Tag: Daily Check-in

Showing up

General

Here are some words so I can meet my daily goal of one post of at least 500 words. I’ve got a lot of feelings in my head and heart tonight but I am not in the mood to share so let’s see what else I can find to ramble about.

Kinda tired of the heat but as we all know, every summer is going to be hotter than the previous summer until the elites decide to stop killing the rest of us with their excess and hoarding. Or until we force them to pay attention. We do have the numbers, and they can’t actually get and stay rich if we were all united, I’m just sayin’. A little organization among us would go a long way toward making the world a better place.

I did manage to go out for a walk before the hot hot heat kicked in. I haven’t been closing my rings as much lately, pretty much exactly because of the heat and also my awesome new job which takes up a lot of my time and attention. Now that it’s the weekend, I just want to play my silly video games, work on my D&D game a bit, and not think about the world falling apart. Clearly I’m failing at that last goal. What can you do, aye?

As mentioned in my last post I do want to get a pet, a cat most likely. I think things are going to be stable enough that I can worry about someone not myself for a bit, and a cat would present just the right mixture of needs-attention and can-take-care-of-itself-sometimes, unlike, say, a dog, which to me feels a bit more dependent on direct attention. Dogs require excercise and walks and cleaning up their poop, where cats have the instincts to poop in one place, making cleanup a bit easier.

I have been drinking plenty of water, so that’s good. My calorie intake has been a bit high, and I’m not getting nearly enough fiber and protein, so I could be doing better in that regard. I will work on that one.

While dad was out on his dinner date, I went downstairs, took out the trash and the recycling, and mopped the kitchen floor. It was getting a little sticky, but it’s not anymore. Did you know that you can just use white vinegar to mop linoleum or whatever cheap apartments have for kitchen flooring? I added one cup of white vinegar to two gallons of hot water, and it worked like a charm. Once it dried you can’t even smell the vinegar, not that there was a lot to begin with.

Just need another fifty words. Good thing I allow myself to write out my thoughts. The whole point is to reach the goal, not make every post godsdamned poetic and perfect. These are the first drafts. I’m practicing showing up, not allowing my perfectionism to trip me up, y’know? I’m doing the best I can here.

Saturday Night Grief

Daily Story Project

It’s been a gray rainy day. Sure there have been moments where some blue sky shows through the clouds but those have been few and far between. I did manage to get out and do a short walk without getting too wet, but even that involved sheltering under a tree for a few minutes to avoid a shower that would have drenched me.

I’m restless and unfocused today, for reasons that I will post about shortly but can’t just yet. Bear with me. Good things have happened, but despite being positive news, it heralds a change, and I think I’m grieving the change, which… that’s weird, right? Oh, maybe not. Wait, I can’t ask you because you don’t know what this is all about.

Been basically snacking all day, since I’ve been primarily stuck inside. Coffee, two cherry turnovers, half a bag of Pirate Booty, a hot dog, three chicken tacos, a hot dog, a handful of mini cinnamon rolls, and a pickle. Oh, and a can of Squirt and a bottle of Mexican Coke. A lotta carbs. I’m sure the weird fuel I’m putting in my body has some kind of an effect on my mood, but I am not a fooditician so I cannot say for certain.

Worked on some maps for locations my players will definitely absolutely get to, and one location they might possibly get to, and another map for a location that’s really only important to me to detail. Once I start a map it comes together quickly, though I can endlessly add details unti the cows come home, which is a farming metaphor I don’t use often.

The change in weather has caused my ears to stop up, I think, leaving me fuzzy-headed and distracted by the sinus and ear pressure. Incredibly distracting and annoying.

It’s the middle of June and I had to turn my heat on in the apartment today. That just seems so weird. That’s how chilly it is today.

I got approved for a new credit card, a rewards card with no annual fee, which just seems incredibly reckless on the part of the credit card company, considering my ancient history with credit as well as the fact that I am currently unemployed and have been since October 13 last year. Far be it from me to shield giant financial institutions from the consequences of their own actions, though. First thing I did with the card was buy an MLB.tv subscription for the rest of the season. Go Dodgers!

Tomorrow is Father’s Day and tomorrow’s post will be about my dad and how I’m happy he’s still here and how we have a good relationship. Not in exactly those words, of course. I plan on picking a story about something we shared together to illustrate that. So look out for that. If you would prefer to avoid stories about dads at all, for whatever reason, feel free to skip the blog tomorrow. I won’t mind; just wanted you to know.

Only good things

General

Having trouble thinking of something to write tonight. Had an eventful day but most of it was negative or stressful and I’m not sure I want to share it all here. It did get half-way sorted out eventually, which is good, but it took a lot out of me.

Let’s see what good things happened. Bioware dropped the gameplay trailer for the next Dragon Age game and I could not be more excited. Varric is older and still a badass with empathy. The actual combat reminds me of the fast-paced action of Dragon Age 2 or Andromeda, which is a plus for me. Rogues can switch between melee and bow in combat again! As a dedicated rogue player I love that so much.

Talked to a friend about it and they said that it didn’t feel like Dragon Age to them, which I’ve heard others say. Their take on it is that to them, Dragon Age is serious and dark, and seeing Varric make quips and take a drink in the middle of a tense situation involving his old friend Solas. I could see their point… but I disagree. Yes, dark horrible things happen in Dragon Age games, but the characters are often cracking wise or sarcastic with each other in the midst of it all.

Like I said to my friend, Purple Hawke has entered the chat.

We do agree however that of course we will be playing it, of course we are. New Dragon Age game! And coming this Fall, which is sooner than I would have expected.

Hmmm. Other good things. Hung out with dad; he’s housesitting a very grumpy old cat this week, so I drove him over there. And got to info-dump about D&D with my nephew for almost an hour. We love sharing stories of our separate games with each other, although I’m always afraid I do more of the talking than the listening. My nephew is very kind to listen to my ramblings, though.

Our next game is tomorrow night. I have a city map that I’ve been working on and it’s enormous and detailed and almost entirely unnecessary for play but I’m having a blast. And I have another map I’ve been working on the past couple of days for a potential encounter. No spoilers in case my players read this but I’ve learned a lot of new tricks making this map. Have I talked about Inkarnate before? It’s so good. And they’ve added new Room and Path tools that make it so easy to outline a building or a wall or a fence or stairs. Just such a delight to use.

Because the emergency took up time I was supposed to use grocery shopping, I ordered pad Thai chicken tonight for dinner, which is an absolute favorite of mine. And I watched the next episode of The Acolyte, which explained some backstory that other shows might have held back or fed us in drips over the season. I’m glad they gave this to us in episode 3; it feels like they’re going to deal with the fallout of that backstory now. An old rule of improv is skip to the interesting part, and the writers of The Acolyte are following that advice. Good stuff!

See? I did have 500ish words of positive things in me tonight. Thanks for reading! Tomorrow is another job interview, bright and early. Something’s gotta happen soon!

A random Saturday post

Daily Story Project

Here I am, at the keyboard once again, hoping I can come up with 500 words on anything at all. It’s Saturday. I thought about writing a morning meditation this morning while sipping my coffee drink (I take 15 ounces of brewed basic coffee and add 2-2.5 ounces of half-and-half, 2-2.5 ounces of chai concentrate, and about 30 grams of chocolate syrup; I call it “coffee”) but immediately got mentally bogged down on this whole D&D city map that’s taking up my entire mental space but that I don’t really want to write about.

Today I did some laundry, ate a microwaved burrito and a bunch of snacks. Watched some YouTubers play The Long Dark. Went for a walk in the rain and kiiiiinda made my cough worse (dagnabit.) And now I’m watching Jenny Nicholson’s four-hour video about the unsuccessful Star Wars Hotel, which is amazing and I’m so glad Jenny is still releasing things on YouTube.

I’m in a holding pattern as far as work is concerned. No real new news there, not anything I want to share publically. Send work if you have some, please, I’m still looking and applying and waiting for someone, anyone, to respond.

Oh another thing I did today is related to the above: I shaved my head and beard. It’s more hopeful, though. If I interview I want to be clean and professional and ready. That didn’t take too much time, though.

Dad felt good enough to walk over to the bar, and he spent several hours there. He was probably happy to get out of the house after being so sick lately. I’m glad he went and happy to learn they’d missed him being around.

It got chilly and, as mentioned, even rained a bit today. I turned the heat back on, mostly for dad but also a bit for me. I’m still a little cold but maybe that’s me being sick? Can’t tell. Oh, I suppose I could take my temperature…

Jenny’s video is comprehensive and scathing. Even as much of a Star Wars fan as I am, I knew that that damned hotel was not something I would want to do, even if I could afford it, which I could not ever. And it looked like a sub-par experience.

Cough is lingering. Maybe this is allergies combined with a respiratory thing; pollen has been out of control lately. My car has been covered in a fine yellow dust for days. Kinda glad for the rain to wash some of that shit off, because there’s no way in the Nine Hells of Baator that I’m going to go to the effort to wash my car. Last time I ran it through a car wash it knocked some of the trim off. Super annoying.

So, yeah, after this next chapter of Jenny’s video (I’m up to part 10 of 20) I think I’m going to just get some water, tell dad goodnight, make sure the heat is set to a decent overnight level, and go to bed.

G’night, readers. Thank you for being here.

Star Trek Discovery S5E04 “Face The Strange”

Daily Story Project, reviews, TV

This week’s Star Trek Discovery Season 5 Episode 04, “Face The Strange” was SO MUCH FUN. The show has finally found its footing. The writers know the characters well, they put them together in interesting ways, and they play to their strengths, which is emotional connections amid bonkers Star Trek science. Minor plot spoilers ahead for this episode.

This week, the ship gets sabotaged by the crime couple that are the big bads for the season in the form of time bugs, literaly spiders that somehow tap into EPS conduits and force the ship to jump backward and forward in time. For Reasons(tm) Captain Burnham (played by the delightful Sonequa Martin-Green) and grumpy new First Officer Rayner (played to perfection by Callum Keith Rennie) are immune to the time loops so they keep getting reset and have to figure out a solution. They do get some help from Chief Engineer Stamets (Anthony Rapp) because, of course, he’s got mushroom in his DNA. If you aren’t following this show you will probably think I am making this up but I assure you, I am not.

By having the leads jumping through time, but being tied to the ship, the writers get to have them interact with the history of the ship, and all the crazy shenanigans that have happened over five seasons of off-the-wall Star Trek nonsense (I say nonsense with love; I love this show, flaws and all) and even get to finally tie up a loose end that was introduced in a Short Trek a few years ago (“Calypso” if you’re curious) to my satisfaction, at least. Even Captain Burnham gets to see just how far she’s come from her origin as Star Fleet’s first and only mutineer, to sitting in the center seat.

Just really well done, y’all. I am sad that this is the final season because it feels like the show runners, cast, and crew are firing on all warp cores. Just this episode has so much payoff, it was a joy to watch.

The thing about Star Trek, for me at least, is it was my first fandom. I was too young to see it when it originally aired, or at least too young to remember that (I was born in late 1964, the first episode aired in September 1966) but I was old enough to watch it when it ran every afternoon on KPTV-12, Monday through Friday. I watched it and I loved it; it showed a bright (literally colorful) and hopeful utopian future, a future of adventure and science.

It remains the one major science-fiction franchise that says we can be better, that life can be more than war and hate and strife. Everyone gets second chances in Star Trek. Everyone tries to know themselves, and improve the universe they live in. Everyone tries to find solutions to problems by talking it through and appealing to our better selves. Even steadfast enemies become allies, in time. I love it so much, and am happy that for all my life, I’ve had stories that point the way to the good world I know is possible.

Interloper

Gaming, reviews

Been playing a lot of The Long Dark lately. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a computer game that’s a survival challenge that I’ve written about before. Your character is lost in the eerily abandoned Canadian winter on an island in the vague northwest. You have to struggle to stay warm, find food and water, and manage your strength. Meanwhile you have to watch out for predators that are far more agressive than found in nature, like wolves and bears. Infrastructure like running water and electricity is down, although sometimes there is an aurora that causes electrical devices to be temporarily usable; unfortunately this also increases the agression of predators making it very dangerous to be out and about under the glowing lights in the sky.

There’s a story mode, too, where you can play as Will MacKenzie or Dr. Astrid Greenwood (voiced by the incredibly talented Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale, respectively), estranged spouses who are trying to find each other and get to a town on the island with a mysterious briefcase. Four of the five chapters have been released for story mode and at least one more is coming. It’s interesting and goes into the weird Quiet Apocalypse that’s befallen Great Bear Island.

That’s not the mode I’m playing right now.

For as long as I’ve had the game I’ve enjoyed the lower levels of difficulty; in those modes the game is much less tense, you start with basic gear like decent clothing and matches (important for getting and staying warm, as well as boiling water and cooking food), and you have better loot scattered around to help you survive, like knives, hatchets, pistols and guns.

But I always admired the streamers and let’s players who played on the highest difficulty level: Interloper. Streamers like Tomasina, Zaknafein, Archimedes, among others. On Interloper, there are no guns, and you start with no matches at all. In that mode, knowing where you are and where to find matches and other good loot is paramount. The maps themselves don’t change, but the possible locations of gear is somewhat randomized. And you have to craft your own knife, hatchet, and bow — there are no guns in this mode. And without a knife or hatchet, you can’t harvest animals well, you can’t craft the best clothing in the game, and you can’t make a bow and arrows. You can’t even defend yourself from hungry wolves when they attack.

To give you a little idea of how the developers see this mode, there is a Steam achievement for surviving a single day in Interloper. It took me several tries, after doing my best to learn the maps on lower levels, before I achieved even this. When I wrote my earlier post I hadn’t even attempted Interloper. It felt too brutal.

I forgot to mention: this is permadeath. Dying in the game means your current save is deleted. Go back to Day 1, you have to start over. Make a single mistake and it can cost your whole run. And nearly every death in this game can be traced back to a mistake the player made. Get overconfident, go out into the cold without proper precautions, or just misjudge how much food and water you’ll need, and it’s over. You’ve faded into the long dark.

But I have finally strung together enough luck and skill that I am past Day 200 on a single run. Other players I’ve talked to have said the game gets boring at this point but not for me. I’m enjoying having a better chance (not a guarantee by any means) of surviving after the brutal first 20-30 days getting set up.

It’s far more than a walking simulator. It’s beautiful, meditative, and challenging. I love it.

Computer Origin Story, Part 1

Daily Story Project, Gaming, Tech

I was listening to a member special from the Accidental Tech Podcast folks, and they were sharing their Computer Origin Stories; remembering their first time using a computer, and their journey from there to their later computer programming jobby-jobs (as Casey always calls their regular jobs) before they all eventually quit to do the podcast full-time, some faster than others.

It’s fun to reminisce! It was all so very long ago, because I am old.

I should probably make this a much longer post, with links and images, but I wanted to kind of sketch out the outline of my own personal Computer Origin Story first. Try to get it down in words. It’s hard and I may be leaving out things and it might not all be in the right order, but here’s my first notes on the topic.

I am unsure if arcade games count for the purposes of “computers” but they were absolutely computers, so I’ll begin the chain of events by my encounter with a Lunar Lander arcade game in what must have been early summer 1979. It was the end of my 8th grade year in Junior High and our class got to celebrate by taking a day trip to the Kah-nee-ta Resort in central Oregon. While the rest of my schoolmates were riding on horseback, or relaxing in the hot springs, or sunbathing, I was in the dark resort lobby feeding quarters into this game trying to land a vector-graphics spaceship on a 2D planet surface, guiding it in by using a knob to control the rotation and a button to feather the rocket to speed up or slow down.

The first personal computer I remember using was a Tandy TRS-80, at a computer store in a suburban shopping mall. I must have been a teenager in my middle years. There was a grocery store in that mall, and when mom would go get groceries, I’d wait for her at the bookstore in that mall, and then, eventually, I’d wait for her in the computer store. This must have been in the early 1980s. I was in high school but I don’t remember what grade. I suppose I can try to find the name of that store, but for the life of me I can’t.

At some point the store ran a contest where the prize was a TRS-80, which would have been prohibitively expensive for my family to buy. To win the contest I had to play a Star Trek game and have the highest score. I got one chance to do it, and I don’t think I lasted longer than a minute or two. My parents, particularly my mom, thought I was going to beat it. I did not, but I had a lot of fun.

That store sold other computers. I would regularly buy issues of Byte Magazine and read up about computers. That’s where my interest began. But it didn’t stop there. More to come soon; there are a few more stops along the way.

Tired and whatnot

Daily Story Project

I’ve made a note of some ideas about things I can write about but for some reason, that reason probably being my dumb brain that hates doing boring things that aren’t novel or urgent, I can’t bring myself to write about them. So this entry will become another stream-of-consciousness flow of random stuff until I reach around five hundred words, as have they all been for the most part. Sure, some of the past entries have been coherent but that is not what I’m feeling today.

I’m tired, is what I’m feeling. Like sleepy tired, but also mentally tired of the dumb job hunting and the endless capitalism and the grind of having Things that Need Doing. Life hasn’t had a lot of joy lately for me. Brief moments of happiness or enjoyment but actual full-on joy? Not present, man.

Physically tired because yesterday I ramped up my exercise routine. Been walking at least once a day every day for several weeks now, thanks to inspiration and a challenge from my friend Christi through our Apple Watches. Walking is great but I miss running, so because I’ve been nailin’ it in the walking thing I pushed myself to try adding little jogging segements. Nothing crazy, just a block or two, and then I let my heart rate ramp back down before going again. It felt good to do it; I’ve always said that running makes me feel human, by which I mean feeling myself in my body, and not living in my head. And even though I returned home sweaty and tired I wasn’t injured or hurt; no pain just discomfort from having worked my muscles harder than normal. I went out and did another, slower walk later in the day, after dinner, to keep my body in motion, and maybe that helped prevent soreness and pain.

And today, my legs and back feel a bit stiff but mostly what I feel is sleepy. I don’t want to move much. I just want to sit, or lay down ideally. I want to be still, close my eyes, and drift into a nap.

Can I do that? After this post. I promise, Me. You can rest soon. Just another 132 words after that last sentence. Keep going.

The mental tired is also a problem. Is this brain fog? Am I a victim of Long Covid? How could I tell? That’s not a diagnosis that doctors are handing out these days. I’m sure I’m just worried about All of This. It’s nice having my dad here, though. It gives me a bit of comfort knowing someone else is around. Dad and I didn’t always have the best relationship but it’s pretty solid now.

How did I get to my dad from exercise? Oh, probably because he can’t exercise. Well, walking around, slowly, is the most exercise he gets these days, being in his late 80s, and having had surgery to repair his broken spine and ribs less than a year ago. That puts exercise into perspective. Right?

Red Barn Kids are not in a barn

Daily Story Project

One of my earliest memories is using a typewriter to write “stories”. I wish I still had some of those. I remember being inspired by a Scholastic book called “The Boxcar Children” about some orphaned kids who lived in an abandoned train boxcar. I wonder if that book actually exists or if I confabulated it somewhere along the line? Memory is a strange country, folks.

The kids in my apartment building and general neighborhood broke in to a locked up standalone garage down the street once, where an old car was parked. It might have been my dad’s Triumph race car? I can’t tell if these are real memories or if I’m inventing them out of whole cloth. The events would be, if real, over 50 years old at this point. I can see some of the other kids’ faces, but others are just generic fuzzy images. I know my sister was there, if it’s something I actually know or not. We did not get caught but then I went and tried to type it up as a story using the family typewriter, a mechanical and not at all easy to use device that often locked up, all the type arms jamming together and requiring delicate untangling before it could be used again.

Maybe the typewriter jammed because I did not know what I was doing? Surely not. OK, yes, that is almost certainly the issue.

I loved the sound that thing made, sharp crisp metallic spring-loaded typefaces smacking into the paper. The little “ding” of the bell when it reached the end of a line, the ratchet sound of hitting the arm, rotating the cylinder to move the paper down, and slamming the whole thing back to start another line.

The title “Red Barn Kids” emerges from the memory pool. The garage was red, but I do not believe it was a barn. But “Red Garage Kids” doesn’t sound as good, does it?

I can see myself sitting in our living room, the tiny TV in one corner, me on the couch with a laminated TV tray unfolded in front of me, the heavy mechanism of the typewriter holding down the shaky metal legs of the tray, and me pounding those keys with my fingers, one finger on each hand since I was, what, 7 or 8 years old and had not learned nor even knew about ten-finger typing yet? That wouldn’t be for another 10 years at least when I took typewriting class in high school, a skill I use daily thanks to computers being, y’know, a thing now.

Kids breaking in to a barn to look at an old car isn’t much of a story. That’s my thought now. More of a scene, or a vignette. It needs conflict, tension, resolution. Why are they breaking in? Just bored? To retrieve something? Does anyone get hurt, or scared, or refuse to enter? Clearly this story is not ready yet to be published.

Would be nice, though, to see what 7 year old me committed to paper. Actual paper, I mean. That kid had goals and the tools with which to achieve them.

The reason

Daily Story Project, General, meta

I forgot to write a 500 word post yesterday. I guess 10 is the number to beat going forward. Like many of my similarly-brained cohort, I’m a perfectionist and stickler for detail, so missing a day when I was aiming for a long unbroken streak is like a pebble in my shoe, a ringing in my ear, a mote in my eye. Irritating, nagging, infernal. I felt a flood of emotion when I realized a day had passed without me meeting the goal I had set for myself.

The streak is broken. I failed. It’s over. Might as well stop trying. I’m no good. I can’t do this. Why bother?

Why bother? Why am I doing this in the first place? What was my reason, and does missing a day invalidate that reason?

OK, then. The reasons I started this new daily streak. Let’s dig in.

I’ve done this before. There’s a tag on this post that I’ve used before, “Daily Story Project“. It’s been a thing on this blog going back a long way. I keep trying to do this. I read about streaks, I live for streaks. Keeping a streak going is sometimes all the motivation I need to keep doing a thing. There are folks out there like Jonathan Mann who has written a song every day for (as I type this) for 16 years and 103 days; 5,581 days in a row. That’s impressive! On one level it’s a challenge to see if I could create something new using my preferred method of creating (writing) for even a tenth as long, even 1% as long.

The only thing I’ve done daily is… I was going to say “wake up and get out of bed” but then I remember days, bad brain days, where I did not get out of bed. I couldn’t tell you my longest streak, though; that’s not something I keep track of. For the better, of course.

If I weren’t just trying to hit 500 words right now I’d go look up the longest once-a-day streak I’ve ever maintained on this blog. But I don’t really care. A reason I’m doing this is to add to this blog, to see who will come if I build it, to turn the Field of Dreams tagline around a bit. But that’s writing for others. I write for myself. If having an audience was important to my creativity this would be a very different place. Here, I write whatever I want. I write for me.

The primary reason I’m doing this is to build up a habit. Just keep going. Give myself permission to do it without friction. No obstacle, only flow. So failing to hit that daily goal is the only obstacle that matters to me. I hate it. It means I took my mind off the target. It means I got distracted. It means that whatever was happening in my brain that day did not get recorded, and you can’t change or grow unless you pay attention. At least, you can’t notice change or growth without keeping track, monitoring, observing, measuring.

I write in order to measure. That’s why. If I miss a day, I missed a measure. But I can keep going.