April 2011 Recap

After another month of diminishing post counts - a month in which three of seven people didn't post anything at all, two of them for the first month ever - you would probably expect me to complain about the lack of logging and bemoan that the effort is dwindling. But I'm not going to do that! Maybe I'm just in a good mood this weekend, but I don't see the point in whining about how we're not logging as much as we used to. Every single one of us had a below-average month, but maybe I'm too focused on those statistics like "total posts" and "average posts per month" lately to remember that the point of Back-Blogged isn't just to post blog entries, but to document the quest to clear out our backlogs. And while I can't know how the month went for other bloggers in terms of purchases and acquisitions, I can say that I personally bought and received no new books, games, or movies. My month-long post total of 11 is my second-lowest count all time, but my +11 progress actually makes for one of my most progressive months ever. So, yeah. I'm congratulating myself for a month well done.

Furthermore, it wasn't a "cheap" eleven. While two of the posts I made were Pain, a very short downloadable PSN game, and Counter-Strike, an FPS with a very limited single player experience, and one more was just a movie, the other eight were five books between 200 and 500 pages in length (legitimate novels, rather than short stories), one 17-hour season of television, and two medium-length PS3 games (with Uncharted clocking in at something like eight to ten hours and Infamous being a slightly more robust twelve to fifteen). I'm not saying I went balls to the wall this month, but if every month from here on out can be as efficient as this April was (and they won't be), I could be done clearing out the backlog in only a year or so. The key this month was no new acquisitions. This was the first month since January of 2010 in which I didn't buy any new games, and the first since November in which I got no new books or movies.

In terms of specific goals, I hit six of eight, missing both The Corner and Season 2 of The Sopranos by ten episodes combined. Sween went three for six, and Brian one for four. But that's okay. When have we ever cared about hitting our monthly goals anyway? They're more of a rough path forward than specific assignments, I think. That said, of course I'm making some goals for the month of May. And here they are.

• The Sopranos: Season 2 - Because in the spirit of finishing what I've started, I should finish what I've started.
• The Corner - Ditto.
• Saving Private Ryan - It's very rare and largely pointless to make the act of watching a single movie a monthly goal, but this isn't just any movie. It's a movie I've owned, without ever having seen it, for something like eight years. My second-oldest unlogged movie is mere months old. In the spirit of Memorial Day, let me finally put this one to rest.
• Player Piano - I've just barely started Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, but with twelve hours of plane rides in my near future, I should have plenty of time to finish it off.
• The Lost Symbol - Because why try for just one book? This is a long one (650 pages) but should make for a fast read. I mean, it's Dan Brown. Could make for decent plane literature.
• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - I want to ride the momentum of my recent gaming resurgence for as long as I can. Why not jump straight into the sequel of a game I enjoyed?
• Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - Speaking of sequels to games I enjoyed, I beat Sands of Time a full year ago, immediately bought four other games from the series, and have yet to actually play any of them. That needs to change! I should note that our Xbox has been on the fritz lately, and if I can't play through this game it may be because of reasons beyond my control.

Alright, that's seven goals for a month in which I'll be vacationing for 11 days and celebrating both my own birthday and my girlfriend's - and hopefully watching the local NBA and NHL team go deep into the playoffs. I'll do what I can!