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Because of the weird times that we are living in, we decided to do the normal Blaugust event in April and call it Blapril. The hope was to get our minds off of everything that was going on in the world with Covid 19 and in theory give folks something good to focus on during that month. At that time I think a good number of us expected that by the ACTUAL Blaugust time frame that events would have gotten more or less back to normal. I at least was wrong about that and we are still very much dealing with the world created by living in a pandemic.

As we near the time frame of “actual” Blaugust, I still wanted to do something to mark the event. I think it is WAY too soon to do another “31 posts or bust” type event. Instead I put on my thinking cap and tried to devise something that would be more of a drop in/drop out nature. If you have been around the internet for awhile I am certain you have seen one of those events that involves posting or drawing something based on a fixed number of prompts. Those are cool and all but I had this brain storm… what if we turned something like that into a “pub crawl” of sorts.

What Is Promptapalooza?

The idea is that each day during the Month of August there will be a different writing prompt presented by a different blogger. I think it was Roger who suggested that we are doing a “Blog Relay”, because the second part of this is that each day the person posting the prompt will also indicate who is next in sequence for tomorrows prompt. There is a good deal of flexibility in this, and I am trying to set it up in a way so that you can either supply your own prompt that you want people to create content based on, or we can supply one for you to post.

What we really need is more sites participating, because currently I am roughly half the way to the thirty bloggers I need to carry this event off. I had been keeping it on the down low up until this point as I tried to work out the logistics, but I now believe it is time to do a finish push and get the rest of the participants signed up. Really at the end of the day all that is asked is for you to take a day and at the bottom of your normal post include the prompt that will be used for the next day along with a link to the next person in sequence providing a prompt.

So in theory it would work something like this:

• On July 31st I would provide prompt number 1 and link to the person posting prompt 2
• On August 1st someone would provide prompt 2 and link to the person posting prompt 3
• On August 2nd someone would provide prompt 3 and link to the person posting prompt 4

This in theory accomplishes a few things. Firstly it provides a constant stream of potential topics for folks to write about. You can pick and choose the ones that interest you and incorporate them organically into your content creation stream. You can also completely ignore their existence and just sit back and consume the content that is coming out of it. The second thing is that highlights a different blog each day and hopefully gets traffic to that blog, letting a chunk of the community see what they have been doing.

My intent as the ring leader is to advertise the person who is providing the daily prompt. Since time zones are a bit of a butt this is why we are advertising the topic for the next day. My hope is that in the case of our Aussie and Kiwi friends that they will be able to snag that topic and still make it work. There are other details I am sure we will have to work out logistically as we go. The event at its heart is a way of prompting folks to create content and also serve as a showcase for the various blogs in our community.

What Promptapalooza Is Not

Blaugust Promptapalooza is not the normal Blaugust. We did that back in April with Blapril and this is an attempt at creating something new to take its place this year. It is not a mission to write 31 blog posts during a month, but if that is something you really want to do then by all means go for it. It is a more low key event designed to allow you to cherry pick the prompts that most interest you and also serve as a bit of a way to help spark creativity and inspiration. We are not running a marathon, but instead sorta having a big virtual block party… with social distancing of course.

There will not be medals based on participation. There will however probably be some sort of thing you can dump in your side bar to show that you were a participant if you so choose. This is not a contest but instead is a community appreciation event, that also includes a feed of new writing prompts. This might get integrated into the normal Blaugust event in the future depending on how well this goes. Just to make absolutely certain everyone understands, there is no expectation of trying to write 31 posts during this August. The world is entirely too weird right now for us to try and pin ourselves down like that.

How Do I Participate?

Right now I just need more bloggers to sign up. Once I get the number needed I will be working out a calendar and indicating which bloggers are to post prompts on which dates. These can absolutely be composed ahead of time and just posted on a timer. Additionally the form goes into detail about wanting to know what dates you can’t post on… and I will be using this information to attempt to create something that works for everyone. I think this could be really cool, but I need some more volunteers.

• Promptapalooza Sign-Up Form

Apologies that a post never actually happened yesterday. It was one of those mornings that after waking up and showering I checked my phone only to see that I had missed a bunch of emergency texts from work over night. Basically the entire morning was spent dealing with issues that had come up, some of which threatened potential litigation. The level of stress that I have been under over the last three weeks has been indescribable as so many things have gone wrong in sequence that I am no longer shocked by them. The biggest challenge for me is that I am stressed beyond the point of being able to actually find relief.

Traditionally my prime outlet is gaming, and I have been in this funk of sitting at my machine and largely staring blankly into oblivion. Yesterday for example I was technically off the clock at 9:51 in the morning having worked my maximum allowed hours for the week. However instead of firing up a game and doing something that I would enjoy, I mostly just browsed the internet or watched YouTube videos for a solid four hours before doing something with any meaning behind it. I did have an enjoyable evening finishing up objectives in Destiny and slowly catching up on She-Ra. It is such a phenomenal show, and I highly recommend it to anyone.

I finished everything on the Huntress for the week, so I am now moving on to the next character in pecking order and going to at a minimum work on Iron Banner for the Warlock. I am not sure how much I will get accomplished over the next several days given that Diablo 3 seasonal start is tonight, but going to at least make an attempt to push. Grinding random stuff in Destiny and watching things on Netflix seems to be a pretty good stress reliever for me right now.

I can’t really handle ONLY watching video these days so I tend to be playing something on my 43 inch 4k television while watching netflix over on my 1080p side monitor that I have turned portrait mode. This generally contains whatever I happen to be watching, twitter and the various chat programs. That said I seem to be very bad at watching things like Discord while I am also watching something on Netflix. Apologies for all of the ignored messages last night. I am in a much better headspace than I was yesterday so whatever it was that I was doing seemed to help.

Blaugust Secret Mission

Now this next bit is going too be purposefully obtuse, but I am in need of about 30 volunteer bloggers for a secret mission. We had the normal Blaugust style festivities this year in April, and we’ve talked about doing something to mark the traditional event. I have a plan and I am in need of volunteers for shenanigans. It won’t require much effort out of any one blogger, and I can even assist with some of it. I will go into further details in private, but I am wanting to more or less keep this secret until I am ready to announce the plans… which means in order to do it I need those 30 volunteers. You all have about a bajillion different ways to contact me, so if you are interest in this quest hit me up and I will fill in the details further.

Every so often I end up writing a real world post, and this is that morning. As a result I tend not to syndicate these terribly widely because it isn’t exactly the sort of thing for mass consumption. These are just me talking with you my long term readers about what happens to be going on in my life. To prime the pump here is a delightful picture of Kenzie and Josie… and it makes me realize that Josie certainly has grown significantly. Also it makes me realize how bad the giant hole that the cats have tore in the stairwell landing looks. The hole started its life as a worn spot in the carpet because they put down really cheap carpet when they flipped this house and we have not gotten our shit together to the point to decide what the hell to do about it. The cats however helped make that hole basically an exposed spot of bare plywood.

This is “four” a new addition to our outdoor cats that visit us from time to time. Four is pretty young and seems to largely be unbothered by our presence. While taking this photo my wife was a few yards away sitting on the patio off our bedroom. Four is completely chill and flopped on the concrete under the table and while he bolts for a moment when there is movement… seems to reset back to the default operation he was previously doing rather quickly. I love the existence of our outdoor cat family, but I have noticed that their presence has meant a lack of the usual bunnies and birds. I just want them to be friendly enough to visit us while we are out there.

Here is the point at which we pivot drastically from adorable cats… to Covid 19. March 20th was my last day in the office during what my friends and I have started to refer to as “The Before Times”. So I was fully remote for 13 weeks, but now have been feeling a certain amount of pressure to at least start showing up a few days a week in the office. It is not so much that I was given an ultimatum, but effectively if I did not start returning before the 30th of June, I would need to come up and clean out my office. I am not exactly sure WHY we need to clean out offices because after two days in the office it still feels like an absolute skeletal crew up there. I had a spare mask I was not using and decided that Giant Cthulhu Pop needed to do his part… or at least could hold it for me.

When I say that there is no one there… this image illustrates that point. This is on the floor of the parking garage with the tunnel that connects to our building In the before times… this would be wall to wall cars and I would not be able to find a spot to park. Even at 7 am in the morning when I normally roll into the parking garage, I would have had to have parked one floor away in either direction to find a space. The building itself is on mask protocols and social distancing, with things like elevators limited to only four people at a time. The thing is… I never rode in an elevator with more than just one other person. On a normal morning rush… there were lots of times I was in an elevator with ten people crammed in.

Ultimately I had planned on shifting to a few days a week in the office and the rest of the days remote as my normal schedule. The problem is… I kept waiting for things to get better but they just haven’t. The above image represents the general curve of infections that we have experienced in the county I live in. The blue diamonds represent phase 1, 2 and 3 of reopening the state and the green stars represent memorial day weekend, the beginning of the protests, and the trump rally. As of yesterday we had a single day high of 259 new cases identified in the county and of course… this was the week that I decided to poke my head out of my hidey hole and go back to work. I am more than a little terrified that I might have been exposed to something have have brought it home to my wife who has also been remote this entire time.

I didn’t exactly feel unsafe while in my office, because everyone there was equally mandated to be wearing masks anytime there was a chance of interaction. However that also means that most of us were unmasked at our desks sharing the same recirculating air. In some ways I am glad I left the house because I had developed a tangible fear of doing so. During the entirety of the thirteen week period, I had only been in two buildings with more than a few people at a time. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to schedule hands free grocery pick up, and only needed to go to I think three stores… all three of which had a minimal number of people in them. However the longer I went without venturing forth… the more insurmountable that task seemed to be. I now absolutely understand how someone finds themselves afraid to go out into the world.

I did do something silly while I was in the office, and took a photo of my sheet of cheapo Dollar Tree stickers. This is kinda dumb but one of the things I would do, when someone did something really cool is that I would slap a sticker on the opening of their cube. I kinda miss being able to do that, so I sorta want to try and turn these into icons that I can use in teams. It is silly but weirdly people really seemed to like getting “good job” thumbs up stickers, so I guess that is something that you never quite grow out of. I did have to alter my pattern of giving them out, because at first I was just sticking them on the top of the cube wall… until I realized that most of my employees couldn’t see up there.

The problem now is I am trying to decide what I should do. Do I continue going back into the office next week on Tuesday and Wednesday… or do I resign myself to just going up and cleaning out my office over the long holiday weekend? The reason why I am so concerned is illustrated in the above chart, which shows the raw data points that have not been smoothed into a curve. Our previous high was 143 on June 20th… and then 4 days later it spiked up to 259 on the 24th. The periodic dips that you see make up for the fact that there just isn’t much testing that occurs over the weekend. I live in a part of the country where masks are just not worn… the few stores I have been in my wife and I represented the sole mask wearers and got a lot of nasty looks as a result. This is why I generally feel like it isn’t very safe to leave my house, let alone return to anything resembling a normal daily cadence.

Something has to change or things are just going to get out of control. I am not sure if that thing means a rolling back of the opening or something like mandating that masks be worn in public. Whatever the case something needs to change now because we are already past the point of making a significant difference any time soon. I fully expect that this is our lives for the next few years, and I wish I had the magical thinking that some of my coworkers do about the recovery bouncing back within a few months. Also… I would really prefer not to die, which is what escalates my fear given my multiple warning signs suggesting that if I did catch it… I would probably have a really bad time. I realize this is a bit of a downer post, but sometimes my blog is therapy and I needed to get some of these thoughts out of my head this morning. I did give you cats before I careened off the cliff though.