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Daily Blogging

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The Routine

For awhile now I have thought about breaking the habit of daily blogging, but honestly there is a bit of fear in it.  I got into a small thread on twitter yesterday about this topic and Wilhelm outlines my biggest fear.  If I stopped blogging every single day…  I question if I would ever start back up again.  The irony of this daily blogging thing… is that when I started it I went from being one of the least prolific bloggers to one of the most…  almost over night.  I started doing this daily blogging routine in April of 2013.  My blog however was started in April of 2009, and during those first four years I only managed to make 148 posts.  The largest lapse without any posts was between August of 2012 and April of 2013.  Ultimately my fear is that if I stop the routine… I will go back to that… because of the posts on my blog 1018 happened after I forced myself into this routine.  Ultimately this is part of my schtick, that I tell folks during the Newbie Blogger Initiative and Blaugust is that once upon a time I used to be one of the least regular bloggers out there, but I started down a path….  and quite honestly I am now a bit scared to ever step off of it.

The truth is, my blog started out as a thing largely about gaming but has turned into something more than that.  I never really kept a diary or a journal, but in essence that is what this blog has become.  These are the chronicles of my adventures, mistakes and all of the various things that happen in between.  Over the years I got considerably more personal, and have shared some pretty private stuff with my blog readers.  When something bad has happened in my life, you have been there with me… and often times supporting me.  When there has been a victory…  you have all shared in the glory.  Admittedly there are a lot of details that I leave off the page.  For example I don’t usually mention my wife or family members by name.  In theory I could give a name to her… the way my friend Grace does her husband…  but there is not a nickname that I call her with enough consistency as to make that not feel artificial.  Over the years I’ve created a bit of a rule set that I try and follow.

  • Don’t call people out by name (unless they have called me out first)
  • If something bad happens, focus on the event and not the people
  • If something good happens, talk about the people who made it good
  • Try and remain positive, and not get bogged down in the depression
  • Even though I am filtering…  be honest about my own failures
  • Be humble and thankful that anyone reads my blog at all

The Benefit

I have of course failed at all of them at some point or another, but those are the basic guidelines that I think about when I am writing.  When folks think about this whole daily blogging thing, they tend to focus on the negative.  Sure it is tedious to get up every morning and knock out a blog post before I leave the house.  On the weekends, and when I am taking a day off like I did today I tend to give myself a little more breathing room.  However most of the time like clockwork I can knock out a blog post in thirty minutes to an hour depending on how much I get distracted.  The only day it wears on me is Sundays, when I have to prepare both a podcast episode and knock out a blog post before I can really get on with my day.  For a long time I was staying up until one or two in the morning editing AggroChat but I’ve recently started just heading to bed after the initial first pass.  If I get up at a decent hour I can knock out all of my bloggy/podcasty duties before my wife gets home from church, which gives us a better start to the day.

There is however a lot of benefit to getting up every morning and writing a post.  In many ways the act of writing about something, helps me investigate it further.  I will turn an idea over in my head, and through writing often process my feelings.  There is something about placing words on a page that makes it more “real” for me.  There is also the benefit of having a written log of everything I did during the year.  Each major event, ends up finding its way into my posts in one form or another, so in essence I am externalizing my memory.  So if I wanted to know the weekend I did this, or that… there is almost always a footnote somewhere in my blog about it that I can search later and place specific dates to memories.  Not sure exactly why, but there is something comforting about this… being able to look up with certainty when something happened in the past, and I have three years of my life documented like this now.

The Readers

The part of the equation that I have not sorted out however, is why the hell I have actual readers that continue to grow over the years.  At this point…  they have to be in this because they care about me, and not necessarily what I happen to be saying.  That proposition in itself is so damned strange.  There is this huge part of me that cannot fathom why more of you have not wandered off in boredom by now.  I do not lead an exciting life, and I tend to fall into the same routines in whatever I happen to be playing.  The truth is I have nothing terribly profound to say, and just represent your average person applying fingers to the keyboard.  I am blessed with some amazing friends, but it still shocks me when I meet someone and they tell me that they have read my blog for a long period of time.  I just want to ask them why?  At some point I stopped doing this because blogging seemed to be what the cool kids were doing.  I guess in truth I do the daily routine for me, and because it makes me feel like I am accomplishing something every morning before I even leave the house.  I get more out of this than I think anyone might realize.  I have this open dialog with the world, but in truth I am mostly talking to myself.  I am putting into print things I need to tell myself, and through the act of writing them out…  I actually take the time to listen.

 

Daydreams and Anger

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Powerball Mania

It seems like the only thing that people have been talking about over the last few days at least locally, is the insanity that is the 1.5 billion dollar powerball jackpot.  This sounds only slightly less impressive when you realize that the cash payout was 900 million… and that the IRS would have claimed at least a third of that before it ever actually got to you.  Still however roughly 600 million dollars is a lot of money, more money that I would ever know what to do with.  Which is a fact that became more clear as the days went on.  I’ve been part of an office pool for years, that I largely look at as “insurance”.  Enough people are in said pool that if they hit the numbers there would be a lot of tendered resignations the next day…. and I feel like I would like to at least have that option.  If all of those folks walked…. work would be a pretty miserable place to be for awhile.  The thing is…  for me it is exactly like paying an extra tax and I never really consider what would happen if they actually did win.  However when the powerball itself was up this high, I had to actually purchase a handful of tickets for myself.

The thing about holding something in your hand that could potentially make you at least on paper a billionaire, starts you daydreaming a little.  However I feel like maybe went in different directions than most people.  Quite honestly the only things I could really think of that I would want to do with the money is buy a new gaming rig and a new gaming laptop.  I mean there is  the usual “lets quit work and do what we want to” pipe dream as well, but that one is probably common among all people.  I have no burning desire to buy a bunch of cars, or buy a new lavish and extravagant house.  In the grand scheme of things… I life a pretty damned charmed life and how “meager” my lottery daydreams were only served to prove that I guess.  Most of the things that I would ultimately end up doing… are already in the realm of possibility for me…  well other than the quitting work thing.  Even though my brain consistently tries to tell me that I am not…  fuck you depression…  I guess I really am fairly happy with life in general.  Now if someone wanted to give me part of their winnings however…. I wouldn’t say no.

Calm Night

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Life affirming message above aside…  yesterday was a really really bad day.  Nothing truly catastrophic mind you, because there are lots of worse things that could have happened.  We have just been dealing with this vendor at work, that seems to keep pulling new requirements out of their ass at the 11th hour.  I get really tired of parachuting in and fixing messes, that never needed to be messes in the first place.  I have some rage issues, and I always have had them.  As a kid I used to push down all the negativity until it eventually erupted and all of that bile and bad blood ended up getting targeted at usually the wrong person.  Over the years I have learned to blow off steam in little bits here and there, rather than letting my problems get big enough to cause a thermonuclear explosion.  Yesterday however… I came precariously close to losing my shit on a conference call.  There was a point at which I just had to stop talking for a little bit…  I am not sure how long…  but I knew if I continued talking a stream of hate would spew forth in a manner that is just not acceptable in the work place.  Within a 45 minute period I had to configure a new reverse proxy server… on the existing application box…  configure it… and all the while keep from trying to break the vendor application sharing the same space.  I got it done… and then a friend took me out to lunch to get me out of the environment long enough to reset the fuse.

So on the way home from work last night, I stopped by the liquor store to get something that would hopefully cause me to chill out and relax the rest of the evening.  I took a red solo cup… because there is just something comforting about them…  filled it up one third buttershots, one third baileys, and the last third with milk.  If you want to chill out… I highly suggest this drink because after that the world felt nice and warm and fuzzy.  After that I had a night where I flitted around games, popping into World of Warcraft and messing with my garrisons and shipyards…. but not really settling on any one character long enough to play much of anything.  I eventually popped into voice chat and logged over into Warframe running a few things with Tam and Ashgar until Tam needed to go to class.  From there Ash and I attempted to do a bunch of things…  the last of which was defeating a planetary boss.  The unfortunate thing is that Ash ran out of resurrections… and I barely finished the boss off… but he didn’t get credit which is kinda bullshit.  As an Excaliber the best thing about me… is my melee abilities, but unfortunately on that boss that seemed useless.  Hopefully when I am not imparied the fight will go a hell of a lot easier, and we can get him through it maybe tonight.

 

 

 

The Sovereign

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Outside

I am not really sure where to go with this post so bear with me.  I had something already planned this morning, but I have to say when I woke up and turned on the television, the news hit me pretty hard.  As a result I am sorta rerouting all power towards a post talking about my love of David Bowie.  I think the part of the news that shocks me the most is the fact that this weekend I had my own mini Bowie odyssey.  On a complete whim the song Heart’s Filthy Lesson popped into my head, which is from the era when David Bowie and Trent Reznor were collaborating on a ton of different projects.  Which lead me to listen to the entire Outside album again…  since in my core I am still wired to care about albums as this complete vehicle.  Bowie particularly…. created experiences… and if you were not listening to the entire album… preferably in order you were missing out on the total picture he wanted to leave you with.  It feels so damned strange to be writing about him in past tense because for the most part my entire life I have loved him.  Granted I am too young to have experienced his really “shocking” Ziggy Stardust period, but I have this vague ephemeral impression of him existing in the background as I ran around playing with my Star Wars toys.

The first era I can really remember being a fan was during the 80’s with China Girl and Let’s Dance… both of which songs loaded with meaning and disguised in a candy coated pop exterior.  That was the thing with Bowie music…  it worked on so many different levels.  There was something pleasant and easy to swallow….  but it burned a bit on the way down.  So if he wrote about something… it was often as an indictment of a practice.  He had this way of taking something and wrapping it in so many layers, that it was often a puzzle to unravel what exactly he was meaning.  Hell as I listened to album Outside this weekend I found myself googling all sorts of side phrases that exist along with the songs… but not really part of the narrative.  Each of them taken together added up to building this atmosphere of the world that the album existed in.  Things like “Paddy? What a fantastic death abyss!”  Just sprinkled there without explanation…  only serving to add to the allure of the tapestry being created.

Persona

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I think the thing that always consistently impressed me about David Bowie, is the fact that he could seemingly transition between different phases of his life and different personas….  and make it feel as natural and thoughtful as if the other face was always lying there just beneath the surface waiting for its turn to come out.  There are a lot of artists that are known for re-inventing themselves as the times changed…  Madonna for example has been this great and malleable chameleon.  Bowie on the other hand was something different…  for lack of better words… its like he never changed but was always evolving.  There is this sameness to all of David Bowie’s music… even though most of it sounds nothing like the rest of his catalog.  Listening to any Bowie song… is in essence listening to all of them.  Every single one seems as carefully crafted as the last, and each one tries so hard to reveal something inside of yourself…  and at the same time about the times you are listening to it in.  In the middle the thoughts and feelings you have when you listen to the music…. somehow get encoded in the experience as well.

Listening this weekend, each time I changed songs…  an experience that I had to that song played clearly in my head.  Not all of them were amazing experiences… and a lot of the early 90’s were spattered with the confusion and loneliness of being a sensitive teen, but still there was this experience that I revisited again through the music that was very much worth having.  There is this period of Bowie that often gets forgotten…  that happens to be my favorite.  During the late 80s… 88/89 to be specific Bowie did this side project called Tin Machine, and there was just something about the sound that fit perfectly to whatever I happened to be going through at the time.  Granted this is the exact same time I am listening to pretty much nothing but Pretty Hate Machine… but there was just something about the music that spoke to me.  I remember skating to Under the God, the above song…  and it blended nicely into the confused soundtrack of DRI, The Cure, and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers that are also often gracing the beat up spray painted “boom box” that sat ramp side.  That is the thing about the music… there are all of these touchstones… where specific albums mean specific things to me… and all of them are important.

Still Processing

I am very much still processing the news, and at this point I heard it roughly an hour ago.  Bowie has been this supernatural force in my life, and always been one thought a way during a good chunk of it.  There are so many things that I cherish… and probably the biggest is the fact that above anything else he was an individual.  He was also really damned sexy, and has this way of making the what seemed like the strangest outfits seem completely normal.  If I had to describe him it would be something like “classy as fuck”, but not in the normal ironic sense of that phrase…. but legitimately he was almost painfully classy.  The above video is somewhat non sequitur but whatever…. even though that isn’t Bowie voicing himself in Venture Brothers…  it outlines the clearly super hero person the man had.  The world is going to suck without him in it.  Most of the time when a celebrity passes…. I have no real feelings.  This man however… he was important to me… he did important things… and produced important art.  This one…  is going to hurt for a long while.

Week Survived

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Week Was Bullshit

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This week was kinda hell.  It was my first week back from my extended Christmas vacation, and it feels like it was pretty much the same thing for my entire office.  Everything became a crisis, because all of those folks that had been slacking for the last quarter of the year suddenly realized that it was 2016 and all of the stuff they failed to accomplish now apparently looks bad for them.  So as a result every half formed idea and improperly started project has seemed to rise up from the graveyard to walk the earth once more.  All of this seemed to reach a head on Thursday when no less than a dozen different fires and microfires were blazing, all of which needing my attention.  Not the least of which was a false positive trojan, and a virus scare where over a hundred users decided to click on that phishing email.  As the week continued I started simply wanting to watch the world burn.

The positive is that as the week wore on I got less and less “jet lagged” for lack of a better term.  Over the Christmas break my wife and I had managed to get our scheduled completely screwed up, and there were several nights when I was finally getting to bed around 3:30 inn the morning.  Those first few days were pure hell, but Tuesday was better than Monday, and Wednesday better than Tuesday…  and thankfully by the time he hellmouth opened up and dumped Thursday on me I was actually feeling pretty great.  The other crazy thing that happened this week was the Lottery… and everyone daydreaming about what they would do if they won the lottery.  It felt like on Friday I could not go anywhere without someone striking up a conversation about the potential winnings.  While I realize that the lottery itself is a tax on those who are bad at mathematics… I managed to get myself suckered in as well and picked up a handful of tickets.  I have long played the pool at work, because I view it as insurance.  If for some reason the entire department hit the lottery… there would be a lot of tendered resignations the next day and I wanted to at least have the option to do the same.

Lots of Destiny

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From a gaming standpoint, I mostly played Destiny on the 360 this week… trying desperately to get to level cap so I have a character to play with the friends on that platform.  Last night… I played absolutely nothing apart from some Neko Atsume.  Then again with Neko you don’t actually “play” the game but instead just look in periodically on your adorable catbutts playing with balls and shit in your yard.  Last night we had a gathering of some of our family, as before holidays we had resolved to try really hard to get together more often.  The problem with last night however is that my wife is entirely too nice of a person.  She somehow allowed one of the most bigoted anti-gay part of the family…  to join our otherwise gay positive little gathering.  The positive is that for the most part it was a pleasant night, which only serves to make me realize just how damned fucked up Facebook is.  The asshole in question has the nerve to forward all manner of anti-gay propaganda on Facebook but apparently would never say that sort of thing to someones face.  This is yet another reason why I don’t really have a Facebook, but instead just the one attached to this blog… largely for the purpose of propagating the blog out into the world.

As you could see in the first image of this post, it is fairly snowy outside so after our gathering we stopped by the grocery store last night and prepared to not really leave the house at all this weekend.  So today we are having Frito Chilli Pies for lunch, and crock pot spaghetti for dinner… all the time between snuggling into our blanket cocoons on the couch.  My wife is teaching Forensics this semester, and as a result she has a whole slew of videos that she wants to preview for augmenting certain sections of her text, like blood spatter analysis and such.  Her first year teaching we ended up testing a bunch of different fake blood formulas because blood spatter is the sort of thing that only really makes sense with visual demonstrations.  As far as myself today, I will probably be playing some more World of Warcraft, and I have even contemplated patching up Wildstar to try and get in on the world boss hunt thing that is going on.  I am still finding my thoughts of Final Fantasy XIV pretty lackluster right now, but I know there is a world event that I should probably pop in do.  Though admittedly I find the monkey samurai helmets creepy as hell… and no where near as adorable as the bunny samurai hat I wear all the time… or the ramurai hat from last year.