Now With More Buds

I haven't blogged in a week, almost exactly.  That's not conspicuous at all, is it?  Don't worry, I might start blogging more frequently again soon.  I start orientation next week.  The pressing concern for the moment is this:

I'm standing in a wedding on Sunday.  I'm excited, but it's in Ohio, and my wife has to work, so that means I'll be apart from my wife for the better part of three days, and as jazzed as I am I'm going to be exhausted, because I know like... three people who are gonna be in the wedding?  I don't know how many Houghtonites will be at the wedding, and that's really the only group of people I know of the bride's, and I know even fewer of the grooms.

Still I'm honored to stand and witness the marriage of two good friends whose distance from me is yet another prod making me yearn to invent teleporters.

Graduating from college seems to have been a subtle shift in anxieties.  Some would say the stakes are higher now than they were, though monetarily I would say no way in heck are they actually.  Except that the high stakes from college have rolled over in the form of student loans looming over my head, demanding to be paid.

But I feel less like there's a single pressing project I need to finish to determine the course of my future, and more like every choice I make throughout every day contributes to the life I'm leading.

It's terrifying, but in the same way as a dull ache is agonizing.

Subtle, and always there, applying pressure.

I'm slowly making my way through The Hunger Games, to the pleasure of my family members who think it is quite good.  I have personal taste qualms about the first person present storytelling, though I think Collins executes it fairly well.  I am most impressed by the wells that go unmentioned in the story, one of things so often overlooked in first person stories.  The narrator is not always a stand-in for the author, and his/her flaws are rarely explicit, since it's hard to be fully conscious of your own failings.  The first person narrator in an active story is never (if the story is well done and the character well-fleshed-out) the unequivocal voice of truth.

Honestly, my personal voice choices have edged towards the third person omniscient, with the narrator having verisimilitude with the author.  It's an old-fashioned preference, but there it is.

At the same time as I wade into the strange coincidental cousin of the film Battle Royale, my wife is finishing up with The Wise Man's Fear, which means I can nerd out with her over a lot of stuff and we equally anticipate the third installment of the Kingkiller Chronicle.  I had some small ambition to review The Name of the Wind myself after reading a particularly aggravating review written by a professional.  I have since procrastinated and haven't done much that could be considered creative in the last week or so.

But I have played Guild Wars 2 like its servers are shutting down.  That's what you do when an MMO releases, right?  Play it eight hours a day for the first week?  That's pretty much what I did.

Now I sit and scoff at my own buffoonery and resist the urge to play the game.  It's hard, okay?  I love that game.  It's a mild obsession, and I'm doing my best to be an adult about it.

It's not going anywhere.

Time marches forward and more cool stuff is on the horizon.  Homestuck continues to be fantastic, a new season of Doctor Who approacheth, The Hobbit comes out this winter, and people have finally stopped harping on the "end of the world" that's supposed to happen before the year's over.  I probably jinxed it by saying that out loud on a blog that gets broadcast to... ten people?  I don't even know who all reads this blog, though you're awesome if you do, whether you agree with most of it or not.

One thing I've noticed about my life now is I don't feel like I'm in an environment where I can say, "All right, now I have to work on this" and have that be accepted.  That's probably just my bogus feelings, but it's true.  I feel like, since I don't have a grade waiting for the work that I do where the value of that grade is a condition of my earning honors that can get me hired better, any work I do is just frivolous head-in-the-clouds creative stuff.  I'm not saying my family doesn't support my art, but...

I need an art space.  A place to sit down that is the place where the ideas and the words are blended in an alchemical concoction meant to be administered to as many individuals as possible.  Okay, that got away from me.

-shrugs-

That's it for now.  Bye guys.

Back?

I am astounded by how a single week away can throw a hitch in your carefully crafted schedule.  And by carefully crafted, I mean teetering on the edge of not actually a schedule.  Now I've got to build up daily blogging and morning runs all over again.

It will be worth it, though.  It was last time.

There's also job-searching to do.  Oh boy.

You know what's on my mind right now (other than super heroes)?  It's the fact that this will be my first fall away from school in about seventeen years.  Do you know how strange that is to me?

So strange.  I don't really have anything else to say.

My friends and I are coming up with superpowers.

There's that.  Good to be back.  By for now, folks.

Back For a Sec

That was kind of a long break for me to take, but I think, for the most part, it was worth it.  I'd love to say I was really busy getting up to all the things—I'd love to claim I had all the irons in the fire, as it were—but honestly I didn't do much except hang with family and chill out and stuff.

Here's the thing, I'm probably taking a huge break again, because there's likely not going to be reliable internet at camp meeting, where I'm going for a week.  If there is internet I'll blog, if there's not I'll blog and post it later.

I went and saw the Batman movie today.  I think what made the biggest impression on me was the quote near the end, where [a character] reads from the final words of A Tale of Two Cities.  It goes something like: "I do a far, far better thing now than I have ever done, and I go to a far, far better place than I have ever known."

And it fits so well with the story of the movie.

And that's all the spoilerificness I have for that movie, other than that, you know, there's Batman in it.

Sorry for spoiling that for you.

I recently watched a bunch of My Little Pony and it's growing on me.  Especially since the actor who played Q in Star Trek was the voice of the wicked spirit Discord.  Every moment of that character was splendid, though I dread to think that some day some kid is going to be watching old shows and say, "Hey, that funny god-man is Discord from My Little Pony!"

But still, the awesomeness is undistilled.

I've been working on Hearthstead comics in the last week.  Got some panels done.  It's hard work, drawing.  Even when you're not very good.  I won't say especially.  I'm not sure the amount of work changes.  Maybe the quality.  But don't take my word for it.  I'm not a visual artist.  Or, not an accomplished one.  Eh, I don't know, but I'm trying.  But anyway, the comic's not far enough along for me to show it off on the internet yet.  It's coming along, though.  So there's that.

My wife has a job and I'm making comics.  Our anniversary's coming up.  Married for a year.  That's awesome, and I'm excited.

But yeah, there's what's going on lately, and I'll talk to you later.

Concept and Application

I applied to work at Meijer today.  The same one Rachael worked at last year when we were scrambling together money to get married.  Now we'd like to scramble together some money to not end up broke.  Because being broke isn't fun, guys.

You can't exactly be successful at writing and be broke.

Hey, that right there?  That was untrue.  Plenty of people do it.  They're called starving artists, and they're all over the place because our culture has created people who don't want to settle for doing something meaningless with their lives.  They would prefer to suffer in order to do something meaningful.  And for most people the most meaningful thing in the world is art.

But I wasn't planning on talking about art.  I was planning to talk about money.  And how it fits into the world of your story.

In Talas Ke, I took money out of the equation.  Kind of.  I decided it was a barter society with no concept of currency, because I believed (and still kinda do believe) that such a society is better off than one with the hulking abstracted behemoth we call "money."

Maybe I'll outline the way money got to where it is today.

You see, somewhere close to the origin of written language, people decided to start quantifying value.  It likely started with bushels of grain or something similar.  One bushel of grain had a certain amount of value, and people tended to agree on what that value was.  They would trade the bushel for something (or a couple somethings) else of roughly equivalent value to the bushel.  Then, we had the bright idea to start using more portable symbols of that value, worth the standard value of the bushel.  This tended to be easy to move into, because of precious metals and their great worth in societies just developing technology that benefited from such material.

At some point banks came into the equation, and at some point banks started to do two different things:  they would lend out your money (for which, ideally, they would pay you) and they would allow you to carry a waiver that told another bank you were in good standing and could withdraw money from that other bank even though it wasn't physically your money.

And money continued to abstract until the point where today it's more a digital numeral than a physical thing you can grasp in your hands.

So what will you do with that in your story?  Is your world one where the people have begun to abstract the value of an object and give it a number?  Or is a simpler one?  How simple?  Think about it, and if you're creating a world based on development past the one ours has, think about how money might change from where it is now.

Honestly, I can't imagine the behemoth will survive much longer.  That's why I don't think about it too much.  But it's a good thing to consider when you're world-building.

So there.  There's more significance to this blog post.

-shrugs-

Anachronized Holidays and The Need For Time Travel

I get busy some days.  Still deliberating about a certain "job opportunity" for my wife, and things, and making plans about tomorrow.  Also, catching up on internet things like webcomics and the like.  Ho boy.  Ho ho boy.

It's July.  You know what that means.

Christmas.

In that vein, the sylvari and asura races will be playable in the final beta weekend event this July 20-22, which is super awesome but I'm still fighting an internal battle between making a crapload of sylvari characters and saving the sylvari for release as a surprise/treat.  It's a hard choice to make, because I like both ideas on their own merits.  My wife thinks I should wait.

There may still be some days in the next few weeks that I don't blog at all for various reasons.  Some of those days may be followed by face punch videos.  Some may not.  Honestly, I kept my original self-made bargain of one month and I did it again, punishments and all, so at this point whether I keep blogging every single day is a moot point.  Stuff is getting crazy around here, with the vacations and the job searching and the crazy little beautiful monster children.  Life only gets more complicated after college, kids.

Get that now.  Understand it.  Grok it.  It is knowledge you will need ingrained in your mind, so that you don't find yourself completely boggled when "Well chips, all my irons just fell right out of that fire."

Don't mind my Homestuck references, I'm freaking out about potatoes right now.  That's really all there is to say on the matter.

-shrugs-

Fireflies and Mexican Food

I've been busy with not-slacking-off stuff all day, which consequently makes it hard to blog.  I've been helping my friend do jobs around the house for my parents.  My feet are tired.

I've also been looking for jobs.  Or trying.  That's also exhausting.  On top of that, I ordered some books to sell by hand (or by mail).  And deposited some checks.  My life's full of mundane stuff right now.

I mean, it's not all bad.  Not even close.  There was some Brawl (which is peerless), and Casa Real.  It's an authentic Mexican restaurant.  I may have mentioned it before.  Anyway, if you live anywhere close to Otsego, MI you should pretty much just drop everything and go eat their food.  It is the best food.

I don't really have anything profound to say at the moment.  No wait, here comes—

The fireflies are out tonight.  They are a beautiful gift, those creatures.  Dancing points of golden light whose choreography draws attention the landscape they fill.  I pass moments of peace amongst these creatures and thank God for this world he made.

Also, Firefly is the best show.  I saw that about a lot of shows.  This one too.  Watch it.  Unless you can't stand sci-fi.  Then just get out.  Out.

Bugs are trying to eat my screen.  Not the beautiful, shiny kind.  The annoying, gnat-like kind.  Time to put an end to this.

Good night, readers.

White Knights and Writer's Block

I may have mentioned this before, but I don't particularly believe in writer's block.  Despite this, though, there are times I set aside to write where nothing comes.  I deeply suspect that during these times I just don't feel like writing.  If I let this rule me, though, I'll never amount to anything as a writer, because I'll never write anything.

It's hard when I don't like anything that comes out of my head when I'm writing.  There are some interesting ideas, but nothing cohesive, nothing that I think matters.  If I'm not engaging with what I'm writing, how are my readers supposed to?  Now, I've had readers most interested in the things about my writing I find the most dull, and I can kind of take that in stride.  People have different preferences from each other.  I still stubbornly seek objective goodness in my writing.  It's just a frustrating battle to fight.

One thing that's quite popular lately in all kinds of stories is the anti-hero.  This is the guy who doesn't even really want to do the right thing.  There's also the edgy hero, like the concept of Breaking Bad (brewing/selling illicit drugs to keep a family afloat).  I know that people are interested in this because it explores the space between black and white, and in our culture people tend to think the gray is more honest about life.  I'm not like that.  Yes, I'm admitting that I look at things in a more black and white way than most.  But you might be surprised by what I call black and what I call white.

One of my main questions is "where's your heart at?"  Not that I actually ask it aloud, or even think about it in as many words.  I like to see when characters weigh their decisions based on the nexus of their motivations, emotions, and logic.

I get frustrated when things don't come out right in the end, or if people making horribly flawed decisions are the ones rising as the victors.  I don't care for stories where no one comes to the rescue.  It's not necessarily because I believe that that's what happens in real life, but because when I'm a very protective person.  Because my first thought when I see someone in distress is how I can end that distress, it's hard for me to imagine that there won't be someone in the story who behaves as I would.

I know it's cliché to like the white knight, but I do.  I don't think they're nearly as boring as they're made out to be.  Because, again, that's my personality.  It's not easy to be the good guy.  If you're human, you're chock full of flaws you have to strive against, at the same time you're battling the injustices you see around you.  But that's the way I see myself interacting with the outside world.  Fixing things that are wrong.

That might be why I'm an introvert.  Some things don't need fixing, or can't be fixed.  At least not by me.  It kinda gets you down, man.

That's also probably why fantasy appeals to me.  Stack the deck in the favor setting things right.  Because things are never going to settle right in this world, and seeing the real world in chaos is what I do every day.  I don't want to keep seeing it in my fiction.

I want to see the chaos undone.  Raveled.

Okay, this kinda got side-tracked.  Anyway, sometimes I lose interest in writing in the confines of my current project.  Like Talas Ke.  I'm having some issues sorting out the ending.  It's hard to finish something that's been around in my head for a decade.  I need it to be perfect.  And it isn't going to be.  But I don't want to give up.  Then there's writing poetry for songs.  I had a couple good ideas, but now I don't know where to go without getting either repetitive or trite.

Thankfully, I can write about whatever on this blog, even about the issues I'm having with writing at the moment.  And know that I'd rather bury myself in a writing project than go out and find a job.  That's frustrating, too.  Because I need a job like a good analogy needs to relate to the audience.

Part of the problem with temporarily living at home with the parents is the lack of space.  It's also one of the few setbacks in marriage.  At least on the surface, it seems like I'd be doing a lot better as a writer if I was single and living alone in a quiet apartment.

Balancing the great two great passions of my life is just going to get harder, isn't it?

Grenth's gory beard, life sucks.

:/

Games

Have you ever played Clue?  It's a game of intrigue, and though I think many people (including, sometimes, myself) pass it off as a children's game, it's quite engaging when you get into it.  You see, it requires you to use powers of logic and deduction in order to solve a puzzle before your competitors.  I don't tend to like board games, and in that vein I tend to refuse to play Clue when called upon, but if I can be convinced to play I have to admit I rather enjoy Clue.  I like puzzles more than I care to admit.

What I don't like are pure games of chance.  Yahtzee, then, doesn't appeal to me much at all.  This is especially true when I'm playing games in groups.  I don't find games of chance to be good opportunities to engage with fellow human beings.

I've been playing Clash of the Olympians, which is a game made by the same developers as Kingdom Rush.  It's a fun game, a well-animated flash castle-defender with the choice to play as Heracles, Achilles, or Perseus, defending against satyrs, gorgons, harpies, succubi, cyclops, griffons, minotaurs, and some sort of goblins.  As Hercules you're hurling hilarious things, as Achilles spears, and as Perseus you fire arrows.

It's addictive, which is good for a flash game.  Part of this is that the final levels are very difficult, and it often requires you to complete difficult mini-tasks in the earlier stages.  So it requires a near-perfect performance from you.  Oh man, games that stoke my perfectionism gather my time and attention like industrial-strength electromagnets.  Repetitive tasks to receive a prize?  Meh.  Repetitive tasks that must be executed with perfect efficiency to succeed and receive the prize?

Whoa wait, it's Saturday already?  Hold on, I just need to try this stage a couple more times.

To give up is to admit you don't have what it takes.  That kind of failure is not an option.  And succeeding?  So.  Very.  Gratifying.

Well, I guess that's one way to demonstrate to y'all that I'm a gamer.  There you go.

-shrugs-

Impromptu Holiday

Today was a party day.  Family friends arrived, my brother and his family came over, and my newlywed cousin and his wife came over.  We had good food and good times hanging out, and I enjoyed it a lot.  I am a bit tired, now, though, being introverted and all.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll have some time to spend alone and work on writing or some such.

Also, I have a third reference, so I can start doing a lot more applications!  That's really exciting.

About Ashes of Silver, by the way, if you don't have a credit card and you want the book, just message me on Facebook or Twitter me or something similar and let me know, because sometime soon I am probably going to be ordering a good number of books to sell in person around the Allegan area.  Also, there's the bonus that you can get it signed (if you want).

Like I said, I'm pretty tired, and I can't think of much to talk about with writing today.  I think that's the way things are gonna go when I'm busy, at least until I can get into that routine I said I should get into.  I set my alarm this morning!

But I slept through it.

Maybe if I got to bed before midnight I can do that better.  But I still have that college-kid compulsion to squeeze as much of the day as possible from the end of the day instead of the beginning.  Silly me.  I'm more focused in the morning anyway, I think.  I repeat, I think.  I don't know.  I do know that I tend to do my more involved blogs in the morning.

I also know that I've done my most prolific writing between midnight and five in the morning.

-shrugs-

For Whom the Bell Tolls

So my last two blog posts were a little longer.  This one won't be.

Today, I stood and watched my cousin (one of my best friends) get married, and almost cried because I'm maybe a little happy for them I guess?  And it was an awesome ceremony, a great reception, and a wonderful time.

Now those kids are off somewhere having an adventure, and I'm home after about three hours or more of riding in a car.  It's super late, and I'm tired, but not tired enough to just let a face-punch penance happen.

Though I might have, if my wife hadn't reminded me.

Tomorrow starts a new week with the foreseeable future dedicated to figuring this life out.  A little over a week till I get my proof to verify, and less than that till a GW2 BETA WEEKEND WOO!!!!  In the mean time, more writing projects to agonize over, more job applications (and similar activities) to fill out/send, and some exercise to work into my (hopefully not too) busy routine.

I leave you with this:  Nate and Christine Hunter, I know you might not read this right away (you'll be busy, I know how honeymoons are), but God bless you and your marriage.  I pray it be as much a blessing to you as the last ten months have been for me.  All my best wishes.  I love you.  Seriously.

Bed time.

Book in the Works

I have just one thing to talk about today—I think.  Today I took great strides to get a novel ready for publication.  I signed up, set it up, formatted it, and finally submitted it for review.  Now I'm waiting for that review to come back so I can order a proof.

I'm super excited, and looking forward to what this means for the future.  There is another thing I'm excited for.  There's a wedding on Sunday.  I'm quite happy for the bride and groom.

Unfortunately, I don't have much else to say.  I'll reserve more of the information about the novel for when there's something you can do about it.  Just know that it's in the works and I'm ecstatic.

Not Much to Report

There was no family today, and not a lot of creative work.  Instead, Rachael and I have been house-sitting.  It's been nice, but my wife gets a little stir-crazy without people around.

Much of the day that wasn't spent taking care of the pool or watering the plants we spent hanging around, watching Voyager or Legend of Korra, or reading Homestuck.  There were also root beer floats, which have not stopped being delicious.

I'm not sure what else to say about today.  So I guess I won't say anything else.  Talk to you tomorrow.

Grindin' XP

Moving right on through the revision process for the Hearthstead novel.  Incidentally, I don't quite have a name for it yet.  I'll probably need to confer with my cousin for a while to brainstorm one out.  Then once I'm done with that, I can move on to other projects like song-lyric poems, scene-writing for a friend's game, and starting the overhaul/revision process for Talas Ke.

Simultaneously job searching, of course.

I know it sounds like I'm ambition, but I guarantee you it usually just seems like I'm really lazy.  I don't know how that works, but it does.

I'm feeling more normal about the whole "graduated" thing.  It's still not exactly old news, but things are settling around me.

You know what's weird?  I've been getting up in the mornings (7:30ish) with the express purpose of working on my projects.  Never did that in college.  Now that I have all this time to spare (not really, but bear with me) I can actually get around to ordering it in a fashion that makes sense to me.

That's the way I like it.  Maybe it's a short-sighted thing, but I've always felt like I'm much more capable of improving when the pressure's off and I have time to grind my skills.  Maybe that's why I feel that way.  I must have a JRPG mentality towards self-improvement.

Didn't I warn you that I'm an incorrigible nerd?

Well that's that.  I'll check in tomorrow with an update.

Peace.

Brawl, Job Searches, and Hearthstead

So I said I played Brawl yesterday.  Do I really have to explain to you how it's a good game?  It is.  Especially when played with friends.  Though it is pretty boring to play alone.  But I've got other games for that.

It's been a little over a week since I graduated, and I've had my time to recover.  Now I get to start ramping up my job search until something clicks.  I've never felt good about job searches, mostly because I'm a socially awkward penguin.  Pray for me.  I'll need it.

The other thing I need to do is get a good habit going of spending specific times writing, both so I can avoid having to punch myself in front of a camera and so I can have that time set aside to work on my various writing projects—one of which is on a deadline.

The world of Hearthstead was created by my cousin and me, and I have a passion for the telling of its stories.  The comic I'm working on, the novel I'm revising, and a number of other side projects are related to that universe, but I don't want to fully expose it to the world until it's ready.

Hopefully my audience can wait until then.

Shrug off.

Anybody Want a Peanut?

It's been a few years since I watched the Princess Bride.  It's a good movie.  It's a great movie.  It's a classic.  I just started four sentences in a row with the contraction "it's," one of which had a different tense than the others.

Watching it this time, I observed things a little differently.  I can tell that the writing isn't magnificent screen-writing, unless we're talking about magnificent parody of bad, low-budget films. I also recognized the actor who plays Inigo Montoya from other media, which was interesting.

I guess what I chiefly want to say is that as my writing has matured I think my appreciation of the Princess Bride—and other works like it—has deepened.  It's still hard to say why it's good, or what parts of it aren't good writing (and why that doesn't matter).  In order to explain all that in detail I would need to write a paper.  I can just tell now how it falls under the category of "so bad it's good."

That's it for now.  -shrugs-

Just an Update, I Guess

Helped my Grandpa with a lot of stuff today.  That was good.  Then I hung out with my family.  That was also good.  Now I'm eating dinner with my family.  This, too, is good.  My life is good right now.  Praise the Lord.

I've done a great deal of driving in the week since my graduation, and I haven't quite stopped being emotionally tired.  I think I will, eventually.  I hope so.  Or at least I'll get used to it.  We'll see.  At the moment I'm happy but things feel off.

Part of this is I haven't quite felt an opening to crack into my writing projects (of which, as I've mentioned, I have copious amounts).  I guess I could get into that while the family's together watching something, or some such, but I prefer to work in the quiet (or sheathed in a musical barrier).  I'm hoping that changes, too, because I really want to work on my writing.  We'll see.  I guess that's my phrase for today.

-shrugs-

Third Time is Still Awesome

I'm gonna go see Avengers for the third time tonight.  It's not too many times.  I'm still super excited about it.  Also, chicken fries.  And good friends I haven't seen much of for the last four years.  Summer is getting exciting in all the right ways.

No, I'm not gonna think about job applications and resumés and writing projects right now.  Still capitalizing on my break.  For now.

-shrugs-

Interdining Bloggery

I'm eating pizza with my in-laws.  Today consisted of not very much, though I do need to finish up a resumé for job applications.  Need to reference how these things are put together.

Yeah, I didn't practice resumé writing very well in college.

That comic I was working on yesterday?  I lost all the figures I had drawn at one point and had to redo all of them.  So much work.  But I think it's worth it.

After-college life is weird.  Maybe it wouldn't be so weird if Rachael and I were all moved into our own place, but then again that would be pretty weird in and of itself.  These are the first days of the rest of my life, as it were, and it's kinda messing with me.

I'm not buying Diablo III.  If someone wants to get the game for me, I'd be "eternally grateful," but otherwise I'm not gonna be playing that game for quite a while, if at all.  But that's okay, I've got Guild Wars 2 to look forward to.

So freaking worth it.