No prompt today as I’m writing this on my phone, but I wanna keep this one short as I’m with friends at the moment. Had a nice relaxed end to the year, and I’m happy. Playing Banana Katana and just having a nice time. This was a tough tear, a draining year, and one that pushed me harder than 2020 and 2021 combined. But I chose that. And I succeeded. Here’s to more years like this.

“How have your political views changed over time?”

I’ve become less willing to compromise on socialist views. I grew up seeing that you can manage to make more progress to the left with a liberal focus, but I’ve just gotten tired of pretending I’m happy about incremental change. I’m not. I am, unapologetically much further left than the people I’ve campaigned for. That’s ok, those people do and have done good work, and I am happy about putting my time into their campaigns. But man, I just wish people’s wellbeing was a bigger focus than capitalism allows, while it plays this joke party game of trickle down and ‘hoarding more lifts us all.’ It doesn’t. It never did.

See why I don’t get political? I may skip the political ones from now on.

On a lighter note, I track every single Commander game I play in my bullet journal, and today I did my annual review. I’ll be playing some tomorrow, but I still like having this to look at:

Also I’m glad I’m not bothered about winning in Commander because, yeesh…

“You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?”

The Million Desk is at the heart. In an ideal world, the monitor for my PC is on an arm, and the keyboard goes away easier, freeing up the desk. I’d have a nice water feature, a coffee station, and my Poäng within reach. Heated, and with a smart thermostat I can adjust without getting up. Mood and comfy lighting, and the whole medium sized room wired up with speakers for music, or to just be surrounded by rain or ocean tracks. A nice and easy to empty bin within arms reach, and the same with chargers. But to be honest, a lot of that is nice-to-haves. The set up I have right now is pretty perfect as is.

Ayyyyy 11am target! That has to be a healthy sign right? I didn’t like, stay up all night playing Skyrim and Magic Arena, right?

I might be stupid…

“Have you ever been in an automobile accident?”

No.

Anyway, I am finding that fatigue gets in the way of essay writing, which is not great to say the least. I am going to get them all done on time, but the big lesson I learned here is I need to go into the start of term rested, as Christmas can only offer so much respite with all there is to do. That said, I have also been too lazy on getting started on those assignments, and that’s pretty bad, because I need to put those tasks at a higher priority than I have been. That said, I’ve got time, and I am starting to get better rested so it’s not inconceivable that I’ll manage to get them done in reasonable time. Today, I mostly rested, and got started playing Skyrim which is a lot of fun. Yes, I have never played Skyrim before. I know, I know.

“How are you creative?”

It’s, pretty much just writing now. I used to paint and draw, heck I have a ton of supplies and a nice lil Huion as my second monitor, but I just haven’t managed to lose myself in it for a long time. Same goes for game making and coding, but I do want to reverse these and get back to all four in time. I guess my bullet journal allows me to get creative in how I log and manage all my data – as in the type that’s useful to me, not advertisers. But I can liv with min-maxing for writing.

Today was a lovely if long day to cap off the three days of Christmas for me, and while I am shattered, I am glad I have such a lovely family to spend it all with. Now I’m gonna stay up and play my first ever run of Skyrim for funsies, as I need to be up late for NYE anyway.

“Who are the biggest influences in your life?”

My parents and family, my partner, and my friends are the obvious answers here, and they are the accurate ones too, but as this is ostensibly a writing blog, imma hijack this one and talk about my literary influences. You are supposed to read a lot to write, and there are a few writers who spring to mind who shaped how I approach the task. Stephen King needs no introduction and neither does Lovecraft, as problematic as the man behind the madness was. But Peter Clines, who draws on both, is less well known, and I find that sad as he is brilliant at telling an evocative story either one of those two pillars would be proud of. Drawing obvious influences, especially from Lovecraft, Clines weaves a fantasy mythos in his Threshold series that hits all the right notes of quirky and unsettling for me, and I am sad there aren’t more Ex Heroes books as I love them. I finished his latest standalone a while back – The Broken Room – and I adored the little postscript with all the thought process that went into crafting the tale. I would love to meet and chat with him some day.

And then there’s Matt Dinniman. My god, I have reread the five published books of Dungeon Crawler Carl so many times now that I can just pick a book and place within at random and hop right in. The influence this series has had on me is to make me want to explore first person writing much more than I do at present. In the main series, I only use first person for ‘ascended’ characters, which is a term I won’t explain because a) spoilers, ands 2) I don’t think I ever use that word in the series itself, because it’s a state of being that isn’t all that explainable and would make for clunky exposition. But hey, now you know when you, don’t end up reading them. But go read DCC. In fact, imma do that right now. Again. Yes I have a problem, no I don’t care.

“Share what you know about the year you were born.”

For my, I wanna say 21st but it might have been 25th birthday – which I’d know if I bullet journalled back then or kept better written records, I got a super cool present: Every single copy of Private Eye from the year I was born. Fun fact, the one for the week I was born has a glossy cover, because it was their election special and they got Spitting Image to do a crossover cover. I mean what do I think of when I think of 1992? For some reason I don’t really think of LucasArts, as my main attachments are to 1990, 1991 and 1993 onwards, not really having much of a latch to 1992. Two elections obviously, both with, pretty dire consequences for the US and UK. I know that 1992 was an Olympics year and have no idea who hosted it – huh, I looked it up and it was Spain, I didn’t even know they had hosted one. I’m trying to think of non political stuff and drawing a complete blank, which is odd, because I have read about 1992 but none of it comes to mind. I’ll probably kick myself later.

Christmas is a day I always enjoy, which I am lucky for and thankful for. I’m knackered now, and while I don’t feel the concept of ‘good tired’ applies to me all that much for various reasons I’ll spare you, I am contented. I’m just finishing up my Christmas write up, which I do every year now and now we’re in post-main-story was allowed to cover target, though I did write another 475 words of PNG too. Starting to love that story, even if I am not super sure how I feel about the pacing just yet. While that gives me time to polish before publishing outside of this site, I would like to know where I’m sticking it, as so far I have no clue. I may just go FictionPress after all, I mean why not. Go with what you know right? Even if I did purge all my old stuff on there. Multiple times. Kinda regret that now, even if it does mean no legacy versions of TUS to confuse people.

“Are you a good judge of character?”

I would like to think so, though I am not sure anyone can ever know the answer to that one for certain. People are complex, contradictory things, and they can have sides distasteful, wonderful, abhorrent and benign in equal measure, and maybe you’ll only know about a quarter of that at best. I know there’s parts of me – mostly the bitterness – that I don’t often let surface that maybe people give me too much of a pass on. Who knows. But I do feel like I know who is worthy of offering trust to, and when to renew it after a mistake or a misstep.

So 10am blog, yay! It’s been a while. I wish I could say I just caught the wind at my back and slayed it, but the truth is more grim. Guess who didn’t sleep? Debating maybe getting a nap in, but that does risk ruining my sleep more. For now, I’m just gonna go lie down either way, my back is killing me. Funny that.

“When are you most happy?”

I would have to saw when I am at my least agitated, which sounds like a ‘no kidding’ answer and, well it is, but it’s a little more than it might appear at face value. You see, if my agitation spikes, I am miserable, and when it doesn’t, I am content, and to me being contented is happy because I am at my happiest at my most mellow. So if we were to say my most mellow activity then is when I’m most happy, then the answer is when I’m writing. Why all the qualifiers? Because on a day where I can’t focus or I’m otherwise very stressed or overwhelmed, writing doesn’t make me magically happy. What it does do however is ground me, and because it’s a route to that contented state, especially once I hit target, then it’s the obvious choice. Why not ‘when I hit target’ you might ask? Well my imaginary reader, cliché as it is to say, the journey is the fun part.

That said today has been quite chill in general, even if I didn’t sleep so well and my physio appointment left me a little more sore. The appointment itself was very helpful and I’m feeling a lil more confident in how I approach EDS now. Writing is going smoothly, and PNG is a lot of fun to write. I just have no idea where to host it.

“What was the last thing you did for play or for fun?”

(I found ‘prompts’ in the settings so yay I have them back now!)

I have been playing a LOT of FIFA 21 on my Switch. Now you might wonder why 21, unless you already know about how FIFA releases only ‘legacy’ versions for the Switch. These are not just ‘basically the same game every year’, they literally are the same game every year with the teams updated, so it’s pointless to buy the newer ones. You might then wonder, why is it you don’t just buy the ‘good’ version for PC? It’s not as if mine couldn’t handle it. Well, I might, but if I did, it would still be the actual version of 21 I’d buy. That’s because that’s the year Southend United got relegated out of the football league, and I can’t play as my team in the 22 or 23 versions. Not everyone gets lucky like Wrexham. Incidentally, if one of my imaginary readers just so happens to be on the dev team for FIFA 24, for real, guaranteed sale if you just included the National League. If nothing else, it would be so cool to take a non-league team and get them to the Premiership. I mean, isn’t that literally why ‘Welcome to Wrexham’ has people excited? Just saying. Though, with any luck Southend will make the playoffs this year. Still, even if Southend do get back into League 2, I would still love to do a National League team through every division. Oh, and for reference, Southend in my playthrough are unbeaten in their first 6 Championship games, so doing pretty well.

I think the reason I am so happy to have prompts back is I can inject a lot more of myself into these posts with a little direction. I love answering prompts, and it makes for a more interesting read looking back, though this is still first and foremost a 1K checking in blog. On that note, PNG is now 6,000 words and nearly 2 chapters, so feeling pretty good about this project. The one hang up I have is I’d love to publish it as I go, but have no idea where to do that. I really dislike most of the platforms out there, but I’m considering FictionPress as it’s the one I have the least beef with. I’d publish on AO3 in a heartbeat but I don’t write fanfiction. Maybe I should. I like fanfiction plenty after all, I just tend to enjoy making my own ideas from the ground up. What would I even write fanfiction of is the question? Now if that came up as a prompt, I would be stumped.