Doubt, Dedication and Days Of Future Past

The word of the week is lenticular.

May 26 - 25K!

Hard to believe that my blog has had 25,000 hits to date.

With over six years of weekly entries, I am tickled that so many people have stopped by to see what I'm up to. As I've mentioned before, it's hard for me to tell who exactly is viewing the page, though I can generally see where the hits originate from in terms of country and links followed from places like Facebook or Google.

Having something to say that's interesting is always important to me. I don't talk about the mundane or the boring in my blog, nor do I stuff it full of political commentary or opinionated rants.

I talk about things that are important to me and that I find interesting.

Seeing that so many people have dropped by, I must be doing something right, if only to be commenting on my own life as I live it… which is really what a blog is all about, isn't it?

May 27 - Budget Smiles

Tonight was movie night!

Cheap movie nights, at that; for years now I've tried to go on the discounted-ticket Tuesday nights at the local Cineplex in order to stretch my budget enough to be able to see films in the theatre. Which I want to keep on doing, as it's an enjoyable experience for the most part, though I've stopped in general going on opening weekends to avoid the insane crowds and the giggle fests of immature crowds that still plague the theatre. Thankfully, laser pointers have fallen out of fashion and it's been a few years since I've seen someone ticking off hundreds of people with a cheap $10 cat toy.

Tonight I saw X-Men: Days Of Future Past… and I loved it!

Being quite familiar with the storyline about how the mutants deal with a future war and all its ramifications, I was thrilled by how well the film addressed the story points. It's been a while since I've been totally and completely engrossed in the movie from start to last and I have to say that X-Men:DOFP delivers this experience: there wasn't a moment I can recall that I wasn't completely absorbed in what was going on on the screen. Other people had similar experiences, given their reviews, which just reinforces my own sense of satisfaction.

Leaving the theater, I had a glow of satisfaction that's been all too rare of late, of having got my moneys worth and more from an entertainment experience. What's more, I knew that what I'd seen on the screen was the result of extremely hard work from people who loved the material and had done their utmost to do it justice when bringing it to life for the audience.

It's that sort of dedication to storytelling that I hope to bring to my work, to do my utmost to create stories that are compelling and that will bring readers completely into the world(s) that I create.

May 28 - Small Thoughts

Do you know how big the universe is?

Douglas Adams tackled the subject gamely, when he said this:

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

Sometimes, I forgot that just how incredibly huge the universe is, even knowing how far light year is and how small our sun( and even our solar system! )is in comparison to stellar distances. The tiny speck that is our little blue planet can't even be seen on a cosmic scale. 

To give you an idea of that unimaginable scale, have a look at this image below:

An area the size of the arrow's tip in diameter represents all the stars that we can see in the night sky with an unaided eye. It's incredibly tiny and the mind-boggling thing about the circle is that it represents a travel time on the order of centuries for light.

When I find myself in an untractable state of mind, I try to remind myself that on the galactic scale of things, I'm both vast and small. My problems are not the universe's problems: they're at a scale where neither can comprehend the other, though we're one and the same, in a sense. Things that bother me today, that may seem insurmountable, are really just matters of perspective and I have to remind myself of that should-be-obvious fact.

In other words, I don't sweat it.

May 29 - Doubt

I had a few bad moments this week.

It's funny how a few small things can make your mind suddenly whirl down into the cracks and crevices that are filled with the accumulated doubts we all carry around with us.

For me, one trigger this week were my arms and the pain I often feel after they've been used bit too much. Performing various daily tasks only to find that a dull ache has surfaced beneath the skin can be intensely frustrating for me and I'm afraid at times it overwhelms me. Overwhelms me because I think that I should be able to perform simple tasks without pain, being an otherwise healthy man of relatively young age who hasn't accumulated any injuries of note. Yet to feel damage I can't see and I can't do anything to repair according to medical experts drives me to the point of physical anger, but as there's no source for such apart from my own damaged limbs, the anger has nowhere to go and I end up having to calm myself through various means. To remind myself that my animal reaction to pain is subservient to the knowledge of my mind, that I have to carry on and do the best I can while minimizing anything that will antagonize my damaged tendons.

It is what it is and I have to live with it.

Thankfully, I won't be lifting all that many printers or similar heavy objects anymore, apart from the occasional singular weekend shift week to week. Given that I'm not playing video games anymore and doing most of my typing by voice, my arm should get a solid few months of general rest over the summer, which I'm curious to see how much of a difference it will make in their sub-dermal complaints.

Maybe someday I'll be able to pay a panel of experts to examine my arms minutely and to give me a solid diagnosis that includes tailored therapy leading to a full recovery of my former carefree days. Or perhaps in a decade I can elect to have new forms of treatment applied, or even some form of nanotech therapy that will allow me to enjoy those things I previously did before my self-inflicted injury of ignorance.

Just being able to type again, pain-free, for a few hours at a time would be glorious. I'm sure my Muse would agree.

May 30 - Kites!

There was a lot happening in the sky in Victoria today.

Down at Clover Point, the Victoria International Kite Festival was taking place, starting tonight and running during the daytime all this weekend. It's the inaugural event, the first of its kind, so I made sure to make some time tonight to go down and see what I could.

Which is a little odd, you might think, as most people don't fly kites at night. For one, it's hard to see the kite unless it's light-colored and the moon is out. To, you'll really have to watch where you're putting your feet to avoid tripping over anything in the dark.

However, you can alleviate both these problems by putting lights on the kites and holding the event out where there's lights surrounding a nice flat open space, just like there is at Clover Point, , which is only a kilometer from where I live by the ocean, at the southernmost point of Victoria.

Hundreds of people showed up at dusk, wandering in by foot and by vehicle to see magic appear in the air. There was a light wind coming in steadily from the southwest, just enough to keep the kites in the sky. Most of the kites aloft had one or more lights and several had long blinking streamers, as you can see from the picture below:

The real fun started after the sun had set, with just a remnant glow in the west as the insert street lights flickered to life. More kites join the ones already aloft in the sky until nearly 2 dozen of them fluttered in the breeze and skittered across the breezes at the hands of their skilled controllers. A special thrill took place when a series of stunt kites were made to perform various precision acrobatics in the sky, to the delight of the crowd, as you can see in this video:

Next year, I'll be sure to have an afternoon off and a kite of my own to steer across the sky, joining hundreds of others in a beautiful ballet set against the background of purest azure blue.

May 31 - Saying No To The Future

How often do you say no?

For me, it's a hard thing to do, as I have an inbuilt need to try to please people. Is something I recognized years ago and I now know can be detrimental to my own desires and needs. All the same, I do my best to accommodate other people, as long as their needs aren't extravagant or excessive as I like to think I'm a good friend.

Today though, I just couldn't accommodate a friend, which made me feel like a bit of an ass. I'd already made plans to have breakfast with one friend and see the start of the Kite Festival before work this morning, when a Staples co-worker texted me last night to see if I would be able to switch for his earlier shift as he's not really a morning person and it takes him a while to get to work from where he lives.

Thinking about it now, it's not a big deal, but at the time last night it took me a few minutes to think about it and say 'no' in my mind. While it didn't feel good, it didn't feel right, which I know is a result of my having been used as a human doormat for many years by MMart, though not often by its employees: as I've mentioned previously in this blog I developed an almost preternatural sense of when someone was trying to get me to accommodate them in a need that wasn't really necessary.

The art of saying no is something I'm still refining for myself. There's quite a few books and websites on the topic, which I'll leave you to find if you need them; I'm good on the topic for now. There's not a lot in my life that I have to choose to say no to, just the occasional social event which really isn't much when you think about it.

No is the word I don't like and I don't think I'll ever be comfortable with, but I think it's a necessary word in anyone's life. Necessary because if you want to have a life that's your own, you have to have a boundary where you know very definitively where you start and other people end.

June 1 - It Begins…

It's a new month and the spiritual beginning of summer.

Today was also my first true day off in two weeks, with glorious weather to enjoy. I took my parents out to enjoy lunch and celebrate my mother's 68th birthday, at a little place I've never been before near where they live called Andrienne's Tea Room. It was a lovely time, as my parents told me all about their trip to the UK which they just returned from last night. 

They took many photos using their new HTC One M7 cell phones( which I chose for them ) and were utterly delighted with the quality of the images as well as the ease-of-use of the phones. They visited many of our ancestral homes and had a fantastic time talking to many of our long-lost relatives, many of whom had no idea that our family trees stretch so far back: all credit to my mother who has done many years of research on our family history to trace it back well past the age of Charlemagne and into Roman times. I had no idea I was related to so many personages of note and that thought always comforts me: that I am descended from so many historical figures that accomplished so much in their lifetimes.

Today also marked the official start date for my second book.

I promised myself that as of June 1 of this year, I would begin work on my second novel. At this point of the project, I have a rough outline prepared along with copious notes made from the editing of the first book. It's going to be a much more complicated endeavor then my first novel, as there are many interweaving plots and more characters by far to deal with. 

Without spoiling anything, I can say that the story will continue from the first book and be enhanced quite a bit, dealing with many things I touched on originally that I felt now need to be explored more fully. It should be quite a ride and I expect that I'll need every spare minute I have for the rest of this year to complete it.

That said, I'll be spending less time on the blog week to week, as I'll be doing less overall. With a solid 9-5 day job during the week to pay my bills, I'll be devoting hours from my every evening to writing the second book and when I'm not writing, I'll be compiling and planning and revising my work.

So don't be surprised if I don't have a lot to say in the blog about what I'm up to each week. Essentially I'll be working by day and writing by night and that's exactly as I expect to be: my schedule's now fixed and every minute that I'm not at my day job I'll be writing; no vacation for me this year because I'll also be trying to find an agent for my first book while revising it bit by bit in breaks from writing the second one.

I plan on escaping through my writing and I hope that when I'm done, I can bring everyone along for the ride.

With a few variations, my weeks are going to look much the same: work and write, then repeat. I don't imagine it's going to be an eventful summer, as I'll have FAR less free time to spare than I did in the magical year of 2012, when I wrote my first novel sans day job. As hard as that was at times( see those blog entries, if you wish! )it's safe to say they were salad days compared to the steady work that's ahead of me. But, enough chit-chat: there's a novel to write!