Thursday, September 20, 2018

A Pawn No Longer

A Pawn No Longer — Blue Ink Alchemy

"There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them." — Denis Waitley I know this is a long post. Thank you for reading it in its entirety. Let's begin at the beginning. I was diagnosed with Type II Bipolar Disorder 14 years ago at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC. This was probably a diagnosis that should have been discovered long before the point of the nervous breakdown that put me in there. There have been inciting incidents, before and since, that have caused emotional reactions within me, and it has taken me years to develop the tools to properly manage my behavior in light of those reactions. The intensity of the emotions has not changed, but as I continue to work on myself for myself, these tools become more refined, more precise, and I handle these things better. One of the ways in which these tools can be forged is through Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). A DBT instructor's manual on emotions defines them in the following ways: "Emotions are complex; they consist of several parts of different reactions happening at the same time. "Emotions are automatic: they are involuntary, automatic responses to internal and external events. "Emotions can not be changed directly; we can change the events that cause emotional experiences; but not the emotional experiences directly. We can't make ourself 'feel' a particular emotion and then feel it. Willpower won't stop an emotional experience no matter how desperately we might want it to." The sequence in which synapses fire within our brains is not within our direct control. We cannot choose to not feel something. The emotions are not something we can stop or merely turn off. We have to handle them. We can avoid them with distractions, which is not advisable. We can cope with them through various mechanisms, some of which are healthier than others. Hardest of all is to try and reason with them. It is an entirely internal process. We must apply facts and evidence to a situation in comparison to the emotions being felt by that situation in an attempt to choose the best and healthiest way to handle and express those emotions. For a person with a mental illness, going through the process of reasoning with emotions is far more difficult than it is for someone who is neurotypical. And this is not a temporary condition. It's not like breaking one's leg, then needing to learn how to walk on it again. This is more along the lines of a physical chronic illness, where walking in and of itself can be challenging due to the nature of one's body. It is unreasonable to say to a person with such an illness, "Just get up and walk! It's so easy, why can't you just do it! Your inability to consistently walk is holding me back/making me feel bad, and that's your fault." It is just as unreasonable to say to a person with mental illness, "Just stop feeling these things! I don't, so why do you? Your inability to handle your emotions the way I do is making me feel bad, and that's your fault." These are things I have been forced to learn, wrestle with, and draw conclusions from since that breakdown 14 years ago. The steps have been incremental, sometimes frustratingly small, and some have fallen on unstable ground. There have been times when it has been difficult to take these steps and use these tools entirely on my own. Others can help, be they therapists or family or friends. But, in the end, no other individual can or should be expected to do it for me. Within the last few months I have found myself gainfully employed after a long period of searching for work that falls within a marketable and well-documented skillset I possess. My list of published and referencable writing is rather small, while my experience with web development operations and programming is better at filling out a résumé. It is with the latter that I secured employment. After over a year of not having something with this rate of pay, this sort of work environment, and this sort of support and direction, the stress caused by not being an "earner" in a post-capitalist society was removed. My significant lack of an inability to recognize self-worth, however, remained, and in the space of that removed stress, that neural pathway found new room in which to exist. It amplified, causing emotions and reactions that proved very difficult to handle. As I said, distracting ourselves from our emotions is inadvisable. I distracted myself by spending a great deal of time not engaged with my personal space or my partner, instead choosing to be elsewhere. This was pointed out to me by them and, at first, I denied the cause. Subsequent discussions, sometimes highly emotional ones, helped me realize what I was doing. As a result, I chose to take a step back from major in-person social interactions to focus on handling this underlying problem in a more healthy and comprehensive way. Part of that process was writing a post about that sense of self-worth, and how much I want to believe in myself, now more than ever. Writing is, and has been, my primary way of expressing myself and exploring these spaces. Rather than do so in a story, I chose to write about my real emotions and experiences, and I chose to post it publicly. I made that choice for posterity, and to provide insight into my emotions and behavior. I thought it might be useful to and for those who are in my life, and who have watched me go through these moments of emotionality that have a negative impact upon them. Others can see or even feel the effects of what my emotions do to me; they cannot always see the cause. I have been told "it hurts me to watch you put yourself through this, to beat yourself up." I believe that. I've experienced that, as well. My partner, who has chronic illnesses, cannot always do the things they wish to do. To watch them struggle against the constraints of their bodily pain, to hear them express disappointment in themselves for not being able to do what they want, is painful to me. At no point do I hold my partner's illness against them. They can't simply not be sick. It's not their fault. It's unfair, unreasonable, even cruel and abusive, to make them feel responsible for my feelings regarding their disability. By the same token, it is unfair, unreasonable, even cruel and abusive, to make someone with mental illness feel responsible for another person's feelings regarding that illness. If something said or done directly to another person causes harm, the person who said or did the thing is responsible for that. And it does not have to be direct physical or even emotional harm, either. A manipulative turn of phrase — "if you love me, you'll do X" — is the responsibility of the person who says it, because it is delivering an ultimatum to the person in question. Words have meanings; it is through language that we communicate what we feel, what we intend, who we are. So when I write at length about an internal process regarding handling my self-worth, or as above regarding the nature of my mental illness, and no language is employed that makes these things the responsibility of others, to have others claim that I am making them responsible for these things or that this language is somehow problematic or abusive is absolutely baffling to me. As a person with a mental illness, I am using that terminology and language to expand upon and explore my condition. Again, I am making the choice to write this for posterity and to allow insight into my internal thoughts, emotions, and processes. That is the purpose of this writing. Nothing more. These emotions of mine — complex, automatic, immutable — are simply that: mine. They are entirely internal. Disregarding their influence on my life, it does not impact other people when I feel something. When I feel a question or lack of self-worth, for example, that is an entirely internal process. No person outside of myself is responsible for it, nor is it my desire to somehow make it another person's fault. That would be unfair. That would be manipulative. That would be bullshit. When someone else, on the other hand, questions my self-worth, or validity, or integrity, that is another matter entirely. I've read over my posts, this one and the previous one in this vein, several times. Others have as well. At no point in either do I directly say that a person or group of people outside of myself is somehow responsible for my feelings or my actions. These things come from a place within my self, and from no other source. These things are amorphous, difficult, and even painful. The last thing on this planet I would ever want to do is put them onto someone else. I would rather not deal with them; why make someone else do it? That is, as above, unfair, unreasonable, and even cruel and abusive. We cannot choose when and how we feel things. We can, however, choose how to handle those feelings. And when we take action to handle a feeling, we can choose to take responsibility for those actions, or we can choose to make someone else responsible for it. We can own, or we can project. We can accept, or we can blame. We get to choose that. I do not agree with all of the choices I have made in the past, but I accept those are the choices I made. Some of my choices have caused me pain or loss; that, too, is my responsibility. Others have made, and will make, choices to make me responsible for things that are not mine. Those choices will attempt to manipulate me into taking responsibility for those things. In the past, my lack of self-worth and my desire to do good for and please the people around me put me in a position to simply accept what I was given, despite its absurdity or toxicity. It is a weakness of mine that has been exploited time and time again. I cannot accept this. I will accept this no longer. Just as how I get to choose how I handle my feelings, I get to choose who I am and who I want to be. I am a person with bipolar disorder. And I choose to not be a pawn of my emotions, nor of anyone else's.
Blue Ink Alchemy
Posted by at No comments:

A Pawn No Longer

A Pawn No Longer — Blue Ink Alchemy

"There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them." — Denis Waitley I know this is a long post. Thank you for reading it in its entirety. Let's begin at the beginning. I was diagnosed with Type II Bipolar Disorder 14 years ago at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC. This was probably a diagnosis that should have been discovered long before the point of the nervous breakdown that put me in there. There have been inciting incidents, before and since, that have caused emotional reactions within me, and it has taken me years to develop the tools to properly manage my behavior in light of those reactions. The intensity of the emotions has not changed, but as I continue to work on myself for myself, these tools become more refined, more precise, and I handle these things better. One of the ways in which these tools can be forged is through Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). A DBT instructor's manual on emotions defines them in the following ways: "Emotions are complex; they consist of several parts of different reactions happening at the same time. "Emotions are automatic: they are involuntary, automatic responses to internal and external events. "Emotions can not be changed directly; we can change the events that cause emotional experiences; but not the emotional experiences directly. We can't make ourself 'feel' a particular emotion and then feel it. Willpower won't stop an emotional experience no matter how desperately we might want it to." The sequence in which synapses fire within our brains is not within our direct control. We cannot choose to not feel something. The emotions are not something we can stop or merely turn off. We have to handle them. We can avoid them with distractions, which is not advisable. We can cope with them through various mechanisms, some of which are healthier than others. Hardest of all is to try and reason with them. It is an entirely internal process. We must apply facts and evidence to a situation in comparison to the emotions being felt by that situation in an attempt to choose the best and healthiest way to handle and express those emotions. For a person with a mental illness, going through the process of reasoning with emotions is far more difficult than it is for someone who is neurotypical. And this is not a temporary condition. It's not like breaking one's leg, then needing to learn how to walk on it again. This is more along the lines of a physical chronic illness, where walking in and of itself can be challenging due to the nature of one's body. It is unreasonable to say to a person with such an illness, "Just get up and walk! It's so easy, why can't you just do it! Your inability to consistently walk is holding me back/making me feel bad, and that's your fault." It is just as unreasonable to say to a person with mental illness, "Just stop feeling these things! I don't, so why do you? Your inability to handle your emotions the way I do is making me feel bad, and that's your fault." These are things I have been forced to learn, wrestle with, and draw conclusions from since that breakdown 14 years ago. The steps have been incremental, sometimes frustratingly small, and some have fallen on unstable ground. There have been times when it has been difficult to take these steps and use these tools entirely on my own. Others can help, be they therapists or family or friends. But, in the end, no other individual can or should be expected to do it for me. Within the last few months I have found myself gainfully employed after a long period of searching for work that falls within a marketable and well-documented skillset I possess. My list of published and referencable writing is rather small, while my experience with web development operations and programming is better at filling out a résumé. It is with the latter that I secured employment. After over a year of not having something with this rate of pay, this sort of work environment, and this sort of support and direction, the stress caused by not being an "earner" in a post-capitalist society was removed. My significant lack of an inability to recognize self-worth, however, remained, and in the space of that removed stress, that neural pathway found new room in which to exist. It amplified, causing emotions and reactions that proved very difficult to handle. As I said, distracting ourselves from our emotions is inadvisable. I distracted myself by spending a great deal of time not engaged with my personal space or my partner, instead choosing to be elsewhere. This was pointed out to me by them and, at first, I denied the cause. Subsequent discussions, sometimes highly emotional ones, helped me realize what I was doing. As a result, I chose to take a step back from major in-person social interactions to focus on handling this underlying problem in a more healthy and comprehensive way. Part of that process was writing a post about that sense of self-worth, and how much I want to believe in myself, now more than ever. Writing is, and has been, my primary way of expressing myself and exploring these spaces. Rather than do so in a story, I chose to write about my real emotions and experiences, and I chose to post it publicly. I made that choice for posterity, and to provide insight into my emotions and behavior. I thought it might be useful to and for those who are in my life, and who have watched me go through these moments of emotionality that have a negative impact upon them. Others can see or even feel the effects of what my emotions do to me; they cannot always see the cause. I have been told "it hurts me to watch you put yourself through this, to beat yourself up." I believe that. I've experienced that, as well. My partner, who has chronic illnesses, cannot always do the things they wish to do. To watch them struggle against the constraints of their bodily pain, to hear them express disappointment in themselves for not being able to do what they want, is painful to me. At no point do I hold my partner's illness against them. They can't simply not be sick. It's not their fault. It's unfair, unreasonable, even cruel and abusive, to make them feel responsible for my feelings regarding their disability. By the same token, it is unfair, unreasonable, even cruel and abusive, to make someone with mental illness feel responsible for another person's feelings regarding that illness. If something said or done directly to another person causes harm, the person who said or did the thing is responsible for that. And it does not have to be direct physical or even emotional harm, either. A manipulative turn of phrase — "if you love me, you'll do X" — is the responsibility of the person who says it, because it is delivering an ultimatum to the person in question. Words have meanings; it is through language that we communicate what we feel, what we intend, who we are. So when I write at length about an internal process regarding handling my self-worth, or as above regarding the nature of my mental illness, and no language is employed that makes these things the responsibility of others, to have others claim that I am making them responsible for these things or that this language is somehow problematic or abusive is absolutely baffling to me. As a person with a mental illness, I am using that terminology and language to expand upon and explore my condition. Again, I am making the choice to write this for posterity and to allow insight into my internal thoughts, emotions, and processes. That is the purpose of this writing. Nothing more. These emotions of mine — complex, automatic, immutable — are simply that: mine. They are entirely internal. Disregarding their influence on my life, it does not impact other people when I feel something. When I feel a question or lack of self-worth, for example, that is an entirely internal process. No person outside of myself is responsible for it, nor is it my desire to somehow make it another person's fault. That would be unfair. That would be manipulative. That would be bullshit. When someone else, on the other hand, questions my self-worth, or validity, or integrity, that is another matter entirely. I've read over my posts, this one and the previous one in this vein, several times. Others have as well. At no point in either do I directly say that a person or group of people outside of myself is somehow responsible for my feelings or my actions. These things come from a place within my self, and from no other source. These things are amorphous, difficult, and even painful. The last thing on this planet I would ever want to do is put them onto someone else. I would rather not deal with them; why make someone else do it? That is, as above, unfair, unreasonable, and even cruel and abusive. We cannot choose when and how we feel things. We can, however, choose how to handle those feelings. And when we take action to handle a feeling, we can choose to take responsibility for those actions, or we can choose to make someone else responsible for it. We can own, or we can project. We can accept, or we can blame. We get to choose. I do not agree with all of the choices I have made in the past, but I accept those are the choices I made. Some of my choices have caused me pain or loss; that, too, is my responsibility. Others have made, and will make, choices to make me responsible for things that are not mine. Those choices will attempt to manipulate me into taking responsibility for those things. In the past, my lack of self-worth and my desire to do good for and please the people around me put me in a position to simply accept what I was given, despite its absurdity or toxicity. It is a weakness of mine that has been exploited time and time again. I cannot accept this. I will accept this no longer. Just as how I get to choose how I handle my feelings, I get to choose who I am and who I want to be. I am a person with bipolar disorder. And I choose to not be a pawn of my emotions, nor of anyone else's.
Blue Ink Alchemy
Posted by at No comments:

A Pawn No Longer

A Pawn No Longer — Blue Ink Alchemy

"There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them." — Denis Waitley I know this is a long post. Thank you for reading it in its entirety. Let's begin at the beginning. I was diagnosed with Type II Bipolar Disorder 14 years ago at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC. This was probably a diagnosis that should have been discovered long before the point of the nervous breakdown that put me in there. There have been inciting incidents, before and since, that have caused emotional reactions within me, and it has taken me years to develop the tools to properly manage my behavior in light of those reactions. The intensity of the emotions has not changed, but this is a set of tools that I am continuing to develop. One of the ways in which these tools can be forged is through Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). A DBT instructor's manual on emotions defines them in the following ways: "Emotions are complex; they consist of several parts of different reactions happening at the same time. "Emotions are automatic: they are involuntary, automatic responses to internal and external events. "Emotions can not be changed directly; we can change the events that cause emotional experiences; but not the emotional experiences directly. We can't make ourself 'feel' a particular emotion and then feel it. Willpower won't stop an emotional experience no matter how desperately we might want it to." The sequence in which synapses fire within our brains is not within our direct control. We cannot choose to not feel something. The emotions are not something we can stop or merely turn off. We have to handle them. We can avoid them with distractions, which is not advisable. We can cope with them through various mechanisms, some of which are healthier than others. Hardest of all is to try and reason with them. It is an entirely internal process. We must apply facts and evidence to a situation in comparison to the emotions being felt by that situation in an attempt to choose the best and healthiest way to handle and express those emotions. For a person with a mental illness, going through the process of reasoning with emotions is far more difficult than it is for someone who is neurotypical. And this is not a temporary condition. It's not like breaking one's leg, then needing to learn how to walk on it again. This is more along the lines of a physical chronic illness, where walking in and of itself can be challenging due to the nature of one's body. It is unreasonable to say to a person with such an illness, "Just get up and walk! It's so easy, why can't you just do it! Your inability to consistently walk is holding me back/making me feel bad, and that's your fault." It is just as unreasonable to say to a person with mental illness, "Just stop feeling these things! I don't, so why do you? Your inability to handle your emotions the way I do is making me feel bad, and that's your fault." These are things I have been forced to learn, wrestle with, and draw conclusions from since that breakdown 14 years ago. The steps have been incremental, sometimes frustratingly small, and some have fallen on unstable ground. There have been times when it has been difficult to take these steps and use these tools entirely on my own. Others can help, be they therapists or family or friends. But, in the end, no other individual can or should be expected to do it for me. Within the last few months I have found myself gainfully employed after a long period of searching for work that falls within a marketable and well-documented skillset I possess. My list of published and referencable writing is rather small, while my experience with web development operations and programming is better at filling out a résumé. It is with the latter that I secured employment. After over a year of not having something with this rate of pay, this sort of work environment, and this sort of support and direction, the stress caused by not being an "earner" in a post-capitalist society was removed. My significant lack of an inability to recognize self-worth, however, remained, and in the space of that removed stress, that neural pathway found new room in which to exist. It amplified, causing emotions and reactions that proved very difficult to handle. As I said, distracting ourselves from our emotions is inadvisable. I distracted myself by spending a great deal of time not engaged with my personal space or my partner, instead choosing to be elsewhere. This was pointed out to me by them and, at first, I denied the cause. Subsequent discussions, sometimes highly emotional ones, helped me realize what I was doing. As a result, I chose to take a step back from major in-person social interactions to focus on handling this underlying problem in a more healthy and comprehensive way. Part of that process was writing a post about that sense of self-worth, and how much I want to believe in myself, now more than ever. Writing is, and has been, my primary way of expressing myself and exploring these spaces. Rather than do so in a story, I chose to write about my real emotions and experiences, and I chose to post it publicly. I made that choice for posterity, and to provide insight into my emotions and behavior. I thought it might be useful to and for those who are in my life, and who have watched me go through these moments of emotionality that have a negative impact upon them. Others can see or even feel the effects of what my emotions do to me; they cannot always see the cause. I have been told "it hurts me to watch you put yourself through this, to beat yourself up." I believe that. I've experienced that, as well. My partner, who has chronic illnesses, cannot always do the things they wish to do. To watch them struggle against the constraints of their bodily pain, to hear them express disappointment in themselves for not being able to do what they want, is painful to me. At no point do I hold my partner's illness against them. They can't simply not be sick. It's not their fault. It's unfair, unreasonable, even cruel and abusive, to make them feel responsible for my feelings regarding their disability. By the same token, it is unfair, unreasonable, even cruel and abusive, to make someone with mental illness feel responsible for another person's feelings regarding that illness. If something said or done directly to another person causes harm, the person who said or did the thing is responsible for that. And it does not have to be direct physical or even emotional harm, either. A manipulative turn of phrase — "if you love me, you'll do X" — is the responsibility of the person who says it, because it is delivering an ultimatum to the person in question. Words have meanings; it is through language that we communicate what we feel, what we intend, who we are. So when I write at length about an internal process regarding handling my self-worth, or as above regarding the nature of my mental illness, and no language is employed that makes these things the responsibility of others, to have others claim that I am making them responsible for these things or that this language is somehow problematic or abusive is absolutely baffling to me. As a person with a mental illness, I am using that terminology and language to expand upon and explore my condition. Again, I am making the choice to write this for posterity and to allow insight into my internal thoughts, emotions, and processes. That is the purpose of this writing. Nothing more. These emotions of mine — complex, automatic, immutable — are simply that: mine. They are entirely internal. Disregarding their influence on my life, it does not impact other people when I feel something. When I feel a question or lack of self-worth, for example, that is an entirely internal process. No person outside of myself is responsible for it, nor is it my desire to somehow make it another person's fault. That would be unfair. That would be manipulative. That would be bullshit. When someone else, on the other hand, questions my self-worth, or validity, or integrity, that is another matter entirely. I've read over my posts, this one and the previous one in this vein, several times. Others have as well. At no point in either do I directly say that a person or group of people outside of myself is somehow responsible for my feelings or my actions. These things come from a place within my self, and from no other source. These things are amorphous, difficult, and even painful. The last thing on this planet I would ever want to do is put them onto someone else. I would rather not deal with them; why make someone else do it? That is, as above, unfair, unreasonable, and even cruel and abusive. We cannot choose when and how we feel things. We can, however, choose how to handle those feelings. And when we take action to handle a feeling, we can choose to take responsibility for those actions, or we can choose to make someone else responsible for it. We can own, or we can project. We can accept, or we can blame. We get to choose. I do not agree with all of the choices I have made in the past, but I accept those are the choices I made. Some of my choices have caused me pain or loss; that, too, is my responsibility. Others have made, and will make, choices to make me responsible for things that are not mine. Those choices will attempt to manipulate me into taking responsibility for those things. In the past, my lack of self-worth and my desire to do good for and please the people around me put me in a position to simply accept what I was given, despite its absurdity or toxicity. It is a weakness of mine that has been exploited time and time again. I cannot accept this. I will accept this no longer. Just as how I get to choose how I handle my feelings, I get to choose who I am and who I want to be. I am a person with bipolar disorder. And I choose to not be a pawn of my emotions, nor of anyone else's.
Blue Ink Alchemy
Posted by at No comments:

A Pawn No Longer

A Pawn No Longer — Blue Ink Alchemy

"There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them." — Denis Waitley I know this is a long post. Thank you for reading it in its entirety. Let's begin at the beginning. I was diagnosed with Type II Bipolar Disorder 14 years ago at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC. This was probably a diagnosis that should have been discovered long before the point of the nervous breakdown that put me in there. There have been inciting incidents, before and since, that have caused emotional reactions within me, and it has taken me years to develop the tools to properly manage my behavior in light of those reactions. The intensity of the emotions has not changed, but this is a set of tools that I am continuing to develop. One of the ways in which these tools can be forged is through Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). A DBT instructor's manual on emotions defines them in the following ways: "Emotions are complex; they consist of several parts of different reactions happening at the same time "Emotions are automatic: they are involuntary, automatic responses to internal and external events. "Emotions can not be changed directly; we can change the events that cause emotional experiences; but not the emotional experiences directly. We can't make ourself 'feel' a particular emotion and then feel it. Willpower won't stop an emotional experience no matter how desperately we might want it to." The sequence in which synapses fire within our brains is not within our direct control. We cannot choose to not feel something. The emotions are not something we can stop or merely turn off. We have to handle them. We can avoid them with distractions, which is not advisable. We can cope with them through various mechanisms, some of which are healthier than others. Hardest of all is to try and reason with them. It is an entirely internal process. We must apply facts and evidence to a situation in comparison to the emotions being felt by that situation in an attempt to choose the best and healthiest way to handle and express those emotions. For a person with a mental illness, going through the process of reasoning with emotions is far more difficult than it is for someone who is neurotypical. And this is not a temporary condition. It's not like breaking one's leg, then needing to learn how to walk on it again. This is more along the lines of a physical chronic illness, where walking in and of itself can be challenging due to the nature of one's body. It is unreasonable to say to a person with such an illness, "Just get up and walk! It's so easy, why can't you just do it! Your inability to consistently walk is holding me back/making me feel bad, and that's your fault." It is just as unreasonable to say to a person with mental illness, "Just stop feeling these things! I don't, so why do you? Your inability to handle your emotions the way I do is making me feel bad, and that's your fault." These are things I have been forced to learn, wrestle with, and draw conclusions from since that breakdown 14 years ago. The steps have been incremental, sometimes frustratingly small, and some have fallen on unstable ground. There have been times when it has been difficult to take these steps and use these tools entirely on my own. Others can help, be they therapists or family or friends. But, in the end, no other individual can or should be expected to do it for me. Within the last few months I have found myself gainfully employed after a long period of searching for work that falls within a marketable and well-documented skillset I possess. My list of published and referencable writing is rather small, while my experience with web development operations and programming is better at filling out a résumé. It is with the latter that I secured employment. After over a year of not having something with this rate of pay, this sort of work environment, and this sort of support and direction, the stress caused by not being an "earner" in a post-capitalist society was removed. My significant lack of an inability to recognize self-worth, however, remained, and in the space of that removed stress, that neural pathway found new room in which to exist. It amplified, causing emotions and reactions that proved very difficult to handle. As I said, distracting ourselves from our emotions is inadvisable. I distracted myself by spending a great deal of time not engaged with my personal space or my partner, instead choosing to be elsewhere. This was pointed out to me by them and, at first, I denied the cause. Subsequent discussions, sometimes highly emotional ones, helped me realize what I was doing. As a result, I chose to take a step back from major in-person social interactions to focus on handling this underlying problem in a more healthy and comprehensive way. Part of that process was writing a post about that sense of self-worth, and how much I want to believe in myself, now more than ever. Writing is, and has been, my primary way of expressing myself and exploring these spaces. Rather than do so in a story, I chose to write about my real emotions and experiences, and I chose to post it publicly. I made that choice for posterity, and to provide insight into my emotions and behavior. I thought it might be useful to and for those who are in my life, and who have watched me go through these moments of emotionality that have a negative impact upon them. Others can see or even feel the effects of what my emotions do to me; they cannot always see the cause. I have been told "it hurts me to watch you put yourself through this, to beat yourself up." I believe that. I've experienced that, as well. My partner, who has chronic illnesses, cannot always do the things they wish to do. To watch them struggle against the constraints of their bodily pain, to hear them express disappointment in themselves for not being able to do what they want, is painful to me. At no point do I hold my partner's illness against them. They can't simply not be sick. It's not their fault. It's unfair, unreasonable, even cruel and abusive, to make them feel responsible for my feelings regarding their disability. By the same token, it is unfair, unreasonable, even cruel and abusive, to make someone with mental illness feel responsible for another person's feelings regarding that illness. If something said or done directly to another person causes harm, the person who said or did the thing is responsible for that. And it does not have to be direct physical or even emotional harm, either. A manipulative turn of phrase — "if you love me, you'll do X" — is the responsibility of the person who says it, because it is delivering an ultimatum to the person in question. Words have meanings; it is through language that we communicate what we feel, what we intend, who we are. So when I write at length about an internal process regarding handling my self-worth, or as above regarding the nature of my mental illness, and no language is employed that makes these things the responsibility of others, to have others claim that I am making them responsible for these things or that this language is somehow problematic or abusive is absolutely baffling to me. As a person with a mental illness, I am using that terminology and language to expand upon and explore my condition. Again, I am making the choice to write this for posterity and to allow insight into my internal thoughts, emotions, and processes. That is the purpose of this writing. Nothing more. These emotions of mine — complex, automatic, immutable — are simply that: mine. They are entirely internal. Disregarding their influence on my life, it does not impact other people when I feel something. When I feel a question or lack of self-worth, for example, that is an entirely internal process. No person outside of myself is responsible for it, nor is it my desire to somehow make it another person's fault. That would be unfair. That would be manipulative. That would be bullshit. When someone else, on the other hand, questions my self-worth, or validity, or integrity, that is another matter entirely. I've read over my posts, this one and the previous one in this vein, several times. Others have as well. At no point in either do I directly say that a person or group of people outside of myself is somehow responsible for my feelings or my actions. These things come from a place within my self, and from no other source. These things are amorphous, difficult, and even painful. The last thing on this planet I would ever want to do is put them onto someone else. I would rather not deal with them; why make someone else do it? That is, as above, unfair, unreasonable, and even cruel and abusive. We cannot choose when and how we feel things. We can, however, choose how to handle those feelings. And when we take action to handle a feeling, we can choose to take responsibility for those actions, or we can choose to make someone else responsible for it. We can own, or we can project. We can accept, or we can blame. We get to choose. I do not agree with all of the choices I have made in the past, but I accept those are the choices I made. Some of my choices have caused me pain or loss; that, too, is my responsibility. Others have made, and will make, choices to make me responsible for things that are not mine. Those choices will attempt to manipulate me into taking responsibility for those things. In the past, my lack of self-worth and my desire to do good for and please the people around me put me in a position to simply accept what I was given, despite its absurdity or toxicity. It is a weakness of mine that has been exploited time and time again. I cannot accept this. I will accept this no longer. Just as how I get to choose how I handle my feelings, I get to choose who I am and who I want to be. I am a person with bipolar disorder. And I choose to not be a pawn of my emotions, nor of anyone else's.
Blue Ink Alchemy
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Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Ballad of the Doomguy

Ballad of the Doomguy — Blue Ink Alchemy

I've been playing a lot of 2016's DOOM lately. It hearkens back to the shooters of my youth. There's a lot of catharsis in blasting demons with cool weapons and punching them in the face. The levels are large and they reward exploration with opportunities to customize your preferred blasting methods and adorable figurines. Perhaps most of all, for me, it showcases some fantastic storytelling and a wonderful way to leverage a silent protagonist. The data logs you find on everything from the UAC's methodology to data on the demonic minions you're exterminating are very well-written. They, like the upgrade tokens, are fun bonuses. You can get all of the story you need, though, just from the brief in-game interactions and the Doomguy's emoting. From the start, you get a sense of your avatar's personality, without him uttering a single line of dialog. In brief: explorers discovered an odd geological rift on Mars that was spewing a fascinating form of energy. The Union Aerospace Corporation's CEO, Samuel Hayden — imagine the love child of Scott Pruitt and Elon Musk who downloaded himself into a cybernetic body — went into leveraging this resource to solve an energy crisis back on Earth. The EPA can't file lawsuits if you're exploiting a natural resource on another planet, right? Right. And Argent Energy rendered nuclear power and fossil fuels obsolete overnight. Hayden didn't count on his head researcher being a covert cultist who discovered the energy was coming from Hell, and talked to demons about some sort of shady deal. Next thing you know, the UAC facility is getting worked over in the style of the colony from Aliens, and Hayden is trying to figure out how to maintain profits when all of his workers are dying horribly. Enter the Doomguy. Our hero hates demons with a fiery passion, and was put on ice after the last time he somehow made Hell worse, at least for its demonic denizens. He wakes up in one of the UAC's isolated labs, find his iconic armor after smashing some zombified UAC folks with his bare hands, and realizes there's a demonic invasion afoot. Hayden contacts him right away, figuring the Doomguy can clean the place up and get the energy production back on track. It takes about 5 seconds for the Doomguy to communicate he's not down for being a corporate stooge. The monitor with which Hayden contacts our hero gets smashed to the floor. Moments later, in the elevator to Mars's surface, Hayden tries again, giving some spiel through another monitor about "the greater good". That monitor gets a solid, indignant punch. I can't tell you how much I love this. Characterization in video games can be difficult, especially in shooters. Halo's Master Chief is your stereotypically stoic one-man army in power armor. Most of the Call of Duty protagonists tend to be walking talking recruitment campaigns for modern military organizations. Other bullet-dispensing avatars whoop and wisecrack their way through the bad guys, kicking ass and looking for a fresh pack of bubble gum. Doomguy's just here to smash demons and give middle fingers to corporate America while he's at it. On top of the pretty obvious disdain he has for the UAC, the Doomguy's got a sense of humor. When you find the collectibles, there's a fantastic little sting of classic DOOM music as the hero looks the figurine over. But when you find one that's the same coloration as your current incarnation, the Doomguy gives it a fistbump. The scion of anti-demon violence and masculine badassery fistbumps a figurine. [tube]SZGjA0O-PsI[/tube] And then there's this little Terminator 2 Easter Egg, when the Doomguy takes a bad step and falls into molten metal: [tube]4VxcwXnR02Y[/tube] The developers could have easily just left the Doomguy as an angry psychopathic killing machine. But they didn't. He has a sense of humor. There are glimmers of knowing self-awareness. And when confronted with the notion that smashing all of the UAC's work will plunge the Earth into a new energy crisis, the Doomguy shows himself to be a person with conviction, weighing that reality with the fact that demonic invasions are literally the worst thing. Hayden doesn't agree; the Doomguy doesn't care. Demons are bad. Sure, making life difficult on Earth is bad, but it's still life. Better to worry about the prices of your utilities than an Imp eating your face, right? Right. [tube]8hneeC5xVtE[/tube] Video games are mediums of visual storytelling. They're made for showing, rather than telling. And 2016's DOOM does this beautifully. I think that these moments, and the data logs, keep me playing just as much as the action and exploration. Fast-paced shooting is one thing; being compelled to see the next bit of story is icing on the cake. It's a glorious storytelling experience on top of a visceral exercise in catharsis. I love story-based games. My next solo gaming project is Witcher 3, which will be very different but, from what I understand, rich in its own storytelling. I'm just as invested in the lore of Overwatch as I am its game balance and being a better Reinhardt. But I'll probably be coming back to DOOM now and again. There are harder difficulties, arcade modes, classic maps, challenges... there's a lot there, and not just in terms of ammunition and well-designed enemies. The ballad of the Doomguy is a work of pulse-pounding death metal punctuated by shotgun blasts and breaking bones, but its melody is one of those sprawling lyrical epics about one man standing against a tide of darkness. It's Beowulf with a BFG. And I am, as the kids say, so here for it.
Blue Ink Alchemy
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Monday, July 9, 2018

Write Place, Write Time

Write Place, Write Time — Blue Ink Alchemy

Pictured above is Chuck Wendig's writing shed. It's a completely standalone structure made to do one thing: isolate a writer and make them write. It's a deliberate, concrete manifestation of disconnecting from the world around us, and exploring aspects of how our world was before or could be in the future. Perhaps new worlds are being created in this tiny booth of creativity and frustration. It's hard to say, until either the writer emerges with manuscript intact, or you go to the door and you knock. Just be prepared if you knock, because writers are most definitely a frustrated lot. Being able to isolate oneself is, in my experience, rather essential to the process. I'm sure there are writers who thrive on doing so in the midst of a crowd. Somewhere out there, there's a novelist who can't make the words happen unless they're sitting on a bench in the middle of Grand Central Station getting bombarded by people and PA announcements and smells and odd looks. More power to them, I say. I'm more of a "writing shed" kind of person. The best I can do is walk up a few blocks to my local library and get in on one of their little work rooms; failing that, use a public terminal that doesn't have about a thousand distractions a click away. Because let's face it: writing is incredibly frustrating work, and most writers I know are more than happy to do things that are not writing. Writers are avid gamers, outdoors enthusiasts, movie buffs, even parents... all of these things take the writer away from their writing, and unless they're isolated to some degree, most writers I know would opt for those not-writing things instead of disconnecting from the world and getting the writing done. Even this blog post is an example of this. I've gone back into my previous entries on writing to see if I'm repeating myself — I'm sure I am to some degree. I've looked at other writers' Twitter accounts to see how far off I am — not all writers are the same, after all. I've been distracted by Discord, Facebook, the traffic outside, the sound of the TV in the flat's main room. I'm thinking about my phone interview in half an hour. I'm thinking about Mad Max Fury Road, and Dungeons & Dragons, and... Well, you get the idea. If I were trying to finally put some damn words into the manuscript that's been very patiently waiting for me to finish it, it'd be even worse. If I weren't sitting in a place free of most distractions, save perhaps for some good mood music, I'd be getting nothing done and I'd end up frustrated over that. I know I can close my distractions as easily as I can open them. I try to do so whenever I need to get something like this done, let alone laying out hundreds of new words in a story I need to finish. In one particular case, there's a definite need there, and despite its lengthy gestation period, I think this novel is becoming more relevant as time goes on, not less. But that's literally a story for another day. With the weather in Seattle being its more temperate summer days of late, days of mild temperatures and little precipitation, going to a library for a few hours seems like a likely prospect until I secure more steady dayjob work. The challenge for me is making the time and devoting the energy to do so. Job searches are soul-crushing, heart-eroding, mind-grating things, and I think this is the longest one I've been on. I can't yet sustain myself on writing alone, and the competition for freelance work is just as breakneck as it is for salaried positions, if not moreso. I'm not giving up, but I'm also reminding myself that I still want to write, need to write, and the only way to do it is, to use an old metaphor, "sit down at a typewriter and bleed." I'm going to be working to find the right time, and go to the right place, to do just that. Don't worry, I'll clean up afterwards.
Blue Ink Alchemy
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Friday, July 6, 2018

500 Words on Job Hunting

500 Words on Job Hunting — Blue Ink Alchemy

One thing I didn't anticipate when I moved to Seattle was how competitive the job market would be outside of the gaming industry. I knew I'd be in for a fight if I went straight for video gaming's jugular. It was something I wanted to get into, for sure, but first had to come gainful employment for which I was already suited and trained. So I started looking for positions as a web developer. That, too, has turned out to be a highly competitive field. I probably should have anticipated it'd be this difficult. After all, some major companies with healthy profit margins exist out here. It's natural for people, especially younger professionals, to scramble and fight for the positions that would be available. I wasn't adequately prepared for that. Years later, I'm paying the price. It's taken me a rather long time, but I'm finally coming to grips with the fact that if I'm going to be employable to a degree that will support my partner and my distant family, I need to catch myself up on what I've been missing in terms of development and programming. As much as I want to get paid for writing novels and making games, my imagination doesn't need the refreshers that my knowledge of languages like JavaScript and PHP do. Plus, there's quite a few new languages I'd benefit from picking up — Python, TypeScript, C#, and so on. I can't afford to take classes, especially since my unemployment ran out months ago. So I'm on my own, using tutorials and code examples forked from GitHub and posted on blogs. But I'm making progress. I know that some people go into positions like the ones I'm applying for without knowing anything about frameworks like React and Angular. The more I can learn, the more employable I'll be when I walk into an interview. The barriers between me and those interviews, at times, seem insurmountable. I've sent out dozens, maybe hundreds, of resumes. I apply to jobs on LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and CraigsList every single day. I'm working with recruitment agencies. Yet, for all of that effort, since my last contract ended in January, I've had three in-person interviews that could have yielded paying work. That, I think, shows just how cutthroat it is out there. I'm not about to give up. If I have to, I'll take another office job while I stay on the hunt. But I'm not giving up this hunt. I've had a dearth of energy over these previous few months, and with it seemingly to be finally on the upswing, the last thing I want to do is settle for less than I can earn. If I can land the right sort of job, a lot of the problems I'm currently dealing with will be obviated. It'll free up mental bandwidth to write more, create more, do more. I'll have to manage my time differently, but there'll be structure to work around. My job's out there. I'll hunt it down.
Blue Ink Alchemy
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Thursday, June 28, 2018

The Deep Mines of Published Adventures

The Deep Mines of Published Adventures — Blue Ink Alchemy

I'd like to give you a bit of a peek "behind the curtain" regarding where inspiration comes from and how basic materials from other sources can lead to new ideas and new directions in storytelling. This past weekend, I put together a one-shot D&D adventure for Seattle fans of Critical Role. While I did re-watch some favorite episodes from the first campaign of the series, and read up on a good deal of material in the Tal'dorei Campaign Guide, considering this was a one-shot, I wanted to make sure that the adventure had direction and balance. With that in mind, I turned to my time acting as a Dungeon Master for the Adventurer's League. The two Adventurer's League modules that I took as my basis were "The Waydown" and "The Occupation of Szith Morcaine". They're from the same season of the Adventurer's League, the "Rage of Demons", and thus had a lot in common. Both were delves into the Underdark, both involved strange beings to both interact with and fight against, and both were influenced heavily by the machinations and madness of the demon prince known as Graz'zt. But the Adventurer's League modules take place in the Forgotten Realms. This was an adventure in Exandria, on the continent of Tal'dorei. This lead to some questions for me, as the Dungeon Master: where is the Waydown on Tal'dorei? How are drow, duregar, myconids, and so on different in the world created by Matt Mercer? And what would Graz'zt want with Exandria? I am, of course, not going to answer that last question here. This is going to be more than a one-shot, much to my delight. But I will say that, since these two adventures were related by the overarching "Rage of Demons," it wasn't difficult to tease a few bits apart, remove things that didn't work, and weave them together into one coherent adventure with Tal'dorei flavor and and plenty of places for a party of adventurers to go. One of the things that saw me moving away from Adventurer's League was that in a short, two- or four-hour session, it can be very difficult to get into character, establish rapport with other players — or, if you're the DM, any players. On the other hand, the published adventure modules are adjustable for all sorts of parties in terms of difficulty and rewards, and the through-line of start to middle to end is very easy to follow. With the change of setting and a longer session time, this flexibility made the matter of adding more narrative storytelling a straightforward one. Now that the party's established, and these initial adventures are completed, we can move on. While it can't be called entirely original, considering the involvement of Graz'zt and the very nature of where Tal'dorei came from, the storyline and character hooks I have in mind are all mine, informed by my fantastic players and rooted in the desire to tell a great story woven through with emotion and character. I also run a game on the occasional Thursday night, and we're going through the 5th edition starter set's "Lost Mine of Phandelver". Again, however, this adventure has been transplanted from the Forgotten Realms to a campaign setting entirely of my own design. The world of Levexadar is my first real attempt at something like this, and as a result, I'm still tweaking things and looking to published materials. On top of the Phandelver resources, I've incorporated some adventure and setting trappings from the previous edition of Dungeons & Dragons. You could say I've "filed off the serial numbers", and I don't feel bad about that. So far, it's made for a good story. When it comes to role-playing games, you can delve deep into the fertile veins of published materials and find all sorts of things to tell a story of your own. I find my thoughts turning to parts of the Tomb of Annihilation hardcover and materials even older than 4th edition as elements to use in one or both of these campaigns. The echoes of the familiar in unexplored territory can both comfort a player, and present an opportunity to surprise them. And if you manage to surprise your players, get them invested in the world and the story, and anticipatory of what'll happen in the next session or even the next minute, you've got a great game of Dungeons & Dragons on your hands.
Blue Ink Alchemy
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Friday, June 15, 2018

500 Words on Outrage

500 Words on Outrage — Blue Ink Alchemy

Between the political landscape and my personal situation, it's very tempting to just type out the word "AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH" 500 times and be done with it. It's also tempting to just fire up a video game and try to forget about the things that are taking up space in my brain and making me froth at the mouth. However, no amount of playing cards, rolling dice, or escorting payloads contributes to the solutions of the problems at hand. And even if I spend my time writing fiction or working on programming tutorials and projects, there's a nagging voice inside of my head telling me that my time should be spent finding more work, or doing something about my country's political situation, or fighting for the rights of others. You know, addressing the stuff that makes me angry. Anger, as an emotion, can get a bad rap. I remember Yoda saying in the first Star Wars prequel "fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering," as if there's always a linear path that emotions take. Anger is almost always spoken of in negative terms. After all, anger fuels a lot of negative or violent outbursts. But as with so many things in life, the proper application of anger can get a lot done. Anger is a problem, as are its causes; what matters is how we use that emotional energy to create some sort of solution. It motivates us to finish more projects, to put forward better behaviors, to act in defiance of injustice. Sure, there are those who subscribe to false narratives and let their misinformed anger push them to make bad decisions. But I'd like to think, optimist that I am, that those folks are in a small (but very vocal) minority. I get little bits of hope, here and there. Seeing people come together in solidarity to fight back against abuse. Social media exchanges of trying to reach a mutual understanding in a civil discussion. Servants of justice constructing their cases to take down the wicked. A phone interview. A comment on Ao3. A hug and a kiss from a loved one. Play of the Game in Overwatch. It quiets those annoying head weasel voices that try to convince me I'm wasting my time and getting nothing of substance done. I have to look after myself, stay on top of my mood, and keep from falling to pieces. It's self-care. It's necessary. I have a lot going for me, when I stop to look at it. There's a lot of love in my life. I'm in a safe place. I'm trying to keep an eye on my diet and what little income I've actually got, and doing my utmost not to be a drain on my family or friends. The outrage remains. It bubbles under the surface. It seeps out through cracks in my veneer. But at least it's not exploding. Because nobody deserves that. I'm using my anger; I refuse to let it use me.
Blue Ink Alchemy
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Saturday, June 9, 2018

Book Review: Ready Player One

Book Review: Ready Player One — Blue Ink Alchemy

Fan Cover by Ali Kellner
I state the following without hyperbole: the first few chapters of Ernest Cline's Ready Player One is some of the most difficult reading I've done in a very long time. Not because of the nature of the events, or even the quality of the writing, in and of itself. It was difficult because it was just so damn proud of itself for the number of 80's references it was making. Reading over our protagonist Wade's list of 80's nostalgia subjects was like reading over the results of a search for "80's pop culture references" and had just about as much emotional effect. Hey, I remember the Atari 2600! I remember Adventure! I remember Joust! I remember WarGames! I remember... wait. Let me back up. For those of you who don't know, Ready Player One takes place in a near-future Earth where things are not necessarily post-apocalyptic, but are definitely bleak and cynically prophetic. With fossil fuels all but gone and the global economy in dire chaos as a result, homelessness and unemployment are as rampant as power outages and autonomous corporate monstrosities. The only refuge most people have is in the OASIS, a free (ostensibly) virtual world which allows user VR access to a universe that takes notes from the Matrix, MMOs, and even SecondLife. Our protagonist, Wade, is a high school student who uses the OASIS for his schooling, since he lives in a refugee camp/shantytown of stacked RV trailers called... well, "The Stacks". He is also participating in a hunt for an item hidden within the OASIS by its creator, who recently died, and left the bulk of his fortune and the controlling share of the OASIS to whomever can find the item. Wade is not alone, however; not only have many other nerds started the hunt, but a corporate rival to the OASIS's company has mounted a major operation with tens of thousands of employees scouring the virtual universe for the item. What chance does one little reclusive nerd has against those odds? Well, if he starts rattling off 80's pop culture references every time he takes a breath, his chances are probably pretty good. I grew up in the 80's. I didn't quite hit my teen years until 1990 or so, but I do remember a lot of the things Cline gleefully barrages readers with during the opening chapters of Ready Player One. When he described the crude, pixelated characters of the Atari game Adventure, I could picture it clearly in my head. I've played through the D&D dungeon "Tomb of Horrors" a few times since I first learned how to play 2nd edition in the 90's. Quick aside: I am really looking forward to the full-blown campaign being built around the latest version of the dungeon. It's called "Tomb of Annihilation" and I plan on ordering it in at my Friendly Neighborhood Comics Store. The novelty of Cline's zeal in rattling off his references quickly wears off, and soon becomes tiresome. Yes, Ernest, we get it, you love the 80's, and a lot of other nerds do too, and this is aimed at making them feel like this is a story for them. That this protagonist is someone they understand and can relate to. Specifically, the tone and timbre of Cline's opening feels like it's leaving out huge chunks of cheese for spectacle-wearing mice, where the cheese is references to Back to the Future and Joust and the mice are mostly males, and probably a majority of them are white. It felt, to me, like pandering to a horrifyingly shameless level. I nearly stopped reading entirely. Like the hunt within the book, Ready Player One contains three gates. This was the first one, and it was definitely the hardest one for me to get past. And to get past it, I had to take a step back. Ready Player One was published in 2011. This was a time before the Oculus Rift, perhaps the most prevalent equivalent to the OASIS's VR/haptic hardware. This was a time before GamerGate and the rise of social justice as a major component of the online narrative. Hell, this was a time before the Marvel Cinematic Universe was really a thing; until The Avengers debuted on 4 May 2012, nobody really thought Marvel could pull off its grand experiment. The world into which Cline presented his novel was one where nerd culture was still most definitely a sub-culture, one far less part of the public narrative than sports, celebrity scandals, and reality television. Tournaments for games like StarCraft II happened largely away from public eyes in the Americas and Europe. Other accessible mutliplayer games geared for what is now called 'e-sports' like League of Legends, Hearthstone, and DOTA 2 hadn't been released. Unlike today, where you can find people playing D&D every week on Critical Role, if you wanted to see people doing that, you had to find a special episode of Community or a fan film like The Gamers. So, yes, while Ready Player One is pretty blatant in pandering to a certain demographic, at the time of its publication, that demographic was not this directly represented. Sure, plenty of white male power fantasies existed — comic books in and of themselves were as power-fantastic as ever, and look at games like God of War and Call of Duty. But here was a novel in which the protagonist, like much of its intended audience, was a reclusive nerd. Even during the first few times we see him in the OASIS, he's kind of a loser. He starts getting ahead because of all of this esoteric knowledge he has in his brain. Not because he gets bitten by a radioactive spider, or discovers an alien rock, or because he's some kind of Chosen Onetm. Wade finds the first key, and clears the first gate, by knowing his D&D, his Joust, and his WarGames. I can see the narrative merit in that. I saw that there was some value in a protagonist, especially in the context of young adulthood, thinking their way through a problem rather than punching their way through it. When I looked at it from that perspective, I found it a bit easier to move forward with the book. And, to be honest, the references became less pervasive and persistent as the book went on. Such was clearing the first gate of the book — whether you embrace and delight in the references, or merely endure them, accepting them gets you into the meat of the story. Spoilers abound past this point. Fairly be ye warned. The second gate involved seeing Wade as a human being. With all of the pandering in the narrative's set-up, and the many ways in which it was clear (at least to me) that Wade was meant to be just as much an avatar for the reader as Parzival was Wade's avatar in the OASIS, how do we contextualize Wade as a person? This involves not just raising the stakes but also making Wade respond to pressure, dealing with real complications, and so on. When his horrible aunt and her idiot meathead of a boyfriend are killed when the evil corporation bombs the trailer where Wade had his mail sent, it's horrific, but Wade walks away from it pretty nonchalantly. By now, as an online celebrity for clearing the first gate of Halliday's challenge, Wade has sponsorship money in no small amounts and can look after his own needs. Sure, it establishes EvilCorp — sorry, "IOI" — as a pretty major threat, but it also shows Wade is capable of planning and forethought to a pretty high degree considering where he goes and what he does next to keep himself safe for the hunting to come. There is a romance, and this being not just a novel with a young adult protagonist but a romance in the context of online, things run anything but smoothly. It feels like pretty standard teen angst, albeit with the backdrop of nerd ephemera and virtual laser-gun battles. The zero-g dance party held by The Great And Powerful Og was a highlight, to be sure. But it isn't until another character is killed — literally yanked out of his rig and thrown out a window by IOI goons — that suddenly the threat becomes incredibly real. In his conversation with the victim's brother, Wade shows us that he has a capacity for respect and compassion that, honestly, runs extremely counter to how straight white male nerds tend to comport themselves in modern society. I feel that it is this, just as much the moment where I considered the second gate of the book cleared, is really what sets Wade apart from quite a few other young adult protagonists. While he did get a little obsessive over his paramour Art3mis in the wake of her cutting off communication, lovesick teens do a lot of dumb shit. He never goes so far as to invade her privacy or compromise her safety or integrity, but he does do the whole standing-outside-the-window-with-the-boombox routine. The window, in this case, being set in a huge fortress on the remote world of Benatar. Wade is someone who can learn from his mistakes. He can take steps to improve himself — he sets up a system for himself to get and stay in shape rather than just become a sad sack of meat strapped into an OASIS rig. And, most of all, he can see past the digital avatar to the real person on the other end, and imagine them complexly. When he sits with Shoto, the brother of the murder victim, their conversation is quiet and meaningful. There are no explosions of angst or huge dramatic reveals; instead, Shoto tells his story, Wade conveys his condolences, and they start to plan what to do next. This could have been another young-adult-standing-in-the-rain moment; instead, both Wade and Shoto demonstrate a strength of character that is not only difficult to find in the genre, but all too often lacking in many of the denizens of the Internet we deal with here in the real world. What happens next in the book, with Wade infiltrating IOI, was to me, a very pleasant surprise. After all of the tiresome reference-making and the teen angst — which, again, Cline handled very well — we come to a moment where Wade risks everything. He sacrifices his safety, his comfort, and his very identity to find a way to overcome the villains. He doesn't do this by kicking down doors, shooting up goons, or even confronting the enemy mastermind in the real world. He lays out an elaborate plan in secret, sets himself up for success, accepts the hardships that will be involved, and without a word to his friends, disappears into the IOI corporate machine. To me, this sequence is the highlight of the book. Moreso than the explosive climactic battle (which I'll get to), this demonstrates what Cline is capable of in terms of storytelling. Devoid of his toys, his resources, and his allies, left with only his wits and whatever he prepared for in advance, Wade has to be clever, subtle, and think on his feet to accomplish his goals. There's no violence, no explosions, no rants, no moments of big drama. Just tension, a touch of corporate horror, and — if I'm honest, much to my delight — a very subtle nod to Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain. I never said all of the references were bad ones. The second gate is cleared when Wade is picked up after his real-world infiltration gambit by one of his closest friends and allies, H (spelled out 'Aech' since the OASIS doesn't allow one-letter monikers). While presented in the OASIS as white and male, H turns out to be neither of those things. How does Wade react? Barely at all. H's race, gender, and sexuality matter very little in the grand scheme of things. Cline, in his fashion, may make the point in a bit of a heavy-handed matter, but considering how relevant a point it is to this day, in this case I think it's justified. Wade's character sketch is now complete; we can move on to the third and final gate. The third gate is — what's the point of this story? What's it trying to tell us? As much fun as the epic final battle is, with everything from a tiny Johnny-5 robot being a key part of our heroes' plan to a showdown between Mechagodzilla and Ultraman, the payoff for all of the fireworks needs to be worth all of the time it took to set everything up. While Wade's obsessive knowledge-farming and gaming skills get him up to the climax of the battle, it is a combination of things that see him through to victory. He relies on a little luck — a one-off scene from earlier in the book becomes incredibly vital to success — as well as knowledge his friends possess that he does not. In the end, his recollection of Halliday's message to the world and an understanding of where Halliday's heart lay are what secure victory. And what lays beyond for Wade is not just the prizes and the accolades, but something far more interesting — he has the ability to turn the OASIS off. Would Wade ever push the Big Red Button? I don't know. Probably not, not unless IOI put some sort of virus into it that might kill everyone if he doesn't. But that seems far-fetched. The message, though, is that Wade can turn it off for himself and, more than likely, should do that more often. After all, he's proven that he can handle himself in the real world, without having to be some kind of hyper-masculine badass or post-human savant. His friends respect him because of who he is, not because of what he can do for them. The last scene of the book, between Wade and Art3mis (Samantha) in a lovely garden maze in the real world, is quiet and touching, and it makes it clear that however amazing and dangerous and empowering a virtual world like the OASIS might be, it is the people we connect with, not the systems we use for that connection, that really matter. And it doesn't really matter who that person may pretend to be, but rather who exists behind the digital avatars and the character sheets and the bells and whistles. That's what matters. That's the crux of the story. That's what lies beyond Ready Player One's third and final gate. Maybe I'm still too optimistic after all of these years. Maybe I'm trying to find meaning where there is none, where other critics see just an endless pile of pandering 80's references aimed at a demographic that already has more than enough representation in pop culture, thank you very much. I can't shake the feeling, though, that Cline has smuggled something to us under all of that seemingly shameless tat and glitzy graphics in our minds that actually means something. On the surface, Wade is a stereotypical gamer — reclusive, introverted, obsessive, maybe even selfish or downright mean. But look again at how he treats those around him. Examine the way he tackles his problems. Read over how he looks into himself when he runs into obstacles, and how he works to overcome them. How many gamers do that? How many dedicate themselves more to practice and self-improvement, rather than screaming imprecations and slurs and insults at their opponents before throwing down their controllers and jumping on Twitter to blame SJWs for the woes of the world? Wade takes responsibility for his actions, and pushes himself to do better. He doesn't give up, never stops trying. He reigns himself in, checks himself, corrects himself. This is something a lot of people, not just gamers, fail to do when the time comes for the individual to step up and do the work necessary to make things right. This is why I ended up liking Ready Player One. This is why I feel it has value, and why I will be interested to see how Speilberg's film adaptation turns out. I don't think it's a "HOLY GRAIL OF POP CULTURE" as the self-fellating promo text tells us in the preview. I think it's good, and honestly, better than its superficial reference-making pandering appearance would make it out to be. Like Gygax's Tomb of Horrors, if you can navigate the various traps and get past some of the more monstrous parts of things, there's definitely treasure to be found. In my honest opinion, to see a protagonist behave like a decent human being in a world where most of the populace would rather be anything but a human being is definitely a treasure worth finding. It's easy to blame the controller or the other player or the world or your circumstances for whatever made those dreaded GAME OVER words flash in front of you. It's a lot harder to dig out another quarter, take a deep breath, and put yourself in harm's way again. Ready, Player One? Cover artwork by Ali Kellner
Blue Ink Alchemy
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D&D Matters

D&D Matters — Blue Ink Alchemy

I'm really glad I started playing Dungeons & Dragons again. It's taken me the better part of a year to feel comfortable going out-of-doors again. I was walking around like a man with my skin peeled off, and the fresh air and particulates of the outside world stung like a son-of-a-bitch. I had to take that time, in a place of safety and solitude, to reacquaint myself with myself. Take a good long look in the mirror. Start fixing some shit. Get better. Then I started going out to watch soccer matches again, and I made a friend. She noticed my d20 ring, a souvenir of days gone by that has only the meaning I've given it. No other associations, no bad memories. Just a spinning random number generator for rolling skill checks in the real world. We got to talking about D&D. And she mentioned a game she was in on Monday nights. Without knowing what I was doing or why, I jumped at the chance. Then I got nervous. You see, I might have gone a bit too far the other way in correcting myself. I was a little hyper-vigilant. I had trouble trusting my instincts. Here was a smart, lovely, challenging person who saw in me enough value and goodness to invite me into another part of her life, and I was asking myself a bunch of questions — do I have the right reasons for doing this? Am I going to be an invasive presence? Will I get along with everyone? Should I be scared? In order: yes, no, yes, and no. My partner told me so. A few times. I can be a little thick-headed; it's an aspect of myself I've had since I was young. Still, the answers were conveyed to me in love, even if they had to be repeated. I finally quieted the head weasels, drew up my character, and headed downtown. My head was on a bit of a swivel before I got into the Raygun Lounge. I didn't know how my Paladin of Bahamut would go over with these new people. I guess the best way to put it "like gangbusters." He had to leave the party at one point because a fellow party member made, in his opinion, a monumentally bad and immoral decision. So I reintroduced one of my favorite characters, a dark elf necromancer, to the party. Again, he was a big hit. Sure, he was the complete opposite of my paladin in personality and motivation, but therein lies the challenge. And since my life isn't exactly on hardmode, being the sort of white male of education and relative means that often serves as a poster child for the Patriarchy, I tend to game that way. See also my pacifist/stealth run of Deus Ex Human Revolution's Director's Cut that is my current PC gaming 'project'. Long story short: I was worried over nothing. With everything going on, within and without, it's been difficult to fully engage with my writing brain. Certain parts of myself have lain somewhat dormant while getting better, engaging in self-care and self-correction, and generally being an isolationist hermit have dominated my time. Being with others and collaborating in telling a story about people making bad choices has started reawakening my own storytelling synapses. If nothing else, it's underscored my need to shift my career path away from banging out code for a living to making words happen. That's been mostly what I've been looking for when I'm on LinkedIn looking for a new job that has nothing to do with start-ups — I am unsuited for such a life. Perhaps I'm just too old at this point. Anyway. Dungeons & Dragons. The classic role-playing game matters to me because it hits all of the right buttons. It's escapism. It's storytelling. It's interacting with other humans, revealing parts of oneself in a safe environment and bouncing off of one another and the Dungeon Master in delightful and intriguing ways. It's taking chances. It's putting on a performance in the 'theatre of the mind' just because you can. I want to start my own group, and guide people through the bones of a story I construct, and watch them flesh everything out and make it a living, breathing thing that we all enjoy. Storytelling matters. Collaboration matters. People, their dreams, their imaginations, their fears, their potential and ambition and passion — all of that matters. All of that comes together in Dungeons & Dragons. That's why it matters. Tuesdays are for telling my story. Art courtesy Wizards of the Coast
Blue Ink Alchemy
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500 Words on World-Building

500 Words on World-Building — Blue Ink Alchemy

I'm very much looking forward to introducing more people to Dungeons & Dragons. The published materials for that purpose within the Starter Set are quite fine, but even moreso than the content within the books, I appreciate the flexibility of it. It's been a while since I've put together a world into which others will be introducing characters with their own motivations, drives, fears, and goals. I want to flex those muscles again. As much as I like the Forgotten Realms setting, what's the harm in creating what might be considered a parallel world on the Prime Material Plane? Similar, but different in many ways. Same maps, different names. Similar factions, different motivations. A history all its own that resonates with the high points of established materials. If nothing else, it's a great exercise in world-building. Even when set in the modern era on Earth, authors tend to create their own worlds when they set out to tell a new story. Look at Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, Seanan McGuire's October Day, Diane Duane's Young Wizards, Lev Grossman's the Magicians — the list goes on. I know that these are all fantasy examples, but considering this pontification is rooted my D&D ambitions, they're what come to mind for me. I'm sure you can think of your own. Speaking of D&D, there's been quite a bit written about the Starter Set called Lost Mines of Phandelver. For my part, my desire is not just to integrate it into a slightly different world of my own creation, but also deepen and flesh out the characters within the adventure. Even within a D&D campaign, I'm not terribly fond of one-dimensional characters, be they cackling villains or glorified vending machines. These are, for the most part, people; people have thoughts and feelings, they have hopes and dreams, they make mistakes. To me, it's important to convey those things and demonstrate that the protagonist (or in this case, the player character) are not alone in the world in terms of beings with agency and identity. Not long ago, I began running an adventure for some friends at a neighbor's house. Upon a cursory reading, I got a notion for how the local innkeep behaved and what his relationships were like. On the fly, as the players interacted with him, I created the character's partner and began role-playing their interactions in front of the players. It was just a little flavor, a bit of color splashed into the black and white text of the pages in front of me. And it went over incredibly well. I can't overstate the importance of taking just a little time to flesh out parts of your world, whatever you're creating it for and however you're creating it. Tolkien and Martin might at times get carried away with descriptors, but would we care so much about their tales and their many characters without those passages, that depth? Their worlds persist because of the way they were built. Don't you want the same for yours? On Fridays I write 500 words.
Blue Ink Alchemy
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Songs of Cornell: Just Getting Started

Songs of Cornell: Just Getting Started — Blue Ink Alchemy

There really wasn't anything Cornell Starblossom liked more than a lively tavern at night. Night was when everybody shook of the day's responsibilities, relaxed, and loosened their laces, especially their purse strings. The half-elf was adept enough with bandore and thelarr to maintain a decent enough lifestyle with just a few hours of song every night. What really got him attention — and tips — was his voice. Unlike the instrumental skills, honed by years of study at the College of Fochlucan, he'd been born with a melodious voice with good range and solid timbre. He'd trained that too, to be sure. From participating in hymns to Sune with his mother, to literally singing for his supper all up and down the Sword Coast, he'd built the stamina, clarity, and expressiveness to handle a night's worth of song, much to the delight of patrons and approval of tavern owners. He sang songs of pure love, loves lost and regained, learning to love one's own self. He sang ballads of heroes long gone and the battles of mighty nations. He sang of dragons, dire portents, and powerful magic. Most of all, he sang to the individuals in the tavern, rubbing elbows with men and sitting beside ladies, all the while keeping a fine hat in view for the depositing of coin. It was getting late at the Clover Wall Roadhouse when Cornell wrapped up his encore. He felt tired, but satisfied. After recent ordeals, he was glad to have time to simply ply his trade and get to know the locals, especially those in high standing. The blacksmith in particular had been of interest to him, in terms of acquiring better means of protecting himself. Having done that, he resolved to spend the next tenday involved in nothing but good song, good food, and pleasurable company. He was thinking about the feisty redhead who'd invited him to her chambers in a few hours as he counted the night's coin. Just enough for his upscale rooms and meals to last him until tomorrow night. He leaned back with a smile. He had no taxes to pay, no lands to manage, no manor to worry over. Just him, his music, and the road. It was freedom, and he valued it highly. "Oi. Knife-ears." He blinked, slowly, and looked up at the source of the voice. It was a burly, smelly human, beefy hands in fists. A thinner, weasel-faced human stood behind the first, sneering at Cornell. "Gentlemen." Cornell's voice came out in his easy drawl, an affect picked up from his youth in Daggerford and time on the road. "Got some feedback on th' set? I'm always lookin' t' improve." "We bet good money on you in the arena, flower-muncher. We want it back." Ah. So these two were from the Redplumes. Or, at least, had supported the Redplumes in their assault and kidnapping of innocents along the road. Especially non-humans. Cornell's smile faded just a touch, remembering the roar of the crowd, the frothing of the quipper-infested waters... "Ain't my fault you bet on th' wrong odds." He paused. "Were they good odds that we were gonna bite it? I shoulda placed a bet on us, myself. Might've been able to help you kind gents." The beefy one slammed his fist into the table. "We will have coin, or we will have blood!" "Oi." This was the barkeep, wiping down his bar, looking up from tending to his last few customers. "Keep it down or get out. No fighting in my place." Cornell gave the barkeep a nod and a smile, and got to his feet. "You heard th' man, gentlemen. Care t' step outside?" The two humans shared a vicious grin and moved to the door. Cornell handed the barkeep his coin — "for my rooms and board 'til tomorrow night" — and followed, running his fingers over the feather in his hat before putting it on his head. He thought about the rapier hanging from the left side of his belt, and the new crossbow on the right. It was his bandore that he hefted onto his left shoulder, however. As he walked to the door, he did a quick check of the tuning of the strings, plucking one or two to get the notes just right. As soon as they were outside, he saw Weasel-face pulling out a pair of crossbows not unlike Cornell's new acquisition: built for a single hand, quick to reload, deadly with good aim. Ham-fist's weapon of choice was a hammer with a long haft and a heavy-looking head. They grinned. Ham-fist opened his mouth to speak. Cornell looked squarely at Weasel-face and gave the bandore a quick riff.
this may hurt a little but it's something you'll get used to
The discordant melody and minor chord made Weasel-face's eyes go wide. Screaming in panic, the man dropped his crossbows to clutch his head in pain, and turned to run as fast as he could. Ham-fist whirled to yell an imprecation, and that's when Cornell drew his crossbow, aimed, and shot the human in the back of the thigh. Howling, Ham-fist went down. Cornell walked over, hanging the crossbow from his belt, and drawing his rapier. He placed the tip of the blade under Ham-fist's chin, and lifted the human's face towards his. "I'm no killer, nor am I thief," he said, his voice grave and even. "But I am a Harper agent." Cornell lowered his instrument to the ground gently and opened the left side of his jacket, showing the badge he wore underneath. "An' you are a threat t' the common folk, or at least those who ain't like you." He put a little pressure on the rapier, a tiny bead of blood appearing on the man's white skin. "I suggest you grab your friend an' leave. Don't let me see you here again. Remember: we're watching you, racist." Ham-fist nodded, or at least did so as well as he could with a rapier at his throat. Cornell smiled, stepping back, and sheathing his weapon. Ham-fist stumbled to his feet and jogged after Weasel-face. Cornell took a deep breath, and let it out again. While he had no taxes or land, he did have his responsibilities. It was the Harpers who had sponsored his entry into Fochlucan, kept his mother safe, and appraised his father, an elf wizard and adventurer in his own right, of Cornell's progress. And there was the whole empathy-for-the-common-folk thing. Growing up half-elven wasn't easy, especially in areas in the North of the Sword Coast mostly dominated by mainline humans. He could empathize with so many of them. It was part of the reason why stories of the Harpers had always appealed to him, and why he now wore their emblem. He adjusted his hat and headed back for the Roadhouse, bandore on his shoulder. The night, much like his journey across Faerûn in search of story, song, and worthy causes, was just getting started. Mondays are for making art. Dungeons & Dragons copyright Wizards of the Coast.
Blue Ink Alchemy
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500 Words on the Adventurer's League

500 Words on the Adventurer's League — Blue Ink Alchemy

Of late, (almost) every Friday night, I take a long trip from my flat to West Seattle so I can join in the occasionally madcap shenanigans known as the Adventurer's League. For the uninitiated, the Adventurer's League is the 'official' organization for players and DMs of Dungeons & Dragons, sanctioned by Wizards of the Coast. Participants log their adventures, XP gains, and magical items to maintain a relative power level. There are three tiers of play, based on player character levels. New players start with characters at level 1 and work their way up the tiers, trying a smattering of different adventures every week as they progress. To what end, you might ask? The advantage of the Adventurer's League is that you can take an official, logged character to any League venue and game, and fit right in. No need to explain any odd stats or homebrewed items to your new DM. You can review a logsheet at any time, make sure things are on the level, and start rolling dice from there. It could be a friend's house, a coffee shop, or a huge gaming convention. It doesn't matter. Got that +1 breastplate and your holy avenger logged and approved by another DM? You're in. Speaking of DMs, being a Dungeon Master for the Adventurer's League has perks all its own. When you run an adventure, you don't just get the satisfaction of helping your players have a good time, even if you kill their characters. You also get rewards to apply to characters of your own. Dungeon Masters can be hard to come by — the DM experience is ultimately rewarding in and of itself, but it can be incredibly intimidating. There are incentives given just to get someone behind a screen at the table. After all, you can't have a Dungeons & Dragons adventure without someone to populate the dungeon and bring those dragons to life. Most of all, however, beyond the experience points and whatever else players and DMs gain, the Adventurer's League is a wonderful way to meet new people. Tabletop gaming, more often than not, is a collective experience, and everyone has something to bring to the table. Meeting like minds who contribute to a wonderful night of adventure and magic helps create a feeling of community. It helps people feel like they're not alone. It draws people out, and encourages them not only to engage their imaginations, but share it with others. That, in and of itself, is a beautiful thing to me. This happens with most D&D groups, of course. But when gathering at home, most of the players know one another, or get to know one another fairly quickly as they meet regularly. In the League, this happens with strangers. Every week. And everyone benefits from it, and walks away having had a good time. I know this isn't always the case, but so far, my personal experiences have been overwhelmingly positive. In spite of my worries, I plan to keep making the trip every week.
Blue Ink Alchemy
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Friday, June 8, 2018

WordPress PHP PayPal Payout Helper Class

WordPress PHP PayPal Payout Helper Class — Blue Ink Alchemy

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At-A-Glance

Platform: WordPress Language: PHP Keywords: RESTful API, PayPal, eCommerce, WooCommerce

Overview

We live in an international, interconnected world. We work for one another on all sorts of solutions. And we all want to get paid for our work, right? Right. It's not uncommon for people to use a CMS like WordPress to advertise, facilitate, and implement their business. And when doing so, an eCommerce platform handles all of the sales, taxes, and so on. But what if we're not paying for a product, but rather providing payment to another person for a service rendered? The client in this example is running a business in Australia, and connects those needing professional SEO services with qualified freelancers. The desired solution would not only ensure the proper flow of payment from the former to the latter, but also automate the process so that recurring contracts with a monthly or bi-weekly payout schedule would take place without requiring manual input.

Approach

The prevailing idea was to have a solution that was as seamless as possible with current WordPress and WooCommerce functionality. The modularity of WordPress and, by extension, WooCommerce means that new classes to handle a situation like this can be added onto the platform is relatively straightforward. With that in mind, I worked to craft a class that drew the information required from existing sources, work it through the PayPal API, and update all of the pertinent data without interfering with other processes. In most instances, this is a process that is done manually. By automating things, we could make the work of the client more smooth, provided that we could ensure the success of these transactions should they run automatically as a CRON job based on whenever the appropriate payout should be made, as well as checking for the proper currencies on payout.

Result

Thanks to the functionality of WooCommerce and PayPal, the incoming currency was the only type that requires a callout. Once the recipients information is entered and the transaction started, PayPal handles the rest. However, giving it the incoming currency is crucial, in that PayPal is informed that default currency values should not be used. Then, it's a matter of making sure the correct credentials are culled for both payer and recipient from the WordPress database. This information is entered by both parties as part of their registration for the site. The class consolidates this information and, along with the currency type and amount, facilitates the transaction.
Blue Ink Alchemy
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