here's something a little different
You'll notice the #thoughts tag alongside #blog here. Generally, #blog is for in-the-moment updates, and #thoughts dives even deeper into personal reflections. More candid, more opinions, and a way to help me process ideas. If you're interested in a behind-the-scenes look at Better Lete Than Never as ideas simmer before being distilled, these kinds of posts will offer a few glimpses of that.
For those who just want the essay-style reviews and recommendations, where opinions are measured and objectivity is king (at least, that's the goal!), feel free to skip the #thoughts posts and enjoy those tagged "evergreen" for obsessively-researched pieces designed to be relevant beyond considerations of time or season.
If you choose to stick around, thank you. Let's talk about the backlog in 2025.
'24 → '25: no grandiose statements, just thoughts
I think most of us have some form of a backlog. My hobbies are often shaped by mine: it's not just "I want to play a game" or "I want to read a book"--it's also "what can I check off my list?" And I think most can relate to that list growing faster than we can reduce it.
For me, the psychological shift from 2024 to 2025 marked the prior 365 days as done. Not necessarily "filled," but "irrecoverable." No doom-and-gloom here, this is my silly video games and anime blog. But it's a moment of being realistic with myself that time is finite. Yes, the F-word.
I go back and forth on how much I stress about "optimizing" my time. At one point I would try to play a new game every day, and read new books and manga in the time between. A later phase, I'd have a single game that consumed everything, leading me to put around 2,000 hours into PSO2.
Now I'm in a middle-ground. I'll dive deep into an obsession when the opportunity presents itself, but otherwise I make a point to try out new things regularly. Now let's take a look back at 2024 and talk a little on 2025.
Reading in 2024 → 2025
Reading wasn't quite in the backseat in 2024, but it might have been riding shotgun. A few sci-fi films got me into the mood for spending time with Philip K. Dick's short stories. They're nice punctuation to my slow progress through Maruyama Kugane's Overlord light novels. I'm a fan of the anime adaptations and spin-off manga, so these light novels are a treat. Meanwhile, as part of my Doom obsession, I've started David Kushner's Masters of Doom.
However, most of my reading time in 2024 was split evenly between two main culprits: technical research literature for work and SNS/Twitter manga. The latter was a mix of doujinshi previews (usually the first chapters of an upcoming Comiket or Comitia release) and made-for-SNS series. Compared to a manga-heavy 2023, 2024 is relatively restrained. I generally cycle through different hobbies to avoid burnout, and by the end of 2023, I needed a break from manga.
2025 might be a year of reading. After a long work day, the stimulation of video games can be overwhelming, and sometimes dim lamplight and a book is all I want, or need.
Listening in 2024 → 2025
As a lover of all thing doujin, I have a long-term goal of listening to as much doujin music as I can get my hands on. Comiket, M3, Reitaisai, you name it, it's all game; every trip to Japan I come back with stacks of CDs. 2024 was the Year of Denpa as the dominant genre, with a primary focus on releases between 2007 and 2017.
Having something whimsical and high-energy, with the occasional shadow in the corner to keep things spicy was fitting as the meta-anthem of this year for me. Denpa is a long-time favorite genre of mine, but it can get to be a little much in large doses. For 2025 I'd like to go back to my usual habit of listening to a more eclectic selection of artists, hopping around to fit my mood at the time.
There are a couple albums I discovered or rediscovered last year that I'd love to write about. Figuring out the logistics on how best to talk about them in text will be the fun challenge.
Playing in 2024 → 2025
In the realm of gaming, Steam was my platform of choice for 2024. Of the roughly 100 games I played last year, around 85 of them were on Steam. This was an intentional effort, knowing that Steam is ultimately a commercial DRM system that won't last forever. Every dollar I spent on Steam comes with the understanding that it's spent on a license to play for Steam's remaining lifespan, whatever that might be.
I say this as a fan of Steam and Valve as a whole. I love them and what they do, but recognize the inherent limitations of their services. Very much an "enjoy it while it lasts" kind of deal.
2024 was also the Year of the Steam Deck, a late acquisition but probably my favorite purchase of the year. The Steam Deck is best approached with realistic expectations: it's a small-form-factor Linux touchscreen laptop with built-in gamepad controls, running off of Arch-based SteamOS for an "it-just-works" experience out of the box. If you venture beyond the Steam integration and outside of its tight core support, you'll have to put in a little work.
My budget of Linux tinkering energy was mostly exhausted after setting up my daily-driver EndeavourOS system (also Arch-based... or just Arch depending on who you ask) earlier this year. So while I appreciate the Steam Deck's flexibility, it's not something I've really explored much yet. But simply playing on it? Yes. Love it. I'll certainly write more about it in the future.
As for the actual games: 2024 was fighting games, Forza Horizon 4, chill idlers, casual games, my discovery of Survivors-type gameplay, and finally playing Vampire Survivors itself. And, perhaps most important of all, 2024 was Doom.
Doom was my late-year obsession, one that gives me plenty to explore. The joy I've found in experiencing anything and everything Doom is why I've started some rather ambitious projects in the form of the Grand Tour and Ten Years of Doom. Let's keep DOOM-ing into 2025.
Projects in 2024 → 2025
My sense of time must be all sorts of distorted: it doesn't feel real that I launched Better Lete Than Never in July of 2024. Was it a short time or a long time? I'm not sure of that either.
In its short(?) runtime, the blog has been a great outlet for me put my thoughts into words, crystallizing them as I talk about my hobbies and the experiences they bring. I'm still experimenting on how I want to run the blog and associated Bluesky account, and in a sense, the experiments should never stop. The best thing about a hobby project is the ability to play around. The stakes aren't zero (I couldn't run anything so flippantly, just-for-fun or not), but the pressure is way lower.
Scope creep is something I manage professionally so it's funny when I do it to myself. I'll have large, grand ideas for the blog or Bluesky microblog even when I try not to be overambitious. It's a common experience, and one that I try to approach with a sense of amusement: "oh, this'll take much longer to finish than I had thought."
The blog has also been great to further tune my writing. I worry less about perfectionism here and feel I can spread my wings, but still care deeply about putting out quality writing. Nobody's going to put all these posts into a $100 book, but I still like to think that if such a thing ever happened, I've written in a way that wouldn't embarrass me if someone dropped real cash on that book.
I guess my backlog-of-backlogs is itself a project. It used to be an amorphous "I'll get to it later" list but thanks to the blog, it's more of a tangible undertaking. This is a good thing, and it's helped clear the fog that covers the mountain and lets me see its size more accurately, so to speak.
what's next
Every commitment I make on a personal hobby project has a 50% chance for me to end up doing something completely different. So think of these as a list of "things I might want to do in 2025" rather than any firm promises.
Here's what you can flip a coin on:
- More anime. Finishing up another season of Initial D and Slayers, and maybe revisiting some old comfortable favorites.
- More music. Let's see if I can do some album reviews/recommendations.
- More manga. SNS manga are great for a quick bit of entertainment, but what about full doujinshi or serialized manga? Maybe some more of those next.
- Less gaming. I'm starting to take breaks from video games in favor of some of my other hobbies. This is a natural outcome of 2024 being so gaming-heavy. Video games are still one of my favorite pastimes but I need to pace myself to not get burnt out.
- Continuing to procrastinate on visual novels. I actually love visual novels. I just never play them anymore. Will 2025 be the year I finally come back? Probably not. But I can dream.