Ruminating

Life Digest 2026 Weeks 1-2

30 December 2025 - 11 January 2026

This was the year I finally uninstalled Genshin Impact (after 5 years of playing), downloaded Steam, and bought two games on it. While I still love Genshin Impact (especially its soundtrack), playing the game had felt like a chore for a while, which usually could be remedied by a patch-long break. But in general, I want to be less shackled to games with microtransactions and tasks. And while I was usually only burnt out by the tasks and events, lately even the main storyline (Nod-Krai's story was so good at its first two patches, what happened?) and explorations bore me. Even the promise of Dottore, my favorite Genshin Impact villain, as a world boss could not make me care, sorry.

Overall I am trying to read, crochet, and game more intermittently according to my mood and brain capacity instead of performing my hobbies like daily tasks or something that I have to do when I have any free time. I’ve also been trying to read first thing in the morning, instead of scrolling social media. But I find it hard to continue reading a book as soon as I woke up so I’ve been reading digital magazines from my local library!

A stray thought: I think I am at the age where I can live with only having two lipsticks and shitloads of lip balms (as opposed to having two dozen lipsticks/lip tints/lip glosses/lip oils/tinted balms to choose from).

Books read

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy - Jenny Odell (2019)

I genuinely feel that this book was saying something important, however, its presentation was so chaotic and unsystematic, that while reading I had to look at the chapter titles or the book title so many times to remind myself what this book was supposed to be talking about. The contents of this book were sometimes so far away from and so much more than the title and the synopsis. Somehow it included too much context and background for every little thing mentioned, that I lost the main thread multiple times when reading. Funny, because this book spent a while talking about context collapse in social medias. And there is something US-specific about the lack of familiarity with community/culture/environment/history that this book was fighting against. I just thought that the entire resisting the attention economy thing described would be more universal, I guess.

Six of Crows - Leigh Bardugo (2015)

Ok the pace and tension picked up in the second half but the story remained as simplistic and tell-not-show. I’m getting 3 couples instead of a well-rounded found family. And I felt that I was getting 3 couples instead of a well-rounded found family (that everyone had been saying about this book). There was barely any close friendship developing besides the one between Inej and Nina. The boys were too busy thinking of country and family and money and vengeance... no time for friendship. The villains were also so boring, but overall, it was a decent read and not offensively bad. I know I am too old for young-adult books, but sometimes they have depth and complexity ... this time my FOMO just won without giving me a substantial reward.

Fall in Love, You False Angels Vol. 4 - Coco Uzuki

I had to skimread the last chapter of the previous volume a little to refresh my memory; I have completely forgotten that Ninomae-kun had also developed a crush! This manga is just so cute and still makes me cackle and scream every time 😩 I get that being a teenager is complicated but sometimes the miscommunication / repressed feelings (in mangas in general, tbh) are too much. It’s likely something cultural, I think?

Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett (1989)

It was so much fun to meet the City Watch, Vimes, and Carrot as they were first introduced as characters. So many things I read in The Fifth Elephant make sense now. Guards! Guards! was such a banger from start to finish; I loved that the story, while still complex was more straightforward compared to The Fifth Elephant. Vimes was exactly my type of character—cynical with a golden heart—and I especially loved the fact that Carrot's possible secret identity was hovering in the background throughout the story and nothing was done about it. I also realized that writing stupid characters that are endearing instead of annoying is a lost art nowadays. Now that I've read 2.5 Terry Pratchett books, I feel that they are like comedic Rube-Goldberg machines; they have so many moving parts that result in a satisfying conclusion at the end.

Kitchen Curse - Eka Kurniawan (2019)

I got this book secondhand and just wanted to try reading Kurniawan’s writing in English before Indonesian. Inherent imperfection of translated works in general aside, I think these were great stories. I could not believe the average Javanese mysticisms that I hear of every other day could be dressed as “magical realism” … this was fantastic work. But as always is the case with short stories, most of the time their contexts were not explicitly written, and so I think non-Indonesians (and to a certain extent non-moslems, non-Javanese, or a person that was not familiar with certain historical events or common superstitions) would not 100% get them.

Current reads

A Decolonial Feminism - Françoise Vergès (2019)

I am very pleased to find that this book was not too advanced/academic for me to read. Social science jargons are my Achilles' heels.

Added to TBR

Articles and magazines read

Games played

Tangle Tower (completed)

I had a fun time investigating, but in retrospect I feel like the mystery (besides how the murder was done) was not properly explained. It was likely a setup for a sequel but it made this game felt incomplete.

Pyre (ongoing)

I feel like this is the type of game that have to be obsessively played and advanced, like how I played Hades back in 2021. Thing is, I don't have time to play a game obsessively nowadays. I do enjoy it, but also, like Hades, it's a bit stressful for me to play through (any game in which I may die or lose is stressful for me).

Crochet projects

Everyday bag (completed)

🧶 2 strands of Onitsuga bali big ply yarn (100% cotton, size 4)
🪡 6 mm hook
Finally finished this one … I started working on this bag in late September, then I ran out of yarn in October and could only get more yarn from Indonesia a couple weeks ago. I’m very happy with the bag, it’s sturdy but not too heavy, the yarn is high quality and it does not bleed colour unlike the other bag I made from cheap t-shirt yarn. The pattern was created by @biyabimi.

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Lace filet crochet quote (ongoing)

🧶 Aunt Lydia’s classic 10 crochet thread (mercerized cotton, size 10)
🪡 1.75 mm hook
I’m making something with a beloved Le Guin quote for a special event in May!

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#crocheting #gaming #reading