What's up with today.... today?

I feel like there are two very different versions of myself. The first one is a stressed-out, perpetually busy university student still struggling to figure out the study/work/social life balance. The other is a lazy, nonchalant sloth who can spend days doing nothing but drinking cups of tea and watching episodes of Twin Peaks. Both of these versions are absolutely shocking at writing regular blog posts.

This is my attempt at both explaining my most recent reasons for this, as well as actually writing something new for this scarcely-maintained blog, thus killing two birds with one stone. Plus I get to write it in the form of a list! Lists are my favourite things. So that's like... three dead birds.

1. I moved house!  I finally escaped my awful, dodgy unit and villainous landlady and made the move to a lovely modern apartment. As well as the wonderful perks of a dishwasher, a massive TV and the ability to literally look down upon the world from the convenience of my bedroom, my housemate has a PlayStation 3. And you know what that means? I can finally play The Last of Us without having to buy a console! Please excuse me while I weep with much-anticipated joy.
2. I actually studied! Did you know that if you make an effort at university, they reward you with good grades? Apparently so. What a wonderful system.
3. I broke my iPhone! Well, to be fair, my iPhone sort of broke itself. I picked it up the other day to find that not only did it refuse to turn on, but had to be completely reset and wiped. Which means that I lost all my contacts, apps and precious lists. My lists! The place where I store all my spontaneous ideas for the blog posts I never write! But the worst part was definitely losing all my travel photos from New Zealand. I'd taken photos of different parts of the New Zealand wilderness that reminded me so much of specific landscapes in Skyrim, and was planning to make a cool series of comparison photos. Sigh. That's what I get for accepting a phone which has spent the majority of its life being handled by small children.
4. I volunteered at Freeplay Independent Games Festival! I got to meet a lot of super-awesome and inspiring people, listen to some brilliant talks from some equally-brilliant minds, and hang out all weekend in the State Library's Experimedia, where a whole bunch of indie developers were showcasing their games. I'll definitely be writing a lengthier post about it soon (no, really, I will!), but for now I can say that my favourites by far were Framed and Muse. I think I kind of made a bit of a fool out of myself in front of the Framed dudes by being a little too excited and overusing the word 'awesome'. Oh well.

Now that you can see why I've been so busy/stressed lately, I can assure you that I actually am making an effort to write things and publish them, too! At the moment I'm working on a 3-part piece about game critics. The first part will be focusing on Anita Sarkeesian, and will be posted before the end of the week.

In the meantime, please enjoy this photo of a very cool Bill Murray colouring book that I bought.

-The Pixel Pixie