I’ve had this idea for a poem I want to write for months now. I want to capture the simple peace and joy of sipping coffee on my porch as early morning sunlight beams down on me. Since I have no deadlines and I want to savor the moment before I capture it, I’ve been waiting for my next chance to do that. Unfortunately, due to various complications, I haven’t actually had such a morning in a long while.
Continue readingAuthor: Wren
Staying On Task
I really should write down my mission statement for my blog somewhere that’ll force me to read it every time I go to write a post. Every day since I started writing these, without fail, I start writing something I feel strongly about but that makes me incredibly sad or mad or frustrated. I get through the post, calm down or need to take a break to marshall my willpower to push through the sadness, and THEN remember I’m supposed to be enjoying myself. Sometimes I’ll get it right the second time, but most of the time I wind up doing it again at least one or two more times.
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 1
I’ve tried over a dozen different blog posts and each one of them was stressing me out or not fun, or taking too much work to write in a way that felt true, real, and honest with myself. I haven’t slept well this week, for a lot of reasons that amount to “I just need to let some time pass until things straighten themselves out,” so I’ve struggled to stay focused on my goal of enjoying this process.
As a result, I’m just going to talk about The Legend of Zelda until I feel like I’ve hit my daily writing goal because I enjoy the FUCK out of The Legend of Zelda and I could write an entire novel just about the darker themes of the various games, a sequel zeroing in on Majora’s Mask, and then finish the trilogy with a final novel about the way that Breath of the Wild’s silent storytelling, that requires the player to intuit and improvise their own story using the pieces provided by the game, is a masterful way of wrapping them all up together but leaving the narrative open for additional entries in the franchise down the line.
Continue readingThat’s Just Bananas
Ross stared at the banana on his desk, steeling himself to eat this particularly overripe item when someone appeared at his door.
“Another banana?” Jill smirked at Ross. “Those things are gonna kill ya.”
Continue readingThe Reassuring Failure of Spotify’s Discover Weekly
First: a follow-up. I wrote yesterday about struggling to obtain an item in Skyward Sword that I need for gear upgrades. During that evening’s video game time, I played Skyward Sword again and killed three enemies that dropped this item and every single one dropped it. Three in a row, right there, staring at me. And completely inaccessible. No way to get them, even a little bit. 100% impossible. Absolutely devastating.
Continue readingLink’s Bug Hunting Bananza
I’ve been replaying the Legend of Zelda: Skyward sword during my evening game time lately and I’m remembering how painful so many parts of the game were. While the HD remake fixed a lot of these problems (like allowing you to zip through most dialogue and cutting WAY down on the amount of times your sword states the obvious to you while you’re just trying to run around the new area you got to), one of my personal pet peeves remains. Collecting weird shit to upgrade your stuff.
Continue readingPost-D&D Glow
There’s nothing quite like that post-D&D Session high. It’s like exhaustion, a headache, and a stomach bug all rolled into one. Basically a hangover. So incredibly unpleasant, but a sign of great times now over.
I don’t really drink much these days, so maybe that’s me romanticizing my early to mid twenties than a reflection of how I feel about hangovers, so maybe don’t drink to excess.
Continue readingWhen Life Gives You Lemondayds.
As part of the general sleep problems I’ve been having (a result of stress and the horribly thin walls/ceilings of my current apartment), I’ve begun taking melatonin every evening. It never did much for me previously, but I also used to be able to get to sleep without much problem. I rarely slept well, but I could still lose consciousness in a normal amount of time.
Continue readingAging Unreservedly
As I approach 30, I’ve been thinking about all the ways people use the phrase “aging gracefully.” If it’s a person who is conventionally attractive, people usually mean that they’ve managed to somehow stay attractive, either through genetics or through a careful regimine of healthy activities and diet. If they’re not conventionally attractive or some kind of celebrity, people usually mean that they’re not fighting the process or trying to hold on to their passing youth.
As someone whose youth absolutely sucked and who has put a lot of effort into reclaiming any parts of it I want to appreciate, I’m not really sure where I’m going to fall on this spectrum. I have no desire to return to the life I lived as a child but I also have no concept of what youthfulness means outside of this context. At the same time, I still enjoy a lot of things people associate with youth, like Pokémon, cartoons, and the word “butt.” Partly because I didn’t get to enjoy simple pleasures as a kid and partly because fun stuff is fun and I’ve learned to never take myself too seriously.
If you can’t laugh at the word “butt” when it’s used in a non-offensive, humorous way, then I guess I’m sorry? It must suck to be that humorless.
Continue readingThis Time, I’m Going to Enjoy Myself
I’ve been reflecting lately on the role of discipline in achieving goals.
As most people in moderate income blocks whose work was impacted by the pandemic can attest, life’s been difficult lately. Despite my entire past (or maybe because of it, now that I’m confronting it in therapy), the past year and a bit has been one of the most difficult periods in my life. Constant stress, anxiety, loneliness, and the pandemic itself has left me with little energy or even desire to create. Even my old constant of working on projects to fill my time until I don’t have the energy to even think about what is bothering me failed eventually.
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