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Avoiding Homeward Path

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As I alluded to yesterday, I am still struggling pretty hard right now. While I am not putting in near the hours I was at the beginning of this current crisis, the fact that it continues to drag on over a month into it… is just grating. The only word I have to adequately describe where I am mentally is “weary”. Part of what has helped me deal with all of this is the fact that I could come home and spend a few hours running around the galaxy with my cast of “friends” in Mass Effect Legendary edition. Unfortunately that is now coming to its own end as I have reached the point of no return in the third outing. Essentially if I move the story forward at this point I will be on a downhill slide to the end of the game.

I find myself somewhat wistful about this most recent outing in the Mass Effect universe. This was my first time playing a female Shepard and I enjoyed it greatly, apart from the less than awesome romance options. I’ve learned something about my particular brand of “pan” in that I am just not attracted to traditional straight white guys. If I could have romanced Cortez or maybe even Joker… then possibly. Instead I basically clung to Liara like a life raft in that department. Mass Effect Andromeda has a mod that opens up all romances to all genders, and I am hoping eventually someone figures out how to do one for the Legendary edition because Tali and Jack are far better than anything I had open to me apart from the non-paramour characters of Chambers and Traynor.

It is really interesting how different the three games in the series are. Mass Effect 1 is this very tight and focused adventure with extremely sharply focused storytelling. Mass Effect 2 is this big meandering adventure with a truly staggering cast of playable characters. Then Mass Effect 3 narrows the focus once again and makes everything about this driving conflict of the Reapers trying to annihilate all life in the galaxy. I still after all of this time prefer the second game and its pacing, but I prefer the mechanics and visual style of the third game. There are some pretty staggering cinematic moments that feel integral to the story and not just window dressing.

If I get home at a decent hour, I will focus on pushing the game across that finish line. From what I remember once I start the assault on the enemy base, it is a quick slide to the final moments of the game. As it stands right now… I still don’t have a clue how I am going to finish things up. I know I have three decisions before me and I have more than enough war resources to get the best possible endings down each path. The problem with finishing however is this journey will be over… and right now I have been using the nostalgia that it has brought me to prop me up and keep me from collapsing under the weight of stress. If I wrap things up… I am absolutely going to have to find another big sprawling adventure to dive into in order to keep me focused.

In another side notes… I did 182 pull ups last night that took about 15 minutes of real time and got absolutely nothing for it. If you find yourself down this path… abort because it is SO not worth it. In additional side notes… I am going to try and ease back into blogging again because the entire process is therapeutic for me and maybe will help me weather the storm a bit better. I miss these morning one sided conversations. I hope you are all doing well and I hope tomorrow I will come visit with you again.

I’m Still Okay

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Hey friends. This is probably the longest lapse I have had in my blog and it isn’t over yet. I just figured I should probably poke my head out for a moment to let everyone know that I am mostly fine. I am going through something right now that is exceptionally stressful and having to just keep my eyes focused on what has to get done right now. Blogging while awesome and often times a relief valve, is just going to go away for awhile until I can come out on the other side of this.

I am extremely appreciative of the comments that I have gotten through various social platforms, but also I just don’t have the “cutlery” to respond right now. I am functional, still showering each morning and all of that. Essentially I am in a mode where it is consuming all of me. Not even able to come home and blow off steam through gaming because the games themselves seem somehow tarnished by the experience.

I hope you are all doing okay, and I look forward to reaching a point where I can tread water instead of drowning like I am right now.

Memories are Fleeting

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This is going to be a bit of an odd post but it is something that has been on my mind. Steel yourself for a rather melancholic romp through my childhood. I have to physically go into the office this morning, and I don’t really have any other content ideas staged so we are going to go with this one. It is also going to be somewhat difficult to write because I want to speak in generalities to protect the innocent. If you have been reading this blog for some time you might know that I grew up in a very small town. The town was so small that it largely did not have much in the way of the infrastructure required to survive from day to day. I live an hour south from the small town that I grew up in, but about twenty minutes west was a medium sized town that we were in constantly because that is where the closest Walmart was, along with various sundry other amenities like the nearest hospital.

Recently I have been spending a good deal of time in this medium sized town because with my father breaking his hip then having a hernia surgery and various assorted doctors visits… have pushed me to drive its streets once again. I would say that honestly this medium sized down holds more memories for me than probably even my home town because we spent so much time there. During the summers I would take part in this Arts Enrichment camp at their performing arts center that is this giant art deco adjacent building. I would spend four or five weeks each year going eight plus hours a day to this camp, some of which was completely unstructured time roaming the facility and in a way it almost feels like a home that I once lived in. Each time I pass the building waves of half remembered memories wash over me and it was one of these that I am going to focus on this morning.

There are so many faces that I remember vividly, but I am awful with names. However in all of these fragmented bits of my databanks, one specific name stood out. I have no clue WHY I specifically remember their name but as one does when you are bored one night… I googled it. Seems as though it is a pretty unique name because everything that I was able to pull up from Google seemed to be linked to this individual. In part this is why I am not using names because I have a feeling that they might just be the only person named this on the internet. Among the links I found was one to an Art Portfolio website that included a contact form. It took me a few days but I finally cobbled together a message that I am certain sounded like the murmurings of a madman and hit send.

A lot of the memories of this time blend together because I went to the Art Camp a number of different times under different disciplines. The first time I attended was in the band program, the second time I think was for traditional art, the third time for photography and the last time was for creative writing. Everything is pretty clear other than those middle two times… not sure which one came first but in any one of these disciplines there are roughly ten to fifteen kids that go along with one or two instructors. The person in question I remember in association with the traditional art program. I remember hanging out with them quite a bit that summer, eating lunches in the same pod of folks and even hanging out at a dance that was associated with the program. I remember them being extremely agitated that night over something but I don’t remember what.

There are certain songs that trigger memories of that dance, namely Never Let Me Down Again by Depeche Mode. I think this is largely because the individual I reached out to, had a friend who was super into Depeche Mode in the Ballet program, and at this dance they kept trying to get whoever was controlling the sound system to play it. I remember the name of the Pottery instructor and that we made Raku which is a kind of pottery where we fired it in a makeshift Kiln that was effectively a trashcan packed with wood and paper… which leads the glaze to crack and the clay to turn black from the soot. I also remember making this nonsense leather mask in the class that was somewhere between Kabuki and Voodoo themed. Each memory is a vignette out of space and time and I’ve sort of woven them into a narrative for lack of other context.

Scanning back forward to today, I thought maybe the Art Portfolio website was unattended and that maybe I was just sending an email out into the void. I set my expectations that I was unlikely to ever hear back from this person, but roughly a day later I had a return response, which lead to a handful of exchanges back and forth. While the recipient was extremely gracious about such a weird interaction, and remembered a number of details about that summer… while they never really said as much I can tell they have no clue at all who I am even when I provided a picture from that era in my life. This person was memorable enough for them to act as an anchor in my memory but whatever recollections they might have had about me were washed away by time. I understand this completely because my parent will dredge up people that I supposedly knew as a child and I cannot with any amount of concentration muster any details about them.

This whole sequence however has had this weird impact on me. It is starting to make me question my own personal narrative about how events in the past went down. Like in this case I remembered hanging out with this person quite a bit in maybe a group of four people total. Maybe I was just the annoying kid that was hanging on trying to find a place to fit in? Maybe I just came across as random white dude number 407 in a sea of other very similar folks that blended into the background radiation? Thinking back I do remember this was likely before my final growth spurt and absolutely before facial hair, and from my high school days onwards the three defining features that people generally recall about me are the beard, being 6’4″ and having a deeper than normal voice. During that summer however, I had none of these on my side.

It does however make me wonder what sort of impression I leave on people now. Am I just a nameless and faceless voice in the chaos of the internet? Am I someone that leaves a mark on those that I have interacted with? I warned you this was going to be a melancholic post, and I don’t really have any answers to these. I am told that I leave a mark on people, but also when confronted with the fact that someone I very clearly remember has zero memory of me… it does sorta make you wonder how tenuous that connection might be.

I am a Horrible Human Being

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Morning Friends! It has been awhile since I wrote a complete nonsense post and as such now that I have some nonsense to talk about I thought it was high time. I am a horrible human being. Like I realize that is a big blanket statement but I will attempt to explain WHY I am a horrible human being. First there are some key elements that you need to understand for this story to work. This is Josie rolled into a ball sleeping on the box beside me during the work day. She is a mess, but a delightful one. As a ringtail breed as I understand them… she will pretty much be permanently in a state of extended kittenhood. She plays with everything and has a grand ole time doing it. She is also EXTREMELY precocious and figures out ways to get into pretty much everything. She wakes us up on the weekends by trying to running across us, attacking the rug at the foot of the bed or attempting to climb the curtains. Let me reiterate… she is a mess but we love her greatly.

Another key bit of information that is important for this story to make any sense is the fact that my wife has no depth perception. I don’t mean this is a funny “ha ha” sort of way stating that she is bad at catch, but instead in a very literal sense. She was born without her eyes fused together and while she spent much of her childhood going through an arduous path of attempts to make them fuse… it never quite happened. There are some truly adorable photos of her as a child sporting an eyepatch, mischievous grin and adorable curls… and I can’t revel in just how stinking cute she was because it is a traumatic experience. It took me until recently to understand some of her behavior like her reluctance to use drive throughs or to gas up her own car. These are both things I do for her generally, but never understood why until she finally explained some twenty years after marriage that she cannot figure out where she is in relation to the drive through or the gas pump.

The next bit of information that you need to understand is what a “Roly Polly” is, which admitted gets called by a bunch of names depending on the region you grew up in. I think more collectively they are known as pill bugs. One of the first things we learn as a child is that they roll up into a ball as a defensive mechanism (or to preserve moisture in periods of dryness). It is fun of course to flick a rolypolies and watch it go rolling across the ground. We have a partially collapsed ductwork through our concrete foundation and as a result the odd random smol bug finds its way into our house. Generally speaking I leave Rolypolies alone because they are obviously lost if they made it inside but occasionally I will just open the bedroom door and set them outside so they can find a better climate.

Now that you have all of the key bits of information we will move on with this story. I had gotten up and showered and was getting dressed when my wife was in the bathroom. Josie has this habit of obsessively staying in the bedroom with us as we get ready, and she was apparently stalking something in the adjacent bathroom. My wife proclaimed that she thought there was a bug on the floor and I of course asked what kind. She wasn’t sure and that lead me to come into the room and upon seeing it I immediately said it was just a rolypolie and not a big deal. She doubted me because she said it didn’t look like a rolypolie… because again no depth perception she just saw a flattened black thing on the ground. So without thinking I reached down and gave the bug a little flick… it rolled up into a ball and skidded across the room.

Remember that Josie is extremely precocious. She immediately grasped what had happened and proceeded to start batting the rolypolie around the bathroom floor. I am a horrible human being because I taught a cat how to torture a poor little bug. At some point she lost track of it and we proceeded to quietly open the back door and rescue the poor thing. However I am absolutely certain that Josie is not going to bop every single bug to see if it rolls into a ball and can be made into a “more funner” toy. I’ve given her a bit of information she did not need to know because up until now she had mostly just quietly followed bugs around the house out of curiosity. I just taught her that they can also be really fun toys.