Quarter 1 2015 Notes

I placed the first two sections under a spoiler as they're pertaining to work which some of you know I'm already discussed a lot on, but it's there for anyone who's interested in reading.

Work

The Same Old Song and Dance with Work

The story’s no different for me in the first quarter of this year. A majority of my time continues to be dedicated toward constantly dealing with the never ending swarms of workload at my job. You would think I’d be used to all of the challenges of the weekday grind of work by now, but there’s always a curveball that catches you off-guard and takes a surprising toll mentally. I did my best to handle everything on my way without having to resort to expend many extra hours, but it already became so much that I had another mental breakdown in the office on February 13. I’m handling the stress of work okay since then and hope that I do not suffer another breakdown anytime soon as I got more work on my plate in supervising a new part-time biller employee starting April 6.

Today (March 27) was the first time I used up any of my vacation time this year, so that tells you how tough it’s been to even find an opportunity to take a personal day off. Even though I am grateful to have a weekday off, there’s always the risk that I’ll have to work twice as hard on Monday to tackle any work I missed on my day off. Henceforth I have so much vacation time (over 250 hours!) that I know I’ll never fully use. There’s just too much going as I’m entrenched in the operations of the office for the company that I just can’t find any good opportunities to even take a week-long vacation outside of the lower than usual activity the week in-between Christmas and New Years. The best I could do is to find that small window to take a day off.

The only positives I see for the company is that they’re finally getting around taking care of the billing/finance group. Two smaller but still very active offices finally have their own in-house biller to conduct their billing business to. The company hired another controller to take more care of the operations side of the finance stuff and the person we can finally report and ask to on a full-time basis on certain items. For my office, the new hire of the new part-time biller is supposed to help decrease some of our more constant monotonous work so that we can focus on more important items, though I have my doubts.

The Reinvigorated but Frustrated Search for a New Job

After I had my mental breakdown in the office, I decide it was finally time to dedicate part of my time looking for new jobs. It’s been an item I’ve always wanted to put more than in years past, but always let other stuff take precedent over it. I’m surprised that I’ve struck with it as much as I have up to this point, but I’ve been frustrated in looking into each job posting carefully and feel confident enough to submit an application. I applied for three job postings in the past months, though I think the one I posted over a month ago is probably a loss, and having no response so far on the other two applications is not encouraging. I’m definitely continuing the hunt, though I fear my experience and the new workload with the new part-time biller coming up will hamper my efforts.

Though I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting, my working experience at my current occupation is anything but accounting. In spite of being in the workforce for close to 8 years, I fear my experience is hampering my chances in some of the actual staff accountant positions I’m gunning for. I absolutely do not want to do the same exact things for a new employer; I really want to work with more accounting relevant responsibilities. I’ll continue to search for jobs relevant to accounting, but may adjust if I’m still out of luck with more of my applications for accountant positions falls through.

Gaming

Shit Luck with Gaming This Quarter

I started off the year well with two games that I found to be highly enjoyable in different spectrums. Valiant Heart was a game that took me by surprise by its heartfelt story from its cast of characters set in World War I and providing some neat history notations of the war. I also loved the graphic/art look of the game and the simple puzzle gameplay didn’t hamper my enjoyment of the game at all. Puyo Puyo Tetris succeeded to my eyes by providing an enjoyable and interesting set of game modes utilizing both franchises’ gameplay. I found the regular versus mode where you can have PP v PP, T v T, or PP v T the most enjoyable mode from this crossover game, but all of the other modes that have more crossover elements in play are well designed and have are mostly fun in their own right.

Unfortunately, all the other games I decided to tackle this quarter ended up adding to the frustration with the stressful commitment to work and important life stuff. Tactics Ogre’s pains were its micro management, drawn out campaign, and challenging stages that border on impossible if you haven’t gotten your army managed right. Oreshika suffered with surprising limited options over the control of your clan, annoying micro management, and stale battles and dungeons. Both OlliOlli games were hampered with the trick stick method of performing tricks, strict and constant prompts to hit a button to land, and more in the case of OlliOlli 2, convoluted level design. The most frustrating part about all of those games I didn’t have such a great time with is that they all have elements of being a great game but fell apart on how it went about it.

The Battle to Find That Gaming Fire, Again and Again

I wrote a blog on March 15 where I wanted to express my waning enjoyment of playing games, but it didn’t quite get the message out as well as I hoped. I don’t want to add in much to what I wanted to say, but I wanted to stress again that it’s been a constant struggle to constant regain that feeling of enjoyment from gaming. I had low points this quarter when I had my mental breakdown with work where my emotions were out of whack, and then the compounded frustration of continued stress from work and unsatisfactory gameplay from Oreshika and OlliOlli pushed me to do that blog.

My gaming mettle has been severely tested and it’ll continue to be pushed by a number of factors. Playing one good game soon may help turn it around a bit, but my concern is trying to sustain my gaming hobby outside of the ephemeral bursts of joy that it generates. Gaming has been a significant impact over my life, from having something in common with others during my childhood to being one of the few sources of relief in my working portion of my life. Hell, I wouldn’t have met without any of you guys without gaming. I apologize to all that I’m been way out of sorts so far this year and I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to quickly turn it around for the best, but I’ll bear it through and hopefully be in a better mental shape soon.

Miscellaneous Items

The only significant items I can bring up outside of constantly talking about work and gaming are the two music concerts I attended over this period. Both of them were okay, but at least it was something to break the monotony of going through the usual motions throughout the week. Outside of that and a return trip to two record stores, it’s sadly been more of the same.

The first concert I attended was Aesop Rock on February 27 at the Union Transfer. His act was okay and definitely connected with the crowd, but I felt his act disconnected with his persona expressed from his studio material, where he comes off more introverted and frustrated. But the act that hilariously stole the show was the second opener Homeboy Sandman. I’m still quite speechless from his act. My biggest personal complaint at the show was that I had to inhale a ton of second hand pot smoke in the venue. And no, I did not get high.

The second concert I attended was A Winged Victory for the Sullen on March 26 at the First Unitarian Church Sanctuary. That’s right, a concert held in a church. R5 Productions (one of the bigger concert promotion companies in Philadelphia, PA) typically runs concerts in the basement room of the church, but sanctions shows in the sanctuary for particular acts. The venue was the correct choice as the music sounded amazing. In spite of a good performance by the main act, I was a little surprised that they decided to kind of mish-mash their songs in a suite-type setlist and only played for an hour. The concert was done by 10:40, probably one of the shortest concerts I ever attended.

Music Albums I Thought Were Awesome

• The Aisler Set – How I Learned to Write Backwards
• Broadcast – Tender Buttons
• D’Angelo and the Vanguard – Black Messiah
• Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact
• Sannhet - Revisionist
• Six Organs of Admittance – Hexadic
• They Might Be Giants – Apollo 18
• Viet Cong – Viet Cong

Manga I Thought Were Awesome

• Prophecy Volume 2
• Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer Volumes 3-4
• Seraphim 26661336 Wings
• Whispered Words Volume 3 [Finale]

Q2 Items

As much as I’d like work to not be quite as hectic, the spring season is typically where work picks up a notch as weather becomes a non-factor in effecting work. The company suffered lower than expected financial results due to the cold and snowy weather and the President/CEO wants all employees to really ramp up their workload this quarter. I also have that part-timer that adds more to my plate. If I thought Q1 was bad, I really have to muscle through Q2.

I’ll do my best to continue to dedicate a few hours each week in looking into and applying for new relevant job postings out there, though I feel like I’m at an awkward crossroads with looking for a new place to work while my current employer has placed a lot on me with the added pressure of the part-time employee. But for me, the work I’m producing isn’t as engaging as it once was and I’m longing to do something different, or at least tasks more relevant to actual accounting work material.

There are two music concerts this quarter that I’m interested in going, but I’m not going to push as hard compared to the concerts I attended in Q1 to go. The ones that I’m eyeing in possibly going are They Might Be Giants on April 25 and Wire on June 2. I don’t think there are other events that I know of that I’d like to go in Q2. In Q3, I’d love to go back to Otakon and Summer Jam again.

[NEW BLACK LAGOON MANGA (Volume 10) APRIL 21!]

In the upcoming gaming release department, the only games that I’m strongly leaning toward purchasing at launch are Splatoon and Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker. I’ll also have Mighty No. 9 if that finally gets released this quarter. I’m probably going to pass on Etrian Mystery Dungeon despite of liking what it has presented so far, plus I’m way more interested in the other Etrian release later this year in Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold. I haven’t done a good job in limiting new games onto my backlog in Q1 (thanks to those certain PSN sales weeks), so I hope I don’t go too overboard in Q2.

I’m pretty stubborn and really like to see their games through to some sort of end, but I simply couldn’t go on with Oreshika and both OlliOlli games. So now with a new clean slate, I plan on tackling through Attack of the Friday Monsters A Tokyo Tale in one session (game is really short from what I read) and Shante and the Pirate’s Curse. I’ll get right into Splatoon once I acquire that game. Outside of those three is up for grabs, though I want to squeeze in Kid Icarus: Uprising in this quarter if possible.

I'm brainstorming of a new list that I want to post close a specific date in this quarter. It'll be similar to the Favorite Fighting Femme Fatales list in which I'll focus on favorite characters in certain games.

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That’s all I have to share for this blog. Thanks for reading! No really, thanks!