The Patreon Letter - 29th Dec, 2019

Hello friends, Em here with the last letter of the year. It's sure been a hell of a year for us, and probably for most of you too. Seems like things will never get better, and at least for me it's very easy to fall into a despairing state of mind when the world continues to subject us to tragedies and aggressions of all shapes and sizes. 

That said, I try not to give into my fatalistic self, and on the cusp of a new year and new decade I find myself looking forward to new possibilities despite everything. Which is why I'm thankful for a thing I've written about negatively before: our fabled Abnormal Mapping spreadsheet, fresh for the new decade.

We've been using spreadsheets to track what we've been playing for years. There isn't a really exceptional games tracker website I ever wanted to invest time into, especially since we (once upon a time) play a bunch of very small games as much as we play big ones. It's much easier to fill out an end of year list when you remember everything you touched, and easier also when you're like me and can't remember the title of any creative work for who know's what reason. Sometimes we slacked on the spreadsheet, almost ever year there's a gap from like april-july when we finally realize we've neglected it and try to refill it back out from memory. But it remains invaluable, a great way to sit back and know yeah you've done plenty of work. 

There's a dark side to spreadsheets, of course, and any long time reader or listener will understand: it is a path to turning everything you do into Content and Productivity, things that we both struggle with a lot. Hell, one of the best/worst things of 2019 for me is finally getting to the point where I found a therapist to help with how locked in I get to working until I'm just falling apart. It's a very real problem that has caused a lot of harm, even if at the same time it has enabled the success of Abnormal Mapping, and my ability to survive and continue doing podcasts at all. But we keep doing them, because they are useful. 

Jackson made this one, in Qubeley/Ple colors because Gundam, and as we approach the new decade we decided to make a change to our approach. Instead of just tracking games, we are making one that tracks everything and anything we want to put on it. You'd think this would make my bad tendencies worse, but actually I've found it very freeing in the month we've been using it. In allowing to track whatever I see fit, I can fool the part of me that always feels guilty when I'm not working, by including such indulgences as 'listening to an album' or 'read a book for pleasure' which are things that I don't have podcasts about and probably never will have podcasts about. So they're just for me, but they also count as part of what I've been spending my time on in terms of media this year. Do I want to rewatch a movie? I could put that on there! Do I want to drop a show that I dislike? I'm looking at you, Mandalorian. You get to go on there, even though I didn't finish you and never will.

This also helps because media tracking sites are woefully inadequate. Why can't letterboxd track TV shows? Why do the anime and manga tracking sites not list western animation? I think both of these are huge oversights, but instead of looking for a more obscure cross-media platform, we just do it ourself. That way when I tell you that RWBY is the worst anime I saw in 2019 (we didn't make those lists, don't worry), you'll understand that we're taking a more generous approach to our definitions but the sentiment is real and considered.

I know many of my friends have wanted to create just such a spreadsheet, and after having done it for five years or so, I have some suggestions on how to keep at it and not let it ruin your life. 

1. If you aren't going to add things to the sheet immediately after finishing them, at least set up a weekly check in to add stuff so you get in the habit of doing so. I tend to do it right before or right after my regular Sunday podcast recording.

2. Only put things on there once you're done with them, whatever done means to you. That way you won't have 700 shows you watched one episode of cluttering your list causing you existential dread. If you don't have existential dread, then go right ahead, but for me I only put something on once I finished it. G Gundam isn't even on my list yet, and there's literally no way I don't finish G Gundam without mortal catastrophe befalling me.

3. Don't sweat not adding things to the list. Some weeks you just don't have it, maybe all you did was fall down a youtube hole or whatever. It's okay. On those weeks be thankful you measure your list in months or years and not days, because some times you have to live your life. We should never mistake consuming content for living, even if sometimes its only one that ensures the other. Be kind to yourself.

4. Most importantly, start this with someone. Maybe it's your partner, maybe it's your best friend, maybe it's just someone on twitter you commiserate with regularly about how you both wish you could be better selves. This isn't accountability, really, and it's certainly not a contest, but it helps to see someone else do things and know they're also seeing you add things, and no matter what you are both changing developing people who have expanded your horizons in whatever direction you picked over the course of the year.

And finally, not really a point, but don't take it too seriously. If this way of living doesn't work for you, it's okay to not do it. It probably isn't normal to try to chart everything you do, and often I wish I lived a life where nobody would ever call on me to list things I've seen or what I thought about them. I would just forget the titles of every book I ever read, and all anime would blur into each other, and I would play four games a year and be happy about it. If that's you? Let that be you! If there's one thing I hope we've hammered home in our six plus years of doing this, it's that we wouldn't recommend this path for anyone. Enjoy things like a normal person as much as you can, and only list things if it truly does make you feel better to lean back and look at the list when you're done.

Metrics are the curse of our age, even if sometimes I find them useful. Make the metrics you want as human as possible, try not gameify your life, and always remember that just being a person is enough even if you don't read or watch or play or listen to a goddamn thing for the rest of your life.

Until next time,

Em