Hoo boy. I know everyone was saying 2021 was shite but it's hard to argue with them. Much like 2020, 2021 for me started good for a month or two and then dipped. In 2020 it was just the dip of lockdown and fear from March to late autumn before things started to open up again. In 2021, it was a meltdown of sorts until I hit rock bottom in the summer and then slowly recovered back to the present, end of 2021 where I'm just fine.
EDIT Jan 2nd 2022: This was very negative for some reason so I will say this: I got to meet up with a few good friends over the year, I still got to go out a few times, family and friends are healthy and safe and other than that not much happened felt like a continuation of 2020. So not too bad overall just a bit blehhh. I mainly could not cope with constantly feeling sun-struck in the summer so was delighted to move to evening shift.
Some topics:
52 takeaways
I actually ate food from 59 different takeaways in Galway this year. I originally planned to only eat from new places but I was eating takeaway on average twice a week so I fell back on classics as well as some of the good new ones. Here they are:
- mcdonalds
- botown
- galway tandoori
- goldenmountain
- bun bros
- four star
- umbrella
- curryandspice
- woozza
- boojum
- YUMMY WOK - best spice bag I had.
- papa johns
- nuthot
- subway
- milanos
- burger king
- handsome burg
- bare pantry
- charcoal mary street
- dominos
- shake dog
- hush? burgers
- VOCHO - amazing loaded fries, got me trying loaded fries everywhere for a while
- wholly cow
- speedos
- scottys
- CHARCOAL - cross ST
- zambrero - great burritos and the amazing ice cream cookie sandwiches
- cap cabin
- bun and burger co
- da roberta
- sliders bar n grill
- underground
- harrys - great burgers, beautiful frozen cocktails. Good desserts.
- venice
- classico
- mizzoni
- capones
- chef laura rosso
- apache
- burgerstory
- pizzamax
- mcdo central
- gourmet offensive
- anfora
- lolo
- jalan jalan
- bangin noodles
- neo
- spice india
- giovannis
- tulsi
- supermac
- osteria
- chili shACK
- china garden
- xian street food
- samyo
- kashmir
So that was fun, definitely gave me more places to go back to. I only did that because I ordered so much four star in 2020.
Ogame
I played this briefly in 2015/16 and for a year in like 2007 but have been playing this again since 2020 and taking big vacations here and there. I think I spent March 2021-September 2021 on vacation mode. Despite that I have made it to rank 165 roughly out of 1900+ players. I'll return to it in a few months I worked really hard at it from October to December but just need a break.
Survival modes, Very Hard
These deserve a solo post, maybe in January. I played Fallout 4, Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3 to completion on Very Hard difficulty and you know what, it wasn't too bad! I will do a post in January on all 3 of them, why not.
Final Fantasies
I have posted about 1 and 2 already and my 100% completion of same. They deserve a mention here as I never played them before and they made an impression on me that's for sure, especially 2.
Top 2021 song(s)
This is a tough one. I had to disqualify a few that were actually released in 2020.
Cold Heart
Back4good
Bed
Remember
My Universe
Bad Habits
Red
Easy on Me
...are some faves from 2021. I'll give the award to Becky Hill. Olivia and RAYE can follow that.
Work blab
I went from easy work at night to harder work in the daytime. Since October I am doing the harder work on a much more preferable evening shift. I start at 4:45 and finish at 1:15 Mondya to Thursday and on Friday it's 2:15 to 7:15. It's super chill, I can continue walking 5km to work and back (something I've done every workday since January) and less people. Also they are just generally sound in there.
DND
One of the things that kept me sane this year. As a player I got to play in the 5e campaign Curse of Strahd start to finish. Played an Aarakocra Gloomstalker Ranger and it was great fun. As a player I only play 'team player' type characters so as awesome as my flying and long range sniping was the party came first. Finished the game with some awesome equipment and lessons learned.
As a GM: I only returned to GMing full time in mid 2020 after a hiatus since 2016, even then last time I was properly full time was like August 2011 so like 9 years. ANYWAY I have made various posts about the campaign which is basically a heavily edited Doomstones/Crystals of Power campaign from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay edition 1 crossed with my own stuff. This is based off the deposition of the 3 demigoddess queens who ruled one of the main countries of my gameworld for like 1900+ years.
So far so good, 50 sessions done since the 29th of December 2021 and 1200 things killed exactly. I've been using experience points instead of milestones and it's worked out well. They are currently level 14 and have acquired 2 doomstones/crystals of power, lost another 1 and are about to uncover the last 1. I'm hoping over the next 6 months to close out the campaign and wrap it all up. I am enjoying it immensely but in classic GM fashion am already planning out the next campaign, hopefully starting in late 2022. I'm thinking Enemy Within as a template although heavily, heavily edited and crossed with events from my gameworld.
Conclusion: 2022
In conclusion, 2021 was a 5 out of 10. Here's hoping 2022 is better. I'm 30 in like 12 days!
