Sometimes, as I’m standing at my desk and sweating while I try to focus on my dumb little tasks on days that I’m feeling particularly frustrated with my job, I let my mind wander through potential futures or alternate timelines. Twelve years ago, when I graduated college, I had very different plans for my life. I’d spent the four years of my college education finding out what I was interested in, what I was good at, and what I cared about, and planned to eventually return to scholastic pursuits so I could earn myself an advanced degree in some kind of writing thing and eventually further that with some kind of further degree focused on medievalism or the development of language or something. I was going to work for a few years, pay off my student loans by the time I was thirty, go back for more education, and spend my life burying myself in my beloved writing and research and education (of myself and then of others). That, of course, didn’t happen, but my dream of living a life of telling stories lasted until pretty recently and now I find myself adrift with no future I’m really working toward beyond being debt-free, no attachments to my present (geographic or occupational) and so I wonder what kind of life I might be living if I hadn’t been shackled by debt or might yet live should I find a way to remove my need to spend most of my time and energy on being a cog in a machine that does not value me.
Continue readingFuture
What’s Next Now That My Dragon Age Playthrough Is In The Rearview Mirror?
Please, if you know the answer, tell me. I’m desperate. As of writing this, it has been almost a week since I finished this momentous task, this three hundred forty hour undertaking, and nothing compares to the soaring highs and wonderful emotional lows (that were also soaring highs, let’s be real, because I love a tear-jerker) of Veilguard. I’ve tried playing other video games, things I set aside to brute-force my way through Inquisition, and none of them seem fun. I’ve tried to read, but my mind can’t focus on something that doesn’t feel as real as Veilguard did. I tried taking a night off, to do something other than play a Dragon Age game, and yet I found myself unable to focus on anything but thoughts of how nice it would be to start a new file. Nothing compares to the depth of character and delight I felt while blissfully escaping into this latest Dragon Age game, so how can I tear myself away from the fresh character I made on my second night after beating the first one? How can I deny myself what my entire being desires so deeply and clearly?
Continue readingChanging The Past By Destroying The Future In Final Fantasy 7: Remake
I finished Final Fantasy 7: Remake. I’ve still got to do the Intermission thing with Yuffie and I’ll probably go back at some point to finish collecting the achievements by playing through the game on Hard Mode (I’ve been enjoying the extra challenge of a more difficult game mode lately and I enjoy the combat in FF7: Remake enough to figure overcoming the challenge could be a fun way to spend my time), but I think I should finally be getting to Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth sometime this weekend [this turned out to barely be true, as I only had about an hour to play it before I went to bed Sunday night]. In the meantime, though, I’m surprised by my lack of ideas to write about. Sure, I’ve got plenty to say now that I’ve fully played through both Remake and the original Final Fantasy 7, but most of that is kind of boring since it amounts to “oh, I know who that character is, now” instead of “who the hell is this Sonic The Hedgehog-looking bipedal Cat?”. Which, honestly, is still my main impression of Cait Sith since I played FF7: Remake the first time not long after I watched the Sonic The Hedgehog movie in theaters (and all that separated the two experiences was the everlasting month of March, 2020). He sure looked like a character right out of that movie. Other than that, most of my impressions of Remake have nothing to do with the original. After all, the whole point of the end of Remake is that you’re ultimately rejecting the pre-ordained future of the original game. Quite literally, given that you fight three strange figures in the lead-up to the Sephiroth fight that are, according to the Assess skill (which shows you a bit of background information about the enemies you’ve targeted, some battle strategy information in yellow text, and then a bunch of game statistics such as weaknesses, resistances, and immunities), the embodiments of people who fought for the future you’re rejecting.
Continue readingReflections On Grief And The Future
It probably seems weird to start out a year this way, but I’ve been thinking about grief a lot lately. I lost a grandmother last year and its almost exactly five years since I said my final goodbye to my grandfather a few weeks before he passed away. However, since I’ve had time to mourn and process the loss of my grandfather and had already begun to mourn my grandmother before she passed (since I have been estranged from the family for almost five years and hadn’t seen her since my grandfather’s funeral), there’s all sorts of grief mixed up in there as well. For instance, I grieve the way things are with my biological family. I don’t regret the choice I made (nor do I doubt that I made the correct decision), but I grieve both that I had to make this decision at all and that things might have been different if my family had, even once, done the work they needed to do to show my they could change. On a less dire note, it has been just over ten years since I moved to my current city, a place I expected to be for five years at maximum before I finished paying off my student loans and left to go pursue a post-graduate degree in some form of writing or English literature. I am still paying off those loans and have given up on pursuing a higher education because there’s likely no financially viable path forward for me down that route. I also thought I’d be in a committed relationship of some kind by now, living in a house, and surrounded by my adopted family made of friends and the biological relatives I’ve chosen to carry forward into my future. There are a lot of things I thought would someday be and that now might never come to pass, and I grieve those too.
Continue readingPost Vacation Check-In
Well, I had a great time. There’ll be more coming about all that (especially once I’ve had time to sort through pictures and decide what is going where when it comes to social media and my blog here), but I wanted to interrupted my previously planned posting order to do a few updates about my schedule. I’ll get those out of the way quick so I can talk about something more fun/contemplative for the rest of the post.
Continue readingLooking Toward Future TTRPGs With My Friends
At this point, I’ve talked to almost all of my Dungeons and Dragons groups about the on-going issues with Wizards of the Coast and we’ve determined that we’re collectively moving on to new games. It was nice to hear that the pretty much universal response to the conversation was “I don’t care what we play, I just want to keep playing with this group” since that makes me feel good about the groups I’ve put together over the years. We’ve got a ton of games to play; most people had ideas, suggestions, or an active interest in a game I suggested during my monologue; and I’ve turned two D&D groups into a single Tabletop Roleplaying Game group that I might try expanding to accomodate people who aren’t up for weekly games. I might even do a long day (for me) of TTRPGs by runing two groups in separate parties through the same campaign as allies, rivals, or something else! The sky is the limit!
Continue readingReflections on Next Year
As the year draws to a close, I find myself thinking about the future more and more. 2023 is going to be a busy and exciting year for me, at least intermittently. Two dear friends are getting married and I will be a part of that, which involves at least one big trip and then a wedding, all of which will happen within the first six months of the year. Shortly after that, I’ll be moving since I can’t stay where I’m living any longer due to the rapid rise of rent and my personal distaste for how aware I am of everything my neighbors do. From there, my year is unknowable. After all, I’m also looking for a new job and hope to be doing something I can do entirely from a home office, since I’d like to move around a little bit. Try living elsewhere for a time. See what that’s like since I’ve lived in the same major area my entire life (northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin). Meet some new people. Go on an adventure or two.
Continue readingVacation Conjecture
Today is my first day back to my normal life following my vacation. I can only guess at how I feel right now, since I’m writing this two weeks prior in order to allow myself a break from daily blog updates during said vacation. The actual week I’m on vacation is going to be only flash fiction so I can avoid feeling guilty for not posting anything. I’ve spent a week in a distant cabin a few hours north of where I normally live, enjoying a getaway with two of my younger siblings and two of my friends (all of us made up my old Monday night D&D group back before I realized I needed to dial things back a little bit in 2021). Some of these people met each other in person for the first time while sharing a cabin with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and probably just a little bit too little space for all five of us to be comfortable together. As someone who has lived alone for two years, I imagine it took a bit of getting used to for me and that I found great solace in the ability to just go for a walk or sit outside in the shade.
Continue readingThe Edge of Sleep
Half-dreamt thoughts on the edge of sleep. Little things seen out of the corner of your eyes. A double-take revealing nothing extraordinary. A memory of a moment in the future, forgotten until it happens.
“Anxiety” they said, “manifesting as insomnia and psychosis.” Sleep studies, sleeping pills, and sleep aids.
“You brain is just firing neurons. There’s nothing to worry about.” Pills, therapy, and even meditation, all to fix an imbalance that never budged.
“It’s a form of schizophrenia. We can figure it out.” More pills, more therapy, but also a treatment center this time.
Whispered conversations on the edge of hearing. Reports handed to parents with only the occasional word revealed to me. The knowledge they talked about me like I wasn’t there anymore and there was nothing I could do to convince them otherwise.
But it was all real. There were cracks in the world, slowly letting the magic and majesty of the old world back in. Atlantis had sunk, but not in water.
Now, after millenia, it was coming back, guided by creatures that looked like the worst nightmares of the woman in the cell next to mine whose wordless screams of pain and fear no words could have described better.
There was one other girl who knew. She showed up after I did but her family never visited. They kept us apart. “It just feeds your psychosis” they would say.
By the time they believed us, it was too late. The wards were sealed and they waited for the Atlanteans to get around to them before taking out the only people who could have stopped them.
It was easy. We were locked in cells and restrained in jackets. A flash of light and it was over.
I have that memory-dream every night, but no one believes me.
Under the Gun
Living underneath an orbital defense cannon was interesting. The geostationary satellite cast its shadow elsewhere, most of the day, but Fred always made sure he was outside when it passed through his town. He’d been a child when they first put it in orbit, but he still remembered just how safe he’d felt, knowing it was up there.
Now, he just liked sitting in the shade and marveling at human ingenuity. In two generations, they had gone from launching orbital defense cannons to no longer needing them. They’d become a last, defunct line of defense in a war that was over. Curios from a past that stuck around because they weren’t worth taking down.
Today, as the shadow passed overhead and Fred enjoyed his lunch, something about it seemed a little off to him. As he munched his way through a ham sandwich, he looked at the familiar dark outline about his head. It took him a couple of minutes to figure it out, but he eventually realized that the shadow seemed off because the various shapes in its profile were on the wrong sides.
It looked like someone had just spun the whole thing around. Fred pulled out his cell phone and pulled up the space transit blotter, looking for a reference of a satellite maneuver, like they do during maintenance. Today turned up empty.
After a few more searches left him empty-handed, Fred leaned back and watched the cannon again. It was clearly pointed down at Earth, rather than just rotated around on a different axis. Suddenly, the looming shadow around him wasn’t the constant comfort it once was. It felt like he was sitting, eating a boring sandwich during a break from a dead-end job, right underneath a gun. One shot was all it would take to-