I’m wondering about the scale of my lack of focus. I don’t think it’s ADD or ADHD or whatever initials that particular diagnosis have been changed to lately. I am looking at the pattern of my postings here and seeing that they tend to cluster when I have certain things going on and thin way out when I have other things going on. There is nothing consistent about what I’m doing.
Having said that, I realize that there IS consistency, just at a larger scale. The general things I am interested in, and the things I work on are in certain channels, but those channels tend to cycle. There will be times when I am working on art pieces, times when I am crafting, times when I’m writing and struggling along with that and times when I’m reaching out with other creative endeavors.
Lately my energy is being spent on one of those ‘other’ creative endeavors. Gaming. I have posted before about being a player in a role playing game that was streaming on Twitch and YouTube. That game hit a snag ~ the snag of course being that we are adults with lives and responsibilities. Schedule has killed yet another game… OR has it?
I asked my friend if he minded that I step in and take over running a game. He was agreeable and so were the folks playing the game. Since then I’ve shifted gears and dropped back into my Dungeon Master ways. I’m producing art, but it’s generally for the game or the video channel. I’m writing, but it’s centered around the next adventure. I’ve dropped off the crafting and painting a bit simply because we’re running this game virtually across 2 time zones.
In the end, playing Dungeons & Dragons has resurfaced as my hobby of choice. I’m having a great time creating the world and working with the players as they move through various parts of their adventures. We’re still on the Ether Network channel, just under a different “show” title. IF you’re into the story, you should check it out over on Twitch or YouTube:
The Dungeons and Dragons movie has wrapped up filming. Now I suspect they’re moving on to the ‘zillions of special effects bits that need to be created in order to make a world of fantasy come to life. Got the news from this article: https://gizmodo.com/the-dungeons-and-dragons-film-has-wrapped-production-1847535005 I’ve written about this before, but I think the author of this article sums up my fears in a single phrase,
“…but with the caliber of people involved, maybe this one will turn out to be watchable.”
Why is it so difficult to make a fantasy story on film that is both a good story and NOT some variation of King Arthur (there are at least 15 variations / versions I can come up with)? There’s so much good material out there. Let’s hope for a real fantasy boom. Think Avengers quality. I’d love to see so much more variety. Give me a wizard that is NOT Gandalf or Merlin. Please.
It’s Tuesday morning as I write this. The 24th of August. To a vast majority of the people I know, that’s all it is. It’s Tuesday morning and there’s work and maybe a list of things that need to get done at the end of the day or a show to watch tonight. I know at least one person who has a birthday today, so that might be a little special moment with a dinner or a gift, but generally nothing very exciting.
For us… exciting might not be quite the right word, but it definitely IS a big deal for us. Today is flight day for my daughter. She is leaving the country to study for the next 10 months in France. I’ve written about parts of our journey here before. We’ve done tons of preparation to get to this point, but today is it. Today is the Big Day. Flight day.
Nobody slept well last night. I set an alarm, but was awake two hours before it was scheduled to go off (despite staying up extra late in an attempt to be more tired when heading off to bed). I got up and have been pacing the house for more than an hour. I’ve played all the vapid games on my phone. I listened to the news, checked the weather radar and reloaded the flight status page twice so far. There is this driving urge to do something, do anything and there’s simply nothing left to do. We finished the laundry yesterday for my daughter’s things. The bags are packed. The phone is charged. The friends have been visited. The family has been hugged. We’ve looked at the airports websites. We’ve done as much of a virtual walk as we could to get a feel for how the journey will go. My daughter has been in touch with her host family and they’ve told her who would be meeting her at the other end of her travels.
I’m still pacing.
This is anxiety.
Today is also an uneven day. As a parent I’m anxious and pacing, but ultimately my part in this will be over by lunch time today. We’ve got to get the kiddo TO the airport and in line for the security check. That’s it. Then we wander out of the terminal, pay for parking and wonder what the rest of the day brings. My daughter will be boarding a plane here, flying to Chicago and gathering with other kids from the program who will be on the same flight with her. Then after a short layover it’s off to Paris. Long flight, landing and meeting a rep from the exchange student program on the other end of the flight. That person will pack her onto the train and head her off to her host family. When all is said and done she will have been traveling for more than 20 continuous hours. She has snacks. She has a water bottle. She’s got money to grab a meal when she gets a chance ~ and we’re going to be sitting here at home unable to be with her, help her or join her in the experience. There is no doubt that I’ll sleep terribly again tonight. I’m going to be a distracted mess at work tomorrow morning until I get a notification from her that she has landed safely. I’ll only be truly relieved when she lets us know that she has arrived at the train station where her host family has met her and she’s safely headed to their home to start her adventure in France.
It’s also a sign that I have written more here out of anxiety than I’ve written in two weeks on any other subject. I’m not sure how other creative types deal with what feels like the opposite of the muse. Distraction. Inability to sit still.
This is it. As so many others know it… it’s Tuesday. It’s a Big Day.
This was originally published in Watch The Skies fanzine, August 2021 issue.
Nestflix
It’s the dog days of summer. The doldrums. Media is scattered far and wide but people aren’t focused on sitting down and watching whatever they can scrounge. Folks are squeezing in one more beach trip or working hard at getting ready for back to school time. Reruns and re-watching old movies is the kind of relaxing thing that can fill gaps between all this summer activity. But when you do the re-watching, do you notice the world inside the world? Do you catch the shows that are on the screens in the background?
This is not a true “what to watch” in the sense that these shows don’t actually exist, except in an alternate world. When you’re going back to an old Futurama episode, do you recall anything about “The Scary Door”? How could you miss a show with a description like this;
“You are entering the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location. The kind of place where there might be a monster, or some kind of weird mirror. These are just examples; it could also be something much better. Prepare to enter: The Scary Door.”
There is a fun site out there that lists more than four hundred of these magical shows inside shows. Have you noticed a show within a show? Do you have a favorite? When you get a few minutes head on over to the Nestflix site and check out this crazy collection.
It’s been a while since I’ve run a D&D game. The schedules of adults combined with a pandemic crushed that creative bit of things for a long time. I’ve posted on here about being invited to play. The game turned from fantasy to horror and that’s not exactly ‘my jam’ as a friend would say. Yes it was fun and there are memorable stories from the few sessions we’ve run. Once again, the schedule of adults looked to wreck that gaming chance. I volunteered to step in and attempt this long distance gaming thing as the game master.
I’m glad I volunteered. The rest of the players seemed to be on board with the idea. All I needed to do was figure out how 5e worked compared to what I knew, work with everyone on character creation, design the adventure, tailor it to the characters, figure out how the online tools were going to work and THEN actually run the game. Easy peasy, right?
Oy. I must have forgotten how much work it is to stay ahead of a handful of very sharp players. I was (and am) glad that I did this. We had a couple of bumpy patches in our first session. A couple of communication errors (mostly on me) and some adjustment to the online environment, but all in all I think it went as well as could be expected.
The best part was that we’ve already come up with a bit of story that’s going to stick with us. A gift that will keep on giving as this party of intrepid adventurers continues to move through the game world. Fear the grain shortage and buy your bread now! You should watch:
I have been meaning to pick up one of the works of this author for some time now. I’m glad I picked this book up and got into it. It took me a minute to get into the story, but once I was in, I finished the book in a day.
The characters were very believable. They were real. I could easily picture them in my mind’s eye. The world building was slightly off to me. I might have missed something early on? I’m not sure. The beacon could easily fit into a ‘current day’ scenario, but I’m not sure this was supposed to be ‘current day’ and that’s where my disconnect happened. It was not enough to pull me out of the story, so I just rolled with it.
I have figured out that heroic stories work for me. I know this about myself and I try to temper my reviews with that understanding. The characters in this story were absolutely heroic… but absolutely not in the old school / traditional sense of the square jawed action man. It was delightful and refreshing to see this in a story. I don’t want to go deeper into the differences for fear of spoiling it for anyone else.
My one and only quibble is something that I understand is completely on me. This does not have to do with the work or the author, just me. The constant pronoun thing was annoying. I know I’m old and this is something that should be part of normal – but it’s not that for me. As I said, minor quibble and all about me, not the work.
This was a fast read, and exciting story and a lot of fun to ride along with. I intend to recommend it to my fan group and hope it makes the selection list!
Poetry is something I’ve always struggled with. It feels like being a good story teller would relate to good poetry with word choice and the way a statement flows when spoken, but that’s just not the case. I can get a rhythm, I can work with a particular rhyme structure… but it just never seems to come together.
Haiku seems to be the answer for me.
I read a little about the history of this poetic form in the book Japanese Death Poems. It’s a fascinating bit of history if you’re into something with a little bit of a dark tint. The form was massively celebrated during Japan’s history and has changed in form and format over time.
Still not something I’m going to ever be great at, but a form I can work with. Friends of mine got married this past weekend. One of the things happening at their reception was a haiku contest. While I know these poems won’t have the meaning to people reading here that they did to the couple, I felt it was worth posting them. Get outside your comfort zone now and then. Try something different. Write a poem…
You told a story of the man in the past – it was always a skirt
We visit the bar then elevator roulette who really won?
For anyone that isn’t in the know for what’s going on with my family, we’re getting ready to send my daughter to study in another country via an exchange student program. I’ve been volunteering with this organization for a number of years and I’m excited for my daughter to participate and learn more about the world we live in.
Part of getting the kiddo ready to go is applying for a long stay student visa. In order to do this we were required to appear in person to make this application. I thought we would be doing this at a consulate office or some place directly connected to the embassy.
Trio of Trouble!
The place we needed to be for our appointment was in Washington DC, so we decided it would be great to have along one of my daughter’s friends who had never had the chance to see our nations capitol before. My wife and I have both been there a number of times and were very excited to share this experience with the kids. We woke up early, jammed ourselves into the car and headed to the Metro. We really appreciate being able to use public transportation like that. We don’t have a great bus system and no trains at all around here, so that was treat the first. Navigating the transit system. We hopped on the train (also a first for our friend) and headed to the address.
I was wrong. Where we ended up was an office for the company VFS. It’s not actually a consulate or an embassy. People connected with those places might be in the background, but this was just an office on the second floor of a plain building over a kabob place. Far less dramatic than we thought it might be. They DO still require a security check to get in (metal detector) and they ask questions about Covid. Masks are still required. But in the end – a lot like going to the DMV.
We didn’t wait long as we had an appointment set up. We pulled out all the paperwork and thought we were in great shape… right up until she asked for something that didn’t have the same name as the paperwork we brought. We figured it out, but that was a moment of stomach lurch. We can’t have the visa appointment too far away from the departure date as it will only be good for a year. That also meant we’re cutting it very close if something goes awry. Then it did. The required photos we brought were deemed unacceptable. The agent we were working with was quite nice and very helpful. She pointed us at a store just down the block that would get us a new photo on the spot. Once we were done with the rest of the paperwork and the biometric scanning (photos and fingerprints) we popped over to the shop, got the picture we needed and were able to drop it off again in about 20 minutes time. All in all a good thing as we’ve gotten all the paperwork turned in.
This appointment was a source of anxiety, but once we finished that, the rest of the day was ours to sight see.
And that’s where things got frustrating.
One would think in the post pandemic times that we live in the desire would be to give people distance and extra time to work with things. That is not the case. The few museums that were open at all (and that was far less than we expected) had reduced hours. We thought to spend a couple of hours at the Smithsonian museum of natural history. It’s not a lot of time, but we’d hit a couple of exhibits ~ just take our time and chat while we walked… The lines at each entry were out the doors, down the main stairs and halfway down the block. Not exaggerating. We took one look at that and said, “How about we look at the gardens?”
We wandered about for a while, but it eventually became clear that the very few things that were actually open were jam packed with people. We were getting worn down in the summer heat, so we settled for walking the mall and looking at the capitol, the obelisk and the castle from the outside. Once we’d done that we just hopped the train and headed home again.
In the end it was a good day because we accomplished the main goal for the day. Visa paperwork is in. We got to share a trip to the capitol with somebody who had never seen it before. At the very same moment, it was a disappointment of a trip. The food we ended up getting wasn’t great. We missed our chance to have dinner in Chinatown. We couldn’t get into any museums or even the welcome center.
What does it all mean? It means that after our schedules settle down a little more and the world continues to reopen we’ll have to set up another trip to the DC area. We love all the things to see and want to have an excellent trip… So we’ll try again!
This was originally published in Watch The Skies Fanzine, July 2021 issue.
The Vast of Night – Amazon
Pick a night. Pick a slow night. Wait until it’s quiet out. Turn out the lights. Get cozy and flip this movie on. The Vast of Night is a small film that’s big on catching you at just the right time. There are bright, glaring action movies and soft filtered romances beside the raucous comedies. This movie pulls you back to the fifties in the American southwest. The story follows two people from the little New Mexico town of Cayuga as they track down a mysterious noise and more mysterious radio station callers. It’s the kind of town where everyone knows everyone else… until they dig a little deeper.
From the Amazon description:
“In the twilight of the 1950s, on one fateful night in New Mexico, a young, winsome switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) and charismatic radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz) discover a strange audio frequency that could change their small town and the future forever. Dropped phone calls, AM radio signals, secret reels of tape forgotten in a library, switchboards, crossed patchlines and an anonymous phone call lead Fay and Everett on a scavenger hunt toward the unknown.”
This is definitely a movie that is all about the mood. It is quiet. It moves a little slow at the start. Give it a chance. As the story rolls, the speed and the tension build. If you take your time you will get to a place where you’ll be out staring up into the night. There are small things, inconsequential to the success of the story if you allow yourself to go along for the ride. Coming in at an hour and a half it’s definitely worth the time to catch up with the folks in this small town.
It’s a sportsball sounding kind of title, but it doesn’t make it less true. Sometimes when you’re in a slump or you can’t seem to shake out of a rut the thing you need is an easy win. Take on something that’s not part of your regular list, your massive project or the thing you’re blocked on and just do something smaller and less stressful. Take the easy win.
That worked for me. I went out and watched the **ULTIMATE** newbie crash course. I don’t know that I’m a total newbie, but I’m always happy to look at videos talking about basics. The foundation or fundamental pieces that crafters start from are often very different from each other. I don’t necessarily follow all the terrain advice shown in Wyloch’s Armory, but there was a bit in that video that reached me. Quick and easy doors.
I hadn’t thought about doors in dungeon terrain specifically. I’ve got grand visions of foam mountains and elaborate set pieces with months of build time involved and it all just seemed to be a bit overwhelming. I needed to step back and take on something smaller and easier in order to get into the work. Doors. The video series creator has a really great take on using a flat washer and some smaller craft supplies to create these doors. I stopped by the hardware store on the way back to the house one day and dug in.
I did not stick to the pure basics as shown in the video, but used the simplicity of the design concept to push forward a series of doors that I could use to advance a story. I was really happy with the result and at the end of the afternoon I had nine pieces I could add to my terrain library for future use. I didn’t grab pictures of all individually, but here are a couple of my favorites:
The Collection
Rusty Cell
Rotten Core
If you’re stuck or have writers block or can’t figure out what to paint or build or whatever your hobby is – sometimes it can really help if you take the ‘easy win’! What sort of things fit this description for you?
