Magic the Gathering

I’ve been struggling a lot with my identity lately. The eternity of 2020 has done a lot to push mortality into the minds of everyone. But I also feel that I’ve been experiencing a heightened push in that regard from other angles as well. We watched Breaking the Rules, which was really not very good, but did make me think. Then I got the kidney stone over the holidays, which, while not life threatening, kind of put my life on pause for a month.

I got sick on December 19th and didn’t stop. I’m now on my final dose of some antibiotic I’ve never heard of following shock wave lithotripsy. I’m incredibly lucky it was just a kidney stone (and food poisoning before that). But it did pretty much destroy any plans I had for the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. During my sick time I did a lot of vegging. I had filed vacation for the final two weeks of the year anyway.

Haibane Renmei is an anime I return to again and again. There’s an idea introduced in the first few episodes that resonates with me far outside the bounds of the show: The main characters are restricted to only own items that are used. I never finished the show. So I never learned why this limitation is placed on the Haibane. The more important thing for me is that this limitation sounds like an interesting guideline for myself.

Following my Dominaria United prerelease attendance for Magic the Gathering, I wasn’t quite feeling like MtG was right for me. Star City Games also had Flesh and Blood at the Con in Columbus. So I had the game on my radar, but, to be honest, I was looking at every trading card game in print in the hopes to cure the itch. Options After watching a lot of videos, I had ruled out Yugioh and Pokemon from my current interests.

After more than 5 years of playing off and on, my best friend and I finally finished Final Fantasy XII! I’ve been playing FFXII off and on since its release in 2006. So when we committed to play the game together I was hopeful we would actually complete it. I had no idea it would take this long. We only played on Fridays for a few hours and only in person.

I’m in a bit of a holding pattern here. My freshly rekindled Magic hyperfixation is simmering along. Other than spending money and watching YouTube, I haven’t done much with it. My new plan is to put together a commander deck for Friday Night Magic, go once, and then re-evaluate my priorities. Gaming As expected, I’m finished Destiny 2’s Season of the Haunted seal! Trying to figure out how much time I’m willing to put into Solstice.

So much stuff going on, but in the middle of it all I have, at least temporarily, found my next hyperfixation. It’s Magic the Gathering… I’m pretty ambivalent about this, but I seriously have no control over it. Even though large portions of me want to ignore it, I can’t help myself. I’ve played Magic off and on since Mirage, which was released in 1996. I really like the gameplay. I really like the fun of opening packs and seeing new cards.

This is my second time taking a look through my open tabs. I have a lot of long lived tabs once again! Time to clean house and get some of these archived. Even with all of these closed I still have 67 tabs open on my phone’s browser… You can see part 1 of this series here. From Truant to Anime Screenwriter This is the offical translation of an autobiography by an anime screenwriter on JNovel Club.