Reading: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (this is really, really good so far and I’m having to parse it out for myself so I can keep enjoying it).

I finished It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium by John Ed Bradley, which was pretty darn good. It tackles a fundamental tension: what happens when the perceived peak of your life (for Bradley, playing football at LSU) is over, and then thing you thought would replace it (being a writer) can’t do that? Bradley relates spending much of his adult life avoiding his old teammates, avoiding LSU football, and generally avoiding growing up at all. It’s funny at times but mostly tragic.

It did make me think of a question I’d ask at a dinner party: what was that moment for you? What did you think would replace it? What happened next?

Watching: The Last of Us

Listening to: Giving a listen to new records from White Reaper, The Arcs, and Kimbra, along with Dawns by Zach Bryan and Maggie Rogers

Playing: Cult of the Lamb (on PS5). This game is if you took about 25% of Hades and 25% of Stardew Valley and mixed them together. It lacks the depth of either of those games, but the core looping mechanic is still really fun, and I will beat this game probably over the weekend. The best thing about the game is probably the aesthetic–maybe I’m adding 10% of Animal Crossing to the mix here–you play as a lamb indoctrinating other animals into your cult.

So you’re basically alternating between building up your cult’s home (including farming for food, mining for resources, and literally cleaning up their shit), and going on runs where you fight villains (non-believers) for some reason I don’t fully remember. The farming and building element isn’t as carefully designed or gradated as Stardew, and the fighting isn’t as deep or satisfying as Hades. That said, they do play off each other in interesting ways, and this is fundamentally a good game.

Habit Watch: 6 of 7 days exercised, 6 of 7 days meditated