Damn you, Expedit shelves! July challenges!

"Reading debt" is the stack of books (or directory of e-books) you're intending to read "someday."

I recently finished Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, which was excellent. Deliberate slowing of my pace helped me savor the tone of one of the most famous noir novels of all time. As I read, I could also feel myself becoming anxious: what do I read next? Were it not for the stacks of unread books I've thrifted or bought at Half-Price Books, I'd read Poke The Box or Ready Player One. Sadly, I "must" read some William Gibson novels instead.

Recently, we acquired some more of IKEA's fine Expedit shelves, and my wife cautioned me not to buy any more games without reducing my collection. For her, at least, equilibrium has been reached. Since then, 6 games have entered the house, mostly Kickstarter purchases that had been in the pipeline for several months.

#1 goal for July: reduce my total game collection inventory by 20 games, or roughly 10%.  As many of them are thrift-store finds, that should be relatively painless. I'm taking inspiration from my Twitter friend (and fellow Cougar) "OfficeBoundTraveler" @3wks, whose posts on the Discardia movement have been an eye-opener into a source of the discontent in my life: I have too many unplayed games, especially games I'll never play. Regardless of what I've been playing lately, I feel the weight of the unplayed games.

To assist in the effort, I'm enlisting a friend to do some of the off-loading. That'll keep me from weaseling out halfway through, too!

#2 goal for July: play 5 unplayed games from my collection. I have done similar challenges in prior years, and it got games out of shrink and on the table. Five is a nice goal without requiring extreme effort.  Good candidates: Rolling Freight, 1955: The War Of Espionage, 1960, Nile Deluxor, For The Win!, and Onirim. They're all games with a "hook" I'm interested in, from a board game design perspective, and all ones that I acquired intentionally (rather than being fill-the-cart impulse buys). Onirim is a solo game, so that's likely to be first.

#3 goal for July: write 5 gaming blog posts in July. I like writing them, I like the feedback I get, and it's good for my craft. 'Nuff said.

#4 goal for July: play Magic, or get rid of some cards. I have so many decks assembled and unplayed, it's ridiculous.  At my current rate of getting Magic to the table, I no longer need any Magic cards for at least the next 8 years... minimum.

As part of a recent Math Trade, I looked up the values for some Magic cards, and was surprised a bit. Cards I priced a year ago had almost uniformly dropped, some precipitously. There are a few "evergreen" cards, but for most of them, well, they aren't getting any more collectible.

July challenge for you: What nagging dread are you experiencing?  What is something you have needed to do for a while?