October 19, New York: Now that was three months of media consumption! The first half of this year, I had finished less than a quarter of my list and was really struggling to make up lost ground. I made it my goal in this three months to get two-thirds of the way through and I completely surpassed that mark. 73 percent! It was quite the summer.
I completed two entire themes of Thirty-Three Project writing: A long waltz through nerddom and Constructing an identity through media, that last one just today.
In Long Waltz, I:
- Replayed the very first version of Sid Meier’s Civilization.
- Watched Star Wars in Machete Order. (I recommend this viewing experience.)
- Wrote about how the movie Hackers changed my life. Seriously.
- Discovered a sub-theme of gnosticism in my re-reading, that included The Invisibles, VALIS and Neon Genesis Evangelion, which I attempted to explain for once and for all.
With the conclusion of that Long Waltz, I jumped right into the theme of Constructing an identity through media— all of the albums, books, movies that I publicly cultivated an affinity for:
- Such as my middle school obsession with Jimi Hendrix
- Or how A Hero of Our Time is actually the perfect book for teenagers.
- I was hugely into Ani DiFranco.
- And I discovered that I now despise both main characters of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
I also launched a newsletter, to let readers keep up in their inboxes instead of just on this site.
All told, I really cranked through the media these last three months. For many weeks, I kept myself to an average of seven posts per week. (Seven!) Let’s see how that affected the old numbers?
TV shows: 6 of 10 | 60 percent
Albums: 47 of 56 | 84 percent
Books: 31 of 43 | 72 percent
Movies: 22 of 36 | 61 percent
Games: 3 of 4 | 75 percent
Total 110 of 150 | 73 percent
Just shy of 75%! I still have a fair amount left to consume and there are some big time commitments in there (I’m working my way through Dragon Age: Origins right now, which is easily 25+ hours of gameplay). I have left a chunk of miscellaneous posts and also one remaining theme: “My creative work and influences”. I’ll do that last. That will actually come with a little more material added to the list, as I’ve decided to review not just the influences, but my own creative work as well. We’ll see how that stands up in the cold light of the present.
January’s just around the corner!