Checking in: Last week my intention was to focus on what is in front of me and let the world disappear for a bit. I have spurts where I'm really good at this and spurts where I'm finding everything to distract me (social media, email, etc.). I have done a few things to remove distractions. I turned off email notifications for my social media accounts a while back and noticed that it made my email way less interesting to read. I also am using tmux at the moment to cordon off the more social session that I have for IRC and email. Perhaps I need to use that more often.

One thing that I've noticed is that I'm having a hard time getting started playing a solo RPG game. I've got several of them (OK, more than several) and I think part of it is the analysis-paralysis around making a decision and sticking with it. I think this happens a lot in my life. I've noticed it before when I purchased books for learning something. After a while I couldn't decide which of the books to read. I've trained myself where I seek out the "perfect" instead of the "what's in front of me". On the one hand that's good because I give myself a lot of different ideas but at the same time it becomes its own practice and form of entertainment. What doesn't ever happen is the actual thing that I wanted to learn. If only there were some advice I could learn from on how to manage this.

Oh wait, there is.

"How to Choose What to Learn" -- The Mediocre Programmer

Cough.

Anywho.

I've played Ironsworn in the past so I'm going to focus on that for now. Plus I want to play with the isscrolls program. I think setting a 30 minute timer per day to just play for a bit is enough to prime the pump on this one.

Regarding my "semi-social" challenge, I've been fixing bugs in tootstream like someone possessed. I'm surprising myself with hoe much I've accomplished in the past few weeks. Thing is, the more I've used the program the more I've noticed things that weren't working properly, things that I missed using other clients, and things that just didn't fit how I expected them to work. Expect a release of this by the end of the month.

I've noticed I do my best work when I'm immersed in whatever I'm working on. I think I need to give myself more opportunities to become immersed. I think the focusing challenge is a good start in this direction.

For this week my intention is to set aside 30m to play with Ironsworn using isscrolls and immerse myself in it. I might or might not blog about my adventures. I know that I work best when I have an audience but I also know that reading someone's notes about their game can be as dull as dishwater to read.

Eh, fuck it. I'll post them with the tag "Actual Play" so you can filter that out if you want to.

Ever onward.