The word of the week is ruminate.
May 30 – App-B-Gone
Crash, crash, and crash again.
Sometimes, you don't realize how often checking
FBook is as part of your day, when you suddenly can't do it anymore. Like when
my phone's official FBook app decided to stop working completely after the
latest update, as well as after an uninstall / reinstall.
Ah well. Made me look up alternatives, which is
always fun.
After looking askance at more than a few apps
that purported to 'do it better' than the official FBook app, I settled on one
called Swipe, which hooks into FBook's mobile site to display information about
your social account. From the reviews, it looked to be solid, regularly
updated( with far fewer bugs than the
official app )and most importantly, light on phone resources - unlike the
official app.
Using it all this week, I was impressed enough to
shell out a few dollars for the Pro version, which among its better features
allows you to exclude keywords from your newsfeed. So Trump, Kayne West and all
their ilk are now blissfully missing from most of my daily reading, which alone
is worth the price of the app.
It makes me wonder how a huge, deep-pocket
company like FBook can't manage to improve its bloated app while others can do
so with seeming ease...
May 31 – Korra
I've been a bit distracted the last few months,
but in a good way.
Watching The Legend of Korra on NetFlix
has been an eye-opener for me, in that I had no idea how good the series was.
Airtight writing tied into fully developed characters and wonderfully laid-out
plots awaited me when I finally got around to watching and I've had to limit
myself to a few episodes every other day to avoid the dreaded phenomenon known
as Netflix binge-watching.
Kudos to those responsible for making the show.
It takes a ton of hard work to create something
truly worthwhile, and the irony is that the majority of that work goes
unremarked by most who see the end result. For an animated television series,
there are many components: the artwork, the animation, the voice acting and of
course the writing that is the seed from which everything grows...
All these combined perfectly in Korra, and
it shows. At no point did I wonder what was happening, what the characters
wanted or whether I was interested in what was going on: the show swept me up
with gently cradled hands and carried me along with the characters as they
experienced the events unfolding.
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| Just some of the great characters in the show |
I found it inspiring as a writer and for that
reason alone, I'm glad that I've been watching as much of the shows I have
these last few months. With my own inspiration flagging since last summer, it's
been a real struggle to visualize the end results of my own creative efforts
and seeing a masterpiece such as Korra helps me greatly to talk back
into my own hard work that still lies ahead.
And I still have one more season of Korra to
finish watching...!
June 1 – More Time
Looking at my calendar lately, it's pretty empty. I like it.
I've divested myself of most distractions, to
better concentrate on what's important. Now that another month has rolled
around, I'm ensuring that what ends up in the calendar are only vital things,
like family and friends and little else. My writing group's activities seem to
be self-supporting this year, 6 months in, and I'm looking to keep it that way.
Even my critique group is only meeting once a month at this point and since I
don't have any new material, there's little I can do to contribute apart from
critically reviewing the work of the other members.
It's funny how when I look back, I needed to find
time to do so many things yet never felt a sense of accomplishment when I
managed to scratch a few things off my ever-growing To Do list. What I've done
in the last six months is put many of those things on several smaller and more
concise lists: Write Today, Do Now and Get Around To Later - just having three
lists means I can better juggle everything overall and not feel a daily
dissatisfaction and not getting so much done as I think I should.
It's been a difficult year so far in 2016, for
myself and some family members.
My anxiety has, through daily effort, being got
under control and I'm making progress towards being much healthier with regular
exercise and decent eating. My sleep is still somewhat scattered, though I'm
finding that by going to bed earlier and waking up around 6 AM is helping
stabilize things for me.
Stability, I think, is my main goal for the rest
of 2016.
To date I've managed to achieve mental stability
and even a good deal of financial stability, though that's still got a long way
to go until I can just watch my bank balance grow without eyeing it askance
every day. Personally, I'm doing wonderfully well with my girlfriend and my
family - for the most part - seem to be on an even keel though it's been
difficult for my sister of late in some areas. But I'm there to help her, as
are my parents, and were getting through things together.
My goal is to have a calm summer, full of writing
and relaxation and not worrying about the future nearly as much so I can
concentrate on enjoying the Now.
June 2 – Building Dreams
It's incredible what people can do when they put
their mind to it.
That old saw of a phrase is exactly what popped
into my head when I saw this pop up in one of the Dark Crystal FBook groups
that I'm a part of:
This extremely talented person is putting
together a screen-accurate cosplay of a Garthim from the movie by Jim Henson.
It's staggering what he's already managed to accomplish in a few weeks and I
think the final result will be essentially mind-blowing in its effect.
Did I mention that this is exactly what I
wanted to create back when I was in grade 5?
Back then I didn't have these skills nor the
resources to put together anything even remotely like this, plus the proper
materials to create it were not widely available - the original suits were made
out of fiberglass and weighed upwards of 60 pounds each, far too heavy for the
kid to wear or even move.
Decades later, it's simply amazing to see my
childhood dream come to life, albeit under another person's hands. All the
same, I'll be watching closely to see what the final product's like, with an
eye towards re-creating it for myself one day.
There are some costumes that you just have to
wear, especially if there are childhood dream come true.
June 3 – Sim Easter Egg
What would my week be like without a bit of Neil Gaiman?
As one of my writing idols( along with Ray Bradbury, among many others )he's always managed to
surprise me with his work, and today I discovered a piece of his I had no idea
existed... because it was hidden inside a video game!
Back in 1994, the PC game Simcity 2000 was released. I'm pretty sure I have a copy of it,
though I can't seem to find it among my collection now( which surprises me )and
I had no clue that it contained some of Gaiman's early work!
Apparently, when you selected the library in the
game, there is a menu that popped up, one of whose options was 'Ruminate' -
when selected, up came a 1000-word whimsical piece about cities that Neil
Gaiman had penned! Here's an excerpt:
It's wonderful glimpse into the fantastical world
of his mind and I am quite grateful to have run across it in the wilds of the
Internet. Even 20 years ago, it's clear that Gaiman's imagination could carry
him to places that most others had not dreamt of... and that his ability to so
clearly share his experience of those places is what makes him such a great
writer.
All the more reason to better my own work!
June 4 – Heat Headache?
What glorious weather!
The temperature shot up today to the mid-20's,
with clear skies and blazing sunshine heating up Vancouver Island from the
early morning hours: lovely!
My sister and I joined my parents out for lunch
at Nourish, a new Vegan restaurant,
occupying a spacious century-old home located in swanky James Bay. We were
seated inside at a bay window with the sashes open to let in the cool breezes,
though I was still rather hot; I seem to be far more sensitive to temperature
these days, and even just wearing a T-shirt with shorts was making me sweat
today. We enjoyed our lunch together to celebrate my mother's 70th birthday,
milestone that were all pleased that she's reach given the numerous medical
troubles she's had over her lifetime, including a recent minor discovery that we
hope will be mitigated in a few months’ time with proper care.
Unfortunately, my head began to throb just after
lunch and I spent most of the afternoon in bed with a debilitating headache,
nixing my plans to enjoy it outside on a patio as I did yesterday reading my
copy of the Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer. A few Tylenol and some
serious shut-eye managed to eliminate it by the evening however, and I was
quite grateful not to waste the whole day.
In the evening, my girlfriend and I watched
several episodes of the first season of Star Blazers, a series I've been
eager to introduce her to as it was so formative to my own creative psyche and
interest in sci-fi so many decades ago. I've mentioned it before and I will say again: this is what made me want to write Space Opera, and it still holds up today more than thirty years later.
June 5 – Even Hotter!
Holy summer-scorchers, Batman!
The temps here shot up to a blistering 28C today,
but didn't feel higher as the humidity's dropped quite a bit. I was again
thankful to be living in a ground floor apartment facing north and west that
only gets direct sunlight on the front windows for a few hours each evening.
Even that is mitigated essentially by an overhanging balcony and a very large
tree by the roadside, which can raise the temperature significantly unless the
front blinds get mostly pulled across.
All the same, I felt fairly relaxed and
comfortable in my place with a fan going as I wrote and read for most of the
afternoon. My girlfriend wasn't feeling well this morning( I think the lack of humidity was bothering her )and thus our plans for the day went by the wayside... but I'm hopeful she'll be better with some rest, which is worth taking the time for.
I decided to test myself a little today, and went
for a walk to get some groceries. With a hat, and water, and keeping to the
shade as much as possible, I ambled about twenty minutes to the downtown Market
on Yates, where I enjoyed the cool air from the refrigerated section until I
was ready to head back home... which went without a hitch. The humidity is a startlingly low 30%, which means that
yes, it is a dry heat that's settled onto the Island for today and
tomorrow both.
So I'm thinking: test passed, I may sweat but I'm
just fine walking around sensibly in the heat, as long as I stay out of the
direct sun for any length of time... and as long as the humidity's low. I won't
have to feel anxious about going out to enjoy the temperatures, as long as I'm
smart about it - which is the way it should be, right? And it’s great that the sprinklers
come on in the evening out the front, which helped cool things off nicely:
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| Sprinklers! |
Getting the blog done early( by 8pm! )was nice, as it meant I could relax for a few more hours before bed and get some reading in. Since I now wake up regularly at 6am, I've been trying to hit the hay around 10pm, to get a little balance in there and make for a restful 7 hours of sleep. With less preying on my mind of late, I'm hoping that I'll be waking up far more refreshed in the mornings in the coming months, perhaps enough to get some writing in before work... who knows?
Thanks for dropping by. I'm afraid things aren't going to be as... exciting as they've been these last few months, what with trips to WA and ON and all that, but I'm pleased to say that it's probably for the best: I've got work to do and can't really afford too many distractions from that worthy goal...
