Category Archives: Personal Observation

My Favorite

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Some weeks ago I got a little break in the schedule and got to do something I wouldn’t have thought I’d enjoy. Turns out, it was great. I had a really fun, relaxing evening of entertainment with friends.

What was this magical thing?

I went to see a play.

My dear friend John had tickets to a local high school production of “My Favorite Year”. There was a moment when I stopped and questioned why my friend had tickets to a high school play in the area (and no kids in school), but then found we were going in support of a coworker’s kids. What the hell? I’m in.

We headed to the auditorium, grabbed our seats and got comfy. That’s when it really hit me – I actually missed that sort of thing. My kiddo is years out of high school at this point and there just aren’t any sort of events like this anymore. No school nights, no plays, no concerts, no games… all that is just over and done. God(s) help me, I actually had a bout of nostalgia and a real sense of loss.

Then there was the mess of a crowd getting out. All that nostalgia went away and I remembered all the pain in the ass parts. I had no connections of my own, no fellow parents to chat with, nor any of the ‘normal’ things associated with going to an event like that. The best possible thing for me was to get through the crowd and head out the doors. Easier said than done, but I managed.

I will say the kids in that production were great. The music, the dancing, the costumes were excellent. It was a great show. Start to finish, well done. If you can go and support the kids of your coworkers or friends, give it a shot!

First Casualty

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The first casualty of stress isn’t free time, it’s creativity.

The real world has been conspiring against me for a while now, attempting to hamper my creative efforts. It has been quite successful – just not enough of anything to push forward. Get finished with the real world requirements and fall over, drained.

Yes, there are lots of ‘creative’ solutions to whatever thing is going on outside of computer land, but that is generally exhausting and limiting all bundled into one. I’ve had a handful of times when I was without “something to do” over the past couple of months, but never a time when I’d had the space or physical and emotional recovery time to make something of it.

Recovery time is an important aspect of that. Just because the immediate issue has passed doesn’t mean everything just pops over into the creative stream and gushes out full speed. More than once I’ve sat here with fingers on keys just trying to will myself to type anything and failing. I’ve watched hours of short videos on YouTube, sometimes repeating the same ones because there’s some spark there that isn’t challenging and there’s an odd comfort to that. That moment of “oh, there’s an idea” and it just falls apart or I can’t get the energy to move has been real.

Sometimes I can’t wait for the muse or the recovery. Sometimes I just need to push ahead and put words on a page. They might not be good words. They might not be spelled correctly or they’ll have terrible grammar, but they’ll push my body to remember the part where I can sit and type for something that doesn’t involve work or an insurance company.

The big hurdle will be taking that process and putting the creativity back into it. Let’s see how this challenge goes.

Preservation

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I give way too much thought to my legacy for somebody that has barely cracked a dozen published works. Thing is, I can’t help it. I have binder upon binder of notes. I have this addiction to paper and all sorts of sketching and annotation and random outlining of ideas. It is admittedly less organized than I would want it to be, but in there is the culmination of years and years of world building and character notes and map sketches.

Who cares?

A fair question. First and foremost the person stuck cleaning things out I suppose. This is a difficult and sometimes tragic situation.

A long time ago I was asked for my opinion on some works left behind by a young creator. This young person had been killed in an accident and the grieving parents, in their quest for answers as to why this young person was gone far too soon, were lashing out at any and all entities involved in the accident. I was shown a sample of the young creator’s works and asked if I thought this was the seeds of a potentially legendary career cut short too soon.

It’s heartbreaking to see this kind of thing. One of the biggest factors in this particular case was the parents clearly having no interest or understanding in the work presented. Was this a factor in the so deemed ‘accident’? Hard to say. I had very limited access to information about the case (for that is exactly what it became when the parents brought lawsuits and criminal accusations). The scattered papers were gathered up and some notes attempting to bring order or sense were clipped to the front of the stack.

At the time I said I couldn’t see the level of potential claimed by the parents. The sketches were indifferent in skill, copying media available at the time. Fan fiction and use of copyrighted works without permission. I think about this from time to time. Would I see it differently now?

So, I have these thoughts. I have stacks of binders and reams of sketches, some in books and some floating freely across reference books or folded into game manuals. Will somebody look at those and claim there is more there than there is? I have my doubts, but I think about it anyway.

Then I wonder ~ what sort of gap in history will there be when these millions upon millions of words just go away? Yes, I have this addiction to paper, but how many notes, feelings, personal letters and all the other ephemera of an author’s life will be lost when (notably not IF) all the electronic records fail and the internet is gone? How will a researcher dig into the various aspects of what brought a story to life when all that life was held together with circuits and lights?

This is a thought I’ve had before, and one that will likely crop up again. The topic is worth the thought. How many thousands of my words would disappear if my website went away? Would anyone other them me care? What sort of personal correspondence would come up when somebody wondered if I bounced ideas off other authors? Will there be anything to find?

I think this article (link) is both hopeful and naïve at the same time. Not everyone has that addiction to paper. It’s worth reading and definitely worth considering.

Endurance

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Is endurance enough?

No, clearly it is not. There are many other factors involved in creating something that others can enjoy. It does bruise my spirit to see others I know and respect, people I have shared creativity with, lose the thread and stop.

This has happened recently to a friend. He posted a lengthy set of words describing how he was leaving the world of the ‘author’ effective immediately and switching back to creating things in a style and manner much more suited to his preferences. He has multiple books published. He’s creative and has a vision for his work. His words have inspired me before… and he’s quit.

I think that’s a harsh word and sounds sharper than I mean it to. He’s changed back to creating in other media, not listing piles and piles of words and mashing them onto pages for others. He’s won awards in this other format, and bluntly I agree with the people who gave the awards. Fantastic work, but watching the walking away of a creative person stings a little.

Part of this might be me seeing parallels. Part of it might be that his word production out paces mine by an order of magnitude (or more). I simply don’t produce words at the pace he does, even when he believes they’re not landing. Part might be the reality that success at any level beyond your local circle of friends is astonishingly rare.

This is not the only bit I’ve noticed, but it worries me to approach the rest of it.

I’ve never been a person to indulge in ‘crisis’ activities. “Mid-life” implies an end point is known. There are so many things to do in this world, there are so many places to see and even people to meet that giving in and wallowing in bad feelings seems like time that could be better spent trying to do all those things. And yet.

Maybe it’s as simple as being a sign of age.

I was at a second hand book store and found a very nice looking collection of old game books. Being a lover of Dungeons and Dragons, it was my first instinct to pick them up and inspect them despite owning all these works twice over already. Clearly my first mistake. When I picked one up and opened the cover it had the name of a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time written inside. Admittedly, we’d lost touch over the past couple of years, but we gamed together. His smile and his characters and his enthusiasm were always a bright – sometimes to the point of being insufferable – spot in the game. Why would he, being of similar age and mindset give up these most prized of possessions from the past? I went in search of his contact information… only to find out that he had died and nobody had said anything to me about it.

I’m not going to claim some wrong doing or severed kinship here. This is not some odd missed connection internet story. It was just sad. I was sad that I hadn’t known. The certainty of never having those conversations again was a blow. I closed the cover and placed the book back on the shelf. I haven’t been back to that shop since then. I don’t want to dig into that chapter again.

More and more of my peers quit, fade away from the community we’ve had over the years or die. It is becoming more of a struggle, but one that I intend to continue. There is still so much to do and see and experience that I must go forward. I must do all the things. New goals will be set. New paths made to move ahead.

So I endure.

The Speed of a Dream

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The most difficult thing to me is the speed that the stories cascade across the screen in my mind in juxtaposition to the glacial pace they can be placed on the page by way of my fingers. What is the speed of a dream?

I’ve tried the voice to text tools and they’re far better these days than they were before, but there’s something to me about sitting in front of the blank page and tapping away at a set of keys. It feels right. The tactile nature of transferring a story from one medium to another. It can be soothing, it can be evocative, it can be infuriating. It happens at a faster pace from time to time. Sometimes I catch inspiration and the words just flow. The problem of course is that inspiration is fleeting and the stories I have to tell want… need, to be much longer than a few hundred words spilled onto a page in a moment when the images are willing to flow.

If the dream like state could be maintained then the words and the works would be created so much more quickly. There are those who believe the artist must, based on the maintenance of that dream like state, take measures to ensure the dreams don’t leave. It’s a fallacy, and worse, detrimental to the truth of the story one has to tell. IF one is the creator of the story than it should be a true creation, not one based in and biased by whatever concoction or substance the author consumed in desperation to grasp the dream.

Perhaps that’s the key. It’s not a dream, or if it is, it’s a dream that belongs to others. The creator is simply the channel and the words and the works are designed to be fleeting. The creations dash forward and away, in search of the place where they may take up space for all the others meant to experience them.

It’s whimsical to sit and ponder these things and more so to believe I have any insight into these things. I am peeking through the keyhole, glancing into the partially opened door in hopes that the light spilling out will work toward a greater success for those passing by in the darkness. Folly on a good day.

Working toward becoming the conduit for these misty visions and half formed myths isn’t easy. The words rarely match the clouded view, out of focus but evoking such strong emotions. How do you match the speed of a dream?

Someday. Eventually.

30 YEARS

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The real world will be intruding on the blog here for a moment.

Today, February 4th, 2025 I will celebrate 30 years together with my wife. The ‘pearl’ anniversary will probably slide past without much fanfare, but it’s a pretty big deal to me.

All the adventures, all the fun, all the amazing times and the brutally difficult times. All the wonder, all the sadness and everything in between… I would not trade any of it. This has been the most difficult, wonderful, challenging, amazing journey. If I was given the opportunity to back and change the past, I wouldn’t. I’d do it all again.

I love this ride we’re on and I hope for 30 more years of this crazy ride.

Happy anniversary my dear!

Happy New Year!

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I’ve stated here before that I’ve got some trepidation about the upcoming year, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still have a small celebration about the calendar rolling over one more time.

Happy New Year. May you have a wonderful year.

Anniversary again

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This one is a little different from my other anniversaries – it’s the website’s anniversary.

This year will be 17 years. It’s another year and another collection of posts, but one that I can’t say is super significant? Why do we attach more significance to round numbers?

Whatever the case, here we are at 17. It IS important to note the passing of time and the fact that I’m still here. I’ve not made anywhere near the progress I’d wanted way back in those dreamy start up days, but I’m still here.

I’m not a website developer. I don’t know how to manipulate the back of house stuff here – I can only work with the tools I’ve got on hand. I went looking to see what kind of statistics were available for me to check out and it turns out… not many. One of these days maybe that will be a thing I can change or update.

I’ve got no small amount of trepidation about the upcoming year(s) as we change to another political administration, but hopefully I’ll still be here for #18 and beyond. Happy anniversary to me.

Year In Books

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I don’t like the retrospective posts looking back at the whole year behind. I’ve written before about that and I’ve written at length in the past about my resolution to never make another new year’s resolution (still going strong). New year, new you is fine for some, but making a significant change can happen whenever if needs to.

This year I was interested to see how my reading had bounced back. A couple of years back my reading and creativity had dropped off a cliff. I don’t think I broke double digits in terms of books read, and that’s tragic. Goodreads creates an annual summary that includes number of books read. This supposes one has actually entered all the books read, but I generally try to keep up with that.

I decided to take a look at my overall stats for the past decade. It’s actually a very nice feature of the site. I’m a little bit off my pace of last year, but far outpacing that bad year. Then I started going further back. Turns out I’ve been very hot and cold over the past decade. I don’t know if those years connect with specific things in my life or things going on in the world, but it’s an odd wave pattern. Somehow I thought I was further along in the “many books read” department. I am interested in how this will look going forward.

By the numbers:
Year – Books Read – Approximate page count
2024 – 21 – – 6,700
2023 – 23 – – 9,100
2022 – 9 – – 2,500
2021 – 17 – – 5,300
2020 – 39 – – 12,500 (pretty sure this was Covid Year)
2019 -16 – – 4,600
2018 – 9 – – 3,000
2017 – 26 – – 9,700
2016 – 25 – – 8,700
2015 – 16 – – 6,000
2014 – 24 – – 8,300

This year played out like this:

I’m going to take some time and ponder these numbers. Some of them I think I know what was going on. Some of them are a mystery. Hopefully I’ll have a bounty of books to show for the coming year and I can continue to track these stats.

Easy to me…

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I meant to post this earlier, but my writing time has been limited lately. Too many hours at the computer doing the day job. Working 50 or 60 hours a week is taxing.

I don’t talk a lot about my day job here. In part this is because I want to keep this space separate from what I do for a paycheck everyday. Having separation and balance is vital to maintaining a healthy self. Blurring the lines between home and work spaces is a new thing, but not necessarily a good thing. We’re in the midst of learning how to set boundaries and use these amazing tools constantly at our literal fingertips.

The day job. I’ve worked in commercial architecture for more than two decades now (almost three if I’m being more honest). The work is creative, mentally taxing and rewarding. At the end of the day you can (if you’re close enough to the project site) go to a place, point at it and say, “I was part of that”. I am part of a team that solves complex three dimensional puzzles and draws out the answers on a daily basis. I have logged thousands of hours at this.

As part of my work I browse a number of articles, news stories, and magazines related to my field. I have seen a number of variations on science fiction-esqe buildings and cities and beyond in recent years. Not that these visions didn’t exist before, it’s just easier than ever to create something vivid and eye catching then share it around the world in an instant. This trend has been ramping up recently with the expanded use of artificial intelligence based tools. Type some words, feed the machine some images and get all sorts of pretty, pretty pictures. This is wonderful for making splashy ideas. AI does not mean easy.

In all the years I’ve worked in the commercial field – and that’s an important distinction here – I’ve never seen any structure succeed without the efforts of a team. Small shops, residential work, local additions are easier for the solo practitioner. At a certain point the scale and scope of required work gets far beyond what one person can handle. There is simply too much to detail. This is the ultimate group project.

Taking on a project with the number of things tied into a whole city is no small undertaking. It is in fact, the opposite. It’s massive and daunting. Multiple buildings and all the things associated with getting a structure built is the work of a huge number of people. Getting locations, districts, connections, utility functions and all the things we don’t routinely think about in well established places ready and mapped out is huge. Having a pretty, pretty picture of your dream is great. You need more than a dream, you need a clear vision coupled with a significant amount of studying urban dynamics, infrastructure and a host of other things.

I applaud people who really do have that clear vision. True visionaries are rare. Many times that vision fails to survive the process of being made real. What we do is great in pictures, but it is certainly not easy. I don’t know who Akon is, but he’s not the only one who’s had an idea and it hasn’t gone anywhere. What the people in my field do is important to the health, safety and welfare of the people who live, work and play in and around our works. Some of the best of these works are amazing and unforgettable structures that can move you emotionally with their beauty.

It’s more than a pretty picture. The picture, the idea is the starting point. That’s when the real work starts – and it is as creative, artistic, businesslike, and challenging as anything else.

I hope the ideas and the grand visions continue. We need that in our world. We also need to do the work to make it real. Check out the article here.