Especially since New Year’s is such an arbitrary thing, and self-improvement and self-examination should be a constant and consistent process. It shouldn’t be something we (I) do just as calendar rolls over to the next year. I mean – really? How many people actually keep their resolutions? How many people make serious and significant changes that stick, just based off a tradition that doesn’t make a lot of sense when you look at it empirically?

It’s sorta like deciding that you’re going to fix everything about your life, one item at a time, one year at a time. If you’re actually successful, you might actually have made some progress about the time you’re stuck in the old folks’ home, mainlining prune juice and praying you can remember the names of all the relatives who never come to visit you.

Hell, even if you make and stick to multiple resolutions a year, it still doesn’t end up making sense. Why do people only seem to really want to change their lives as the new year starts? Okay. I get the whole idea of ‘starting over with a clean slate’ – but you really don’t. All we really do is take a deep breath and hope that the next year is better than the year before it, despite that fact that all the problems we had in 2011 are still going to be there in 2012 – along with all the problems we haven’t seen yet.

Yeah, yeah – I know. Old man Jayiin doesn’t get it. What else is new? I rarely get it.

So, onto the part of this you’ve been dreading since my last New Year’s post. Mostly, because I don’t have many New Year’s traditions (seeing as how I’m crap at holidays), so I might as well stick to the one I have and enjoy the fact I’m able to write something coherent in this blog once a year.

2011 was a year. I turned 31 and enjoyed the fact no one’s taken a hit out on me yet.

I spent most of 2011 sick or injured, or recovering from being sick or injured. I’ve never been this consistently tired and worn down. Kidney stones, hives, my first real migraines in years, sinus issues and more versions of sinus infections and stomach bugs than I’d thought possible. I have to take an immense amount of Prednisone; I’ve gained weight and my diet has been so bad even I think it’s appalling. I’ve barely written a thing (again) and I’m more behind than ever.

To say nothing of car troubles, two broken desk chairs (and when the first one broke, it took me with it). I’m deeper in debt, my fibromyalgia and arthritis are worse than ever. I’m terrified than by the end of 2012, I won’t be physically able to work the sales floor at work anymore, despite the fact I’m only out there one day a week.

Even worse? I’ve had to give up drinking tea, coffee and energy drinks, which were my only real defense against the fatigue of the fibro.

I know. I’m a terrible human being because I don’t like drinking plain old water. Yes, I should get over it and drink plain water. But I just don’t like it. It’s boring.

So I’ve reverted to drinking Sprite and missing Sprite Berryclear Remix. Which is high fructose corn syrup – tasty, but terrible. I don’t like most fruit juices and just about everything else I want to drink is just as horrific for me. And being allergic to Splenda, aspartame and a lot of other artificial sweeteners means that most diet drinks are out of the questions.

I’m going to try to learn to drink plain water. Don’t hold your breath, though. I’m probably going to fail and continue to find a way to consume sugar-laden beverage in a way that won’t cause more kidney stones or make me wish I was going to die.

I feel like I’ve been surrounded by strife even more than normal this year. There are people at work who make me want to headdesk and facepalm and go on violent rampages – and this is a new thing for working at Dlair. But then again, I’ve also never managed to learn healthy ways to deal with extreme passive aggression, despite (or maybe because of?) having grown up being subjected to toxic and soul-poisoning levels of it. I’ve had good friends get divorced, good friends move away. My mother’s passive aggressive manipulation of everyone around her started anew with Christmas, just when I thought things had really taken a turn for the better.

Yeah. I should have known better. I should have known she was just biding her time, waiting for the right moment to strike and unbalance us all, putting us firmly back under her thumb.

Here, at the end of the year, I feel like I’ve lost my mojo. I’ve lost my focus, misplaced my determination and my brain is drifting away from the rest of my me more often than not. And my temper – my center and my calm – my zen – has been less certain than any other time since high school.

I can hear some of y’all now, getting all riled up at me. I’m always writing negative crap about my life and never talking about all the good stuff. That my New Year’s blogs are always cynical diatribes railing against the world around me – a world which could be much, much worse, right?

I could argue that I call it like I see it. I could mutter and grumble about not being an optimistic, positive person. But that would all be a whole lotta hypocritical bullshit, because I’m the guy always quoting my favorite Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn: “Your focus determines your reality.”

So yeah. There it is. My focus apparently sucks. Admittedly, some of it has to do with this time of the year. It’s no secret that I hate Christmas and the holiday season and I end up writing these blogs after having been exposed to several weeks of what my brain interprets as deeply negative stimulus – meaning by the time the new year rolls around, I’m a cranky fucking Grinch who wants nothing more than to rant, rave and rail against all that is the western winter holiday season.

Right, then. What happened in 2011 that was good? Well – I’m still with my girl and she’s living with me now, away from her family – which is, if anything, so much more psychically toxic than mine that my family actually looks functional and healthy by comparison. This is a thing beyond all awesome – and is the best relationship I’ve ever been in. I’m sure it says something terrible about me that she’s a decade younger than me, but I’m not sure I really care, because I’m happier with her than I’ve been in a very, very long time. Maybe ever.

I’d go into more depth about how awesome she is, but I’ll save that for Valentine’s Day or some other arbitrary holiday-cum-utterly incomprehensible socially obligatory occasion.

I reconnected with one of my best, closest friends – my foster brother from middle school and high school walked into the store earlier this year – with his wife! – and I’ve been down to San Antonio to see him several times. (In fact, I have a lot of friends down here, including one I haven’t had the chance to meet in person. I’m very much looking forward to my next trip down there.)

This, also, has been a thing beyond all awesome. I feel like I got a part of myself back; JAH is a guy who knows me better than anyone else, despite not having talked or spent time together for about ten years. He’s still a crazy son of a bitch and a mad genius who (if he gets his way) is going to change the entire world.

I managed to need (and acquire) a new computer after my faithful Asus Netbook died, thanks to a good buddy of mine. This new computer, while weak sauce compared to the beast machines most of my friends keyboard jockey from, is the most powerful and reliable computer I’ve ever owned. (Gateway doesn’t always suck. Who knew?)

The 3rd Annual Webcomics Rampage which ended up with my face in a Hijinks Ensue comic. There was much awesome involved in Webcomics Rampage and I really should write about it in its very own blog, but I probably won’t. Because (as per usual) I fail.

I also managed to scrape together enough money to buy a new Kindle Fire – which is also awesome. As if my regular Kindle wasn’t enough of an addictive time sink. That many books right at my fingertips…it’s a terrible, wonderful thing. I can invert the text color and read white words on a black background, meaning I’m reading even more than I usually do. Which may, in fact, partially account for my lack of writing.

I made my annual sabbatical journey to the mystical and magical land of Seattle, Washington to visit my brother and his ladyfriend and spent a good ten days or so doing as much of nothing as I could. It was freakin’ fantastic. I came back and promptly was assaulted by kidney stones, resulting in me spending the week of Thanksgiving pissing out sharp fucking rocks and alternating between debilitating pain and being stoned out of my gourd on pain meds.

I’ve even managed to (somehow) develop an actual social group. I’m not sure if it’s a form of cancer or something good yet, but I’m really not used to it. It’s been about ten years or so since I’ve had an actual steady social group. We even do things like go out to eat, hang out on a semi-regular basis and are talking about starting an actual, honest-to-Gork RP group, in which I will be running my Silver Gryphons campaign.

I’m not sure how to balance a social life with everything else I want/need to do, though. I’m having trouble with that, which may be part of why I feel so harried and behind right now.

I’ve also managed to get my act together enough to start going to church on a regular basis again – which again, is more exposure to people and more social interaction. I’m worried that I’m going to hit some kind of limit on social interaction with people before to long and revert back to my hermit-like existence and ruin the whole ‘social group’ thing, but we’ll see how it goes.

I’ve also developed an interest and enjoyment of professional wrestling (WWE only) and go to visit Kelly Dawn and her boyfriend for most Pay-Per-View events, which are usually the highlight of my month, because it’s the most low-key fun I have these days.

I’ve also managed to plow through quite a bit of my non-writing to-do list during 2011. I’ve been oddly productive, actually, and a lot of my tasks are now maintenance kinda things instead of massive projects looming over my head. I still have a few bigger projects, but I feel more confident about being able to knock them out. Most of that productivity was possible because of my girl and her willingness to help me slog through the list and help me not stay on bottom-dead-center this past year. I’m hoping that is a trend that continues and doesn’t stop.

Not only did I get a lot of my own stuff done, but my Dad finally got around to getting some of the remodeling done on our trailer…erm, house – we now have a handicap accessible bathroom and shower for Mom and a ramp/deck at the front door. We’re looking at some serious re-arranging and re-structuring of the innards of the house, in terms of furniture and who lives/sleeps where, which is both necessary and good, though it is a January project I’m not exactly looking forward to. I’ve had to request time off work to really get started on it, but I can’t say as though it’s not something I’ll be glad to have done. With any luck, all that work will give me a chance to get some of my other projects knocked out.

I really, really wish I’d had time/energy/determination to write more this past year. I have no shortage of ideas (even a major breakthrough on the Katheryn story – probably the biggest breakthrough I’ve had on it. Ever.) and I have enough time; I just need to work harder at not letting myself burn away my free time by surfing the internet or staring off into space. I do way too much time-wasting as it is.

What do I want to do in 2012?

• Write more. Write like a fucking madman. Fanfic, blogging, reviews, stories – just write.


• Finish sorting all my computer files


• Finish organizing and sorting my music – including actual playlists.


• Try to exercise. Not likely, but, still… (Just like everyone else.)


• Work on my diet. (Just like everyone else.)


• Finish the last of my organizational projects – there are only a few left


• Avoid being sick/hurt all the time. Especially no more hives.


• Read more.


• Write more.

Will I actually get any of this done? Possibly. Possibly not. Who knows?

Though, on the topic of writing, I’ve decided to start off 2012 with an incentive to write. My buddy JM and I are in a Word Count Challenge – 500 words a day from January 1 – January 30. Whoever does the worst at the end of the challenge has to pay a forfeit. If I lose, I will have to find the time to go to his apartment, sit down at his computer, and play a MMORPG. In particular, I have will have to create a character for Star Wars: the Old Republic and play for at least an hour after character creation.

Given my feelings on MMORPGs, this is not a fate I relish.

I haven’t lost a Word Count Challenge to date; I don’t intend to start now. I do hope, however, this challenge will give me the momentum I need to write and keep writing throughout the year instead of just during NaNoWriMo.

So…happy new year? Or something like that.

Used to be, when April 3 rolled around, it was an important moment. A day of reflection and renewal of purpose. The whole day was spent with my thoughts drifting back to the same subject – a subject tinged with excitement, exasperation, fear and anticipation. A subject that made me hope and dread at the same time.

This year, April 3 was Wrestlemania. (Go ahead. Laugh. I know you want to.)

April 3 is the anniversary of the Katheryn story.

Not that I really expect that to mean much to some of you. Or even most of you. Just because you occasionally get bored enough to read my blog doesn’t mean you know what the Katheryn story is, especially if you’re a relative newcomer to my blog or my life.

Used to be, I couldn’t stop talking about it. That’s another change; at one point in my life, I figured I wouldn’t ever stop talking about the Katheryn story. I couldn’t. It was too integrated into my personal identity – especially my personal identity as a writer. It still is. And yet, I almost never write about. I almost never talk about it.

Why not?

I mean, this past April, while I was watching Triple H and The Undertaker beat on each other, the Katheryn story quietly turned 16.

Sixteen?! Really? Really? I’ve been writing on the same damn story for sixteen years?

Well, yeah. Kinda. Apparently, I’m stubborn, tenacious and (very likely) obsessive. (Those of you nodding your heads in agreement with the last one? Not cool, y’all. Not cool.) I don’t accept defeat and keep trying, no matter how many times I fail!

(Or, if you want to get technical, I haven’t failed yet, because I haven’t shelved the project and decided I’m done with it. If you want to get technical.)

Or…or, I’m a lame-ass punk writer who can’t get up off his fat ass, dig down deep and write the bloody thing already. (I can hear the ‘told you sos’ through the cybernetic ether. Apparently, I’ve been told such before. Who knew?)

In truth, the Katheryn story is hardly the same story it was when I started it back in 8th grade. It’s gone from being a cheesy fanfic that won a middle school writing contest (how sad is it that I’m still proud of that?) and has turned into it’s own universe, complete with a history that starts before the beginning of time, a deep mythos, and a very complex and (I think) amazing world to play in.

In (further) truth, I might have just set out to write a story that I didn’t have the tools, skills or experience to tell. I’ve had to cut my teeth on smaller projects, less ambitious tales and less complicated worlds in order to learn how to write what I want to write. Which is why I can safely say I haven’t been working on for 16 years.

True, it’s a rare day that goes by that I don’t think about the story. (Stop smiling and nodding knowingly. Obsessions are completely normal. Healthy even. Just ask Freud. Just don’t ask him while he’s anywhere near that picture of his mother.)

None the less! All asides aside, the Katheryn story is a huge part of my life and has never stopped being a huge part of my life. I don’t really see it as some kind of ‘magnum opus’ (at least not since I graduated high school), but I do see writing it as a goal. I also realize that not everyone (as in, almost no one) wants to hear me babble about the Katheryn story all the time. Or most of the time. Or even as much as I used to.

It’s rude to be that guy (or, at least, that form of that guy) – and Real Life(TM) has taken over much of my existence. Varying jobs, schools, chores and other things necessary for the smooth(ish) day-to-day operation of my life take up a lot of time. A lot more time than I wish it took. But, there you have it. Life sucks, takes a lot of time to deal with, and no matter how much I whine about it, no one else will do it for me until I have enough money to pay them to do so.

(Now there’s a goal…)

But for the 15th and 16th anniversaries to pass unnoticed? Kinda…bothers me a bit. Mostly, I think, because I realize that they depress me. After working for so long, I have so little to show for it?

That…and I know that of that 16 years, I’ve been a functional, intelligent writer and reasonable facsimile of an adult for less than ten. I think that’s the bottom line of this whole post and whole ponderation.

Katheryn may be turning 16, but she’s hardly the same girl she was when I started writing her. And though she defined who I was as a writer for a long time, she stopped doing so years ago, because I am no longer the same person – or the same writer – I was when I started writing her.

Her story is not the same story; her world is not the same world – and I am no longer quite as enamored with what I once created. I now know I am better than I was and know I can do far better than I once did.

And that…is a whole helluva lot cooler than any anniversary will ever be. So I’m good with having spent her 16th birthday watching some rather excellent pseudo-violence and eating awesome tacos with my friends.

Hopefully, the next ‘anniversary’ is just as good as this last one.

Another boring and pointless blog brought to you by jayiin’s bored subconscious. And for anyone who really cares, I’m actually writing on the story, using Camp NaNoWriMo as convenient excuse.

Any resemblance this blog may have to mealy-mouthed self-analysis and carefully considered excuse crafting to avoid accepting responsibility for the fact I still haven’t finished it is purely coincidental. Because I’m a grown up.

ad astra per aspera

————–

I know people get tired of me talking about feeling productive and getting things done, but I’ve discovered I have trouble relaxing enough to get to sleep unless I feel like I’ve accomplished something for myself sometime during the day. I almost always accomplish a great deal at work (though not always the things I want to work on) – it’s my own stuff I tend to fall behind on.

I wonder how much of my grumpiness & discontent relates back to not taking care of my little world and all the things that I can do to make it a better place for me and mine to inhabit (or visit)?

I wonder how much less stressed I would be if I didn’t feel like I had a giant rock waiting to fall on my head because I’ve neglected to take care of myself – and to tend to the ordering and maintaining of my space and my life?

And I wonder how much of the chaos surrounding me is because I cannot say no to people and yes to myself?

—————

I’ve heard the stories. In the workplace of fifty years ago, if a guy forgot to shave or looked scruffy or acted an ass, another guy – usually another man – would take him aside and tell him so. I think we’ve lost something in that people don’t do that anymore. I think we’ve lost a level of honesty between people and we’ve lost a level of willingness to strive to be the best we can be and to want someone to tell us when we could be better and even how we could be better.

We’re all so afraid of criticism and so afraid to be told we’re not perfect, we’re falling short of our potential and we’re able to be more.

We’re taught to see ulterior and malicious motives in every word given that isn’t positive endorsement or unflagging cheerful support. We’re taught to be afraid to tell the truth because we don’t want to be known as an ass.

We’re taught not to want to be a truth-teller. (And yes, Jason, I see the logical direction of that statement and will take it in that direction another time. This is the wrong blog for that.) We’re taught to be afraid of things told to us because they might the truth and we’re so afraid to fail that we often don’t even try.

Boldness of speech or of action is characterized as foolish or ambitious and the only ambition we praise is the kind that gets you on the cover of magazines for money, beauty or power.

We’re taught that success is equated to money and to appearance and that if you lack one or both, you are automatically a failure. If you wear the wrong clothes or offend the wrong person or don’t get in the right clique. If you don’t do something so amazing other people have to sit up and notice and applaud.

We’re taught that the only criticism and advice to take is your own or the kind found in a self-help book that gets liked on Facebook and has enough Amazon reviews. We’re taught that the right way to change is to sit in the dark and confront your fears and your failings and your misery alone – without ‘inflicting’ it on other people.

We’re taught no one can help us change; no one can help us achieve; no one can help us become more – that we must do it all alone, struggling every day, sacrificing everything of meaning or value along the way and that the empty rewards of success will be enough, because there is always more to be earned or gleaned.

We’re taught we are not allowed to cry in public; we are only allowed to cry in the corner of the room, in the shadows where no one can see us hurt – because it might make them uncomfortable. We’re taught that the only tears we can have are those no one ever sees. To be human and to be frail and to be vulnerable is to be weak and therefore to be fought against – because if you are weak, you have failed. You become nothing but another number, another statistic in a poll no one really understands.

We’re taught that pain is to be a secret and not shared.

I don’t think this is okay.

I want someone to tell me when I am falling short. I want someone to tell me when I can do better. I want someone to tell me when I’m scruffy and don’t look my best (which isn’t much, admittedly, but you have to work with what you’re given.)

I want to be told the truth. And I want to be allowed to tell the truth. I want to face my fears in the daylight with my friends and my brothers beside me. I want to be allowed to be human and be weak. I want my accomplishments to matter – even when they mean nothing for money or beauty or power. I want to be heard when I need to speak and I don’t want to be afraid to hurt and be afraid to fail.

And I don’t want to do it alone, just because our society is afraid of things that hurt. Or might hurt.

I want to tell the truth. I want to help someone else do more and be better. I want other to trust me to tell them when they look scruffy or have food on their face. I want to be strong enough to not be frightened – or scornful – of what might look like weakness. I want to remember and laud the accomplishments of others, because they matter – even when they don’t bring about money or beauty or fame. I want to listen when someone else needs to be heard and I want the people around me to know if they hurt or if they fail, then I am still here while they heal or they try again.

I want the people around me to know they are not doing it alone.

Somehow, I think that these desires might be some of the hardest, most frightening things I have ever set out to do.

—————

Pride is a terrible word most of the time. It implies vanity and arrogance and scorn of others. It implies so many bad things…but pride is at the center of satisfacation (at least, in the workplace.)

To me, it is at the heart of what we call ‘work ethic.’ Because I have pride in my work – whether it’s cleaning out the cat boxes or sweeping the pool deck or making copies of legal briefs or answering the phones or pricing product or coding webpages, my pride in myself won’t let me do less than my absolute best.

If I do, I feel the acute sting of personal failure.

I want to be proud of what I do. I want to brag about being the best sweeper or cleaning the cat boxes the best or having elegant code or making perfect copies. I want every detail to be right, every line straight and not a speck of dirt or shit left to mar the task I have undertaken.

Even if only I see it.

I don’t know why, but a lot of people I know don’t have this pride. They don’t mind things they do not being done to the best of their ability. They are content with just being done and moving on to the next thing and the next thing until they get to a thing they enjoy.

They cannot find contentment and satisfaction in the doing – and the doing well. They cannot find pleasure in knowing they have accomplished a thing so well that they can say to anyone: “Yeah, I did that. That was me.”

It scares me, sometime, that lack of pride. I wonder if it is that lack of pride, that causes so many of the problems around me. That being indifferent to the quality of what you do and only wanting the quantitative payment of having done it and recieved a paycheck.

I wonder if the dissatisfaction so many have with their ‘tedious’ jobs or their ‘dead-end’ positions comes from a profound indifference to how they accomplish a thing.

I’ve also noticed that the more indifferent a person is to how they do things, the more threatened they are by those who have pride in what they do. They mock, deride and sabotage (not on purpose, usually) and try to bestow their sense of indifference, the liberation of no longer giving a damn about the quality of what you do.

It must be liberating. It must be amazing, to just not care when a thing is done poorly or to know that it could have been far better than it was – and yet be okay with that.

It must be a thrilling experience.

But I’m afraid of that thrill; I’m not ready to be liberated. I’m proud to have pride and somewhat worried that someday, I will forget my pride and just give in to the idea that it’s okay to not do your best on everything…because the people around you won’t care, either.

I write a lot about this, because it’s a constant challenge for me. (Or, I should say, whine a lot about this.) There are a lot of productivity articles, blogs, books, seminars, webinars, college courses, etc out there to help with it. They teach techniques, skills, tools and offer all kinds of advice on finding ways to accomplish tasks.

I’ll admit it. I’ve read some of those articles, books and blogs. I’ve peaked at notes from seminars and webinars. I even attended a few of those free classes when I was in college (way back when). I’ve tried lots of different techniques, skills and tools. I’ve listened to and tried out all kinds of advice.

Yet, I keep finding myself behind. There’s always stuff I’m behind on or haven’t had a chance to get to. Some of it is mundane stuff – chores, filing, investigating this or that or the other. Some of it is pretty non-essential stuff – gaming errata, gaming itself, fanfiction, etc. And some of it is fairly important, such as research into my health insurance plan or remembering to bring something into work or remembering to pay something on time. (Sorry, ADC!)

The consequences for not getting these things done vary from task to task. Not remembering to bring something into work can make my job harder and sometimes mess things up for my co-workers. Not investigating my health insurance means I don’t always know what I can do with it other than throw money down on co-pays when I get the sniffles. Neglected chores leave me with a disorganized, cluttered and occasionally dirty space and the need to be up late doing laundry when I should be sound asleep.

Worse than consequences for me are consequences for other people. Often times, other folk are counting on me to get something done for them. When I do what I invariably do and drop the ball, I let people down or leave them hanging and I hate doing it.

I hate being the guy to drop the ball and I try really hard not to be that guy. Yet, I constantly find myself looking back and realizing I’ve done it again.

Right now, I’ve dropped a lot of balls and I’ve found myself really, really behind. I’ve been this far behind on things before – and I don’t think I’ve ever really caught up from those other times. I do think it’s possible, if I can figure out what I’m doing wrong.

I’m not a procrastinator by nature. I don’t tend to put things off. I hate leaving things for the last minute, because I tend to do a crappier job of them. I’m good at crises and crisis management. I’m adaptable (for the most part) and great and improvising solutions. However, I prefer to do things right the first time and do so with enough time left over that if I messed up or if things take more time than I thought they would I have the time to fix things or do them right.

To my credit, I don’t often find myself doing my tasks at the last minute. Getting given something to do at the zero hour and being forced by circumstance to jump and work on it quick, fast and in a real damn hurry through not fault of my own isn’t anything more than handling a problem.

Being able to jump in and accomplish a task at the last minute isn’t true productivity though. It’s just crisis management.

Anyone who grew up in my family or around my family knows that one of the skills you get growing up a Rogers is crisis management. Another is cleaning up messes somebody left behind (and usually through no fault of their own.)

Productivity is being able to create or produce abundantly; to cause or bring about. (Productivity on Dictionary.com)

On a day-to-day basis, this means being able to accomplish the tasks you need to accomplish to keep your life running smoothly, do your job and get paid (which, really, is a task to keep life running smoothly in and of itself) and do the things you said you would do for others. In short, being productive is the daily grind. Whether it’s getting up before the ass-crack of dawn to milk the cows and plow the fields or it’s getting up with the sun to get into work on time, productivity is usually all those recurring tasks or jobs or things you just have to do whether you like them or not.

Okay, sure, there’s lots of things in there I like to do and things your probably like to do to, too. Unlike a lot of folk I know, I actually enjoy my job – which tends to make the tedious and not-so-glamorous parts of it more bearable. I also have a work ethic that doesn’t let me do anything less than my absolute best at everything I do, whether it’s coding up a new page for the website or cleaning the store cats’ litter boxes. (Which can sometimes be a roadblock – more on that later.)

Regardless of what you think of the things you have to do, they have to be done.

All the productivity training in the world boils down to one thing: just do it. Just get it done. All the tools and tricks and techniques and tactics out there teach you varying ways to keep track of what needs to get done, ways to manage your time, ways to prioritize and even ways to make some tasks easier to complete.

But at the end of the day, it’s just a matter of someone getting down to it and doing what needs to be done. This is a matter of self-discipline. Of having the intestinal fortitude to put aside something else, get up and go do.

I have self-discipline in a lot of areas of my life. I’ve never been late to my job. In fact, I tend to be very productive at work. I have a reputation with the management of being the guy who gets stuff done (almost always) in a timely and efficient manner. And it’s taken some work to get to that point. I’m sure some of my old bosses would say that while I did a good job, I wasn’t considered as dependable as I am now.

No, most of my issues with productivity take place outside the workplace.

I could write a lot about how tired I am. About how much I hurt and about how little time outside of work my schedule affords me. But that would just be whining and throwing out excuses. I’m done with excuses. (Until the next time I don’t want to take responsibility for myself or my actions. Which happens to us all, so don’t point fingers.)

My youngest brother has always given me a lot of crap about my perfectionism. Instead of just getting something done, I try to make it perfect. It has to be done in the perfect order, in the perfect way, at the perfect time with the perfect result. This is partially a result of my work ethic – of wanting everything I do and produce to be of the best possible quality. I hate doing shoddy work and I hate being embarrassed by what I create or produce. However, when taken to the extreme, I get stuck in a self-destructive loop where I can’t get anything accomplished because it won’t be perfect. Either I keep starting over or I don’t get started at all.

I hate breaking up larger projects. I like to get it all done at once so it’s not hanging over my head or waiting to be finished. Remember when I said I’m not a procrastinator? Sometimes, procrastination isn’t a bad thing. I need to learn that if I can’t get all of a project or task finished at once, it’s okay to leave part of it for later. If I really do have the self-discipline I think I do, then I’ll be able to come back to it later and finish it.

(Yes. This might just be why I have trouble with my longer writing projects.)

I can hear my brother laughing at me and telling me: “I told you so.”

Yes. Yes, you did.

I also tend to prioritize things starting with what I want to do the least instead of what’s most interesting. The problem is that there’s more I don’t want to do than there are things I want to do, so I end up not working on the things I want to do – like gaming, writing, etc.

That, I think, is the major problem.

It comes down to one concept. Sabbath.

I saw that. All you folks on my friends list or on my Facebook who are allergic to religion just tuned out. Hell, I bet some of you just stopped reading and went on to something else.

I hope some of you stayed, because although I’m going to talk a bit about religion, the concept is one that’s not just religious.

The idea behind Sabbath is rest. Fun, even. Doing something to recharge yourself for the next bout of crap you don’t want to deal with. We all need a break from the daily grind. I’m not just talking about vacations or an extra bit of sleep or watching a television show. I’m talking about time you devote just to making yourself feel better.

Without feeling guilty about it.

Writing fic or my stories always makes me feel better. Blogging makes me feel better. Clears out my brain and leaves me more focused. The same for reading a good book or playing an RPG. Or even just going out and about and seeing something new or going to a new place without the purpose of accomplishing a specific task.

I’m really, really bad at this.

A lot of people are, really. For all that America is considered a very hedonistic culture, most of us are really bad at really doing things to make ourselves feel better. I think that’s why we’ve developed such a dominant set of entertainment industries. Did you know that compared to most other ‘first world’ western nations, Americans take less time for themselves and invest less time in feeling better than almost anyone else?

Sure, this is a concept that, taken to the extreme, can make your productivity go down the toilet.

I think that our tendency to take it to the extreme, though, is a backlash against the culture of productivity we live in. (Yes, we do live in a culture that emphasizes getting things done, believe it or not. But that is a topic for another blog and another day.)

I think that’s why Christianity has the concept of Sabbath – and it’s a concept I’m just now starting to understand. Understanding it and practicing it are two different things, though. In order to properly devote time to recharging, you have to know what’s really going to be quality and what’s going to be empty fluff and it really is different for every person.

(And yes, for you Christians reading this, while writing it I suddenly felt a conviction to practice Sabbath. For those of you non-Christians, I finally realized what I’m doing to screw myself and what I might be able to do to start fixing it.)

In truth, I’ve neglected this for a long time. I spend so much time working and plowing through the daily grind that I set aside almost no time for myself. I thought I was, but I’m really not, and it’s messing me up far more than I thought it was. (And this is not the place I thought this blog would end up. It’s a bit more relevant than I thought it would be. Huh. Go figure.)

Thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve ever been very good at practicing Sabbath. Part of me has always quietly considered it a waste of time – time I could spend better getting things done.

But, it’s fairly obvious I’m not. Time to try it God’s way and see what happens, I suppose. (Yes, you folk who are allergic to religion can probably tune out now, unless you like me enough to keep reading. But hey, you’ve made it this far, right?)

So there it is. Something resembling a plan.

The other part of the plan is just as hard as learning to relax and recharge. I have to learn to procrastinate productively by making myself leave parts of projects for later and start taking things in smaller, more manageable chunks. Otherwise, I’m going to end up really and truly burning myself out.

If you’re the praying type, I’d appreciate it. If you’re not…just remind me that it really is okay to relax. It’s even good for me.

Or so I’m told.

This boring ramble is brought to you by Jayiin staying up to wait for laundry. Irony? Perhaps.

It would explain a lot of things really. It would explain why, despite our adaptability, occasional (and surprising) calm, our general level of intelligence and our addictions to modern conveniences we seem to have the ability to tap into some primal depth that lets us go longer and work harder than circumstances should allow.

(Was that fairly arrogant? Yes. Am I sorry for it? Not really. I probably should be, though.)

It would also explain other things. That we tend to favor going through obstacles instead of around them. Why we have so much trouble dealing with social niceties like passive aggression, dropped hints and small talk. Why we tend to be more interested in getting things done and being practical than making things pretty. (Why worry about interior decorating when there are chores and projects that need doing? Why sit and watch television when there is work waiting? Why play competitive sports when we can compete against others in ‘number of things accomplished in the shortest amount of time’?)

It would also explain why, without any real reason, the reptile hindbrain kicks into a high gear and sets us off on irrational, unnecessarily aggressive protective tears for no rational reason.

For example.

I have a girlfriend. (If you didn’t already know that, then you weren’t paying attention nine months or so ago when I got her. I wandered around in a daze for about six weeks mumbling: “I have a girlfriend?”)(2)

My girl friend has a friend. This friend and I don’t know each other very well. In fact, we’ve met once. The way she functions in life and the way I function in life are completely different.

She’s something of a social butterfly (nothing wrong with that!) and tends to be more interested in prime time dramas I’ve never heard of, reality television and interpersonal drama than with anything I’m interested in. In fact, a day or so after we met (for all of two hours or so) she apparently spent part of an evening discussing me and judging me with a friend who had never met me.

Generally, that kind of thing is enough to make me write someone off. After all, she doesn’t know me, so who the fuck is she to judge me? People who talk about me behind my back like some kind of nattering magpie when we’ve had such limited contact aren’t generally people I want to deal with very much. They bring the drama. And I’m allergic to drama. Gives me hives.(3)

Still, she’s my girlfriend’s friend, which means there has to be more to her than that. And writing off your girlfriend’s friend isn’t smart.

(And really, I’m Christian now. I can’t really do that sort of thing anymore. Forgive, lead by example, be Christ to those I meet, etc.)

Sure enough, she brought the drama.

She gave out my girlfriend’s phone number – without my girl’s permission (or even bothering to ask if she could) to a guy. Now this guy is someone my girl knew when she was in middle school and he was in high school. And at that time, he apparently had a crush on her. Now, he apparently has a kid. (And maybe still has a crush on my girl.)

The guy texted her and said ‘you should call me,’ but my girl isn’t all that comfortable with new people randomly appearing and saying ‘we should have contact’ without a)warning and b)desiring said contact in the first place. Needless to say, my girl (who has social anxiety issues and will kill me for this post) wasn’t comfortable with the situation.

She was a bit freaked out, felt betrayed and backed into a corner. She didn’t know how to protect herself without hurting her friend, maybe even getting the guy upset with her friend because she didn’t contact him back. She didn’t want to upset anyone or hurt anyone or cause any problems…but she didn’t want to contact him back. She was having enough trouble adjusting to working a full-time job that involved 40+ hours a week of contact with total strangers and being surrounded by people most of the day.

People she had to talk to. Interact with. Approach and make contact with.

In some ways, that part of the job was living nightmare for her. But it was a professional thing, where she had the barrier of ‘I am doing my job and providing customer service’ between her and the people. There was no expectation (aside from a few creepers) of further contact or interaction outside the paradigm of the store. Limited contact for a specific purpose.

This was different – the guy wanted to forge a personal relationship with her, kindle (or re-kindle) a years-lost pseudo-friendship she didn’t remember until much, much later. Not only would it be personal, social contact – it would be in situations where she didn’t have safeguards in place. She would have to set boundaries (after figuring out what those boundaries would be) and go to the interpersonal effort of making sure those boundaries stuck.

This can be a monumental effort for those of us who don’t have panic attacks when confronted by uncomfortable social situations. For her, it was like being asked to climb Mount Everest, without oxygen, after six weeks of privation camping in the Amazon rain forest. Without a rest in between.

She didn’t respond to him, but it did eat at her a bit.

Some time later, we found out this person had been making some rather…not cool comments about my girl. Something along the lines of “She’s not calling me back because she’s having sex with her boyfriend.”

Now, I was already profoundly annoyed that someone – anyone – would dare pass out my girl’s phone number to a relatively unknown person without her permission. I was somewhat irritated by the presumptuous tone of the text the recipient of her number sent.

Up until hearing that, I’d been able to fight it off. I’d done a rather admirable job of being rational and reasonable about things. In my that other social circle, it might have been perfectly acceptable to give out someone else’s personal contact information without regard for their safety or desires. It might have been perfectly reasonable to sent a demanding text to a girl you haven’t seen in years without so much as a ‘hey, do you remember me?’

Hearing that, even third/fourth hand, set it off. That unreasonable, primal, irrational instinct to protect. Protect my girl from those people who weren’t a credible threat – or even more than an irritation, really.

No. I dropped straight into it – what my mother calls ‘caveman mode’ – that place where all logic and reason is devoted to the pursuit of a single goal: take care of my girl.

This was not a jealousy thing. I’m not worried my girl would be remotely interested in this guy, let alone him being any kind of a threat to my relationship. But that Neanderthal part of my hardwiring was screaming at me.

I can’t describe it, really. My entire focus narrowed and all I could think of was: This person. He is a threat. If he had been there in front of my, violence would have almost certainly occurred. (Overreaction, much?) Hunting him down, backing him into a corner and threatening to rip his tongue out with a pair of pliers I had with me for perfectly legitimate reasons?

A good plan!

Getting his number from my girl and making threatening phone calls where I promised retribution most terrible should he dare utter one word about her, think about her or even have a stray thought of ‘I wonder if she’s still dating the crazy fat dude with the psychotic tendencies?’

A necessity!

He’s not a threat. Why would it matter that someone I’ve never met and my girl doesn’t really have any interest in renewing her acquaintance made a tasteless joke at her expense?

Hell. She’d even already gotten a new phone number (on my urging) when she switched cell phone plans. (If giving out her phone number was acceptable for one person, why not others? I didn’t want to risk it.) And her friend had agreed not to give it out to him! (She didn’t apologize or admit she was wrong for giving it out without permission in the first place, but you can’t have everything from a social group with social mores that make no sense.)

But there I was, sitting in my car. I’d dropped my girl off at her place and I was hell bent on getting home, jumping onto Facebook, and sending her friend a strongly worded (read: truly offensive) rant about what she had done.

Is this my place? No.

Can my girl take care of herself? Yes.

Should I have done it? Absolutely not.

(Did I do it? No.)

Not that it mattered. I was positive I had to protect her. I had to grab my club and hunt down those members of another tribe who had dared threaten my woman!

From afar. In a way that wasn’t really a threat…just kinda rude, insensitive and presumptuous.

Yeah. Real mature. Real grown up.

I’ve seen this before in myself with other girls I’ve dated. Or been friends with. Or worked with. Or just known. Or met casually by accident.

This overwhelming, primal urge to protect. My Dad has it. My brothers have it. My grandfather has it. I can only assume my Dad’s brothers have it. I’ve grown up around it.

My father would brook no insult to my mother, even though she was more than capable of handling herself. My mother used to have to talk him out of going to her office to let the people there know what he thought of how they treated her. Especially her male bosses.

Hell, he insisted on him or one of his sons being there when health professionals came to the house for her physical therapy.

How ridiculous is this?

Sure, it comes in handy when there’s a crisis and we really do need to take care of our girls. The drive to go to any length, any effort, any expense (and without regard for ourselves or whoever was stupid enough to get in our way) to make sure we protected our girls has, in fact, made it possible for us to handle some fairly tricky and difficult situations.

The feral caveman-mode has made surviving really hard situations possible. The primal urge to be the strongest, best and most productive we could be, no matter what, has served us well (and has gotten us all into trouble).

Hard truth: I know better.

Not only do I know better from a purely social perspective of ‘it is not my place to fight her battles for her, I know better from a Christian perspective of understanding that people – especially me – are fucked up and do/say things to/about each other without any real thought all the time. Most of the time, we don’t even mean to be assholes and cause drama or hurt people.

Rationally, I’m sure her friend didn’t, even for a split second, think she was doing a bad thing. I’m sure the guy didn’t really think he was freaking her out. And I’m sure they would both feel bad if they knew the extent of it.

If I were really following through on the Christian way, I should have encouraged her to make contact with them, helped her forge those relationships and helped her work through all her hurdles. And done so in a loving, patient, kind and forgiving way.

Yep. I failed.

I listened to the caveman in me and encouraged her not to pursue things; I was going to protect her from the discomfort they were causing by standing between them and her if I had to! I was going to growl and menace and keep them back – even if it meant I looked like (or maybe was being) an overly controlling asshole boyfriend.

Damn the consequences, she would be safe from them! They wouldn’t upset her delicate balance. They wouldn’t cause her confusion, awkwardness and emotional exhaustion. They wouldn’t force her into unwanted social interaction if she didn’t want it!

(Or maybe even if she did…I wasn’t too keen on how they were acting.)

I had no fear of their ire. I had no fear of what they would think or of what they would say. Or of what might happen because of it.

In my more lucid moments, when I was more modern man and not caveman, I even felt a faint shame about it. But the other hard truth is this: I’m not all that evolved, because that faint shame isn’t enough to make me put down my club and start using polysyllabic grunts.

I still don’t like the situation. I still don’t like the way she’s been treated. And I know there’s a line there I can’t quite see…and if they cross it, I’ll forget I’m a reasonable, rational person and I’ll start saying ‘ooga booga, no hurt girl!’

So much for evolution. At least in my case.(4)

Footnotes

(1) This post is not meant to start any kind of a discussion of evolution or the theory of. It was just a lead-in to the actual point of the post.

(2) She is not ‘mine.’ This post is not meant to indicate possession. The term ‘my’ is used to indicate ‘she is the girl with whom I am in a committed, long-term relationship.’

(3) The person to whom I am referring will see this post linked on Facebook, but will probably not bother to read the post. Even if they do, I’ve never been one to hide my thoughts on such things. One of these days, I will master the art of ‘not being an asshole,’ but not tonight.

(4) Yes. Long post is long. It is my blog, after all.

Yes. My blog has been suffering from neglect. Sadly, with this post, I will have posted as much in Jan – Feb 2011 as I did all of 2010.

It’s not from lack of ideas or inspiration. Or even from lack of time. For the first time in a long time, I can say that I seem to be on bottom-dead-center where my writing is concerned and I can’t honestly say there is anything to blame other than myself.

So. Mea culpa. Now what?

Writing one blog post won’t do a damn thing to help me get serious about writing again; neither will blogging in general (even if it is good practice). I’m reading plenty, have plenty of creative input and enough free time that I could be plugging away at half a dozen writing projects.

I can say, however, that I haven’t been completely useless on the writing front. There are things going in the orbit of my writing that are (slowly) providing me some impetus to get off my fat ass (or should that be ‘sit my fat ass down’) and write.

• WizardTales, the fantasy fanfiction site I’ve been part of/on staff of off-and-on since around 2006 has just re-opened it’s doors after about a two-year haitus. This time around (third time’s the try, right?) we’re simplying things a bit and doing things somewhat different. Mostly behind the scenes. Somehow, I’ve been handed the Red Hat (site admin, for those who don’t know MMM parlance). Things are (of course) moving slow, but they are moving. Fanfiction remains a strong inspiration and motivation for me.

• An old friend contacted me early on this year and made me an offer; thusly, I find myself as a member of UK Authors. I haven’t been there very long, and the culture and attitude of the people there is vastly different than any other writing community I’ve been a part of. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet or how I feel about the welcome I’ve recieved. They don’t seem interested in discussing craft as much as they seem to enjoy irritating each other around the boards. The quality of writing is about the same as I’ve found on other internet forums – some of it is fantastic and some of it is terrible. They have real support and a thriving community of poets there. In all truth, I’m not much of a poet. I’ve written a few decent ones, but nothing special. And I seem to have lost the knack of it over the years. The jury is still out on UK Authors, bu being there is making me realize how much I need to write.

• the Katheryn story is nearly 16 years old, and for the first time in almost six of those years, the story is starting to make sense. Writing the (first part of the) prequel for NaNoWriMo in 2009 was a good idea. It shook loose some of the cobwebs and helped me see more of what I really wanted the story to be about. Setting it down for over a year was an even better idea, because now that I have some distance, I’ve started to untangle the knot of issues at the core of the story and started to make some real progress on how I want to write it.

I think I had an idea too ambitious for my skills and I’m only just now really coming into the level of skill and maturity I need to write the story and do it justice. It’s taken awhile, but I think I’m finally getting there.

• Forum-based RP has always been something that gets my creative side moving – the same goes for tabletop RP. I’m hoping to make more time for both in the near future. (And, if I can actually keep some momentum, my next post will be about tabletop RP. Someone please hold me to that.)

Hopefully, some of this does something. Because I can honestly say I am not a bad writing. I might even be good.

Recently, a good friend of mine called me up and left me a very serious voicemail.

She had run across an old story of mine that was loosely based on real events, answering the question “what if” about a real scenario. She’d found and read the story when she googled herself (she was in the acknowledgements, because the names had been changed to protect the guily) and thought: “Oh shit. Was I that kind of asshole to him?“

Truth: she wasn’t. But the story made it out that way. Sort of. (The narrator was an emo pussy version of myself. He whined a lot and very much had a fatalistic ‘life sucks’ attitude.)

The story was good enough she was afraid the events were real and she wasn’t remembering what happened right. I wrote that story about a decade ago, so obviously – I don’t suck if I can write a story well enough that someone who knows better doubted their own recollection of events.

I need to get off bottom-dead-center and write.

If any of my friends out there want to help with that – nag me about writing. Nag me until I’m mad. Ask me about stuff until I have to start writing just so I can make everyone stop nagging me.

Either that, or just keep throwing things at the back of my head until I start writing and stop sitting around saying “I should write.”

Otherwise, I will turn into the loser I’m afraid I could be.

Some guys are car guys. They love cars. Even if they don’t have a ‘pimp’ car, they know car stats and car stuff and they make psuedo-obscene monkey noises when an awesome car rolls by. For some guys, it’s boats. Or guns. Or tools. Or whatever thing it is.

As a little kid, I used to draw computers on the chalkboard in the garage at home. I used to count down the days and the hours to the computer classes we had in elementary school, on old, ancient Apple Computers. I used to handle the 5 1/4 floppies with reverence. My fascination didn’t end there. In middle school, I was one of the onlh kids who understood what a network was, much less a token-ring adapter.

My fascination with computers is much like my fascination with other things. It only carries me so far – to the point where I’m good at something, I have a solid base of knowledge with some surprisingly in-depth tidbits and no small amount of technical skill. I’m nowhere near the level of a true IT professional. (Though if you squint at it really hard, my job could make me an IT professional. If you squint really hard.)

Really, my love affair with computers is more about their use as tools. Although we didn’t really explore such things in school, we did get a cursory introduction to things like word processing and spreadsheets and databases – although practical and incredibly powerful tools, the teachers stuck with my generation didn’t trust or live with computers the way teachers now do. Nowadays, teachers put computers (and the internet) in the same category and reading, writing and math. Survival skills without which you will flounder in the world.

Most of my peers saw computers as a novelty item – or later, a necessity for typing up a reporrt. Or playing games. They were tools, yes – but tools like pencils are tools or rulers are tools. They are things that you use to accomplish specific and limited goals. There was a brief period of time where computers meant more to most people, but that passed with the advent of smart phones and all the rest of the hand-held gadgetry. Already, tech bloggers are saying netbooks are on their way out in favor of touch screen ‘phones.’

I guess I’m an anachronism. My phone is still pretty stupid and doesn’t always tell me when I’ve been texted (but I’m still marvelling at the novelty of a color screen on a cell phone! Those haven’t been around as long a some folk tend to think!)

I’m an anachronism because I still love my computer. Specifically, my portable computer.

For me, computers were a revelation and have become the single most important tool in my life. Take a guy with a slightly-better-than average creativity, a solid dollop of diction, decent intelligence and a smattering of almost-there skills and you have a guy who would be spectacularly useless.

Put that guy behind a computer, and he can be a genius. When I was a kid, especially in middle school, I saw computers as my salvation. Not in so much as they would give me a lucrative career, but they could save me from mediocrity. A dyslexic writer is a slow writer – until you give him a keyboard and a spell-checker. I’m a crappy artist who can’t draw stick figures without a ruler and compass, but I’m a pretty damn good desktop publisher and an almost halfway decent graphic designer (as long as the graphics are someone else’s.)

In truth, I’m not good at much other than writing, talking and inductive reasoning. With a computer, I discovered I was able to write, talk to people, enter into communities and even be respected for what I said and did as opposed to dealing with all the social issues I had at school or at work. (Yay for BBS!. And if you don’t know what that means, don’t tell me.) I could be good at almost anything!

(Many of my peers have long since had this epiphany, but as I had it earlier, I always had an edge in the learning curve/skill department.)

I decided to know as much as I could about computers and I got really good at them. Teachers asked me for help and I had a pretty high level of access on my middle school network, thanks to an awesome SysOp computer teacher. I learned DOS and I learned some coding and I learned how and why computers worked.

With a computer, I wasn’t just a geek (and therefore an object of pity and/or cruelty). I was useful.

So one day, I decided I needed to take a computer with me everywhere. I think I was in 8th grade and the thought of having my very own laptop computer was the Holy Grail of Awesome. It’s like that boy who loves cars mowing lawns to earn the cash to buy his first junker. In my case, it was slinging french fries and cream gravy at a fried chicken fast food hut to earn the scratch to buy my first bare-bones system.

I bought it out of the classified ads, if that tells you anything. It was a Toshiba with a 586 processor and a 1.3 GB hard drive. (Which, back then, was freakin’ enourmous.) It didn’t even have a CD-ROM. My uncle helped me install Windows 95 on it. There were so many 3.5 disks. It had wordpad.

But it did have a modem (33.6!) and could access my bulletin boards and that was good enough for awhile. Suffice it to say, I’ve gone through a fair few laptops in my day. Some have been the luxury sport cars and have cost me an arm, a leg and my self-respect. Some were junkers with Windows ME that I could barely make work, no matter how hard I tried.

My latest computer was a netbook by ASUS. It was a great little machine that did far more for me than the specs or the design said it should. It accompanied me on all my recent travels to Seattle and Dayton and San Antonio. Despite being a tiny thing designed for limited use, it did the work of a full-size, fully equipped computer, handling graphic and web design and lasting through two NaNoWriMos.

It died a couple of weeks ago, and I panicked. I was devastated. My stalwart companion, my trusty computer was dead. I didn’t kill computers! I worked them into the ground and retired them when they were at the end of their useful span. My skills kept them going to the bitter end and I could always judge right when it was time to start saving for the next one.

This time, I killed it. I overworked it, I think, and it’s poor heart finally gave out.

It took a few hours for it to sink in. My computer was dead.

Hence, the panic.

Oh, I knew my data was fine. The hard drive wasn’t the problem, the power supply was – I hadn’t lost anything.

But. I didn’t have a computer. What was I going to do without one? How would I function? What purpose would I serve without my all-important tool? How could I do my job without one? How could I communicate or, or…or just be me without a computer?

I was in a horrible state for about 24 hours. I didn’t know what to do with myself without my computer. It wasn’t even the internet (I realized that fairly quickly) – it was the machine itself and all the infinite possibilities and infinite abilities it represented. I tried doing what other people say they do for fun – playing video games didn’t work and watching TV has never been my thing. I could read, but…even then, there was this giant, gaping hole in my universe I had no idea how to fill.

Yeah. I know. I have a problem.

I knew I could fix my netbook, but it would take weeks (to get the parts) and cost almost as much as a new netbook. Which was about all I could afford.

So.

With the help of a good friend (who happened to work at Geek Squad), a loan from my father and a cash advance from work, I was able to acquire a new computer. And it was during the process of said acquisition, I realized I had fallen into complacency. Without my friend’s help, I never would have known the netbook was a bad idea, because I had no idea that Windows 7 Starter wouldn’t have done what I needed it to do.

Nor would I have known why upgrading a netbook to Windows 7 Home was a Bad Idea(TM). Why? Because for the first time in my entire life, I had been running a computer that was two operating systems behind. I didn’t even know what the different versions of the OS did!

My shame was almost enough to make me decide to go luddite, but that lasted only as long as it took me to realize that it meant I would no longer be a Computer Guy (if I still was).

I indebted myself all over the place, put my old hard drive in a case to make it an external and bought the new computer. My father fronted me enough money to get the insurance, software and protection I need for it (so that I don’t end up destroying it on accident). I got it home and went through that delicious process of setting up the computer – pulling it out of the box, peeling off the foam and turning it on for the first time. Ignoring that small fear that what you bought is really a peice of crap (although this time, knowing the insurance I had on it and the research both my Geek Squad buddy and I had done on it, I was more confident than usual about the computer.)

It didn’t take me long after that to realize I was in over my head. Windows 7 and Windows XP were vastly different. It was like learning Windows 95 after working on Windows 3.11.

Almost nothing worked the same! Oh sure, the basics of windows are the same, but the file structure and root directories and startup protocols were different. (No boot.ini file? Wtf is this?)

I hate being ignorant, especially about computers. So I went and bought a thick book on Windows 7; I refuse to let my computer be smarter than me.

Okay, so you read this far and you probably don’t see the point of this entry at all. The point is pretty simple: I had never really given much conscious thought to how important computers are in my life and I sometimes wonder if they have the same place with other people, or do others see computers the same way I see the microwave. It’s dead useful, but it doesn’t occupy a central portion of my identity.

I’m damn glad I have my new computer, even though I’m still not entirely sure I’m comfortable without Windows 7. I think without the computer, I might be in a lot more trouble than I thought.

The first attempt was a boring and dismal failure, talking about the death of my old computer and getting a new one. Big news in my life, but not really the stuff folk want to read about. I was kinda proud of it, too. It had links to the computer’s specs and it talked about how annoying (humiliating) it is for me as an an IT professional, (after a fashion. If you squint real hard at my job) to know nothing about Windows 7 – not even enough to know which version I would need for what I do.

Boring. I still wanted to write about it and I still might, if I can find a way to make it remotely interesting to the rest of you.

The second was about responsibility. A bit philosophical, but boring.

Instead, I’ll tell you about my Very Good Day and my Very Good News.

The Very Good News is that by the time I get this posted, I will have been dating (officially) my girl for six months. Yay us! Truth to tell, I never thought I would write something like that every again. But, there it is. Just goes to show that things can work out way more awesome than I think they can.

And before you go hide under your desk from my flood of words, I’m not going to give you a ‘how we met’ story. Seriously overrated, writing those down. Especially since this one is a lot of me banging my head on my desk saying “Bad me. No treat. Cannot has girl.”

When, in reality, I could have. And do.

No. It is today that was very good.

It didn’t start that way. I closed the store on Saturday night, which is, in and of itself, not a terrible thing. My girl was closing with me and we had a really cool co-worker closing with us. And I didn’t have to do a lot of the painful manual labor, just the painful mental labor. Considering it’s been a good long while since I had a regular closing shift, it’s kinda my turn.

No, it’s not closing. It’s waking up the next morning and crawling out of bed early enough to go to church. This is hard enough as it is, because I so rarely have the chance to sleep in that missing church for a bit of extra sleep is really tempting. But I got up and I hated myself for it.

I hurt this morning. I cannot tell you how much I hurt this morning. Everything ached. Including things that haven’t been aching lately. I could barely walk; I stumbled around, got dressed and staggered out the door. I’ve been missing too much church lately, I missed my friends and damn it, I was going to go!

I picked up my girl from her place and we went to pick up my brother, but he was more dead than she and I were, so he stayed home. We went to church, foregoing breakfast. The effort to procure it seemed insurmountable. Insanely so. The effort of parking. Getting out. Walking in someplace. Deciding what to eat – yeah, no. To say nothing of getting back in the car and driving to church only to have to get out again.

Sarcastic? Me? Never. Perish the thought.

Thankfully, some kind and wonderful soul had brought doughnuts. I threw some money in the breakfast pot and had a couple. I also drank the Monster I had with me and wrote a bit, listened to the fun sermon, in which the pastor dressed up like a mad scientist and even had a fake mad science/Late Night TV Product gizmo as part of his demonstration. As I’m nominally on the web/PR team for the church, I valiantly crawled out of my nice, comfy chair and took some pictures. Not that I did that well, really – I couldn’t get the flash to turn off until the very last picture.

Yeah. I should have RTFM closer. Because it’s my camera.

By the time I left church, I’d been hugged by half a dozen kids, talked to a bunch of people I missed and I didn’t hate the world as much. I headed from church out to a very successful meeting with a co-worker where we planned out quite a bit of a project we’re both involved in and came up with a couple of new ideas the boss really liked. We made a lot more work for ourselves, but – I think, in the long run, it was a good thing.

Then off to see the Seth Rogen Green Hornet movie.

What a fucking waste of time and money. It was even worse than Scott Pilgrim, if you can believe it. Seth Rogen didn’t even try to play Britt Reid. He just played a slightly more heroic version of most of his characters – dumb, lazy, and none too entertaining. They butchered the story and played merry hob with the characters I love (except for Lenora Case. Cameron Diaz was awesome.)

Look – I bet the movie isn’t really that bad, just based on the merit of me hating it. But I don’t like buddy movie comedy. I don’t like parody movies very often and I hate awkward situational humor where the entirety of the joke is one guy is being an ass.

The good part of the day? My girl. She is incredibly supportive of me in so many ways. If you’ve been reading me long, you know I have an obssession with ‘getting stuff done.’

Well, the reason for that is for about two or three years there, I didn’t. I just didn’t. I sat around on my ass, played forum RP, read and wrote fanfic and tried to figure out my life through the zen art of doing absolutely shit. I wrote a lot of stuff that’s pretty much nothing more than extravagant practice, honed my skills at being an online GM for a bunch of geeks who can’t let go of dead fandoms and didn’t really advance my life much.

Now, I’m playing catch-up from those few years. To be honest, a lot of what I have to do isn’t fun. Some of it is learning writing discipline again. (Which is why I’m forcing myself to write this terrible entry, even though it’s terrible.) Some of it is just slogging through all the crap I’ve got to get rid of. I did a lot of that the last two years, but there’s still the garage and there’s still too much crap in my room.

Some of it is just learning not to leave little things and a lot of it is learning to be better about taking care of little thing – email responses, review responses, writing/calling/responding to people. The end result is I have a long list of projects that have just sat there, and I have tried to make myself get through them from time to time. I start to make progress – I really do – and then I just go back to sitting.

I could blame it on the fibro and the fatigue that comes with it, and while that is a factor, it is not the major one. I could blame it on busy schedule and on priotizing thing, but that wouldn’t be really honest, either. I could take the tried and true road and call it a ‘combination of factors’ or some other bullshit.

Yeah. Not really. I just stop and end up just sitting, staring at my computer and watching the list of crap I have to do grow.

The real problem? I needed help. I needed just a little bit of help to get moving and keep moving. My girl is givng me that help. She’s being supportive, affectionate, attentive and is even willing to just sit on my bed and watch TV or play Pokemon while I trudge through the morass of crap I’ve let build up.

She’s read my writing and is encouraging me to write more without nagging. She’s willing to sit with me while I sort through things and willing to help me clean out things and willing to help me do some of the crawling around on the floor or moving around of things (despite being very tiny, she’s rather tough) that is hard on me physically.

That little bit of help has me moving forward at an accelerated pace. Even before we were actually dating, he helped me a lot – tagging along on errands, helping me in the day-to-day organizing, etc. Just having her there makes it easier for me to do and makes even the most annoying and frustrating errands bearable and sometimes even fun.

And before some of you throw down the line about the ‘shiny wearing off’ – she’s been helping me like that for more than a year now, and the shiny hasn’t worn off yet. I know lots of couples who have been married decades who still like to do stuff like that together, just to be together.

So nyah, naysayers. I’d stick out my tongue at you, but you wouldn’t see it.

She made today awesome, because even though I was hurting, she helped me slog through what needed to be done and a lot of what I wanted to get done.

When I set up my new computer, I looked at my to-do list and I realized that I had made a lot of progress in the last year. I finally realized how much progress when I realized I was actually starting to look some of the big, nasty projects in the face.

And for once, I’m staring right back at them.

So that’s my good day. A day spent being productive and being with my girl and going to bed feeling like it’s okay to go to bed for the first time in a long time.

I am thirty years old.

It’s odd how much that surprises me. It’s almost like I didn’t expect I would make it this far – that somehow, reality would somehow stop and I wouldn’t turn thirty. I can’t even claim I didn’t see it coming because eighteen months ago, I was pretty worried about turning thirty.

Why (w)angst over it? Because I’m supposed to! Didn’t you know? Thirty is the beginning of ‘middle age’ and soon that slow, inevitable decline into decrepitude will begin. The fun, good part of life is ending!

Or, so I’m told.

Yeah. I call bullshit.

I once wrote about the new year being an arbitrary starting over point; most age milestones are the same thing. I often call it ‘magic number theory’ – the idea, propagated by popular culture and social conventions, that having lived a specific amount of time automatically confers necessary knowledge, wisdom and skills.

It’s especially apparently supposed to be a bit like leveling up in a video/computer/role-playing game. There will be a cool sound effect, some lights, maybe some sparkles and – boom! – you just suddenly know and understand. When you hit the magic number, you suddenly grok life.

(Of course, when you hit this arbitrary benchmark and you don’t suddenly get new knowledge, wisdom and skill, you can’t very well admit to everyone else you didn’t get your level up, now can you? After all, they obviously did. It is most imperative and important that you pretend, because no one should know you don’t have it all figured out yet. But only for a little while, because surely next year will be the magic number!)

Just for the record – thirty is not my magic number.

Thirty may not be my magic number, but it is the first birthday I’ve ever immediately felt different upon reaching. I don’t mean that I suddenly feel more knowledgeable or wise – but I do have the overwhelming realization that I have been alive three decades. I am suddenly hyper-aware of all that I have not accomplished.

I say that – but 2010 was incredibly successful. Last year, I wrote about wanting to live legendary, to go out and do and I’ve done better about going out and doing in 2010 than I ever have before. I travelled more, met more people, expanded my horizons, taken serious personal and professional risks and even fell in love with a girl. Who, miraculously, loves me back.

On the other hand, I haven’t spent nearly as much time with my friends and family here in Austin as I should have – and I have not written nearly enough.

[Insert appropriate dramatic pause of acceptable and dramatic length.]

This is the part of my start-of-year blog post when I talk about all my resolutions to fix the mistakes I made last year. Except, I don’t like the word ‘resolution.’ Congress ‘resolves’ things. So does the UN. And they are the butt of more jokes than even geek culture and (depending on who you ask) don’t really accomplish much. And the point of this post is to talk about what I want to accomplish.

So no resolutions. Instead, I’m going to think in terms of goals.

I have had success at setting goals this past year. I’ve gotten much more aware of my limitations than I think I ever have been and the goals I’ve set have been set with those limitations in mind.

I know some of you hate it when people talk about having limitations. Some folk I know get really, really (and wrongfully) upset with folk with disabilities talk about ‘working within their limits.’ Apparently, (some) folk believe the only way to be successful is to overcome limitations and do more than you thought you could.

I’ve discovered that this can be a very self-defeating line of thought. You can accomplish more than you thought you could; you can achieve anything you set your mind to – but sometimes, you have to respect the limitations you’ve been set.

Dictionary.com‘s first definition of limit is: “the final, utmost, or furthest boundary or point as to extent, amount, continuance, procedure, etc.”

There are, I think, two kinds of limits. The kind that are real and the kind we put on ourselves. I have a lot of both. Until recently, I didn’t play video games, outside of the occasional bout of Bookworm or Bejeweled to clear my head. I hate being bad at things and I know from experience that between poor depth perception and dyslexia, video games are difficult for me.

Frankly, I suck at them.

My girlfriend loves Pokemon. In some ways, Pokemon is to her what Star Trek is to me. She’s been amazing, diving headfirst into a lot of things I’m passionate about, going so far as to read the first five Harry Potter books so she could read HPU and is reading quite a bit of katheryn story. She’s visually impaired and reading is hard for her. She’s gotten involved in Zoids and role-playing and all sorts of things just to be a part of the things I’m doing.

So when I went to Seattle to see my brother this November, I bought myself a Nintendo DSi and Pokemon SoulSilver. She told me I couldn’t buy her anything, much less anything expensive – despite the fact I’d saved up money just so I could. However, she didn’t say I couldn’t buy myself something nice. So I bought something that would let me share one of the things she’s really into.

I still suck at video games, but I can play Pokemon and share something with her – I had to throw off a limit I had set myself because I hate being bad at things.

Yes. I pretty much suck at the game, but it’s fun sharing something with her.

I can’t play for hours at a time, because it makes my hands hurt – I cannot overcome this limit, because my hands hurting are a warning that I’m starting to damage my joints. (I’m going to buy a DSiXL, which is larger and will hopefully be easier on my hands.)

(A lot of my posts talk about my fibromyalgia and arthritis – it’s hard not to write about or think about, because these conditions (even more so than my obesity) define some of my limits, especially my physical ones.)

I need to lose weight, but I can’t do a lot of high-impact exercise. I can’t afford to join a gym, but I can do low-impact walking and other exercise here at home – and I’m trying. Weight loss will be slower than with exercise better geared for it, but I can still exercise.

I can exercise and get healthier, I just can’t do it in what is considered the most efficient and effective method. I respect my limits, but I still find a way to accomplish what I want to accomplish.

Before this year, I lived under the delusion that I could overcome some of the things I can’t and when I tried and failed, I was very discouraged and ended up not wanting to try anymore.

When I set goals for myself that respect my limitations, I end up making a lot of progress. I went walking; I slowly cut down how much I eat.

Maybe this makes me a coward for not standing up and saying ‘RAWRR! I IGNORE MY ISSUES AND DO ANYTHING!, but I don’t think so. I think it makes me wise enough to work around my limitations.

So my goals for 2011? Continue what I started doing in 2010, but write more, see my friends and family more often, and take better care of myself.

• WRITE MORE: Time and energy are limited. I’m not setting myself a goal like blogging every night or writing 1000 words a day that would either mean sacrificing all the other things I’ve worked for or end up being impossible on the nights I’m feeling horrible.

Instead, I plan to blog at least once a week and write on one of my stories at least once a week, even if it’s just for half an hour or so. Though this is not the pace I need to set to be a professional writer, it’s a start – and it’s better than setting an impossible goal and not writing at all. Which is pretty much what I’ve doing this past year.

I’m going to try to journal more and jot more notes down as I go; I get lots of good ideas when I can’t do much with them, but I can start writing down enough thoughts on the ideas that I don’t lose them. This one will be the

• PEOPLE: This is probably the hardest goal I’ve set for myself. I don’t really have a day off anymore, since I started taking my mother to her appointments on Wednesdays and I go to church on Sunday. However, I can try to call people more, find times during the week to hang out for just dinner or a movie or just meet at a (blech!) coffeehouse and catch up. Most of my friends live in far south Austin or San Antonio, whereas I live just north of Austin. I’ll manage – but gas money and time will be a real constraint.

At least once a month, I will find time to see someone I haven’t seen for awhile. If I have to save my pennies for a couple extra tanks of gas or skip out on something else I want to do that costs money, I will.

I’m also going to get better about reading and commenting on people’s blogs and facebook – it’s not the same as face-to-face contact, but it’s a good step. Social contact is hard for me, for a lot reasons, but it’s something I need to do. I have a lot of people who are good friends to me, but I haven’t been a very good friend to this past year. Sorry, y’all.

• ME: There are a lot of things I need to do to take better care of myself and a lot of them are small. I can find time to walk more, do more exercise at home, buy/cook less food, pay more attention to my physical condition – instead of just assuming I’m going to feel like crap no matter what I do, I’m going to assume at least some things can be made better.

Also, I need more sleep. That’s probably going to be the hardest thing I try to do this year.

Compared to my posts for the last two years, this one seems weak and boring – but in a lot of ways, it’s just as profound. I can say that I did do what I wanted to do in 2010 – I dove into life and did a lot more with myself than almost any other year I can remember. I went to Seattle twice, visited my best friend in Dayton, was a counselor at a pre-teen camp, and got a girlfriend. (Yeah, I know, mentioned some of this stuff already, but bear with me, okay?)

At the beginning of 2009, I was a disorganized mess – not so at the beginning of last year ot the beginning of this year. I’ve gotten rid of even more stuff, gotten more organized, and even paid a bit more on my debts (though, I still owe people and organizations massive cash).

I’m much better at getting things done and keeping myself together. I’m better at realizing when I’ve set unrealistic expectations for myself and taking things in small parts instead of just setting a crazy goal and assuming I’ll be able to reach it without a plan.

I can honestly say that I’ve made progress and have actually managed to make some of major changes in my life that I’ve wanted to make over the past couple of years.

The truth is, now that I’m thirty, I really have no idea what I want to do with myself for the next thirty years. For the first time in years, I’m writing a New Year’s post without feeling desperate, frustrated and feeling like I’m standing still. For the first time in years, I’m not looking back at the past year and saying ‘I fail at life.’

That’s worth something, I think.

I know there are things I want to do – game, write, hang out with people and continue to go out and do. I’m still living by the credo: “Fuck it. I win.”

Even when doing something means I fail. I’m not as scared of failure as I have been. Hell, I’ve already submitted a story to a contest this year. If that’s not a good start, I don’t know what is.

Life isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good. Why resolve to change what’s working?

As for what I haven’t accomplished – well, when I think about all the things I have done in the past thirty years, I realize that I have the ability to do twice as much in the next thirty. Many of the things I wanted for myself when I was 20 or even 25 are not the same things I want for myself now and I think I would have been unhappy to have accomplished some of the things I thought I wanted.

Like I said, I’m a little unsure of the things I want for myself now. I know I want to publish my writing, I want to write amazing stories, and I want to continue in the awesome relationship I’m in. I want to have a job like the one I have now – full of variety, challenges, and constant learning and growth. I want to keep expanding my horizons and I eventually want to go back to school – but when the time is right, not just when it seems convenient or easy or when everyone around me tells me I’m supposed to.

So the major goal for 2011? Figure out what my next big step is and start working towards it.

I will keep to what I said last year and live legendary.

And if you read through this without the cheese factor making you nauseous, congratulations.

Once again –

Fuck it. I win.

Oh. And happy new year.

Yeah. I know this has been a long time coming. Still, things have been busy. The last few weeks, I have worked enough hours that they literally had to cut entire shifts off me – which I then had errands, chores, and other sundry crap to do instead of write.

Frustrating.

Still, I figured I’d best get this written now, because I am about to take another trip, this time to Bellevue, WA for the Grand Opening of Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy® Bellevue.

I’m pretty stoked. Gonna stay with my brother and his fiance and help usher in the first Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy® franchise!

But since I’m planning on writing about that fairly extensively and even taking a camera with me on the trip (*gasp!*), I’d had to be an entire trip behind on writing.

(I do seem to be taking a lot of trips lately, don’t I?)

The Trenchcoat Mafia goes on Vacation: Part II: The Knights in Slightly Tarnished Armor Enter the Basement!

Before I continue on with the tale of the trip, a few random thoughts I’ve had on the subject of vacation. I never really understood the purpose of vacation as a kid, except in the abstract, because we really didn’t go on many (and the one time we went, I got horribly sick. I’ve been scared of Houston ever since!)

Really? The purpose of a vacation should be clear to everyone, even in the abstract: escape from your real life and go visit a fantasy life for a little while. Go see people. See places. Do things you don’t normally get to do, even if it’s just laze around the house in your underwear and scratch yourself while you watch way too much television and eat like a college fratboy.

The truth is, no one really wants to hear about someone else’s vacation unless it’s in a coffee table book, a travelogue with pretty pictures or comes complete with gratuitous and salacious gossip. I’m much the same: why do I want to see slideshows of places I can’t go to or of people I’ve never met?

I also believe vacations are journeys – miniature walkabouts, side quests and tangential experiences in life that usually provide pivotal insight, restoration, or even a goal to reach in everyday life. If I work this long and save this way, I can go to this place.

It’s those journeys, revelations and insights that I think are what fascinate us about travel stories – what was learned, experienced, gained? (Or, if you’re a RP’er – what was your XP and loot?)

So that’s why I’m boring you with vacation entries; because it was quite a journey.

I chronicled the journey from Autin, TX to Dayton, OH. Ben and I had made it to Dayton in one peice, albeit tired, sore, hungry and in desperate need of a shower.

The last few minutes of the drive were like something out of a movie: great traffic, beautiful lighthing and a sky that cannot be described; so many colors of blue and gray backlit by the sun, mottled by cotton-puff clouds that looked like they had been carved out of boiling foam and hung in the sky at the absolute perfect angle for casual artistry.

Despite being tired and sore and smelling like I’d been in a car for hours, I swear I could hear the hopeful soundtrack playing in the background as we drove over the bridge from Kentucky into Ohio and from Cincinnati into Dayton.

Ben was practically bouncing in his chair as he drove. I thought he was gonna make a mad dash for the bathroom. Even though he was quivering like a kid waiting to attack Christmas presents, he still kept up his running commentary on Dayton, pointing out landmarks and historical houses and various places we might or might no go.

We pulled up outside Ben and Bri’s house, and I was once again struck by something: there was snow. Piles of the stuff. All over the place. It was wet and cold and the novelty had certainly worn off by the time we climbed from the car.

The house was a neat little old house, looking like it was probably built in the 1940′s – Ben and Bri had painted it charming blues and reds and left it looking all together cheerful and quite like it belonged on a street full of such houses – which it was.

Oddly enough, this is the kind of place Ben has lived a lot; he’s from a small town in Texas called Marble Falls and is country boy at heart. Though he’s emerged as an idealist and something of a mystic, he’s grown up with a family life and circumstances that fits the American Dream like a glove. In a lot of ways, he’s still living it.

Now, don’t get me wrong when I say that. It’s fantastic. Every time I get to step into his world for a little while, I emerge the better for it. Cleaner, wiser, seeing the world as a brighter and better place than I did before. I always walk away from time in Ben’s world with a feeling of hope and optimism.

Why?

Because his life is like it is. Because I know there are people for whom every day is not a financial struggle or who live well; who live simply and with joy in the small things. People who know how to take pride in how their house or yard looks.

For me? That’s something I could never get joy out of. I never did find the joy in fixing up my house – just the very idea of it makes me ache all over. I’m not mechanically or artistically inclined, at least not that direction. I can fix almost anything, given time and research. But to paint a house? To renovate a house, as they’ve done?

I would hate it. It would make me miserable.

The very idea of a Homeowner’s Assocation fills me with fear and rage.

Yet, it probably wouldn’t bother Ben nearly as much as it bothers me – if at all.

Visiting Ben’s world reminds me of all the things I love about my own life, as well as reminding me that just because someone lives in a neighborhood where what your yard looks like matters doesn’t mean that there isn’t joy to be found there and that such aspects of life aren’t just horrid obligations sucking the fun out of life – as they would be to me.

We got out of the car and I staggered around a bit, getting feeling back in my legs and dealing with the fact that there was hole in my boot. I’d discovered it in Nashville, TN and though I’d duct taped it, melting snow was still seeping in and freezing the side of my foot.

Ben got out of the car and made that mad dash I was talking about. Not to the bathroom, but to his wife, whom he hadn’t seen in weeks, while he’d been in Autin job searching – she was waiting for him in the doorway. Leaving me, the born-and-bred Texan who knows nothing about snow, to somehow navigate the two entire steps up the walkway to his front porch. (Yes. His house has a covered front porch, and it is awesome.)

So what do I do?

I fall flat on my face. In the snow. My cell phone flew out of my shirt pocket (and though I didn’t know it at the time), so did my iPod. WIth as much dignity as I could salvage, I picked myself up, wiped my phone off on my ragged pants, and stumbled, slipped and sort of skated the rest of the way to his porch and into the warmth of his house.

The first thing his wife says to me? “Take off your pants.” In her defense, she also told me to take off my boots, because was a bit wet from my faceplant.

Not as awkward as you’d think, if you know Bri. She’s a great balance to Ben, who’s brain is always running away without the rest of him, leaving him racing to catch up with it before it gets into too much mischief without the rest of him there to enjoy it, too. Bri is very grounded, rooted, and practical.

Greetings could wait. I was dripping on her floor.

Have I mentioned I don’t travel well? I don’t. It took me awhile to get settled in, including finding a good place from which I could write/be online/do work.

Yeah. My vacation had a bit of work associated with it, but my job is such that I don’t currently have a trained backup person, meaning even when I go out of town on vacation, there are still things – some of them daily – that I needed to be doing. The Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy® Dispatch, for example. Or site updates. Or the GAMA 2010 Power Retailer Awards Submission.

Still, compared to normal, that was a light workload that I didn’t really need to sweat about. I was able to get online, call a few folk and let them know Ben and I had made it in safe and step outside for a smoke.

Smoking on someone’s classic front porch is actually pretty freakin’ cool.

It was freezing outside, but I was warm enough – Ben had given me a nice pair of leather gloves and a pair of warm houseshoes, so smoking outside was no hardship.

We had a pleasant dinner (home cooked!) and went to bed; it was colder – much colder – than I was used to, but I slept like the dead. Sleeping in was wonderful. I woke up stiff and sore and frozen, but I figured a long, hot shower would cure that.

Normally, I would have been right.

However, Ben and Bri’s house, having been built back in the day, didn’t have what you would call an ample supply of hot water, so there was no long, hot shower. Instead, I frantically showered as quickly as I could before the hot water in their shower ran out.

If there was one thing I would have changed about that vacation, it was their shower. (Though, I get the feeling they would have changed it out, too!)

None the less, Ben had a solution for his frozen Texan; lots of wonderful hot tea – Ben is a Tea Snob and has lots and lots of absolutely fantastic teas – and a hot, home-cooked breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast definitely set the right tone for the day.

Then Ben dropped it on me. The News. The awesome, excellent, fantastic new that I would get to sit in with his gaming group.

That’s right. My first full day in Dayton? I was going to get to role-play. Not only that, I was going to get to play with a system I hadn’t gotten to use before – Paizo’s Pathfinder. Pathfinder has been out for awhile and is basically a revision of the old D20 system from D&D 3.5. It’s been advertised as D&D 3.75.

Yeah. I was excited. I rarely get to game in person anymore – and though my online gaming group is pretty much awesome, I’ve missed having a real tabletop game.

Unfortunately for me, I had several hours between the morning and gaming. How was I supposed to wait all day to game? I’ve been a gamer since my age could be measured in single digits – gaming is one of those things that I’ll go out of my way to get to do, burning money, gas, time and energy with wild, reckless abandon for.

(Why yes. Yes, I am a geek. Thanks for noticing.)

So Ben decided to distract me with a museum. I was suffering from Epic Writer’s Clog and his friend Angela (from his gaming group, now known forever in my brain now as the Dayton Irregulars) was at loose ends.

You know how most folk collect things? Coins, games, cards, cars, stamps, seashells, etc? So does Ben. However, Ben collects people the way I collect pens. But Ben is very selective about the kind of people he collects – he only collects interesting and fascinating and odd/off-the-wall/out of ambit and lost in the in-between that sits in the middle of completely nucking futs and boring, mundane members of a semi-productive society.

This is not to say Ben doesn’t interact with/like/befriend people all across the spectrum – because he does. But there are some of us who gravitate into his sphere of influence in some strange sociological analogue of quantum physics – it doesn’t make sense, unless you just decide that it does and work backwards from there.

Angela is one of those people.

Softly spoken, quietly sparkly, subtly intelligent, unobtrusively sophisticated, gently sarcastic and utterly awesome. She’s a fantastic artist and a gifted hostess (who treated us to amazing Earl Grey tea in awesome teacups) and managed to not only put up with Ben and I for several hours without backup or shiny distraction, going gamely along with whatever approximation of a plan we concocted.

And if you know the two of us well at all, you should now feel great sympathy and respect for this brave woman.

I like museums. I don’t get to go very often anymore, so when I do get to go, it’s a special treat – and the Dayton Art Institute was a lot of fun. I got to see some amazing bits of art, wander, talk art, philosophy and pretty much be an academic for a few hours, which is something I don’t get to indulge in much these days.

We saw some amazing examples of glass blowing (which I want to someday learn) and got to see some fantastic oriental weapons and armor from the Edo period and I got to explain to Angela the reason katana swords are shaped like they are and how they worked in actual combat. (Not the way you’d think, given their media popularity.)

After, we once again bravely braved the slush and ice and cold and headed out to the Ohio Coffe Co., where in I had weak hot chocolate (though, in their defense, they make coffee, not cocoa) and one of the best chocolate chip cookies I have had in a while.

This started a trend of amazing cookies on this trip.

Now, you have to understand that my drinking coffee is a new thing that began just before I left for Dayton and will, in fact, be the subject of another long post no one will want to read. But it was not the coffee – or even the amazing cookie – that made the Ohio Coffee Co. stick out in my brain for all time.

It was a geek coffee shop. It was full of Star Wars posters, including a Boba Fett cardboard stand-up (I know there’s a name for such things, but I do not recall it as of the time of my writing this.) They had Sisko and Picard action figures on their counter and a wide variety of other pictures and paraphenalia and definitely declared them a caffiene den suitable for habitation by geeks.

Once Ben had his coffee fix and I had consumed cookies (there are many reasons I am a fat man. Chocolate chip cookies are some of those reasons), we took Angela back her to place where we would prepare for gaming.

Did I mention Ben was wearing his kilt the entire day? I should mention that, because it was awesome.

I then met Angela’s other half – Bryan. Bryan, like his girl, is insanely creative and is very detail oriented, which makes him an excellent GM. He gave me the specs to create a high level character (this game has been going on for years) and talked me through a bit of Pathfinder. Since Pathfinder is basically a revision of a system I already know, so I was able to rather quickly create a character – I recycled a name and created a half-elf Sorcerer/Fighter with a lot of emphasis on the bow.

Professional Geek Moment: (If this were a textbook, this whole section would be in a shaded box on the side of the page. So ignore it if you don’t care about gaming or my opinion gaming.) Okay, so I didn’t think I would like Pathfinder, because of some of the issues I have with D&D 3.5. (Broken, power gaming, etc.) However, Pathfinder fixes the problems I had with skill in 3.5 and made every class balanced and worth playing, even the much abused fighter. I got a huge kick out of the Sorcerer’s optional powers and the Fighter’s feat progression. The game play was pretty much a streamlined version of 3.5 and many of the house rules my gaming groups have used for years to balance things out were included.

Since these guys eat pizza, and tomato-sauce is good way to ruin any day, much less a vacation day of gaming, Ben and I ran through a Wendy’s to get me sweet tea and bacon-cheeseburger goodness. Once my unhealthy repast was acquired, we drove out to the Place of Gaming.

Which is a basement.

A basement in a house owned by parents.

In more than twenty years of gaming, this was the first time I had ever gamed in a basement. Let alone a Parentally-owned basement. But this basement has been converted into sort of a geek-cave. It’s not bachelor enough to be a true man-cave, but it is certainly a geek cave, complete with a large TV, good internet, a gaming computer, couches, bean-bags, bathroom, beer fridge, unused exercise equipment doubling a dirty clothes storage and a fold-out gaming table.

In short? The kind of plcae I wish I’d had to game at when I was a kid.

The Dayton Irregulars are a motley crew with a wide age range, though most of them went to school together and gamed in high school. I was easily the oldest (and fattest) one there, but neither was a real surprise to me.

The game was fun. Angela’s lesbian tiefling hit on my poor and the group was experiencing the fun of becoming accidental crusaders through a steampunk maze of clockwork cockroaches, parasitic demi-metals, classic video-game traps and puzzles and mysterious beasties who really, really wanted to kill us in creative and unusual ways. Some of them even used rifles.

The end result?

I had a blast.

I left laughing and grinning and excited about the idea that I was going to get to go again that next week and a bit sad that I wouldn’t be able to game with them every week.

After a nice smoke and cup of tea wherein Ben and I (once again) had the kind of discussion we can’t have with many other folk, sharing thoughts most people roll their eyes at, I went to bed.

And slept.

More in part III (because this post has been FAR longer than I thought it would be!)