Resignations, Roleplaying and Routine

The word of the week is neoteric.

Jan 5 – End Credits G33kery

Yesterday's Simpsons episode had a wonderful ending to it!

While the episode itself was well executed in its own right, what really tickled my gears happened after the episode, during the end credits! Have a look:

Simpsons Star Trek inspired closing credits by lbrasi3

Simply wonderful and totally g33ky, they were the perfect start to my week. I spent the evening prepping for writing my second book, getting scenes in order and generally putting a little more organizational polish onto my plans.

Bring on the words!

Jan 6 – Museum and Writing Book 2!

My day off today, it was quite a full one: I went to a museum AND started writing again on Book 2!!!

Although I wasn't initially feeling well due to a bit of a sugar rush, thanks to a bit of breakfast that I didn't pay close attention to, I was fine( more or less )an hour later… just in time to visit the museum.

Despite having lived here in Victoria for seven years, I've never actually taken the time to traipse through the Royal BC Museum. It's always been there, next to the IMAX theater that I've been to half a dozen times but somehow I've never really set aside a day to visit. Until now; a friend and I went for a lunchtime trip that turned into three hours of playing tourist.

What an amazing place!

The first thing I noticed was that the museum is a much, much larger place than I had guessed. Spread over two floors, the exhibits are housed in extremely large spaces, which make excellent use of the available square footage. The first exhibition we saw was “Wildlife Photographer Of The Year” which showcased the top 50 images selected from over 42,000 entries. There were some stunning pictures there:

:

After that, we toured through the Natural History and First People’s galleries, each of which was vast and filled with fascinating, detailed exhibits. I was stunned by the quality of the displays as much as their quantity; my last museum visit was decades ago to the ROM in Ontario and I don't recall those displays as being nearly as well thought out as what the Royal BC Museum has.

The real gem of the museum is their Old Town section of the Modern History Gallery: it's a faithful re-creation of a turn-of-the-century town, one that you can actually walk through parts of! You can stroll down the street and window shop, taking in the displays and feeling as though you've just stepped back a century in time. We've all heard that phrase, but today I really experienced it first-hand, like a perfect period film set:

This is only PART of Old Town...

I was flabbergasted and had a smile on my face the whole time I was in Old Town.

Once we were done, I got on with the rest of my day off( plenty to do! ) But in the back of my mind I was already planning to return to the museum again soon.

Feeling energized by my trip, I was in a good mental place when evening rolled around and it was time to start writing. I had a scene in mind and the writing started out smoothly, to my surprise, the words flowing rather well, just as I remembered doing last year. Before I knew it, over an hour had passed and a new scene was completed, one that I'm quite pleased with overall.

A few more months of having writing sessions like tonight and I should be finished Book 2's first draft.

Jan 7 – Sleep Shifting

Routine is good, except when it’s bad.

That doesn’t sound like it makes sense, but it does for me at this point in my life, especially as I’ve come from a previous job that was all over the place in terms of work hours.

Essentially, what I’m saying is this: I’m happy to be working 9 to 5 now.

I get tired earlier in the evening now, starting around 9pm… which is a far cry from when I sat around at midnight hoping I’d be able to sleep before 1am and having to be up at 6am the next day. With the job at MMart, my shifts varied so much that I was in a constant state of flux, living on sugar, caffeine and stress hormones so much that my body clock never, ever got settled.

That’s a bad way to live, and I did it for far too long.

I’m much better off now, getting used to rhythms that make sense, at least to me. Admittedly, figuring out this no-sugar dietary lifestyle does make me second-guess myself sometimes, but for the most part, I’m close to snoozing around midnight and up around 7am each and every day. It seems to work, I don’t feel exhausted as much as simply tired from working hard and I can get through a busy week without needing half a day off at the end to simply crash / recover myself.

Routine also bodes well for my novels: I’m all set for getting in 2-4 hours of writing a night before I run out of steam, which is perfect.

All part of the plan for 2015.

Jan 8 – Reading Is Good For You          

It seems I should still buy a few 'real' books, now and then.

Apparently, people don't retain nearly as much when reading electronic publications, such as my Kindle. While convenient, a recent study has shown that people who read actual paper books are much more likely to see benefits in memory retention:

The tactile experience of a book aids this process, from the thickness of the pages in your hands as you progress through the story to the placement of a word on the page. Mangen hypothesizes that the difference for Kindle readers "might have something to do with the fact that the fixity of a text on paper, and this very gradual unfolding of paper as you progress through a story is some kind of sensory offload, supporting the visual sense of progress when you're reading."

The study doesn't say much about the smell of books, which I also think is important. Memory is often tied to smell and even though my own olfactory senses aren't the greatest, the smell of books is one that I covet and occasionally crave, for the memories it evokes.

Time for a trip to the bookshop soon, I think...

Jan 9 – Personal

The first week of my new year has still been pretty busy.

Even so, it's not been as crazy as December, for which I'm grateful. Although I haven’t been sleeping wonderfully this week, thanks in part to my cat’s penchant for early wake-up yowls, it’s been fairly decent. Monday and Tuesday were crazy at work however, being the first of the month AND of the year, so it was a relief to see things wind down back to normal by today.

I also had several personal disappointments this week, but as neither of them affect either my work or my writing, in the slightest, then on the scale of things they don't really matter. As I've reiterated numerous times already the last few months, my focus is on getting my books done and having my day job means that’s possible now. Should anything socially happen in the meantime, I'd actually have to try and find time, so going out now and then is really going to be a weighty choice.

Other than that, it's full steam ahead to a very full rest of the winter season and onto a very busy spring.

Jan 10 – Campaign On Hiatus

Finally, a solid day off that I put to good use.

Rather boring use, but vitally necessary all the same; I don’t like to play catch-up with my weeks, but days like today are going to be the norm for 2015, I think.

Tonight was a bit of a wrap-up, too.

My gaming group got together for the last time for the next 6 months, as our game master is due to deliver her child in the next few weeks. Obviously, she and her husband are going to be rather busy after that, so our group will have to shift gears somewhat in the next short while. More than likely we’ll be running a mixup of boardgames and RPG games in short doses, as none of us really want to just stop getting together cold turkey - which is gratifying.

I really enjoyed the game group that I have played among for the last year. It's been extremely relaxing to be among so many friendly g33ks, especially as they enjoy my sense of humor as much as I have enjoyed theirs. Movie nights may also be part of the mix coming up; who knows? 

All I know is that I have to make some time for when I need to g33k out.

Jan 11 – Resigned

As of today, I’ve quit my weekend job - YAY ME!

Technically, I gave notice today: an entire month's worth, when it comes down to it. I typed up a short letter last night and handed it in first thing this morning at the beginning of my shift. The manager didn't even bat an eye, so I believe I was quite correct in surmising that they've been expecting me to leave for quite a long time now - so have I, truth be told.

Right now, my time is better spent writing then earning an extra hundred( maybe two )a month at a low-paying job that gobbles up my weekends. If I was completely crazy I could work seven days a week between the two jobs, but the return for the retail end of things would be rather minimal compared to the energy outlay and I need to save that up for my writing.

Needless to say, I really enjoyed the rest of my day. It's a good feeling to know that every minute that I work there gets me that much closer to leaving a job that's no longer relevant to my life. I am quite grateful to have worked with so many good people there, for the most part, and I'm pleased that I’ve formed friendships with a good number of them outside of work. I'm also quite happy that I no longer have to care even a moment about any idiotic paperwork mountains that I've been dodging since the summer; all that silliness will be done with in a month’s time.

It’s a good, good feeling, to know that I’m moving onwards.

Back to the regular this week: work the day job, write in the evenings and prepare for the time when my weekends will be completely my own again. It’ll be nice to stop playing catch-up and simply live life by my schedule, at last… it’s taken me long enough to get here, after all!

PPS - my blog passed 30,000 hits this week! *applause*

Galavant, Games and Gaining Ground

The word of the week is neoteric.

Dec 29 – Changing Media

Is blogging a dying art?

One has to wonder, in the age of Facebook, Twitter and so many other social media feeds, if the blog still has a place. I know that my weekly entries for B.C. Beginnings, hosted here on Blogspot, are an incredibly valuable source of stability for me as well as an informational resource for everyone who wants to check in once in a while on what I'm up to.

Yet it seems that blogs are on the decline, after nearly 2 decades of popularity.

Peaking in 2004, before Facebook really took off and Twitter was just a gleam in someone's eye, blogs are a way of updating an audience regularly - who that audience is nowadays however, has been changing and diversifying. There’s some good advice over at John.do, both for blog novices and those who perhaps have lapsed in their blogging recently; definitely check it out.

One of the longest running blogs out there, Kottke.org, wrote an article a year ago about this very topic and it's an interesting read. Audiences are diversifying, medias are being mixed and in general people are picking and choosing where they get their content from.

As for me, I'll still be blogging for the next few years, as far as I can tell. There's no better match of medium to message then what I'm doing right now, especially as I don't run this blog to make any income.

It simply here for my friends and family, which is all I really wanted it to be.

Dec 30 – Last Dark Horse

Out with the old and in with the new is the order of the week.

I actually placed an order this week, for some old things before the new came in. In case you wonder what I'm talking about, I'm referring to the Star Wars comic series that Dark Horse Comics has been publishing for the last decade or so that are now discontinued.

It seems that Disney has declined to allow Dark Horse to continue to publish licensed Star Wars stories as of January 1, 2015 and so in keeping with Disney's new vision of the Star Wars universe, all of the old stories that Dark Horse has published will no longer be considered canon.

Meaning that they can't be sold commercially any more. A true pity.

I found out about that little gem last week and today I finished going through Dark Horse’s catalog to see what series, if any I wanted to pick up for myself. If I had wanted to go whole hog, I could have purchased an electronic version of every Star Wars comic they had put out for a trifling $300.00 USD, but to be honest I haven't followed most of their storylines with all that much interest. I did pick up a few short miniseries of unusual stories, like Star Wars Tales, that place the characters in( then )non-canon situations, as well as a few other concepts that I find intriguing.

It will also be interesting to see what Disney does with the license in the future, to find out how much of a departure from the last 30+ years of where the Star Wars franchise has gone.

It’s a new era for the stories told in a galaxy far, far away…

Dec 31 – New Year's Games

The last day of 2014 went rather well, I think.

When I arrived home after leaving work early( again, yes! )I found this waiting for me:

I’d written a letter to the Jim Henson Co a month ago, thanking them for hosting the Dark Crystal Fan Fest( as well as their Workshop Tour )and putting a lot of what I felt about the trip into the letter. To my delight, the Christmas card contained a response to my letter from both Cheryl Henson and Z. Briggs, the hosts for the NYC trip this past October. What a treasure to receive! 

By dinnertime, I was at a friend’s parent’s place, the same one in Saanich which has hosted our Pathfinder games this past year. A huge spread of food was available, all part of birthday celebrations for our friend Deb… who unfortunately made herself stay home due to possible sickness so as not to spread it. The rest of us toasted her regardless and set to the feast with vigour, settling down afterwards to while away the hours until midnight playing games like Bang! and Anomia. I was decent at the former and terrible at the latter, as my mind tends to mull over answers rather than blast them out quick as thought, which is what you need to do to win at Anomia. Fun all the same though.

Midnight came and went and I was soon home thereafter, perhaps the most low-key New Year's I've had in a long time. However, I spent this one with friends and that made all the difference.

Me I have many more New Year's Eves like that in the future.

Jan 1^st 2015 – Family and Finance

Today was a different sort of day, all in good ways.

Instead of spending it at home, as I have the day off work, I instead went to my parents and had a delicious turkey lunch with them. Everything they prepared was perfect and I can't recall the last time that I so thoroughly enjoyed every single bite; it was like I hadn't eaten anything all year!

Spending the afternoon with them today was a relaxed treat, as I haven't done much visiting in the last six months or so due to my new job and all the other busyness I've been involved in. Making the time to be with family is very important to me and will be a priority this coming year.

Today was also good financially, as we spoke as a family about our roles for the next while, both long-term and short-term. They seconded that I should finally leave Staples in the next month or so, as the negligible extra monies I bring in art worth the time and energy I'm expending that could instead be going into completing my novels. Indeed, they were adamant that we begin work again immediately on my books, as they want to see them all in the hands of publishers as soon as they can possibly be in submittable shape

As I'm in agreement with her on that, we’ll begin work next week again on Book 2. I've had enough time to digest the feedback setback I received this past autumn and move forward; indeed, I'm eager to pick up again from where I left off to hit the ground running with the story.

That determination, along with other financial things we discussed today, means that 2015 should see me far more focused. I'll work steadily at my day job, leaving any stress from it behind when I clock out and plug solidly away at my novels in the evening. There should still be a decent amount of time to socialize and perhaps explore other avenues of my life while still keeping the focus on my writing, with the goals of finishing the first draft of Book 2 as well as the fourth draft of Book 1.

That's rather ambitious, but completely within the realm of possibility based on my past accomplishments. Seeing as I want to get better at writing, I need to put my nose to the grindstone this year and make it happen - nothing I haven't done before, setting deadlines for myself.

Jan 2 – Farewell To Cookies

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions; instead, I look ahead to the future and plan accordingly.

That said, this is as good a time of the year as any to plan, as well as look back. 2014 was very good to me, in many ways: I completed a draft of Book 1, I landed a permanent well-paying job, some new wonderful people came into my life, I went to NYC… and many more things I’m thankful for.

Some things went out of my life as well: a large amount of stress, for starters. A few people I thought I knew decided I wasn’t their sort and stopped hanging out with me, which is their choice - it just leaves more room for other folks who may want to partake of my company.

Poor Cookie Monster... he just can't quit.

Sugar was another thing that vanished from my life, taking with it many delicious things but also leave me the better for its absence. I admit that I'm still not eating perfectly healthy meals 100% of the time, but I'm almost there and cutting out sugar has done a lot to move me towards that goal. Sadly, it means that my love of cookies has to be curbed and cut back to almost nothing; I'm at the point now where even one sugar-heavy cookie might send me into a small sugar overload. I want to avoid any possibility of diabetes in my future, so that means that sugar and I have to part ways.

I think I may have made the cookie monster sad saying that.

Jan 3 – Afternoon Tea And Me

My major activity today was reading – my own work, if you must know.

By the afternoon, I was ensconced at a table at Murchie’s Tea, with a copy of all that I’ve written for Book 2 and a green pen in hand. Truth be told, it was a copy I had already marked up: I was mainly reading it to re-familiarize myself with the story and to catch any additional errors.

It's funny how much advice there is out there for writers, from other writers as well as just those generally any advice to anyone who'll listen. One of the bits of advice I often hear is to let work sit for a while before you go back to it, which makes sense in that you get a little distance from your writing so as to better see its flaws and strengths.

The hours I spent today reading my work were fruitful. I’ve sorted out where I think I'll be going from here with the book and will be working on further outlines for the rest of this month, along with a few scenes each week until I get back into the rhythm of writing one or two chapters a week. At that output speed, I should have the first draft done by the time Spring arrives, or thereabouts.

Hopefully my outlines will outpace my output of scenes, which is all I can ask for.

Jan 4 – Transformed

It was a bit of a wash today, not just because it was raining.

I'm not complaining: most of the rest of the country is knee-deep in snow, so what's a little rain to deal with? Not much, really.

No, today slipped away by degrees, as I fought off headache and generally puttered about the place getting small things done. I ended up watching too much of a Transformers marathon on TV, including most of the third film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which I hadn't actually seen when it came out. Turns out I didn't miss much: the special effects were the best part and I won't even go into all the plot holes… sometimes, I wish I could just turn off my brain. Sometimes. Great music though.

I did catch the pilot of the new show Galavant, which is a medieval musical comedy reminiscent of The Princess Bride. I did see a preview of it last week and tonight's episode grew on me despite my normal aversion to musicals: it's unpretentious, easily written and has a good cast, all of which are good indicators for better things to come. Not that I need more television to watch, but fare like Galavant is different from the mainstream and checks enough of my interest-boxes to warrant giving it a chance.

Oh, one more thing: this blog should reach 30,000 hits this week – another milestone. Little things like that make me happy… and while other blogs are bigger or more well-known or what have you, I’m just pleased that so many people have stopped by over the last 7+ years.

That means you, dear reader – see you again soon, I hope!

One thing about having a regular day job is that my body's quickly acclimated itself to a routine: I've had to start writing the blog earlier and earlier these last few months, as I can't make it past midnight most days without feeling exceptionally groggy the next day - not worth it. A friend of mine calls it 'Chronos Pumpkinitis' and I have to say, it's taking a bit of getting used to...