This last month and half has been a lot of me working on a D&D adventure/campaign that I wrote for my birthday. In years past I've talked about wanting to make my friends and family get together and play DnD with me. Usually I back out because I figure no one actually wants to play. This time my wife took me seriously 🤣.
I know, I haven't done many updates to this blog in while, and the DnD Campaign is not the only writing I've been working on. My goal for the year was simply to write more. I have achieved that and I have been consistent in writing every single day; whether it's writing a legal pleading or working up and formatting a draft of a brief for work, or just an entry in my journal or “daily notes.” This has been the most prolific year of writing for me in a very long time... Probably since the semester in college where I had both PoliSci and World Lit back to back. Both classes were effectively just a steady stream of producing essays and papers.
“Charley Crockett, anybody can pray for rain. You best get busy digging a well, boy!”
~James Hand
I originally wrote this in April of last year, shortly after my Mom's passing. This was something on the previous incarnation of my blog. I felt it was worthy of re-posting and preserving. Today would have been her 73rd birthday. When I think about her, I can still hear her laugh. Happy Birthday Mom!
A new chapter has started, in a way it's like revisiting a book series you loved and finding a new entry. I'm on my second week at the new job.
I had a shot at something different (working in the casino gaming sector)... But, I knew that it would involve being awake at all hours, and having to devote an inordinate amount of my time to the company.
The law firm I interviewed with offered me what I was looking for: straight forward expectations and a realistic workload. Law offices can be notorious for having to work overtime, deadlines are critical, and you have to juggle hearing dates and things like that. But every so often you find an attorney who has put in enough time (often several years) and has struck a nice balance. I've never worked with this particular attorney directly before, but we know a lot of the same people from as far back as decade (or longer) ago. So I felt comfortable taking the job.
A friend of mine and I meet up every week just to shoot the shit and compare notes. We keep each other motivated to continue moving forward and improving our lives. This week he shared with me a “Life Audit” document (specifically, it was a PDF). I was thinking about doing a blog post with basically all the steps from the PDF and talking about my approach to them. But I don't see the PDF publicly posted anywhere, or it's not easily accessible. I would say that the author is a pretty notable internet personality and “self-help guru.” It is branded content, but doesn't appear to be copyrighted... In any case, I'm not looking to be sued (should more than 10 people read this), so I'll spare you the specific steps that he walks through with his system. Instead I'll summarize the process without also promoting any one specific personality—there are a myriad of them online, you're free to pick the personality you like the best, they all essentially say the same things and they're happy to take your money. Sometimes these people are controversial figures, and I have no real context for this guy other than the title of a book he wrote, and this one PDF that my friend sent me.
Everyone has their own winter rituals. Either you make them or you follow what has come before, or you choose to ignore them all together, we're all acutely aware that it's something that a lot of us do every year. Figuratively, symbolically, or astrologically, everything in the human condition is a cycle of some sort, like a series of a million different Venn diagrams creating infinite combinations of various overlapping factors, perpetually in motion like celestial gears; these cycles dictate a number of things related to our lives. Or, the cycles at least preside an influence over our perceptions, emotions, and actions during certain times of the year, or periods in our lives over the course of several years.
Not sure what's taking me so much time to finish my Nation of Victims review. I keep coming back to it though. Hopefully I'll be done changing things around and rearranging paragraphs enough to post a fairly decent overview and recommendation for the book soon. Right now though, I'd like to talk a little about life and get into some personal knowledge management (or, “pkm”) software that I've been using.
(The first snow of the year finally touched down in the Humbodlt-Toiyabe National Forest.)
