Martin “The Nose” Samson could feel something was wrong. He trusted that feeling with his life, because it hadn’t been wrong yet.
He was at home, alone, eating breakfast. A normal Sunday. Afterwards, he was going to do the dishes and read because he had nothing going on until that evening, when he would join his friends for their usual movie night.
After finishing his cereal, he walked around his apartment, looking for anything that would explain his foreboding. Gas wasn’t leaking, doors weren’t mysteriously open, nothing was out of place, and there was no around his house.
Mystified, he returned to his routine. He cleaned up, read, and was making lunch before he heard something that startled him. Something was scratching at his front door. Martin didn’t have any pets. He liked to be alone at home, which included avoiding animals. He preferred plants
Martin walked over to his front window and peered out at his porch. There was a woman standing in front of his door, picking at something. He watched her for a moment, but she kept scratching, occasionally stopping to flick bits of something into his front garden.
Unable to squash his curiosity, Martin went to the door and opened it. “What are you doing?”
After a moment of surprise, she shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, I sneezed when I came to your door and I’m trying to clean off the mess I made.” She held out a hand. “Anyway, I am here to let you know that I’m your new neighbor across the street.”
Martin shook her hand. “Nice to meet you.” As he let go of her hand, he realized it was the one she’d been using to pick at the door and the trepidatious feeling vanished.
Month: March 2018
Saturday Morning Musing
Rejection is hard. Few people enjoy it. I spent all of last weekend resting because of it. I did my first submission of 2018 and got a form email rejecting my submissions, so I decided to spend my weekend reading, gaming, and resting.
Rejection is something I’m still not used to facing. It has become familiar, but I don’t know that it will ever become something I am used to. I’ve faced it numerous times, as a writer and in other parts of my life. I didn’t exactly spend the four years between my relationships not asking women out. I didn’t just quietly hate my old job and the way things worked at my old company. I’m an action-oriented person. I do things. I ask people out, take risks, and try to affect change when I think it needs to happen. I submit at least one creative piece a month, and used to apply to any conference I thought was relevant in college. I have seen a lot of rejection and I’ve gotten good at processing it.
I was actually planning to not submit anything this year. I’ve got a lot on my plate with daily blog update, trying to figure out how twitter works (I think I’ve gotten the first couple steps down, but tips are always welcome!), and trying to get back into the swing of working on my books. There isn’t much time in there for me after you factor in my job, self-care like sleep and working out, and dating. But I guess I’m back to it? There’s no reason not to submit if I’ve got a contest or magazine and something appropriate sitting in the wings. Except, you know, rejection.
These days, rejection is a lot like a bee sting. It is painful and uncomfortable, but hardly fatal (I’m not allergic, so the analogy works for me) and the pain will diminish as time passes. Before long, all you remember is that you were stung. That’s what these rejections were. Painful and not something I wanted four of at once, but I handled it fine and I’m alright now. Honestly, the most frustrating part, and the only thing with any emotional bite left to it, is the lack of feedback.
Feedback is super useful when getting rejected because it means the reader like your stuff enough to make suggestions, even if it wasn’t what they were looking for. I don’t remember where I read it, but someone wrote that the process of getting published follows a pattern. First, you get form rejections. Then, once you have improved your craft, you start getting rejections with feedback. After that, you start getting a few small acceptances mixed into the rejections with feedback.
I know the above process is hardly something I can count on and not even an unlikely expectation, but it still sucks to not have gained anything from the stress and work of preparing something for submission and submitting. As annoyed as I felt, I felt even worse for my friend who had written an entire short story to submit and gotten a form rejection. I just took some poems, wrestled with my doubts, cleaned them up, and sent them off. Took about five or so hours, all told. My alpha reader spent several days working on this story, getting feedback, and turning it into something I honestly thought was a perfect fit.
While I didn’t enjoy it, I am thankful for this rejection. It forced me to slow down and take a break. I keep myself running at a high level of stress to maintain my focus, but I have a tendency to not let go of my tension when I need a break. I hold onto it and ruin my ability to enjoy whatever rest I’m allowing myself. Thanks to the rejection, I’m spending more time on taking care of myself and prioritizing doing things to recharge. I had someone contact me via my blog to recommend a game and I started playing that last weekend. I’m loving the game so far and enjoying having something super rewarding and engaging to invest my time in. I’m planning to review it for next week’s review day, so hang tight and you’ll get to read about a game that wound up being thematically appropriate to me and my life right when I started playing it.
The rejection sucked. The rest was good. Today, I feel more ready for the future than I’ve felt in well over a year. I am doing new things every week, constantly expanding my capabilities, and improving myself. I’m just over two months into 2018 and I really feel like this is going to be my year. I don’t know what it will bring, but I’m ready for it.
Dreams
My dreams are a dark unknown abyss
That always deny me restful bliss
As I try to sleep and only miss
Each and every attempt to end this
String of nights forever gone amiss.
My dreams often lose their frightful sheen
When they are so few and far between
I forget the horror I have seen
And eagerly await the next scene
Of whatever story I am keen
To introduce into my routine.
My dreams aren’t sweet, ephemeral things
Tied to secret hopes by hidden strings
But scaly monsters replete with wings
Moving in silence so loud it rings.
My dreams have no blood and guts and gore,
They have something even worse in store
As I toil through my nightly chore
Of knocking on the dark, horrid doors
Of my mind to find what it fears more
Than any monster to wash ashore.
Gotta Catch ‘Em All
I’ve been playing a lot of Pokemon X lately. I’ve finally gotten past the place where I stopped last time, even after falling into the same hole of earning tons of money and XP fighting in the Battle Chateau because I’m a completionist and would rather spend two hours walking in circles to find the last Pokemon than move on and breed it from the evolved form I already caught. The problem is, there’s no real “complete” moment with the battle Chateau, so you can level up Pokemon endless or make sure that your wallet is always sitting comfortably above one million Pokedollars.
The other thing I’ve encountered, since I’m actively working on catching all of the Pokemon these days, is just how many Pokemon there are in this game. I’ve caught or evolved over two hundred so far and I’ve only just gotten the fourth gym badge. If I never caught another Pokemon and just evolved the ones I’ve already caught, I’m certain I’d break three hundred. Every route I enter, and even some of the cities, has new Pokemon to catch and there are few overlaps. Thankfully, I’m an old hand at walking in circles and can afford to just throw Ultra Balls at everything because I just go to the Battle Chateau every day so I can achieve my dream of eventually earning a billion Pokedollars. Specifically, having a billion Pokedollars at once, if that is even possible. If not, if the money counter doesn’t run that high, I will settle for having had a total of one billion Pokedollars. I’ve been tracking my expenses so far and I’m a little over two million right now. Only nine hundred and ninety-eight million to go!
I did the same thing with all of my Pokemon Moon play-throughs, and am currently doing the same thing with my Pokemon Ultra Sun play-through. There’s a lot more overlap in Sun and Moon, though there is also variation in what Pokemon can be found on a route depending on which patch of grass you’re in. If I didn’t use a location guide to find out which Pokemon are available where, I’d have missed a few dozen, for sure. That being said, I prefer Sun and Moon’s methods to X and Y’s. I don’t feel trapped on routes as much since I know I’ll be able to find the Pokemon on other routes, much of the time. The biggest downside trying to catch them all in Sun and Moon is that you never get the customary National ‘Dex.
The National ‘Dex was introduced by that name in the third generation of Pokemon games, Ruby and Sapphire. In Gold, Silver, and Crystal, it was referred to as the “Old Pokedex Mode” but it was essentially the same thing. Ultimately, it is an organization of the Pokedex to include all known Pokemon, listing the Pokemon by oldest to newest. It has been a staple part of the core Pokemon games and they completely abandoned it in Sun and Moon. I was devastated! I was looking forward to compiling all of my Pokemon in these new games only to find out that I could, but I’d have no way to actually track them in-game aside from portioning out PC boxes and figuring out where to place Pokemon that way. Which is why I spent the $5 for the Pokebank because you can do the same thing there, but it is a lot easier since it directly interfaces with most of the games. Only one transfer required and you can access it from any of the modern games.
The National ‘Dex available in the Pokebank is likely to be the only National Pokedex available going forward. Since it will be able to interface with all future games and will help solve the problem of cross-generation trading that was such trouble from the very beginning, I can’t see it going away any time soon. Since it is essentially cloud storage for Pokemon, we’d need some kind of big jump in technology for it to be worth changing the system to use something new.
While it isn’t as fun to use the Pokebank to check my National ‘Dex, I can see the value. Nintendo and the developers of Pokemon can just upgrade the one app and the Pokemon in the cloud can be made available to any device people use to access it. Portability, safety in the face of lost systems or games, and ease of access. I just wish there was some character who would give me things for completing it like there was in all of the games leading up to Sun and Moon. I want my ultimately meaningless recognition and prize, dammit!
The Anthropocene Reviewed: Reviewed
I’m a relatively recent fan of the Vlogbrothers. I’ve been working my way through all of their videos during my workouts because they’re a lot easier to muddle through if I’ve got something else to focus on, and I have to say that I’ve become a huge fan of John Green’s voice. In a lot of his recordings, he sounds so calm and soothing that I find myself feeling more relaxed, no matter what I’m doing while listening to him. I love Hank Green’s videos as much as I love John Green’s, but I don’t enjoy his voice the same way I do John’s. If I want to feel excited about something or to get psyched up about something I’m passionate about, then I’d listen to Hank Green.
As a result, I was very intrigued when John announced that he was starting a solo podcast in which he would review “different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale.” He has called it “The Anthropocene Reviewed” and his first episode was a review of Canadian Geese and Diet Dr Pepper. I’m not going to spoil the review by telling you how many stars he gave each of those things, but I am going to insist that the parts leading up to the numerical rating are the absolute best.
As a huge fan of John Green’s Vlogbrothers videos that were themed as “Thoughts from ________,” I enjoyed these podcasts because they sound just like an extended version of one of the videos. In the first episode, he talks about the history of Canadian Geese, shares some interesting facts, discusses how they’ve participated in the Anthropocene era of the world, and how we Humans have affected them. I learned a lot and I got to do it all while listening to the soothing tones of a wonderful writer. As if that wasn’t enough, he then went on to discuss the soda flavor known as Dr Pepper, which is incredibly interesting to think about. It is a flavor made up of other flavors and there is no naturally occurring equivalent that we can compare it to, so Dr Pepper would not exist without Humans.
The second episode, he discusses Halley’s Comet and Cholera, which are both interesting topics. Halley’s comet appears once every Human lifetime. Some people get to see it twice, if they’re lucky, but never more than that (at least by current life expectancies. Who knows what’ll happen in the next hundred years in terms of Human lifespans…). As a result, its participation in the Anthropocene era is more as a spectator, witnessing the drastic change of the world and Humanity at larger. Cholera, on the other hand, is what happens when people gather large numbers and don’t have access to clean water. Cholera is a side-effect of human expansion and continuously pops up because the people with the resources to end it don’t care about it. John does a much better job addressing the issues that have resulted in an ongoing Cholera epidemic, but I feel like my summary is accurate if a little angrier than John’s analysis. Sorry, but preventable stuff like that pisses me off.
While I haven’t found any kind of regular updating schedule for the podcast yet, I think that it will start to gather steam as more and more people start listening. John and Hank are incredibly busy people who somehow find the time to keep doing incredible new things, so I really can’t fault John for not having a specific schedule right now. He has a lot going on these days, by anyone’s standards. I say I’m a fan of the Green Brothers, but I haven’t even started to plumb the depths of their content outside of their YouTube videos. There’s just so much and I’ve already got so much going on!
Anyway, I suggest checking out John Green’s new podcast. There’s plenty to laugh about, plenty to think about, and you get to listen to Mellifluous tones of the elder Green brother’s voice for almost twenty minutes at a stretch. That’s a win all around.
Coldheart and Iron: Part 7
The final tally of the dead was worse than I had hoped but not as bad as I had feared. Six dead laborers, a dozen dead nomads, and two dead Wayfinders. Most of the injured survived, except the one Wayfinder whose wounds claimed him about two hours after the battle ended. Most of the dead had been in the farmhouse, where the bandits had crashed through the door on the tail of their flashbang.
The nomads’ medic was one of the guards in the basement, so he got to work right away after we gave them the all-clear and was instrumental in saving a couple of the more injured laborers and nomads. He worked with Jonathan, our medic, to stabilize everyone we could before we moved them all into the barn to recover, rest, and hide while half of the uninjured Wayfinders scouted to make sure there were no more bandits around.
I personally led the squad to follow the tracks of the group that snuck up on us. It was relief to discover they had split off from the main force before they were in sight of the bandit’s base camp, even if it was frustrating to see how our scouting had failed us. We got back to the farmhouse around ten a.m. and immediately went to work digging graves with the other able-bodied Wayfinders. A mass grave for the bandits and individual graves for everyone else.
Around noon, the laborers and nomads emerged from the barn and started lending a hand. They knew as well as we did that the bodies needed to be buried by nightfall, and they wanted time to lay their friends and family to rest. They just needed more recover after the firefight than we did. Around five in the afternoon, the last shovel of dirt was placed, the last words were said, and any Wayfinder not preparing to leave in the morning was busy hiding all traces of the battle.
Camille was busy with after-action reports and Natalie was updating the supply logs with Jonathan, so I took Lucas aside to help me scatter snow over the graves. We worked in silence as the sun set until the last glimmers of light were disappearing through the haze of clouds coating the sky.
“You should have checked with me first.”
Lucas didn’t say anything. He stopped working and started off toward the setting sun. I let him have his silence for another minute before speaking again.
“I know the nomads would have been captured or worse if we hadn’t done anything, but we’ve lost six of the people who paid us to get them safely across the tundra and you broke one of the biggest rules of the Wayfinders. Again.”
“What do you want from me, Marshall?” Lucas turned to look at me, his usual grin replaced by a mixture of sadness and anger. “I see people in need, and I want to help them. You would do the same thing, if you found people running for their life.” Lucas sighed and looked down at his feet. “Or at least you would have. I don’t know anymore.”
I stared at my oldest friend and tried to keep my roiling emotions off of my face. “We have rules, Lucas.” His head snapped up, eyes meeting mine and face as carefully neutral as mine. “Over the past fifteen years, we’ve added more and more rules as what we’ve done has turned from a past-time to fund our searches into something bigger than-”
“Than helping people?” Lucas stepped toward me, lowering his voice so no one would overhear. “We started this whole organization in order to help people, Marshall, or have you forgotten that?” I clenched my hands but kept my face neutral as the roiling was replaced by indignation and anger. Some part of me knew that we were both tired, Lucas especially so since he hadn’t gotten much rest the night before all of this had started, either. I took a moment of silence to try to calm down a little, to resist the urge to knock him down, but he took my silence as an answer.
He took another step towards me, getting in my face and dropping his voice to a hiss. “Are you so caught up in playing ‘King Cowboy in the New Frontier’ that you don’t remember what this was all about?”
I punched Lucas in the solar plexus and swept one of his legs. It felt good to be standing over him, but I knew he was just as angry as I was, if not angrier. I relaxed my fists and arms, looked up at the sky, and took a deep breath. I acknowledged the part of me that knew I messed up and tried to get the anger I felt under control. This wasn’t the first time we’d had this argument and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
When I looked down again, he was still on the ground, clutching his chest and gasping for breath. I squatted down next to him and, after he’d recovered enough to stop squirming, I grabbed his shoulder. “Dude, you can’t keep saying stuff like this. You know I don’t think that. You know why I started all this. You know why I’m STILL a Wayfinder after almost twenty years of fruitless searching.”
“That’s…” Lucas gasped and coughed. “That’s no excuse. If anything…”
I felt the anger creeping back and tried to keep myself calm. “You know better than anyone else what this disaster has cost me. You’ve got family and friends you could be living with instead of wandering around out here. You chose this life. This life is all I have.” I sat down next to him and rubbed my face.
I took another deep breath and softened my tone a little more, trying to sound a little more apologetic. “I would have helped them, that’s not the problem. That’s not the rule you’re in trouble for breaking. You knowingly led a group of bandits back to our group. You compromised our secrecy and, as a result, people died that otherwise wouldn’t have if you had followed protocol.”
Lucas glared at me as he pushed himself into an upright sitting position. His voice was angrier that mine had been and I was glad that almost everyone else had gone into the barn. No one else would be able to hear us if we started shouting. “Protocol would have meant taking them to Chicago and they had just been chased away from there! What good would that have done them?”
“More good than this would have.” I gestured at the graves we were sitting near. “You could have taken them to Rockford instead. That’s much closer than Chicago and you would have been able to get them there by tomorrow morning if you pushed them hard enough. They’d have been safe behind the walls of the enclave there.”
“And risked getting shot at while trying to push children and elderly at a quick pace? We’d have had to leave that old woman behind in order to have a chance of making it, because she’s too big to carry.”
“At least then everyone else would have had a chance.” I stood up. “Also, I’m pretty sure that old woman could have outpaced most of the other nomads.” I chuckled, trying to lighten the mood.
“Sure, then she would have had an equal chance to get shot in the back, just like everyone else..” Lucas started struggling to his feet. I offered him a hand but he smacked it away and glared at me instead.
“Stop arguing. You know I’m right or else you’d have hit me back by now.”
Lucas slipped in the partially melted snow I’d been sitting on and he fell over again. He shot me another dirty look from his place in the snow before just laying back and covering his eyes. “I can’t even stand up, much less strike a superior officer right now. I’m too tired. Couldn’t this have waited until after we found shelter for next week’s blizzard?” He let his arms fall to the side and picked his head up to meet my eyes. “Or at least until after I’ve gotten some sleep?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry I hit you, Lucas. That was way out of line and I know you don’t really think I’ve forgotten anything. I wish this could wait, but we have to talk about this today. If nothing happens to you, if there isn’t a clear resolution about what happened, then the laborers, the nomads, and the Wayfinder trainees will start to wonder about why their friends and loved ones are dead. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a problem with the laborers before the week is out.”
I offered Lucas my hand again and, after a moment’s hesitation, he took it. “They paid us to keep them safe.” I grunted as I hauled Lucas to his feet. “They all know that nothing is certain out here and that we couldn’t guarantee their safety, but this will be a hard thing for them to handle. All the trainees now realize just how likely it is that they’ll die out here if they stick to guiding large groups. This will seem like a slap on the wrist to them, but you did break a rule and these are the recommended consequences.”
Lucas took a step back after he gained his feet and brushed the snow off his pants and coat. “Yeah, that you wrote.” His voice was calmer, but I knew I’d need to do more to make it up to him than apologize.
I nodded. “You’re still head of the scouts, but your pay for this trip is going into the death benefits of our dead Wayfinders and you’re demoted to Lieutenant. Once we’re back in an enclave, we’ll look into getting you promoted again since the only reason you’re not higher ranked is that we don’t have higher ranks. No matter what, though, your pay won’t change for future jobs”
I stared at him, stony-eyed, while I waited for him to acknowledge my orders. After a another few swipes at snow that was no longer there and a deep breath, he saluted. “As you say, Captain.”
“Good.” I nodded and gestured toward the barn. “Now let’s finish up so we can go inside, eat, and get some sleep.”
Once we had finished, we walked off toward the barn. Someone had set up a LED floodlight near the door so we could finished up. Once we got near the door and started taking packing up the flood light, my nose detected the first hints of someone making hamburgers. My stomach growled in response and I was suddenly struck by the realization that it had been over twenty-four hours since I had eaten. I was so focused on the hamburgers that it took Lucas pointing it out for me to realize that the noise I was hearing was shouting coming from the inside barn. I left Lucas to finish up and, rushed inside. When I saw what was going on, my heart fell.
Tabletop Highlight: First Reactions to Fifth Edition
Over the weekend, I took my first deep dive into D&D Fifth Edition. I’ve made characters and even briefly played it before, but this was the first time I actually explored characters rather than rushing through the process. Carefully considered each class and, after looking at what I had to work with, settled on playing a Sorcerer. The first D&D character I ever played and the most fun D&D character I ever played were both sorcerers, so the class is near and dear to my heart.
My initial impression was that the system is complex, strange, and makes very little sense. Over time, though, that shifted. The more time I spent with it, the easier the system seemed. So many of the 3.5 rules I know by heart and so many of the choices I’d made in a 3.5 campaign just aren’t options. Feats are entirely optional, ability scores cannot be increased over 20 via natural level progression, and everything in the system feels a lot more balanced. My past remarks about the 5th edition being more like addition than 3.5’s multiplication still stands, but that means that all of the classes still wind up in more or less the same neighborhood.
The biggest revelation I had while exploring the system more fully was the way it lends itself toward role-playing. 3.5 can be entirely numbers with no role-playing unless the players and DM are specifically making room for it. 5th edition doesn’t necessitate role-playing, but it does make it a much more regimented part of the character creation process. There’s room on the standard character sheet for flavor text about who your character is, the backgrounds provide a basis for less experienced players, and even the class features help you figure out who your character is based on what specializations you pick.
The hardest thing for me to learn is the new rules around combat and actions. I’m used to poison results being specific to the poison used and much more complicated skills that play off of each other and are full of conditional modifiers. The simplified “advantage, neutral, or disadvantage” system takes all of the conditional stuff and wraps it up in one neat little package. I can see combat and skill encounters are going to be much easier for new players to handle since the math isn’t as potentially complicated. I’m going to miss my ridiculous bonuses and OP bullshit that I can pull when I’m feeling petulant in 3.5, but I can see myself running a lot of 5th edition games because it’ll be so much simpler. Instead of spending time looking up rules players are asking about, I can focus on storytelling, good encounters, and keeping the game moving along. I’m really looking forward to how the pacing changes between the two systems.
That being said, I think I’m going to stick to 3.5 for my big story campaigns. 5th edition is still relatively new and I can’t find as many resources for it as I can find for 3.5, so it would be a lot harder to make up some of the stuff I have for 3.5. 5th edition’s power scales are too linear to be able to just fudge a few numbers and make it work, even at mid to high levels.
This past weekend, I stuck to mostly first level things for my sorcerer (and a rogue as a backup character for when my aggressive, “think’s he’s a tank,” sorcerer gets smeared on a dungeon floor). Next weekend, if I’ve got the time, I’m going to look into future levels, magic items, and how all the rules have changed so I can start planning out a campaign to run in 5th edition. I’ve got a lot of friends who want to play now and 5th edition seems like it would lend itself well to online play, so I might actually be able to help my friends who don’t have anyone to play with in their areas, finally. That’d be great. I like running big games full of organized chaos and laughter. Even if I can’t see everyone’s face, I think this would be a lot of fun to do.
Through the Eyes of a Statue
Everything seemed so quick. The little creatures around it moved faster than it could track, but it enjoyed watching the blur of their movement. The humans were respectful, ensuring the constant exposure to the elements and birds did nothing to damage it. It didn’t really mind the birds, seeing as they moved even faster than the humans, but it did enjoy the colder months when the birds were scarce.
There was a door at the statue’s feet and something through that door attracted many humans and their companion creatures. It suspected that the door led to whatever was behind it. It couldn’t turn to look, but it could feel the reassuring weight of something even larger than itself at its back.
It was so long since it had first opened its eyes and seen the wondrous world around it. The area had changed drastically since then, as the humans molded the world to their will. Once it was the tallest. Now it was dwarfed by the structures around it, whose height passed beyond its sight. It could not turn its head and it missed the sky, but there had been so much going on below that it had not cared.
The humans and their creatures had stopped coming around, though. There had been rumbling and a bright light. Most of the humans had vanished, leaving behind black smudges everywhere. There were some humans left and they still moved quickly, but not as fast as they once did. The statue was sad to see them go, but it thought they would be back. There had always been humans around it.
For now there were the plants growing where the humans once occupied. They moved much more slowly, and it enjoyed that. Maybe the humans would too, once they came back.
Saturday Morning Musing
The older I get, the more I feel like my life is made up of big moments separated by spans of time spent either recovering from the last big moment or preparing for the next one. Time passage is hard for me to gauge over long spans despite the fact that I’m really good at tracking it over short spans. Over a six-hour period, I can usually guess the time within five minutes. Beyond that, it gets trickier. I routinely have weeks that feel long or days that feel short. Variation in the perception of the passage of time is a common thing for most people, sure, but I feel especially bad at the larger-scale stuff. Until I actually think about it, I’d swear that I was just recently in college. At the same time, I feel like high school and the problems of my childhood are so old that they might as well have happened to someone else.
This isn’t earth-shattering or super special. People feel like this all the time. I’m just focusing on it a lot right now because I’m at this point in my life were things are starting to come together, but the one thing I want more than anything is still going to take a while. I’d give up almost anything to be a writer full-time, but I can’t throw aside my debt obligations for that super-useful degree I got in English Literature (that sounds way more bitter than I feel, but I have my moments where that feels absolutely true) because that’d hurt my dad, who co-signed some of my loans. I need to keep working and making payments in the hope of one day being free of this mountain of debt. Having a wonderful girlfriend is amazing. Having two roommates who respect me, whose company I enjoy, and who share my interests enough to at least nod along while I talk at them is the best living situation I’ve ever had. Being able to support myself AND start paying down some debts by working 45 hours a week is something I thought wasn’t possible a year and a half ago. I have so much to be thankful for that I feel horrible that I can’t stop thinking about how disappointed I am that I can’t write all the time.
I’m in my mid-to-late twenties. It is possible that only a quarter of my life has passed so far. A huge chunk of my favorite creators, including all of the ones who influenced me the most, didn’t get their start until, sometimes, as much as a decade after they were my age. There is still so much I can do. Even if it takes me another ten years to get to the point where I can write full-time, I’ll still have so much time to write and create. I just feel like part of me is missing when I’m at work, testing software, and trying to stay focused so that ideas of what I want to be writing don’t cause me to run the same test case multiple times without once actually seeing the results.
If you start discussing romance or relationships with someone, the idea of soulmates is going to come up at some point. Generally speaking, people fall into one of two camps. Either soulmates are bullshit and love is about building something with someone you’ve picked or soulmates are a thing and you’re destined for someone. While I’m not willing to rule anything out and I generally don’t call people out for relatively harmless beliefs, I get frustrated when the soulmate idea is expressed as the idea that people are incomplete without their soulmate. There’s tons of philosophy and even some religious teachings that supports this idea. I don’t think that’s true and I feel like the idea of needing another person to be complete places a lot of responsibility and emotional labor for your well-being on someone else’s shoulders. I don’t need another person to feel complete. When I get lost in my writing, no where I am or what I’m writing about, I feel whole.
That is all I need. All I want. Just this little thing. Just this enormous, seemingly impossible achievement.
I’m working toward it. Updating this blog every day, working a few extra hours a week to reach a state of financial stability, and trying to make time to work on my novels in between it all. This all helps. Writing every day makes time feel a little more real. I can count the days between November 1st, 2017, and today. I can remember most of my posts. I’ve got a record of living all of those days and the act of sitting down to write each night helps me feel like I’m going to eventually get where I want to be. Hopefully, by the time I’m done with my year and a month of daily posts, I’ll be able to see how much closer I’ve gotten.
My Voice
My voice can fade from lack of use.
My neck is caught up in a noose
Built according to my own design.
There never was a loop so malign
As the fears so doggedly adverse
And twisted into this evil curse.
The end of the cord lies in shaking hands
That seem to have their own firm plans
Of when to tug and when to let be
Because this rope is not to kill me.
I wove this rope of silence and fear
Of the loss of all that I hold dear,
Despite insisting all of the while
That my thoughts and truths were not on trial.
Lies told by my insecurity
To preserve my sense of maturity.
This lesson I learned as I have grown:
My silence belongs to me alone.