Pursuing Calefaction

Today and tomorrow comprise my long weekend at the clinic. I am charged with tending to the animals boarding over the weekend. When I was still living in Chapel Hill this was no serious imposition on my time, for the clinic was only a ten minute drive away; I simply did things in town. Now that I live in Raleigh I must commute fully thirty miles one way, so I must needs plan my entire weekend around going to Chapel Hill and staying for the full day each day. Given that NaNoWriMo approaches with a quickness, I am using the weekend to get some preliminary writing done.

I’m completely unsure what to write now that the start looms, less than a month away. I have entertained coming back to Winterswatch, and it is still a viable choice, but I dread picking it up again. Despite having managed to squeeze out 50,000 words I feel that I have done it disservice both in structure and content. So if I try again at this story, I shall need to actually plan its arc rather than let it form of its own volition. (In my defense, I learned that I would be a WriMo only three days before it began. ) Alternatively I could start from whole cloth, using October as a period to dig for the idea that will grip me as Winterswatch has. Either way, I’ve got to start now. Not next week, not on Monday, but now.

I’ve signed up for the 2010 attempt. If you want to follow me or add me as a writing buddy, just go to my NaNoWriMo user page!

The G1 has been quite the springboard for me. I now have a screenable, universal point of contact that also serves as a mostly-fledged personal computer and PDA, complete with internet access wherever I am. This is what I have been looking for since I was in college for my second stint. The hardware has been out for some time, but I lacked the money that early adoption requires. Fortunately I have similarly-minded friends, and I bought this unit from one who had acquired two at a nice end-of-service discount. TMobile isn’t selling these anymore. While in some respects that’s for the better, this hardware is still the best design I’ve seen in the Android smartphones to date.

Now the point of this is that I can at last write in a fashion more suited to my all-over-the-map way of life. I can write at work! (Much of the entry to this point was written during breaks at the clinic today.) I can write in the car! I can write in bed, or sitting on a park bench. Those among you more familiar with me may say, “But what about your netbook?” And you have a point. But this frees me from having a laptop bag, for one. For two, it frees me from having to interrupt the process of having a thought to open the laptop, log in, and get the old wp fired up, during all of which I have probably gotten distracted from the idea already. Yes, I’m that flighty.

Now, I have zero excuses not to be pumping out 500 words a day.

NaNoWriMo is going to be very interesting…

It’s my birthday. So never mind that I’m still up only by the questionable virtues of caffeine; it’s time to break the long silence, even if this ends up being trite. I predicted as late spring was taking shape that this summer would be a giant ball of chaotic energy, and I am very sorry to report that I was not wrong. Many happy moments arose from the crackling, undoing energy that my local corner has been suffused with, but they are islands of joy amid lakes of stress, uncertainty, and anger. The long and short of the “news” is that the Sidhe and I have moved to Raleigh, I have a shiny new phone that does everything except my laundry (woe!), and I am no longer a Dragon*Con virgin.

This last is both the most important and least awkward of the three. I’m well familiar with city life–I stomped around Baltimore for the decade after I graduated high school–but it still takes time to get acquainted with new roads and places. The thrum and hush of Raleigh is not at all the same as Baltimore’s, even though we happen to live on Falls (of the Neuse) Road, which happens to coincide with Baltimore’s Falls Road in many respects: neighborhood character, position on the circular roadway known down here as the “belt-line,” and status as an artery into the city being but a few of these. It does, however, lack one major feature of Baltimore’s Falls Road. If you are brave enough to travel along it south into the heart of the city past the alligator mural, you will find yourself speeding headlong down sharply-banked, poorly-maintained curves, cracking from the roots of a verdant forest that springs up almost without warning. Hence its nickname among certain Baltimoreans: the Jungle Road. But enough about Baltimore! I have a new phone finally, acquired through the efforts of my friend BPT (@kaetzchen on Twitter). He scored a couple of used HTC Dreams, AKA the original Google phone put out by T*Mobile. They aren’t s’posed to run the latest Android (froyo), but a team of hackers shoehorned it in beautifully. So thanks to BPT and the awesome dev team that made Cyanogen_mod, I had a smartphone just in time for Dragon*Con 2010!!

A full post will be dedicated to that event, but suffice it to say I was in nerd heaven. Despite being a newcomer, I was immediately familiar with the basics. I have had some first-hand exposure to that excellent expression of American bohème called Burning Man; after seeing unspeakable acts performed by parties unknown in a telephone booth in the middle of the desert, I can safely say that D*C was relatively tame. But not entirely so. I brought my A-game with the help of the Sidhe, who taught me how to sew on her Singer. So I rocked a home-made Rincewind robe & hat much of the time, with stints as a TOS Science Officer and a reprise of the Tenth Doctor in his tux. I didn’t attend nearly all that I hoped to, but it was nice to just soak in it without a demanding schedule. I had the great good fortune of going down with some veterans, so I had top-notch guides on how to handle the dramz. I got to meet the excellent Keith R. Potempa and his lovely wife Freya in person, and I was less than ten feet from Brent Spiner at his Sunday panel!!!

Back to regular life now, but I’ve been infused with a latent energy now that I’ve seen other people living the dream too. It’s ok to play boardgames. I just need to seek out the big boy boards now. My commute is now tripled, so full days are now completely untenable for accomplishing anything beyond making sure Dalek and the Sidhe have been fed & watered. Real life encroaches. But I have seen the glory of the true path, and none can now keep me from finding it out of these hinterlands.

I’m coming home.

Well, since that’s what the majority of these posts have been so far, I may as well be honest. (It’s a blog, right?) I have read that “exhaustion and sleep are the enemies of study,” and this is certainly true also for writing. I can’t write when I’m constantly trying to regain my brain’s operational capacity enough to make the next meal. This twelve hour day is bullshit.

Well, the Sidhe secured a job teaching Latin at the school she aimed for, besting one of her backstabbing cohort members in the process–delicious, that victory, even vicariously. This means I can actually look for jobs in a specific geographical area. Other ideas include writing letters of inquiry to gaming companies, seeing if they need copy editors. (Well, I know they do. The question is whether they do.)

I am killed. Today (and foreseeably for the rest of the week) I am charged with the care of some very large dogs, dogs who will drag me all over the parking lot and grassy berms outside the clinic. Already my shoulders and knees are wracked with pain, and a layer of skin has been torn from my left knuckles.

But I ain’t dead yet.

I’m using the wiki to gather the bits of my life that I want to make sense of; the hard part is accepting that there will be days that I don’t achieve any of the goals I have set for myself. I don’t get to write every day. That sticks in my craw.

So I have this problem, and I know I’m not alone. It’s called distractibility. The technical term is ADHD, but I’m not disordered as much as I think it’s best divided into two parts for me–there’s the day-to-day stuff, which is easy to get a handle on with meds, and then there’s the larger, overarching life stuff. Goals, dreams, motivations. This is about the larger stuff.

I have, in conversation, referred to the shining grails, the sparks of inspiration that force us to walk toward them, even if it’s only a single step. My problem is that I see so many, all bright and golden and beautiful and true. The easy side of it is recognizing the practical considerations of such ideas, especially the very high-flown ones, but then the lower hanging fruit remain. These are ideas that are completely within my grasp should I but choose to move toward them. And this is the catch: I find myself getting caught up by one after the other, such that I begin one, meet with difficulty, and rather than chew through that difficulty I set it aside to “think about it.” And then, while I’m “thinking,” another gem is unearthed, fully-formed but for the doing.

The doing usually uncovers the Devil within the details, naturally. But by this time I’m already taking time from more practical considerations to push this thing forward, because, you see, I’m what I shall term a True Believer. That is to say, I favor the beauty of the idea over its possible impracticality, even when I recognize that the idea is usually more complex or my skills are not yet up to snuff. This leads to my usual state of affairs: speccing out several projects over the course of a month, and then winnowing those down to a few that are actually viable, then actually starting to commit to one or two, and then getting distracted by the next cycle of projects that have freshly crystallized in my brain. The wiki has been a bit of a savior for me, but it can also feed the energies of the very cycle I’m trying to mitigate. Since I got it up and running, I’ve been able to keep better track of the froth of ideas that my brain generates, and that has allowed me to at least see what sort of things are viable and not on a long-term basis. And, at the very least, I now have a record of my ideas, so that I can come back to things that were abandoned due to lack of skill when I have increased the appropriate variety of muscle mass. But all of this is still a kind of short-term distractibility, not far removed from basic stuff.

Read more…

Eldritch Knight.  Arcane Trickster.  Spellsword.  Red Mage.  All of these names grasp at the idea of an arcane warrior, a master of martial and magical prowess. Those who walk this road follow a ridge between two valleys, each with its own verdant fields and riches.  A mage might study in his tower and a fighter spar on the tourney field, but what sort of person seeks to do both, to pull himself in opposite directions simultaneously? The level of dedication and discipline that resides in such an individual goes beyond the everyday, and is uncommonly equalled even by others of heroic stature.  Sacrifices are made, but for the fighter/mage, they result in a net gain.

A player, too, must exercise discipline when fashioning a character of this bent.  With few exceptions, the martial and the arcane occupy vastly different mechanical spheres.  A martial character will use primarily Strength or Dexterity, while an arcanist most often utilizes Intelligence or Charisma.  But a generalist array can support both primary attacks at the cost of diminishing a secondary stat, and wise feat and power choices can leverage common abilities.  This series of articles will explore the nature of a fighter/mage character in D&D 4E and describe some of the choices to be made in fashioning an effective master of two worlds.

Read more…

You know what? Fark ‘em. Fark the people who refuse to engage. Fark the people who hide behind coy evasions and third-party missives. I’m done chasing coat-tails and enduring pointed silences. I have too much to do to be caught up in petty games, playing the patient soul while you hide behind fear of being wrong or embarrassed or, worst of all, offended.

You had your chance. Years, I’ve bided. Clearly you have better things to do, so I’ll let you get to them. Have fun. When you’re ready to actually say something, you know where to find me.  I’ll be as happy to engage as ever. But I’m done waiting.

More wiki-hacking today.  I’m getting near to a point where I can say that the structure is self-explanatory, but several steps lie between here and there. First, I need to get the free linking under control.  It’s a bad habit I learned while first exploring things, and it must go if I’m ever to keep a lid on the potential data that will accumulate on it.  Second, I need to finish making templates so that it can grow organically within constraints.

I wonder if maintaining a wiki isn’t like keeping a garden?

The place is locked down, as much to encourage user interaction as to keep the low-hanging fruit away from vandals.  I know it’s contrary to a wiki to keep things under tight control, but I do have a personal interest in the flow of information on the site–some of it is personal in nature, and must be protected accordingly.  Moreover, I want it to be a home of sorts, and most homes have varying degrees of privacy.

Hopefully this week ahead I’ll actually be able to write stuff that isn’t a blog entry.  Many things abrew, including gaming topics, character vignettes, and technical descriptions.  And I must, must, must pick up the pen once more on Winterswatch.

There, I said it.  I invoke thee, Elephant in the Room!

Though I seem to be getting worse and worse, it is for good cause. I just finished configuring my wiki (http://wiki.calefaction.org/), which means I can sleep without fear of anonymous jerkwads ruining all my hard work. At least now they need to create an account to do it.

Writing is hard when you work 12 hours at a back-breaking pace and still need to make dinner for the family. I realize that my goal of writing everyday is probably unreasonable, or at least very difficult to achieve successfully. But I still intend to hold myself to it! There is no excuse, in this business, for not writing. The only way to write is to write. So I’m not giving myself easy outs. What I am trying to do is to figure out how to write and keep up with living. Μήδεν αγάν, quoth the philosophers of old–nothing excessively. This is, I guess, the business of life.

Well, I am content for today. It was my day off, but I still medicated, and for that reason I got actual work done. I vacuumed. I finished the laundry before dusk. The Sidhe and I had a delicious Tofurkey dinner to celebrate the end of Passover. And I got my wiki up and running!

And I wrote again!

Well, a bad way to start. But in my defense, it is spring, and I am not doing nothing. Tonight, fire!