quantifica november

Hey team. We are closing in on the end of the year. Here are the stats for November!

FINANCIALS

We just barely fell short of target this month, as the Patreon continues to diverge from target while AdSense shores up the difference. We are about 12.5% ahead of schedule for the year, so being 5% below on November is not a crucial problem. We will probably be below target for December as well, but will still hit the target for the year. We can more or less call the finances a lock for 2024.

It's a bit of a weird position to be in, as this will be, unequivocally, the most money I have ever earned in a year, and yet I'm still pretty much living paycheck-to-paycheck. I have been able to live a bit more comfortably, being able to go on a few trips and pay down some debts. But I'm not building savings, my bank account still sometimes dips in the negative at the end of the month, and I'm once again in collections.

As we're nearing the end of this yearlong project, I am putting some thought towards next year, and thinking of how I can mix up the financials spreadsheet to shift the focus to budget rather than raw income. It's hard, since my income can fluctuate wildly from month to month, and sometimes the windfall months are in a different part of the year from the lean ones. But I can at least predict my expenses decently well, which can give me an idea of how much I have to work with on a given month. Will have a more concrete idea by the time I launch next year's project, but there are ideas being noodled.

At any rate: there will be a next year! No idea what it looks like, but I can confidently say the party will keep rolling in 2025. So that's good news.

BINGOS

Filled in a very valuable square this month, giving me four-of-five on three different lines. I've included a Bingo Feasibility chart this month, ranking how doable each remaining square is. And it's looking like I'm probably gonna hit bingo on the I-line! I guess I can safely divulge that I3 is "don't have a sciatica relapse," which, having made it this far, seems pretty likely. Can't call it til the end of the year, but something would have to go very wrong to not hit that target, which means a full line! B3 and N1 are similar "can't call til the end of the year but more-or-less guaranteed," though neither can get me a line on their own. If I wanted more than a single line, my next best bet is G2, which is a longshot, but technically possible. I don't think that's gonna be a priority in the coming weeks, but... never say never.

All in all, though, the Bingo Card has proved a great motivator for the year, and I've really benefited from it. I don't think I would've done some of the things I did without this entirely unenforced pressure. :)

NOVEMBER MINIMIX

More tunes! One of the weirder conglomerations of sounds, and you will hear me go off about some of this in the end-of-year quantifica, but I actually really like this mix. I think it shows the breadth of my tastes well.

The Park
- every noise at once: exploring the Chamber Pop microgenre (DON'T GET ME STARTED)

Sideshow
- not sure, actually; maybe a Spotify rec?

Collision Event
- every noise at once: exploring the Chiptune microgenre

If This Tour Doesn't Kill You, I Will
- Spotify rec

CORSO
- someone I follow on BlueSky was hyping up this album, and turns out: it's great!

Hope is For the Hopeless (Vogued)
- rec from a friend

MOVIES & BOOKS

I am every-so-slightly bottlenecked on the Film Randomizer list, coming into December with 6 films still unwatched and having never done more than 4 in a month so far. It is, however, common for me to watch 8-11 movies in a month, so I will just have to weight the list heavier. Have already knocked out two films, so we're down to the last 4! I think we're gonna pull this one off as well.

Reading took a big hit this month. I've been struggling to stick with any book. Started Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell but put it down after the intro. I've picked up Walter Mosely's Black Betty multiple times but failed to crack it open. Got maybe 3 pages into Margaret Killjoy's The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion yesterday but couldn't stay focused. So we've got 29 pages for the entire month of November, which is the lowest of the year by far.

My reading habit takes a hit every Fall, between the holidays seasonal affectiveness, and that's when we didn't just have a horrible election. In raw pages, I'm almost neck-and-neck with last year, so I'm not considering this a failure, and we'll see if Christmastime leads to any "books under blankets with a mug of cocoa" time like it has in the past. In any case, the reading log has proved... compelling?

TASTING MENUS

I am officially declaring the Tasting Menus a wash. I've owed you a video for like 7 months. Have the notes and everything! That project just didn't come together. Will put some thoughts into how I wanna track/incentivize myself differently re: games in 2025. I liked the idea of this, but it clearly didn't serve me as I'd hoped.

Got some videos in the works, you should see at least one of them before the end of the month!

-I