! With this in mind, I've got a new monthly goal in mind for October. Lucky 7s! My goal is to complete seven video games, seven books, and seven DVDs this month. Impossible? Hardly! That's 21 loggings and my career average, these past two shitty months included, has been 19.7. So this is totally possible! Since specific goals are always easier to achieve than vague ones, I'll map out my course, at least partially, right here and now.

Gaming-wise, I should definitely be able to finish off FF3, Onimusha, Halo: Reach, and Left 4 Dead 2. The latter two games are ones I am co-oping with friends, so I will blame them and them exclusively if I fail to beat them. The remaining three games could be any variety of quick beats; I've still got a few Sonic games and Calls of Duty. (Proper pluralizing, right?) When it comes to books, I can definitely finish off Mockingjay and should also be able to get festive and do Dracula and Frankenstein for Halloween's sake. The remaining four are up in the air. And regarding DVDs, I mean, if I can't rattle off seven movies (a whopping 14 hour commitment) then I should probably quit my loggin' quest altogether. Right? Right. Cool. Here I go!