Getting Back Up

I started trying to write about my thoughts and feelings, to bring you all up to speed with where I am, and both the world at large and my own mood have shifted considerably since then. There was an event that people have apparently settled into calling the “Capitol Riot,” and while the U.S.A. isn’t a failed state just yet, our state GPA isn’t great so to speak. The world isn’t quite as much on fire as it seemed on January 6th, but the future is still uncertain. Personally, although I don’t have full-on clinical depression, I do have clinical anxiety, and my brain occasionally throws in a bit of depression on top of that. That may explain why I was feeling unusually unmotivated over the past few weeks, to the point where I was wondering if I should just throw in the towel on some of my creative endeavors. Then something clicked and suddenly I was so inspired that I could barely concentrate on my day job. So this post isn’t going to be as much of a downer as it seemed I guess!

For me the new year came quietly and without much ceremony. I went into 2020 hoping to make a change, to find a better job and generally get things moving in my life, maybe see more of the world or at least visit my sister in DC. (And I hope to not find myself warning her to stay away from Capitol Hill so often.) I was at least lucky enough to be able to work from home, but that’s had its ups and downs even so. At some point I stopped feeling cooped up, though I’ve still struggled to get stuff done. I don’t have any resolutions for the new year per se, but I do want to do a better job of both keeping up on my creative endeavors and keeping in touch with the people I care about. I also just need to take better care of my own health, since being tired so much of the time isn’t conducive to much of anything other than sleeping a lot.

I did a lot with keyboards over the past year, and it’s become one of my major hobbies. I’ve built kind of a lot of them now, though a lot of those are small macro pads. I decided I need to cut down on keyboard spending, though I still pre-ordered the KARA keyboard from Rama Works and Magic Girl keycaps from The Key Company, which weren’t cheap, though there are much more expensive keyboard things out there that I’m not even touching. I started using a weird ergonomic split keyboard with only 36 keys, and that’s somehow become my preferred type of board, and I have a second one I use for work. Maybe it’ll become a conversation piece whenever I start working in an office again.

I got into messing with keyboards through getting into steno, and I’m still very much keeping up with steno. I’m still not likely to do it professionally any time soon, but I’ve integrated it into my regular habits enough that not having access to it is annoying. (I’m grateful that someone in the Plover community was able to get it working on macOS Big Sur so that I can still use it on my MacBook.) I also just got an actual steno machine (a student model) that I found on eBay at a reasonable price. It’s taking some getting used to, but it’s interesting to get something more like the authentic experience, using a fully purpose-made keyboard that sits on a tripod. It even has the option to set it up with a paper tape.

Messing with keyboards has led me to order a basic 3D printer, so that’s another hobby and potentially a huge amount of time and money. I’m getting an Ender 3 Pro, a well-regarded entry level 3D printer (which is a little over $200, depending on whether they’re running sales), whereas my roommate’s main 3D printer (he has three in all, four if you count the one he 3D printed but hasn’t gotten working yet) cost him about $2,000. For keyboards I want to be able to print things like cases and keycaps (without having to pester said roommate about it), and there are just an absurd number of things I could potentially do with it, including several little upgrades to the printer itself.

We’re not out of the woods yet when it comes to the pandemic, so the dawn of 2021 doesn’t mean I can just go back to normal. On the other hand there’s a lot I can do from home, and that’s where I need to get to work. The big thing that’s actually happening is Back to the Rifter. Julian has finished the interior layout, so it’s now a matter of doing a bunch of proofing and getting the cover sorted out. It worked out to 172 pages, less than the page count of Rifts, but embarrassingly close for a commentary. I hope people like our mixture of dumb jokes, random tables, scathing commentary, and tackling serious issues. Particularly with the essay Julian added to the end of the book, it takes on the Nazi apologism of the Coalition head-on. It’s worse than you think, and Julian brought receipts.

The way I put it is, Rifts feels like it’s made of scar tissue. It’s got the scars of the Satanic Panic, the Cold War, the recognition that Siembieda feels he’s due, and the places where he sliced up pieces of his previous games to crudely stitch together. It’s a deeply strange mixture of inspired creativity, hackneyed cliches, and lazy thoughtlessness. Lately it feels like we’re under the rule of deeply strange people (crudely googling Greek words gave me “paraxenocracy” as a made-up term for “rule by weirdos”), and not in a good way. The tabletop RPG industry is small potatoes of course, but it’s still got some unsettling people in what passes for its positions of influence.

I have some ideas for other projects based around engaging with books, and in particular I want to do an in-depth review of the original AD&D core books. That’ll be a pretty time-consuming thing to tackle though, and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get into it. I wouldn’t want to switch to doing nothing but criticism, but it’s definitely something I’d like to do more of, especially since it gives me an outlet for writing that is easier to work on by myself. Oh, and I also got a copy of the official novelization of the movie Face/Off, and I definitely want to do something with that.

On the RPG front, running Magical Fury on Discord has me thinking about ways to improve the game, especially the combat system, to the point where I’m poking at ideas for a Second Edition. If there’s something you think the game needs, let me know!