“The most important invention in your lifetime is…”

It’s the smartphone, I think that’s hard to dispute. Name one other invention that hasn’t in some way been influenced, made possible by, ruined by the smartphone. There are important inventions in the field of medicine, conceptualisations that are inventions of social discourse, and of course other comparable technologies, but nothing changed the world like the smartphone. I would go as far as to say the internet was invented in 2007; that thing you and I used before 2007, that wasn’t the internet, that was an internet, not the definitive product that warped society around itself, mostly for the worse, in some ways for the better. The next few decades will in all likelihood see the successor to the smartphone emerge, and as a society, we need to decide if the Faustian bargain is worth it this time. I’ll give you a hint: if it’s any form of implant, the answer is a resounding no. If it’s external, flip a coin. Maybe a coin with two tails.

Starting to feel much more in control of my life. It’s funny, because there is a lot out of my hands right now, and much I need to do if I want to pass the first year, but I’m starting to feel a certain direction to my life is taking shape, a general and progressive reshaping of what stagnated for a long time, and began to improve when I started 1K. The legacy of the 5 year mark – coming up in September – is going to be the deliberate and methodical rewriting of my brain towards my goals, and I gotta say, it’s a nice feeling. I feel as if I am finally becoming the person I want to be.

“How does it feel running a daily blog for four years that literally nobody reads?”

Ok no, that wasn’t the prompt but I can make up prompts if I feel like it. Four years, it’s wild to think about. So much has changed in the last four years – the majority of 1K covered by that stretch – and it’s surreal to think when I started this blog I had no idea what I would use it for besides rambling out odds and ends, and now four years later, I have managed to procrastinate long enough on figuring that out it’s become my brand. Wrote 2,000 words total today between comfort project and my edits, so all in all, a good day. And I got my grades back for term 1. I passed. Half way there.

“How does death change your perspective?”

Memento mori. I try to live in a way that leaves me contented, and to treasure all the little nice things along the way while they’re still around. I also try not to dwell on it, so if it’s all the same I’ll leave that at that.

Good day, albeit busy. I did manage after work and before, more work in the evening to fit in some time playing Pokemon Emerald, as well as before work when I got up. I hope this isn’t a temporary fixation because this is making me smile a lot and I want to hold onto it. Yes, you could tie this back to the previous paragraph, no I am not going to. Instead I’m going to focus on getting a good night’s rest, and prioritizing Pokemon in every gap I can.

Writing is going well, TWR is less of a mess at the beginning than I remember, but I am braced for it to go off the rails soon. Taking it slow – still on the second chapter – and chipping away at it. This feels like my preferred editing method. Slow yes, but I then have days where I get a burst of energy and do more. That works for me, for now at least.

“Something on your “to-do list” that never gets done.”

Hah, implying anything on my to-do list ever gets done. They seem to instil me with pure executive dysfunction. Still working on that. Am far too much of a last-minute person.

When I was a kid, I had this realisation one day that I would be an adult with money one day, but I wouldn’t want to buy fun stuff like cards or Pokemon games anymore, and it made me sad. I always smile when I remember that and prove that child wrong, and today I did that in a big way. See, I always wanted to play Pokemon Emerald, and the one time I bought it I was like 16, I got a copy off eBay, only it was fake and I found out it was a fake when beating the Elite Four corrupted the save file. That was, horrible. But in front of me now is a lovely – and genuine, I checked – copy of Emerald, and it’s a blast getting to play it again. At some point, Imma relegate the Reddit link above to wherever my Twitter link is – do I even have one? In its place, I think I’ll set up a page with my live Pokedex progress in Gen 3 (Emerald) and Gen 4 (SoulSilver). I think I just need a copy of Ruby for Zangoose, but if I need LeafGreen too then I will source it eventually. For now, am just happy to have more silly lil projects. You can never have too many. Reminds me I still need to buy a speaker for the TeenyPC, that was what I was meant to buy today. Oops.

And yes I made pasta bake today, it was lovely.

“What’s your favourite thing to cook?”

It’s actually a recipe I haven’t done in months, and I really should fix that. It’s a pasta bake that uses kidney beans and lots of chilli, and you layer it with tortilla chips and cheese. It’s so freaking good, the best comfort food imaginable. The original recipe used chorizo so if you’re a meat lover it’s still worth a try and works so well. I will buy the ingredients for it tomorrow I think, thanks prompt!

Had a bit of a mood crash yesterday, and didn’t sleep so good afterwards. Well tonight I am hoping to get at least a full night’s rest, make some tasty food tomorrow, and continue to focus on recovery. I am – fingers crossed – back on my feet now, so all I need to do is keep things level going into next week, and I should be golden. In an ideal world, I may even play some Pokemon, if you know, I find the energy to do more than solitaire. I did manage some Arena today.

One place relaxation is working wonders is my writing. I’m sorta just doing a silly comfort project at the moment I’ll probably never publish, but I am also editing The Whispering Rail, which for context outside of the Horizon series is the novel that needs by far the most work out of the series. So far, it’s going quite well to be honest, the beginning remaining a little slow but this one’s supposed to be a mix of fast paced and glacial yet tense scenes. If it remains that way though I do need to work to justify it, as that is bad writing in a vacuum.

“Write about your first computer.”

Computers. See, my parents are both former teachers, and also as a family, we’ve always been quite into technology. Honestly, the fact I am not into programming is both kinda funny, and sad too, because I have been tinkering with tech since I was five. And my first computers were a pair of ex-school Windows 95 machines, yup, I was dual monitors, dual set up from the start, and I adored them. My favourite game back then was Drainstorm, a game I forgot the name of and couldn’t find for a good 20 or so years, and used to play for hours on end, until my life changed forever with Day of the Tentacle coming into it, and the rest from there was history. I first played DOTT on the one on the left. I need to find if my parents have any pictures of them, god I loved those PCs.

Bit of a late one today, but I focused on rest and then went to see my mum and step dad for the evening. We watched The French Dispatch, which has stolen the position of my favourite Wes Anderson picture – is that too granular a heading to add to my favourites list? I’ll let you decide. And because you’re figments of my imagination, I decide you decide no, it should go on there. That’s almost bizarre enough to be from a Wes Anderson film. It’s been a good day.

“What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?”

Confession time I guess. Pushing my writing out there into the wider world isn’t a step I consider vital; I wrote these stories for me. That said, I would like to have the option, and it’s not so much the criticism I fear as the general interaction. While I like to think I have some decent charisma and can hold my own, most of the time, I am at my core shy and more introverted, even if I do draw energy from others’ presence and enjoy social contact. That’s a consequence of me forcing myself to do it in my late teens and early twenties, so I’d call myself an ‘artificial extrovert’. Note to people on the spectrum considering that: don’t. It’s just self harm by another guise, and it’s not worth it. So, call the fear ‘the social aspect of sharing my work’, and the what it would take? I’d need to feel the time was right, because I am done forcing myself to do things that make me uncomfortable just because that’s what others do. I am not others.

Working in the Falmer Common room is nice. I have a little space I often get to commandeer, looking over Library Square and out of the sun, though it’s so overcast today the latter isn’t so much of an issue. It’s funny, because on paper it’s a much nicer space, but I do still much prefer when I get to work in the office, and not just because of the ergonomic equipment. Don’t get me wrong, it’s pleasant here, and I am able to do all aspects of my job just as easily here – arguably more so as I wish I could just use this laptop in the office, and maybe just should. But I do like the feeling of being on site. Maybe I need to find a way to increase my hours spent there, but it’s a bit of a logistical nightmare to fit in office time around the trains. I could do it, but at the moment I’ve condensed all my work hours into Monday – Thursday, with my lectures between, leaving Friday as a freeform study and rest day. That’s probably better for both work focus and uni focus, but I am looking forward to being back in a lot more from May. Probably 4 days a week though, as the four day week does my health the world of good.

I will do something with 1k.pub, and it will involve putting my work out there more than I am at the moment. But for now I think it’s more important to keep the work and uni ships afloat. It’s a fear I’ll overcome, when I’m ready to.

“What do you complain about the most?”

Surprisingly, the answer isn’t writing anymore. When I was younger, as in pre-1K, I would have said writing in a heartbeat, followed by health issues because I had no idea what was going on there. Now, well it’s neither of those thanks to 1K and knowing about the EDS, so it’s probably my lack of free time where I have energy to do the leisure activities I want to. I get quite grumpy when I finally have time and energy to do a thing, and suddenly get roped into a commitment that steals both. I am also capable of being grateful people want to spend time with me too and reach out, so I don’t want that interpreted as not wanting to spend time with others, just that I wish I could have spare buckets of energy when I finally find myself alone. Right now, I basically just play solitaire, which is depressing as all hell to say. I have my Swtich, DS, 3DS and GameBoy Advance SP on me at all times, and heck this laptop can game, even if not as well as the PC at home, so it really is possible to make the most of those moments between things. I just have to actually do it.

I bought a new domain name yesterday. Not for this site, I like having my own name on this one, but for a future 1K Publishing operation. Granted, I have 1kpublishing.com already, but I found out that 1k.pub is finally available. Or, it was available, and now I have another domain to hoard and potentially do nothing with. There’s nothing there yet, but I have some ideas, and maybe if I find some of that energy I lament the lack of above, I might set a new site up.

“What are your favorite sports to watch and play?”

To watch, probably football, but I can’t play it. My legs give out way too fast because of all the sudden movements. Tennis is a watch and play. I do like rowing but I don’t row outside of my machine nor really watch it. Maybe I need to watch more sport.

Today was a good day. The day is irrelevant, my xirlfriend is insane. No seriously. They just casually bought me one of these:

I won’t say how much these are worth. Suffice to say, there’s only 1,000 of them, so, yeah you can probably guess. I am in shock. I really do not deserve them.

“What would you do if you won the lottery?”

I would book in to speak to a lawyer, I would consult on the best way to anonymously claim the ticket, and then I would claim the prize, put it in savings, and just pay myself an allowance out of it. It’s boring and it’s not especially altruistic, but as much as I hate to say it it’s the only smart path, as any other route just creates the potential to upend your life. Would I tell the people around me? Very few of them, but they might notice my generosity increasing. After all, I would pay myself a generous enough allowance to be able to pass on those benefits to others, as well as to support causes I care about. I’d keep working, and live off that money, so it’s more like the allowance is there for me if I need it, and to treat others and do good otherwise. Oh Look, I Just Described UBI How About That? Huh. Maybe We Should Have A UBI ok ok, I promised less politics and that one’s on me, it wasn’t even a political question. Granted every question is political if you think about it long enough.

Quick side note, I still don’t have the prompt appearing on the new post page like it should, but I found it shown on the landing page of WordPress’s admin end so that’ll do.

So I keep coming back to what to do with my stories. I feel like I need to put them out there a little bit more than just “here’s the Google Docs”, but I’m not too sure what that looks like. Maybe I need to investigate what options WordPress has for hosting ebooks. I’m not sure about it though as ideally, I’d want them to be in a form where I could release them as the ‘beta versions’ of the stories, while I still cross the i’s and dot the t’s, but is that the kind of thing a reader would be ok with? I guess it’s more like an open-beta. You know I wrote that out and realised that it’s literally what video games do all the time and feel remarkably silly now. I, guess I could make this happen. Hm…