10 posts tagged “reflections”
said the joker to the thief.
"There's too much confusion.
I can't get no relief."
--"All Along the Watchtower", Bob Dylan
I had an epiphany driving home from work yesterday; a realization that had long been brewing in my mind but finally percolated to conscious thought. It's time for me to step away from the library profession and walk a different road.
There are many things I love about working in libraries: finding answers to tricky questions, helping others find what they need even if they don't know what that is, and much more. I've also met a great many awesome people while working in libraries, as well as made some close, trusted friends, and hell, even found my wife.
But the thing is, right now, I'm pretty sure I'll never be completely satisfied long-term working in libraries. I've slowly discovered that I need a career that is constantly challenging me intellectually or at least keeping me on my toes. That doesn't happen often enough in the field I am now (or at least not in the way I need) and I don't expect it would change much even if I stick with it.
I don't yet know where I'll look to next, as I have some soul-searching to do first, but there are plenty of possibilities. And that thought alone gives me the courage to start anew.
Although we celebrated two years of dOrange back in April, the origins of our little gaming group actually go further back. As much as I'm ashamed to admit it, the earliest history of our group can be traced to a New Year's Eve Party back on December 31st, 2004 where Jeremy, Sarah, Leslie and I played our first tabletop RPG adventure. The shameful part of the story is that the adventure was none other than the Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game.
Consider the cheesy text on the back of the box:
Enter the world of adventure!
There's something moving behind that door...
Perhaps it's a vicious ogre waiting to tear you limb from limb.
Or a horde of zombies thirsting for blood.
Or maybe a terrifying dragon ready to engulf
you in a maelstrom of fire.Problem?
Nope. Not for you.
You're a hero--a powerful wizard, a strong fighter, or a sneaky rogue.
You can handle whatever comes
at you in this introduction to the greatest fantasy
game of all time.
I'm surprised we weren't turned off by this blatant dumbing down of a rich roleplaying game, but somehow we persevered. (Since when zombies thirst for blood? Isn't that a vampire thing?) Even when the very first adventure had us saving a lame-o unicorn from a bunch of goblins, we still wanted to know if we could kill the unicorn for extra XP. (Instead, all we were told was that, Alabern the unicorn, "can touch wounded characters with its horn.")
We've come a long way since then. It's a Paragon night tonight and I'm itching to get back into it after Squibblequick smote Anthony's computer last week, forcing us to delay the session. And then we're kicking of Matt's newest "evils" campaign, Anathema, on Saturday, granting us a double dose of gaming. Who knows? Maybe we will finally get to kill a unicorn this time!
Last week, I felt another funk coming on. Not a depressed-and-down-in-the-dumps funk, but a funk serving to warn me that it's time to try something new again, 'cause my normal routine is getting a bit old and tired.
Talking with Ernie last week about obsessions helped clue me into this. She mentioned that she's been looking for something to put her energy into (besides her new house, it might be Nate's Genesis campaign). Since I've finished applying to grad school (just a whole lot of waiting now, as the Pants can relate) and L and I are still in the process of tackling her Type II Diabetes, it occurred to me that I need a new "project" to kick around.
After thinking about it for awhile, inspiration struck and I decided to put in a volunteer application for the World Center for Birds of Prey. I've missed the volunteer scene since I left Circle K when I graduated (but Colleen's still keepin' the faith) and I've always found birds of prey fascinating, so throwing in my hat to volunteer at the World Center seems like a perfect idea.
Unfortunately, I'm playing the waiting game again, as I have no idea how long it'll take for the Volunteer Coordinator to contact me. So, for the time being, that puts me right back at square one: what else can I do to kick it up? I've contemplated pushing myself to work on my drawing skills (or lack-thereof) more, but it's tough to motivate myself on that front.
Maybe something will come to me in the next week or so (life has a way of doing that), but in the meantime, it sure doesn't hurt to ask the friendly, helpful neighborhood. Any suggestions or tips on what I can do to kick it up and try something new? I'm open to (and grateful for) any ideas you've got, whether it's stuff you're into or just something you think might pique my interest. Temper fi!
Thanks to a generous loan from Ernie, I've been exposing L to one of my favorite childhood television shows: Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was shocked (shocked!) when I realized that she had barely watched any ST:TNG when she was growing up, given that it was such a staple pastime in my family.
You see, while I was growing up, my family would spend huge amounts of time up in the mountains of rural Idaho. Fortunately, we had an old color television, solar power and batteries to gather around once the day's work was done. Unfortunately, our little antenna only received one station with at least marginal quality. However, it just so happened that station was FOX, which ran current ST:TNG episodes. Pretty soon, it had become a family ritual to gather in front of the tube every evening to catch the latest episodes and reruns.
Thus, I have wonderful memories of ST:TNG, associated with family togetherness and especially of great times with my brother. ST:TNG was a jumping off point to many other things, including collectible card games (picked up at our first Star Trek convention), roleplaying games (first one we ever owned was an old used copy of the original ST:TOS RPG), and science fiction in general.
So, it was with great expectations that I revisited ST:TNG with L -- and those great expectations were met mostly with disappointment. It turns out that my tastes in television shows have evolved, mostly spoiled by the likes of Six Feet Under, Firefly and Battlestar Galactica. While I do get a warm fuzzy feeling of nostalgia, it's still a bit sad to me that ST:TNG doesn't inspire me like it used to. It hasn't changed, but I certainly have.
I'm curious, what media (shows, movies, books, etc) from your childhood disappoints you now that you're an adult? Surely we all have things we remember as being frickin' awesome when we were young, but then when we see it again as an adult, its no longer frickin' nor awesome.
It terms of close friendships, it has come to my attention that I tend to live by the Rule of Four (no, not the book). It's funny how patterns (or the illusion of patterns) start to emerge as time goes by.
Back in my halcyon days at the Gryphon's Guild (see Looking Back) there were four of us who were collectively referred to as the Romantic Four, being a set of two couples who were extremely good friends. We were a tight little group and I have many fond memories of conversations and jokes that were shared among us. There was only one short span of time that all four of us were together in person and it was wicked awesome. (Chee-rific you might say.)
This eventually segued into the Quartet during my Albertson College years, made up of a close group of four friends who mostly met through Circle K (the college version of Kiwanis). Jay and I started as friends, next became roommates and eventually ended up as "the old married couple". Colleen and I met on the first day of summer orientation, became friends, had a nothing-happened romance, and finally became even better friends because of it. Emily and I met through Jay (if I remember correctly) after which we became friends and she infected me with her love for post-modernism, Sandman and good movies. Together, all four of us had many a great time, with far too many stories to even know what to begin with.
Finally, working at the Ada Library has introduced me to my latest foursome (no, not that kind of foursome) which is covertly referred to as Dead Fish. (Strange name, but if you want an explanation, you'll have to ask me elsewhere.) I married L and as for the Pants and Ernie, well, they're like sisters to me. Collectively, they've made my first full-time job extremely kick ass and outside of work, they've also made my life kick ass.
I've been blessed to have many awesome friends in the past several years. You never know what the future holds and it's true that friendships are organic things that wax and wane with each passing day, but this I can say with perfect certainty: I hope I always have friends as amazingly incredible as I have and as I have had.
Weeks since my last update, just what have I been doing lately??
- Didn't get a Wii, but I have started playing Oblivion on L's 360. Even if it's a bit campy at time, I'm lovin' the crunchiness of the system. (And Argonians are just sexy.)
-
Finished reading the third book in a kick-ass fantasy meets alternate history series, Temeraire. Definitely my favorite series of the year. Love dragons? Love historical fiction? Throw away Eragon and read this!
- Saw the rockin' production of The Adventures of Silence, starring the Pants, Ernie and my very own L. These gals were awesome! I'm never going to pick a fight with the Pants when she's donned chainmail nor Ernie when she's posing as an old male wizard.
- Work's been fabulous -- I'm still getting paid to play with LEGOs and to tweak Dragonfly (adalib.org 2.0). I'm damn lucky to have the job that I do.
- All the Christmas shopping's done (minus a couple minor things), courtesy of the Internet tubes. Who wants to fight the manic crowds worshiping at the Church of Capitalism (also known as the Mall) when it's so much easier online?
- Currently listening to Breaking Benjamin's latest CD (courtesy of our library's awesome Young Adult audio collection), Phobia. Wow. Just wow.
- Best of all, had some great conversations with friends, including hitting the Pita Pit with Colleenist, playing phone tag with BlueDelt, doing the girl talk with Ernie and the Pants, attending a book signing with my brother, chewing the dOrange old guard fat with Piscis and L, and IMing the Mattiepie. You guys and gals are too awesome for words -- thank you!
Alright, I promise to TRY not to slack off in my blogging, so you won't have to endure one of these lists again. But feel to free to kick me every so often if you fear one of these long list-type posts is building up.
I leave you with something truly random -- BACON ON A CAT!
For a few moons, the cheery, colorful virtual realm of AC:WW brought me portable entertainment. It was a microcosm of reality without most of the messy stuff. Sure Tom Nook was a greedy, demanding loan shark, but the dumb raccoon could be paid off with fruit that grew on trees. Neighbors got mad at you for forgetting their appointment to visit, but they forgot all about it by the next time you talked to them.
But, unlike reality, everyone you talked to ended up saying the same thing over and over. (Which, I suppose is reality, if you call yourself a postmodernist.) You never really could change yourself, at least not beyond the superficial haircut or new outfit. And unlike reality, you'd don't have to die to opt out.
In other words, that which the fickle gamer giveth, they taketh away. And after giving my friend Ernie the birthday cake, firebar, and photo of Amelia from my house in Oblivion, I clicked on the "humane" option to "Rebuild the Town." The game assaulted me with its final guilt trip ("are you really sure you want to erase all your neighbors and all your stuff?") and then committed virtual suicide without so much as a peep.
Now Oblivion is no more. But in some way, it'll be reborn after I mail the game cartridge to whoever bought it from me. And there's always more oblivion, just a power switch away.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Google by Bruce Sterling
It's not that we can't do it: it's that all our social relations have been reified with a clunky intensity. They're digitized! And the networking hardware and software that pervasively surround us are built and owned by evil, old, rich corporate people! Social-networking systems aren't teenagers! These machines are METHODICALLY KILLING OUR SOULS! If you don't count wall-graffiti (good old spray paint), we have no means to spontaneously express ourselves. We can't "find ourselves" - the market's already found us and filled us with map pins.
Is the evolving digital networked buzzword-laden landscape consuming our souls? (The irony is that I couldn't share this half as well without a social network like Vox.) Are the exponentially expanding digitized networks ushering in an age of greater communication yielding enhanced understanding of the "global village"? Or are they harbringers of a stratified, digitized hierarchy that removes us further from others and from ourselves?
Sometimes I answer "yes" to the former question, other times, it's to the latter. Caught as we are in the present, I suspect none of us will really won't know until 2026, probably never.
"May you live in interesting times" goes the (supposedly) ancient Chinese curse. But the jury's still out on whether "All Hail Our Google Overlords" turns out to be our generation's blessing or our curse.
I was IMing with BlueDelt earlier this morning and commented that there's been a lot of activity lately in my neighborhood. (And I don't mean the cops showing up and busting the meth dealers.) It's really awesome to see blog posts and comments flying back and forth across the virtual commons, creating and continuing conversations.
As further evidence, I sort of use Leyna as my personal benchmark in Internet phenomena. I remember when she was steadfastly sticking with her Hotmail email address, even while the rest of us were jumping onboard the Gmail train. Eventually, however, she threw her hands up in the air and migrated to Gmail. (And I'm pretty sure she wouldn't go back to Hotmail now.)
So now that Leyna, after much cajoling and persistent nagging, has shifted her blogging over to Vox, I'm taking it as a sign that Vox is reaching critical mass among my friends. And with luck, it'll only keep growing -- yet, still have that personable, personal feel that I associate with Vox.
The question now is not whether Vox has potential -- it's whether it has the staying power of Gmail. Part of that depends on the website, but most of it falls on each of us. Will we keep blogging in the long-term? Will we eventually reach a point where we'll wonder what we'd do without it? And will we keep thinking [this is good]?
Whatever the answers, I look forward to the journey.
It's a bit strange, transitioning here from LiveJournal after 5+ years maintaining an account there. There's a lot of memories resting with that blog, like an old house or well-loved book. Most poignant are its associations with The Gryphon's Guild, an online community that was a significant part of my life from the end of high school through my early years of college. I made many friends there, a few particularly close ones, and even discovered my first romantic relationship.
It was a safe place to flex my budding social wings and find encouragement, something I didn't really have in high school. I could don my avatar, Muse, and feel far less shy in a group. From my early awkward bashfulness, over time I found my niche and my social confidence. I believe the Gryphon's Guild was truly instrumental in forging the person I am today, more reassured and less reserved. It was as real as any physical place I ever known.
But growing as an individual also meant growing out and beyond the community. I found my niche at college, spending more time with friends there than I did online. I drifted out of the day-to-day of the Guild and eventually, even apart from friends there, maintaining only loose ties at best.
Part of me still lingers, always will. But what do you do in life? You find new places, make new friends. You move on. You even make new blogs.
But from time to time, I reflect. I reminisice. And I remember. Just for a little while.
