Moving On from 2017

Moving On from 2017 — Blue Ink Alchemy

So, 2017 is finally behind us. Or, at time of writing, it's about to be. What a relief, right? The year seemed incredibly long. News and events that occurred around Halloween or Thanksgiving feel like they happened years ago. It was exhausting, seeing the world get yanked unwillingly into a downward spiral perpetuated by a resurgent nationalist would-be oligarchy. Aspiring autocrats vied for power, and thankfully, the world fought back. Make no mistake, we are at war, with the stakes being the very future of our species. We have concerns that need addressing such as poverty, hunger, and climate change, but the unfortunate truth is that we can't fully tackle those until we get rid of the power-hungry ignorant obstructionists. 2018, thankfully, holds the promise of us being able to do so. 2017 was a wake-up call, a year-long trial by fire in which common folk were called upon to rise up in the face of a new form of subversive, diabolical ambition. This may be less true for the world outside of the United States, but given the world-wide influence of the nation in which I live, it's been difficult for me to see the rest of the world outside of the impact our current lackluster leadership is having. We're in trouble, over here; we've tried to balance the bluster from our so-called representatives with a clarion call for help. I spent a lot of 2017 wishing I could do more. I spent the first few months of the year focused tightly on self-examination: what I could change, what I needed to cultivate within myself, which parts of myself I needed to discard. As the year progressed, my attention grew more and more outward, being active in lending my voice to the resistance, and keeping my heart and mind open. It was hard at times, exhausting at others. I finally concluded that the start-up life was not for me, and in another instance of re-inventing myself, dedicated my time while unemployed to changing the focus of my dayjob career and trying to finish a manuscript that I'm eager to share with the world. It wasn't all trials and tribulations, to be sure. I rediscovered my deep love for Dungeons & Dragons. I made some new friends, and learned to appreciated quality over quantity for people in my life. I returned to therapy and balanced medication with meditation and writing. I took more measured, thoughtful chances, and was rewarded in wonderful ways. And I never, ever, ever gave up. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I do not believe in the no-win scenario. It can be difficult to see, clouded by the tumult of the world and rampaging egos of others, but there is always a way forward. Where there is life, there is hope, a chance for a better tomorrow. Leaving one's heart open to possibilities isn't easy in this world. People will exploit such sentiment, leverage feelings, manipulate one's mind and perceptions. But without an open heart, one cannot find some of the greatest things this life has to offer — progress, reconciliation, self-discovery, courage, and love. I'm still percolating my thoughts on The Last Jedi, but among many other things, the film illustrates not only many ways in which people can fail (at times spectacularly), but how we can learn from our mistakes, and turn the outcome of our flaws into steps towards a better tomorrow. It's a lesson we all need to learn sooner or later; for me, I could have learned it sooner, but now that I have it in mind, tomorrow cannot help but be better than all of my yesterdays. I had allies in my journey forward, friends and family and loved ones. To them I say: thank you. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you. I did all of this for myself, as much under my own power as possible, but it would be uncharitable to say that I could have done so much without your love and support. They say the best revenge is living well, and to be entirely honest, I'm going to keep living as well as I can, if only to spite my demons and failures and head weasels. And, of course, I'm going to write as much and as often as I can. I have unfinished work that it worth writing, worth reading, worth sharing. Everything from unsent letters to that manuscript. I want to see what I can do when I really buckle down and make the words happen. Thanks for sticking around; if nothing else, thanks for reading all of this. See you in 2018. [tube]j1qQuSuQaHY[/tube]

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Blue Ink Alchemy

Moving On from 2017

Moving On from 2017 — Blue Ink Alchemy

So, 2017 is finally behind us. Or, at time of writing, it's about to be. What a relief, right? The year seemed incredibly long. News and events that occurred around Halloween or Thanksgiving feel like they happened years ago. It was exhausting, seeing the world get yanked unwillingly into a downward spiral perpetuated by a resurgent nationalist would-be oligarchy. Aspiring autocrats vied for power, and thankfully, the world fought back. Make no mistake, we are at war, with the stakes being the very future of our species. We have concerns that need addressing such as poverty, hunger, and climate change, but the unfortunate truth is that we can't fully tackle those until we get rid of the power-hungry ignorant obstructionists. 2018, thankfully, holds the promise of us being able to do so. 2017 was a wake-up call, a year-long trial by fire in which common folk were called upon to rise up in the face of a new form of subversive, diabolical ambition. This may be less true for the world outside of the United States, but given the world-wide influence of the nation in which I live, it's been difficult for me to see the rest of the world outside of the impact our current lackluster leadership is having. We're in trouble, over here; we've tried to balance the bluster from our so-called representatives with a clarion call for help. I spent a lot of 2017 wishing I could do more. I spent the first few months of the year focused tightly on self-examination: what I could change, what I needed to cultivate within myself, which parts of myself I needed to discard. As the year progressed, my attention grew more and more outward, being active in lending my voice to the resistance, and keeping my heart and mind open. It was hard at times, exhausting at others. I finally concluded that the start-up life was not for me, and in another instance of re-inventing myself, dedicated my time while unemployed to changing the focus of my dayjob career and trying to finish a manuscript that I'm eager to share with the world. It wasn't all trials and tribulations, to be sure. I rediscovered my deep love for Dungeons & Dragons. I made some new friends, and learned to appreciated quality over quantity for people in my life. I returned to therapy and balanced medication with meditation and writing. I took more measured, thoughtful chances, and was rewarded in wonderful ways. And I never, ever, ever gave up. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I do not believe in the no-win scenario. It can be difficult to see, clouded by the tumult of the world and rampaging egos of others, but there is always a way forward. Where there is life, there is hope, a chance for a better tomorrow. Leaving one's heart open to possibilities isn't easy in this world. People will exploit such sentiment, leverage feelings, manipulate one's mind and perceptions. But without an open heart, one cannot find some of the greatest things this life has to offer — progress, reconciliation, self-discovery, courage, and love. I'm still percolating my thoughts on The Last Jedi, but among many other things, the film illustrates not only many ways in which people can fail (at times spectacularly), but how we can learn from our mistakes, and turn the outcome of our flaws into steps towards a better tomorrow. It's a lesson we all need to learn sooner or later; for me, I could have learned it sooner, but now that I have it in mind, tomorrow cannot help but be better than all of my yesterdays. I had allies in my journey forward, friends and family and loved ones. To them I say: thank you. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you. I did all of this for myself, as much under my own power as possible, but it would be uncharitable to say that I could have done so much without your love and support. They say the best revenge is living well, and to be entirely honest, I'm going to keep living as well as I can, if only to spite my demons and failures and head weasels. And, of course, I'm going to write as much and as often as I can. I have unfinished work that it worth writing, worth reading, worth sharing. Everything from unsent letters to that manuscript. I want to see what I can do when I really buckle down and make the words happen. Thanks for sticking around; if nothing else, thanks for reading all of this. See you in 2018. [tube]j1qQuSuQaHY[/tube]

---

Blue Ink Alchemy

Thirty-Nine

Thirty-Nine — Blue Ink Alchemy

I took some time to overhaul the look of this blog so that it was more centered on Dungeons & Dragons. I had intended, for the most part, on producing only content related to that game here. In the weeks since I made that change, I've struggled to generate said content. The explanation may be related to any number of things — the imbalance of chemicals in which my brain swims, the emotions that climb over one another for my attention daily, the tension that exists between my journey forward into the future as aspects of my past try to exert overwhelming influence on my present... I think I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm thirty-nine years of age today. I think it's normal for people to be reflective on their birthday, but given the last couple of years, there's a lot for me to work over. Hell, I've spent the last fifteen minutes trying to puzzle out what it is I want to say here. And a bit part of the challenge is that I keep coming back around to the idea that other people will be reading this. But the thing is, I can't write this for anybody else. This sort of thing is something I have to write for myself. So why put it on the blog at all? Let me try and articulate this. People fight battles you can't see every day. There are folks out there with diseases wracking their bodies with pain, without a single outward visible symptom. I don't want to be reductive in my writing or over-simplify these very complex conditions, but when you break it down, at the end of the day, they're alone in the war they wage with their physical forms. It may be a false equivalence, but I feel the same goes for mental conditions and disorders. While there are behaviors that inform others of what is going on inside — a literal request for help in completing a task or mitigating symptoms, or a figurative "cry for help" in one form or another — the reality is that we can never truly know what is happening on the battlefields we all have within ourselves. My hope is that me rambling into a keyboard will help others in finding ways to come to terms with those battles. That, in turn, gives me more fuel to wrestle my own demons to the ground. And wrestle them I must, or they will strangle the very life from my soul. That may sound overly dramatic. I'll plead guilty to perhaps engaging in a bit of hyperbole. I am, by nature, a storyteller. Stories tend to be dramatic in one form or another as a way to draw in the audience into the narrative and the characters affected by it. Be it as a novelist with my "rough and unable pen," or as a Dungeon Master behind a screen armed with dice and terrain tiles, I want the people who read or hear my words when I'm telling a story to find escape, catharsis, or a deeper understanding about themselves or the world around them. A lofty ambition, maybe, and possibly a little pretentious. But more than anything else, I want my readers to read because they give a damn. That's why I'm such a fan of authors like Chuck Wendig and Seanan McGuire and Delilah Dawson — I care about what happens to the people in their stories. By telling us stories about people like Nora Wexley or October Day or Cardinal, these authors inhabit fictional characters with life and say to us through their actions, losses, and emotions, "these are people worth caring about." Maybe it's just me, but that's why I read stories. That's also why I show up to D&D every Monday night. It's not about rolling the biggest numbers or pulling off the most inventive moves in a combat scene. I show up because I care — about the characters at the table, about the people who play them, about our hapless Dungeon Master, whose narrative skills and voices are the skeleton upon which the players hang the meat of the story. And everyone at that table cares about each other, and the characters represented by dice and sheets of paper. I'm waxing poetic here, but I swear, this all has a point. Why put this stuff on the blog, instead of keeping it to myself? Because I am worth caring about, too. And by making that a public declaration, I am putting my foot down as far as my feelings of self-loathing and worthlessness are concerned. I can fill pages upon pages of journals with pontifications on the meaning of my life and how I need to find that for myself rather than looking for it in the affection and approval of others. (For the record, I have.) Added to that is the fact that I am aware of my status as a ghost piloting a meat suit on a rock hurtling through the unfeeling void of space at speeds I can barely comprehend. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, I'm one of around seven billion human beings on this planet, and there may be an exponentially larger number of sentient beings in our universe. The question of whether I or anybody else cares about me is ultimately insignificant. But because I am sentient, because I think and feel, it's anything but insignificant to me. That is worth remembering. And it has to start with how I feel about me. After almost forty years of life, it's long past time to stop treating those feelings like they don't matter. I can never fully understand the battles others fight. I will never know what it is to be female bodied, have a different skin color, suffer from a chronic illness, or come from an abusive childhood. My context for relating to those around me is limited by my own experiences and whatever knowledge I have as imparted by other individuals and the world at large. But the feelings of those individuals do matter to me. This is especially true in the people I personally know and care about. Even if there is a world between me and an individual who's touched my life or found an indelible place inside my heart, even if we rarely if ever speak to one another, your feelings matter to me. You matter to me. I'd like to think I matter to you, but in the end, I have to matter to me. At the most basic level of things, I have to fight this battle on my own. Nobody else can fight it for me. Others can fight it with me, certainly. And it's good to have allies. But I am the only resource upon which I can absolutely undoubtedly rely. I have to treat myself as such. I have to value myself. I must matter to myself. I need to care about myself. It's the only way I can truly be my best self, and in turn, care about and fight alongside you. To that end, I am taking this opportunity, at the dawn of my thirty-ninth year, to try and pull myself away from the memories and imprecations of my past selves, to strain my eyes towards the horizon, to stare into the howling and uncaring void that in the end consumes all of us, and scream the words: I choose to be.

---

Blue Ink Alchemy

Thirty-Nine

Thirty-Nine — Blue Ink Alchemy

I took some time to overhaul the look of this blog so that it was more centered on Dungeons & Dragons. I had intended, for the most part, on producing only content related to that game here. In the weeks since I made that change, I've struggled to generate said content. The explanation may be related to any number of things — the imbalance of chemicals in which my brain swims, the emotions that climb over one another for my attention daily, the tension that exists between my journey forward into the future as aspects of my past try to exert overwhelming influence on my present... I think I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm thirty-nine years of age today. I think it's normal for people to be reflective on their birthday, but given the last couple of years, there's a lot for me to work over. Hell, I've spent the last fifteen minutes trying to puzzle out what it is I want to say here. And a bit part of the challenge is that I keep coming back around to the idea that other people will be reading this. But the thing is, I can't write this for anybody else. This sort of thing is something I have to write for myself. So why put it on the blog at all? Let me try and articulate this. People fight battles you can't see every day. There are folks out there with diseases wracking their bodies with pain, without a single outward visible symptom. I don't want to be reductive in my writing or over-simplify these very complex conditions, but when you break it down, at the end of the day, they're alone in the war they wage with their physical forms. It may be a false equivelance, but the same goes for mental conditions and disorders. While there are behaviors that inform others of what is going on inside — a literal request for help in completing a task or mitigating symptoms, or a figurative "cry for help" in one form or another — the reality is that we can never truly know what is happening on the battlefields we all have within ourselves. My hope is that me rambling into a keyboard will help others in finding ways to come to terms with those battles. That, in turn, gives me more fuel to wrestle my own demons to the ground. And wrestle them I must, or they will strangle the very life from my soul. That may sound overly dramatic. I'll plead guilty to perhaps engaging in a bit of hyperbole. I am, by nature, a storyteller. Stories tend to be dramatic in one form or another as a way to draw in the audience into the narrative and the characters affected by it. Be it as a novelist with my "rough and unable pen," or as a Dungeon Master behind a screen armed with dice and terrain tiles, I want the people who read or hear my words when I'm telling a story to find escape, catharsis, or a deeper understanding about themselves or the world around them. A lofty ambition, maybe, and possibly a little pretentious. But more than anything else, I want my readers to read because they give a damn. That's why I'm such a fan of authors like Chuck Wendig and Seanan McGuire and Delilah Dawson — I care about what happens to the people in their stories. By telling us stories about people like Nora Wexley or October Day or Cardinal, these authors inhabit fictional characters with life and say to us through their actions, losses, and emotions, "these are people worth caring about." Maybe it's just me, but that's why I read stories. That's also why I show up to D&D every Monday night. It's not about rolling the biggest numbers or pulling off the most inventive moves in a combat scene. I show up because I care — about the characters at the table, about the people who play them, about our hapless Dungeon Master, whose narrative skills and voices are the skeleton upon which the players hang the meat of the story. And everyone at that table cares about each other, and the characters represented by dice and sheets of paper. I'm waxing poetic here, but I swear, this all has a point. Why put this stuff on the blog, instead of keeping it to myself? Because I am worth caring about, too. And by making that a public declaration, I am putting my foot down as far as my feelings of self-loathing and worthlessness are concerned. I can fill pages upon pages of journals with pontifications on the meaning of my life and how I need to find that for myself rather than looking for it in the affection and approval of others. (For the record, I have.) Added to that is the fact that I am aware of my status as a ghost piloting a meat suit on a rock hurtling through the unfeeling void of space at speeds I can barely comprehend. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, I'm one of around seven billion human beings on this planet, and there may be an exponentially larger number of sentient beings in our universe. The question of whether I or anybody else cares about me is ultimately insignificant. But because I am sentient, because I think and feel, it's anything but insignificant to me. That is worth remembering. And it has to start with how I feel about me. After almost forty years of life, it's long past time to stop treating those feelings like they don't matter. I can never fully understand the battles others fight. I will never know what it is to be female bodied, have a different skin color, suffer from a chronic illness, or come from an abusive childhood. My context for relating to those around me is limited by my own experiences and whatever knowledge I have as imparted by other individuals and the world at large. But the feelings of those individuals do matter to me. This is especially true in the people I personally know and care about. Even if there is a world between me and an individual who's touched my life or found an indelible place inside my heart, even if we rarely if ever speak to one another, your feelings matter to me. You matter to me. I'd like to think I matter to you, but in the end, I have to matter to me. At the most basic level of things, I have to fight this battle on my own. Nobody else can fight it for me. Others can fight it with me, certainly. And it's good to have allies. But I am the only resource upon which I can absolutely undoubtedly rely. I have to treat myself as such. I have to value myself. I must matter to myself. I need to care about myself. It's the only way I can truly be my best self, and in turn, care about and fight alongside you. To that end, I am taking this opportunity, at the dawn of my thirty-ninth year, to try and pull myself away from the memories and imprecations of my past selves, to strain my eyes towards the horizon, to stare into the howling and uncaring void that in the end consumes all of us, and scream the words: I choose to be.

---

Blue Ink Alchemy