Between traveling, packing, moving, and unpacking, I have not had the time in weeks to even touch the latest chapter of Infrared Isolation, so it will be at least another week before I can resume writing and editing. Only reason blog posts have continued is that I need some daily writing to stay sane. Plus, it’s all lower effort stuff. Which isn’t to say it’s not good writing or anything, just that five 600-900 word blog posts about various topics are a lot easier to write than a 3000-6000 word chapter in an on-going story.
Shifting Relationships and Rebuilding My Support Network
I was talking to someone about my move (upcoming as I’m writing this but past as this gets posted) and mentioned that I’ve got half a dozen people coming to help me with the move. Their response was appreciation that I had such a robust support system. It wasn’t really a response I was expecting, so I was a bit caught off guard by the shift in the direction the conversation was going and it took me a few moments to respond. I managed to do so graciously and warmly, since that’s what the conversation’s tone and depth called for (and it is true that I love and appreciate the friends and family member who are helping, some of them coming from a few hours’ drive away to lend a hand), but there were a few bitter thoughts that popped up so quickly that I barely caught them before they made it out of my mouth.
Continue readingI Got Back Into Valheim Again
I dipped a toe back into Valheim during my final stream of May for the first time since January at least. It felt nice to get back to the game, especially when I needed to get my mind off my move, even if it came with a few bitter moments of realizing just how much work I had to do to set up a sustainable base in a new world. I wasn’t starting a new character, after all, I was just starting a new world. My main character has a bunch of good, upper-mid-tier gear since I was in the “I have mastered The Plains but not yet fought the boss” portion of the game on my previous server, so even my casual “running around” gear was powerful enough that I would need multiple crafting station upgrades to repair it. I considered starting fresh with basically nothing but my skill levels, just to avoid needing to streamline basic repair abilities, but that was not very appealing after all my time playing the game. Plus, most of my gear needed a bunch of rare materials to be crafted or upgraded, but almost everything (with two notable exception) could be repaired by a 2nd-tier crafting table and I had all the tools I needed to make that.
Continue readingAdding Streaming To My Multi-Media Creative Life Goals
Since returning from my friend’s wedding, I’ve been streaming mostly Wildermyth (and a little bit of Valheim) when I’ve had the time to actually do a stream on my twitch account. It has been a lot of fun, even if I did spend most of my first two streams using OBS at a horrendous 360p, because I’ve been treating it like I’m reading a story to my audience rather than like I’m playing a game. Sure, there’s some combat stuff that occasionally interrupts the story I’m reading, but that’s usually over fairly quickly. The same is true of the overland movement and map unveiling portion of the game (even if I’ve coincidentally spent way more time managing things than I usually do on account of character hook quests pulling my characters to incredibly inconvenient locations). I spent probably forty-five minutes of every hour trying to keep the character’s voices consistent as I read through storytime and the other fifteen minutes managing mechanics. I’m really enjoying myself, even if it’s pretty difficult to manage audience comments and interactions at the same time.
Continue readingCrunching Into Pathfinder 2E
While I’ve been packing, most of my free time (aka, my breaks) has gone towards learning Pathfinder Scond Edition since I’ve joined a group as a player. We had a session 0 two weekends ago, which accounted for most of my Saturday breaks during my main packing weekend, and our session 1 is this upcoming Sunday. To be honest, learning PF2E has been more mentally draining than packing has. Not even dealing with the “box of things I don’t want to think about” was as draining as my regular dives into the incredibly dense rulebook and mechanics of the system. It is a very complex game full of proper nouns, what feels like an overwhelming number of character creation options, and an overlycomplex path from character ideation to final creation. I understand that this is probably not as true as it feels right now, since I’m learning the system as I’m trying to get ready to play it (and I remember just how incredibly obtuse and confusing learning to build characters in 3.5 and Pathfinder First Edition was back when I first played in 2010), but it is still more of a headache than I expected.
Continue readingJohn Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society Is A Delightful Literary Treat
As part of my recent reading kick, I’ve absolutely blasted through a few John Scalzi books. Most of them are things I’ve read before, some to their completion and some only partially because I got distracted by life in 2020 and never picked them back up, but I’ve read some of his newer stuff as well. One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about Scalzi’s books is that they’re dependably enjoyable. If you like anyone one of them, you’ll probably like all the rest. He isn’t exactly the most progressive writer out there, but he is definitely on the right side of history, so there’s little to worry about beyond a few rather obvious lacks (in terms of representation, mostly) in his earlier books. His more modern stuff is better, in my opinion, but I feel like that’s true of just about any writer since we tend to age like fine wine rather than dairy products. Anyway, I’ve gotten away from the point I was planning to make. I recently read his Spring of 2022 book, The Kaiju Preservation Society, and it was an absolute delight.
Continue readingA Small Disruption To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming
I’m spending the next three days moving into my new apartment and out of my old one, so I’m taking a couple days off from posting (today and tomorrow) so that I don’t have a bunch of writing to do during my spare time or extra writing during what is supposed to be a post-move recovery week. There will be no new chapter of Infrared Isolation tomorrow and the book review that was originally scheduled for today will go up on Monday. I’m only human, after all (as much as I like to pretend otherwise), so I’m going to do the sensible thing once again and take a couple days off. After this, though, I shouldn’t have any more disruptions to my schedule. I will FINALLY have some quiet, restful times (assuming nothing goes disastrously wrong, which feels like a dangerous thing to assume after the first five months of this year). I’m very much looking forward to it and hopefully I’ll be able to get back to more positive or thoughtful posts once all my mental and physical energy isn’t being directed toward trips, obligations, and large responsibilities. Catch y’all next week.
Planning My New Apartment
I’ve been trying to figure out how I want to lay everything out at my new apartment. It’s a bit difficult, unfortunately, since I’m not certain where everything might eveb fit. I never saw the exact unit I’m renting (I saw a similar model in a different building) and I have no idea which of the various internet jacks into the apartment will be the one that is active as far as my ISP is concerned. Also, my couch is huge. It can be broken up into smaller pieces, sure, but it’s always a bit weird to use when it is. Most of my stuff fits together in rooms in pretty specific ways, and I’d want to try to keep things that are currently near each other together in the new apartment. I think I have an idea, based on what I’ve seen, that will get it all to fit and I’ve got a lot of really fun ideas on how to lay things out in interesting ways. All of which might be moot since the location of the internet port is going to really dictate where my computer goes and, if I want to improve on my current streaming setup, where my entertainment center will go. I’ll have some ability to work around awkward or difficult origin points for my internet setup, but only to a degree since fifty-foot cables can only do so much for spreading out devices.
Continue readingI’ve Got Moving On The Mind
One of the major upsides to being an orderly person is that packing does not take as much mental effort. Sure, there’s a bunch of stuff I have to figure out if I want to keep it or throw it away, but I don’t really need to organize my stuff. It’s already very organized and I’m just going to be moving it from where it is to a series of boxes and then back out somewhere that at least sort of matches where it currently is. Books will still be on shelves. Games and puzzles will still probably be in a closet somewhere. It’s not like i’m going to change how my books are sorted. Everything that needs to get packed together is already together. Everything that hasn’t moved from where it sits in my closet in the three years I’ve lived in my current apartment is automatically marked for “keep or toss” assessment. I’ve still got all my old boxes, I haven’t added to my collections much (thanks to the austerity I’ve observed over the past three years), and now all I’ve got to do is slowly, carefully pack it all up and set it to the side to be eventually deposited in whatever room winds up being my library/living room/office space.
Continue readingWork Hasn’t Been Horrible, Lately
As hectic, busy, and downright exhausting as work has been recently, I’ve actually been enjoying it more. I don’t know if it’s because I have stuff going on in my evenings again or it’s just because I’ve been working more with people I like who appreciate my thoughts and no longer feel like the work I’m doing doesn’t matter. Well, now that I’ve typed it out, I’m pretty sure it’s the latter. Or, you know, both of them with most of the change in outcome being a result of the latter. Feeling like the work I’m doing matters is kind of a big deal to me because there is little more I hate than feeling like I’m wasting my time and going to work every day at a job that felt like it was wasting my time was really not a happy place for me to be, mentally speaking. I mean, I knew the work I was doing mattered, but there were sure a lot of days that it didn’t feel like it did, no matter how much I reassured myself otherwise.
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