Monday, November 21, 2016

No limits? No Thanks

Pulling another topic from my friends list, and it's something that feels like a sensitive subject: Unconditional Love. I have an opinion on it that's probably not commonly shared.

I think it's either dangerous or a crock of shit.

Monday, November 14, 2016

Getting Gone

If you've been reading these Monday posts, it should come as no surprise that I'm an avid cyclist. I'm on my bike every day, and use it as my primary method of transportation.

But I've never taken a trip on my bike. I want to. I want to travel with just my bike and what I can carry on it, traveling some long distance. I'd have to build myself up to be able to do it, but it would be an accomplishment I'd be proud of.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Round 1... Fight!

I've been chasing a kind of memory for several years; something that's a fragment of my youth. Sitting in a friend's living room as we toss a controller between ourselves in a round robin session of Dead or Alive 2. Battlecon is a board game, but it does something that I think helps me to capture a little bit of that feeling.

It's a board game that is a fighting game; each player picks a character from the roster of fighters, you place your token on the board, and then proceed to try and beat the ever-loving crap out of the other guy. And you're not going blind at it; you can see exactly what your opponent has in hand before you chose your action every turn, the custom cards each player has in their deck is on a card you trade at the start of a match. You pick what you're going to do by combining a "base" (what you do) with a "style" (how you do it). You reveal your choices at the same time, and then based on the moves chosen, the order you execute is decided.

I've played maybe ten games, and I'm already starting to dig into the mindset the game asks you to have, thinking and trying to outguess your opponent. It's pretty easy to learn, but the depth in the game is kind of impressive. I don't have any idea how long I'd have to play to reach the point where it feels like I've explored all the play space in the game.

Monday, November 7, 2016

Observer

I've been a daydreamer forever; I think it's part of why I like writing, it gets those stories that are spun in my head out and gives them a life.

But actual dreams? I've always had a hard time remembering those. But recently, even though I've gotten no better at remember the details of my dream, there's been something that's felt strange in them:

I'm not there. I wish I remembered some of these so I could give solid examples, but it's something that has just carried through in what I wake up with. I dream in the third person. There's not a character in my dreams that I feel like I'm inhabiting, but instead I'm watching the story play out.

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Day 2

900 words. It feels like a better day in general, and it was nice to be able to actually enjoy my coffee tonight.

Putting life on Hold

How the hell am I planning on doing NaNoWriMo?

When this post goes live, I'll be one day into November and trying to climb the hill that is NaNoWriMo. It's not going to be my first attempt at this mountain; but I want to make it a successful one. That's going to require some things.

I'm going to try and have all of November written up by the time the month starts, so anything you see on this blog posted in November of 2016 was written... To be honest, it was written in the crunch time of the last week of October while I enter "Oh shit, the paper's due" mode.

I'm going to be making more of an effort to get writing done. On a weekend, I usually have a little bit of free time, and I've occasionally struggled with what I'm going to do with it. Not this coming month. I'll be pushing myself to write in every moment I can manage to spare.

Less time with my Girlfriend. This one is going to be easy enough; she's got several research projects that she's pointing to the bleachers on, so both of us are going to be rather wrapped in our writing.

The biggest X factor is going to be how well I can keep myself from burning out. And that's something that's not entirely on me. I'm going to need to lean on my friends, make time to relax with them.

Wish me luck.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

NaNoWriMo Progress: Day 1

There may be better ways to start such a project: I ended up running out of my house this morning and forgetting my lunch. I was running around at work from the time I got there until I left 9 hours later. And I did it all on a handful of coffee cordials that I'd bought as a personal supply of Halloween candy.

So I reached my writing place frazzled, fraying at the edges, and swearing away from any more caffeine tonight. Tonight's opening was 500 words, which means that when I bring myself back here tomorrow, I will not be fighting blank page syndrome.