JUNE 10 — I'm off work this week and no, it's not because I went and lost my head and bought another plane ticket.

My house needs cleaning, my lawn needs weeding and my gardenia plant needs saving from a bad case of the mealybugs.

Next week I have a follow-up appointment with my surgeon to go over the results of my latest mammogram but next week is next week, this week I'm decluttering.

That includes my hobbies; I have belatedly discovered CEX and the joys of trading in my old video games for new video games.

I no longer game on anything but the Nintendo Switch 2 — it's portable, fairly powerful and was worth selling my older Switch for and I don't miss playing on mobile, PC or the PS5.

While I was cataloging what I had, I came to realise I have a fairly big library of digital games (curse those eShop sales) and a decent amount of physical ones.

Except maybe for the upcoming Fire Emblem release this year, I have a moratorium on buying more games and will attempt to clear at least half of my gaming backlog.

"Clearing" also means being able to be honest with myself about whether I will finish a game. 

First on my list A Short Hike — the reviews were great, the price was cheap and it seemed charming enough. You're a bird. With legs. Going on a hike.

But after two hours I got annoyed by all the puzzles, having to map routes, collect enough golden feathers to be able to scale cliffs and talk to increasingly annoying NPCs.

Maybe it was the cancer, but if I'm not doing things that I need to do (eat, show up for work) or want to do (nap, eat too many croissants) I have decided I will just not do them.

Do I need to finish A Short Hike? Do I want to finish it? No and no.

This Marie Kondo-ish approach also serves me well for house cleaning. Do I need this? Do I want this? Two no's and off it goes into the bin.

What do I want to do? Watch Masters of the Universe a second time because it is leaving the cinemas fairly early. Make a grilled cheese sandwich. Figure out how to make decent French toast. 

What do I not want to do? Give too much of a damn about current political machinations. 

The world turns. Politicians remain selfish and mostly stupid. I will tend my gardenias and focus on the more important things in life — like when the LRT3 will open so I don't have to spend 40 ringgit on return Grab fares to 1 Utama. 

Apart from that I will be playing another game — AI: The Somnium Files. I'll tell you about it next week.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.