Buffering… Buffering…

There’s not going to be much of a post today. Don’t worry, it’s for what I hope are good reasons. I’m in a surprisingly good mood, and I’m trying to hold on to that, since it seems to be motivating me to actually do stuff. But it’s taking a lot of effort, and it’s making me think quite a bit. I’m not ready to share those thoughts yet, but let’s just say I seem to have managed to at least temporarily the soul-sucking apathy that comes with working retail.

So I’m going to try to milk this motivation for all it’s worth, while at the same time trying to get it to stay around. Oh, all while trying to get my thoughts in order. Hopefully that wasn’t too vague to be encouraging. I’ll keep you posted.

Bittersweet

I haven’t really thought about my architecture degree in quite a while. It’s been at least a year since I’ve actively looked for a job in the field, and even longer since I’ve brushed up on any of the design skills I developed. My professional credentials have expired, and whatever vestigial internship documentation file I started is likely scrapped. I’ve even made the reluctant admission (at least to myself) that I’ve pretty much given up on my chances of working as an architect. I’ve been so caught up in the day-to-day chore of living and paying bills that I haven’t really had time to do much else other than survive, let alone dream.

But today I noticed a message from one of my grad school friends, one who is working in the industry. He had forwarded me a few job listings related to architecture. A quick glance made them appear similar to so many other dead ends, that I was prepared to let them slide into obscurity.

But reading them struck a note, inciting a pang of emotion. A bittersweet feeling, of missed opportunity and what-could-have-been. It’s like when you see an ex somewhere, completely out of the blue. If you had known they were going to be there, you could have mentally prepared yourself. But instead you’re found with your defenses down and sent reeling. Even if it was a relationship that needed to end, it still hurts.

Is that what architecture is for me now? A path that has slipped wholly out of my grasp? If not, dare I reopen old wounds of rejection and failure? Would it be better to just move on?

Or is this the first stirring of new possibility, of something that could actually change my life for the better?

I honestly don’t know. There’s a lot of feels to work through, something I was not prepared to do today. It is true that I want to find a new job, get out of the early-mornings-and-weekends retail rut I’ve resigned myself to. I’m just not sure how best to go about that. Maybe this is the catalyst that can get me moving again. Or maybe it’s the salt that gets rubbed into an almost-healed wound. Or maybe I’m reading too much into this.

Yeah, probably that last one.

The Responsibility Rant

Being an adult sucks.

No, that’s not quite right. Being an adult is awesome. You have tons of freedom. You can spend money on all sorts of cool toys and games. You can do pretty much whatever you want with whomever you what. You get to make your own schedule. You get to eat whatever you want (ice cream!) whenever you want (breakfast!). And (if you’re lucky) homework is a thing of the past.

Being a responsible adult sucks.

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Escher, Eat Your Heart Out

I picked up more games than I meant to during the recent Steam Sale. That is to say, any. But the combination of deep discounts with recently-acquired (or soon-to-be-acquired) holiday cash proved too powerful. If it’s any consolation, most of the games I picked up were ones I was thinking about buying for a while; that is to say, there were very few pure impulse buys. I’ve talked about some of the other games I picked up recently, and I’d like to continue to do so today. Today, I’d like to talk about Antichamber.

Antichamber, in what is apt for the newly “Mile High” state (topical reference!), is quite trippy. It’s difficult to describe, but I guess I would start by saying it’s a first-person puzzler similar to the Portal games. You are thrown into a sparse environment with practically no preamble, having to find your way through the world while at the same time coming to grips with its rules.

Rules? Yes; the world of Antichamber doesn’t work like you would think. For you see, it is non-Euclidean.

Walls shift. Doors lead different ways depending on which side you enter. Things are bigger on the inside, or exist only when observed (or not observed). Basically, the world is a maze where the normal rules apply only when they feel like it.

This mindbender is shepherded by a very distinctive, stark art style. Almost everything is rendered in pure white, with crisp black edges. There are occasional splashes of color, sometimes used to differentiate paths, other times to make them blend together. But everything is bright and simple. Deceptively simple.

The single purpose of the game is to make it through to the end, conquering obstacles by breaking your brain ever so slightly. Eventually you acquire a device that lets you manipulate colored cubes you come across. These cubes can be used to open doors, access unreachable areas, and solver a myriad of puzzles. As you progress the manipulator gains more functions (and colors), making more complicated puzzles solvable.

I just finished the game after 8 hours, and really enjoyed it. A lot of the puzzles had me stumped for quite a while, and there were a few places where the solutions seemed unnecessarily obtuse or random. But I managed to get through the game without consulting a guide or wiki even once, and for that I am proud of myself. The rules of the world even began to make sense, and I was able to use them to my advantage more often than they hindered me.

One notable feature is the ability to warp from your starting room to any previously-visited location. This is useful, since it is usually infeasible to retrace your footsteps to get to where you just were. It makes solving puzzles a thing you can do as you want to, rather than banging your head repeatedly against the same stretch of sterile white wall. The feeling of elation when you return to a room and solve the puzzle with ease is unparalleled.

So if you want to kill several hours (and brain cells), and cerebral puzzles are your kind of thing, I can heartily recommend giving Antichamber a whirl. You have been warned.

Resolutions

I have a few different New Year’s Resolutions. 1920×1200. 1280×800. 1024×768. 1920×1080. 1280×720. 1440×900. My laptop, tablet, second monitor, television, phone, and what I typically use for games, respectively.

Okay, it’s a lame nerd joke, I know. But I was thinking about resolutions today, being the new year and all. I was thinking about them while I was putting off writing my blog post for the day. And that’s when I realized: resolutions (that is, goals made in the heat of the new year’s regeneration frenzy) don’t make my life better. In fact, they might actually make it worse.

Most people make resolutions to better themselves. They want to lose weight, or write more, or finally take that trip they’ve been dreaming about. But the truth is, most of these achievements are unrealistic. They don’t want to “work hard at getting more in shape;” they just want to “be a size n-1.” They want to be something else, but don’t realize the hard work it will inevitably take to get there.

It’s no secret that most resolutions fail in short order. To think mine would be any different isn’t the most humble of worldviews. So if I made resolutions, and they are more likely than not to be broken, where would that leave me?

Feeling guilty about broken promises and unmet goals, that’s where.

It takes a lot of work to change one’s habits and/or personality. One of my loose, resolution-ish type things for this year was to be more disciplined with my writing. Needless to say, that hasn’t happened yet; I did my usual internet surfing/time passing thing, then finally got around to writing once my girlfriend had left work (which meant I had to finish before she got home). In other words, the inexorable pull of ADD was yet again too much.

As this happened, I started feeling guilty (something at which I have plenty of practice). Here I was, the earliest days of a new year, and already falling back into old habits. The Funk leered at me from around the corner; it could smell the direction of my thoughts, and they were tasty.

But I stopped myself (something at which I’m getting better) and realized the irrationality of what I was telling myself. Why would I think that a date clicking over would be like some switch being magically thrown in my head, turning me into a shining exemplar of punctuality and productivity? That’s as silly as thinking that I will wake up next Tuesday and be able to digest dairy, or that my ADD will magically fade into the aether. In other words, dumb.

So yeah, no resolutions for me. That’s not to say I don’t want to better myself. But a better way to do that, rather than digging pit traps for myself, is to avoid known triggers and setting myself up to fail. I’m going to try to take a less rigorous, hands-on approach to the next year. If I succeed in getting what I want, great! If not, then so it goes. Life’s too short to be neurotic. I’d rather be content.

I Guess I Should Be Looking Forward

Yesterday, I spent some time looking back at 2013. It’s also traditional, however, to look forward into the next year, often making resolutions or setting goals.

Well, I’m not really going to do that. Resolutions seem made to be broken, and setting goals involves a lot more thought and decision-making than I’m feeling up to right now. Rather, I’m going to write about things I want to do, see, or have happen in the near future.

I want to keep on writing. Blogging has become part of my daily routine, and I’d like to keep it that way. I’d like to put more energy into it, however, try to make my daily posts a bit less perfunctory. Maybe even write some fiction; I’ve toyed with the idea of serializing one of my short stories, as a way of building up a (lot of) buffer. I just haven’t decided when to do it yet.

I want to find passion for my hobbies again. Right now, a lot of my friends seem to be coping with varying levels of SCA burnout. Even I’m finding myself less enthusiastic than I used to be, going to weekly practices far too often out of force of habit. Maybe teaching (which I plan to continue to do) will help with that, but I also want to further my own training.

I want to continue to work on improving my mental state, being more conscious of triggers and cues that herald a Funk, as well as maybe even talking to someone in a professional manner. It can’t hurt at this point.

But mostly, I want a better job. Being a retail grunt has outstayed its welcome. Architecture didn’t pan out, and I’m still feeling more than a bit burned by forces outside my control (read: recession). I want to start looking for other jobs, in fields closer to my passions. Maybe IT support. Maybe web design. Maybe even something where I can use my atrophying architectural design skills. I don’t know. I have so little experience looking for a job, let alone picking a career, I don’t know where to start. But something has to happen.

And of course (as well as to end on a lighter note), I want more LEGO.

So there you have it. A short list of not-goals and not-resolutions for the coming year. I haven’t the faintest idea how to accomplish most of these (except the LEGO one), but I’m sure I’ll figure something out. More likely than not I’ll forget this stuff, but maybe I’ll return to this list in the future, see how things are going. After all, I’ve written it down; that makes it real.

Anything could happen.

I Guess I Should Be Sentimental

So, a new year. How about that?

Most places will be running articles about how to change your life in just 10 easy steps, or 29 things that will be the same and/or different for this trip around the sun. As ridiculous and sentimental as these types of things can get, who am I to jump off a bandwagon? I’d like to take a moment to look back at the year past, and maybe the year to come.

What changed during 2013? Well for one, my girlfriend and I moved. Due to mismatched lease terms, I had moved into her place back in September of 2012, but March marked the time when we “moved in together,” finding a space that would work for both of us. It’s been an interesting experience, living with someone else, and one I’ve gotten used to surprisingly quickly. I guess it really hit me when she went out of town to visit her parents over the holidays. I was shocked by how big and empty our four-square townhouse (with finished basement) felt, just by the absence of one person. I’ve lived in smaller places on my own, but never one this large.

My job situation has also improved slightly. True, I’m still working a retail job well outside any field I have actual skills in, but I’m no longer pushing carts in the sweltering heat and/or freezing cold. I’ve since moved inside, stocking shelves in the early morning (ugh) and helping people on the sales floor after opening (closer to yay). At least this way I get to use some of my tech savvy. I think some of the management is trying to groom me to become one of them, but I’d rather not make a career out of it.

I’ve also tried to become more cognizant of my mental state when it comes to SCA fighting and fencing. The head game seems to be the next plateau I need to break through; I just need to stop being so darn nice all the time.

I’ve started leading drills at fighter practice, filling a gap that’s been present for far too long.

I’m becoming more conscious of my depressive tendencies, trying to recognize and mitigate the Funks I tend to fall into. While not formally diagnosed, I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that my state of mind might be something other than my fault, and I should feel about as bad about falling into a Funk as I do about not being able to focus thanks to ADD (read: not at all).

I got a shiny new (big) TV. I started watching Doctor Who. I started experimenting with multiplayer Minecraft. My Steam library expanded (as did my backlog), and I even got around to completing some games and reading some books I’ve been meaning to.

And the biggest change, in case you couldn’t tell, is that I started blogging. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing regularly (mostly fiction) for years, but finally buckled down back in July and did something about it. I’ve been posting daily (for the most part) since. The writing has not always taken the direction I thought it would, in terms of format or subject, but I’ve stuck with it. Even if it feels like I’ve just been vomiting words onto a blank page to fill some arbitrary, self-imposed quota, I like to think that writing is still doing me some good.

And of course, with that, thank you for sticking with me and my writing. I know readers come and go, but I thank all of you who have come, stayed, even moved on. I hope you find my writing interesting enough, as I can’t always be the best judge of that. To those who have commented, thanks. To those lurkers who read and move on, maybe clicking “like” somewhere, I thank you too; I’m a lurker by nature as well. I wish you all a happy new year.

Knowing Your Worth

I often say I’m “too nice for my own good.” But what does that mean? I’ve touched briefly on what it means for my martial arts, but it also affects me in my day-to-day life. For me, it means that I tend to put other people’s concerns and needs well above my own, no matter how much it might inconvenience me or cause me to miss an opportunity. I’ll make sure someone else is happy before even considering my own needs. And while part of being a productive member of society is maintaining harmony, there is such thing as too much of a good thing.

Case in point: I recently had a friend call me with some computer troubleshooting issues. Now, being fairly tech-savvy and having worked in IT and A/V support, I have a pretty good working knowledge of computers. I couldn’t make sense of his problem over the phone, so I offered to make a house call. My friend was thankful of course, and we managed to fix the problem. But while in the car I started thinking: if I did this sort of thing for a living, would I be giving my skills away for free? And if not, does it make sense to do so?

One thing I learned going to school to study design (architecture in my case, but it holds for any creative field) is that the skill and talent it takes to “be creative” often goes unappreciated. You hear horror stories of young freelancers who are asked for samples or to do “spec work” without pay or any sort of contract. These people often end up sinking hours into projects that never end up paying. So one of the things our professors stressed to us is to never give our skills away for free. This has several purposes: it gets you paid for your expertise, and it makes sure your clients value your contribution.

So in that light, why was I on my way over to a friend’s house, taking time out of my schedule, to do something that didn’t really benefit me that much? Why wasn’t I charging even a nominal fee to do what other people do professionally? Is it because I think I’m worthless? That last question may seem a bit hyperbolic, but it really is the central issue. If I don’t value myself and my own fields of expertise, how can I expect anyone else to?

All these thoughts went through my head, at a time when I’m finally feeling ready to consider looking for a better job. Since architecture doesn’t seem to be panning out, I need to look at other skills I possess, other ways I could make a market for myself, rather than trying to break into one that seems to be out of my reach. And the idea of freelance IT service is one I’ve toyed with in the past; even if people with my skills seem to be a dime a dozed from my point of view, clearly not everyone feels that way. Otherwise we’d all be solving our own computer problems.

So yeah. I guess improving my sense of self-worth is something to work on for the coming year. Maybe if I can value myself enough I can get other people to do the same. With money, even!

Halfway Out of the Dark

I know it’s a few days past Christmas at this point (thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster), but the holiday is still on my mind, especially given the lack of excitement it gave me this year.

I, like a lot of people I know, seemed to be burned out on Christmas this year. Whether that’s because of stress, over-commercialization, or general disillusionment, the holiday came and went with a resounding “meh.” My girlfriend and I didn’t even bother setting up any decorations, let alone a tree. For all intents and purposes, Christmas seemed like just one more day, but with the added stress of giving (and receiving) presents.

In fact, my only source of anything resembling holiday cheer was, somewhat embarrassingly, Doctor Who. I’ve been working my way through the new series, and once I made it up to the Christmas special “A Christmas Carol,” something resonated with me.

This time of year isn’t about giving and receiving gifts. It’s not about rampant commercialism. It’s not even about a dominant world religion’s origin myth. It’s about celebrating the passage of time, as the depths of winter begin to recede in favor of the renewal of spring. At it’s heart, it’s about being halfway out of the dark.

I don’t have much to say, I just wanted to note how that one simple line from a British science fiction television show managed to put things into perspective for me. It’s a bittersweet realization, but is also somehow fitting. Time marches on, and the only meaning it has is that which we assign to it. If we can’t find joy in basic natural phenomena, then we might as well be inanimate objects. Making it through another year on this planet can be a cause for celebration, to remember to appreciate that which has made the trip with us, and that which has gotten left behind.

Halfway out of the dark: it’s all up from here.

Just One More Go…

Tell me if this sounds familiar: you come across a new source of entertainment (book, movie, game, television series, music album, etc). It’s the holidays, and you have quite a few new things to experience, but you pick up this particular one to just “try out for a few minutes.”

Heh…

The next thing you know, you’ve lost hours (if not days) to this new activity, and you have no idea how. Somehow, it scratches some deep itch inside you, compels you to return again and again and again. You finally wrench yourself away to sleep, probably due to sheer exhaustion. But the next day you come back for more, and you lose even more time.

In other news, I may have a problem with roguelikes

What is a roguelike, you may ask? Well, it’s a genre of video games which share a number of attributes with an old 1980 ASCII game called Rogue. These features include random level generation (infinitely replayable) and permanent character death (don’t screw up). For some reason, this combination is like crack for me; I am compelled to keep trying over and over, repeatedly exploring, screwing up, starting over, and largely losing huge blocks of time.

My current fix is Rogue Legacy*, a game where you control a series of adventurers, each with a set of unique and humorous traits (like alektorophobia or nearsightedness) as they explore a haunted castle. When you inevitably die, the quest is taken up by your heir. You have the chance to spend gold found in the ever-shifting fortress to permanently upgrade you characters and equipment, giving your future selves a slightly less slim chance of success.

There are a few tweaks to the roguelike formula, some that I like, others that I don’t. One of the unlockables is the option to freeze the castle layout, so you can explore the same dungeon multiple times. This can be useful for practicing against bosses or finding treasure chests, but you get a penalty to gold. The one tweak that I don’t like (even though I can see that it makes sense for balance) is the inability to save your gold: each time you re-enter the castle, you lose whatever gold you haven’t spent on upgrades. Admittedly, this forces you to be more careful and get better, as later upgrades cost more.

What’s funny is I’m not that good at the game. Health pickups are rare, and I tend to forget that, making me careless. I’ll die repeatedly as I flail about, but I’ll be right back moments later to try again with the next heir. I’ve seriously lost at least a day and a half to this game.But don’t let that deter you. If random chance and blind luck sound like fun to you, you should totally try this game. I think I’ve definitely gotten my money’s worth (it was on sale, but that’s a different/known issue). It’s on sale, and there’s a demo! I can also suggest Spelunky, if you prefer your masochism with a dose of bullwhips and fedoras instead of swords and wizard hats.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make a run or two before dinner. Ha, I crack myself up!

EDIT: Almost 3 hours later (I think), I am finally getting up from the computer.