Wow. I can't believe Thanksgiving is behind us and the New Year is just ahead. I can see by my post count my resolution to post weekly went right out the window long about the start of my MA program... along with my regular trips to the gym.
I feel like I've got a polite invisible assistant standing over my shoulder most of the time these days whispering "remember, thou art mortal" all the time. I've finally caved and admitted to myself and my therapist that yes, Virginia, I've got an actual problem with stress and anxiety. I've been on anxiety meds since October-ish and I couldn't begin to tell you if they're helping. Too much going on.
The holidays are rough this year. I've still got schoolwork due each week, including the week of Christmas, so there's no letting off the gas. I keep telling myself, if I can just make it to 1 March 2015, I'm good. That's when all my MA work should be done, and I can start looking for adjunct hours and turning this academic slog into income. My wife and a few others are trying to talk me into a Ph.D. program... but one thing at a time. I'm nearly insane as it is, and I'm not doing any one thing especially well.
So, let's talk about stuff that makes me happy. Like gaming. Gaming makes me happy. Bobby and I spent some time a couple of weekends ago putting some more work into our version of MechWarrior. The file dates on our draft copies showed me that we've been working on this project for over a year. That makes me feel frustrated, as I know we should have had something more than a few Word documents to show for our work by now - but then I remember all the other plates I'm spinning and it all begins to make sense. Family, Job, School, in that order. Then Guard, then gaming.
I seriously considered resigning from the Guard. In fact, I consider it almost every day. I worked so damn hard to get into the Guard, but sometimes it just seems like one more thing I have to do that I'm not particularly enjoying anymore. I can't go too much into it, but I'm not on track with my weight loss anymore, and the duties I have been assigned are too much like what I do in the civilian world. I know I have talents in the area in which I am being asked to work - but it wasn't what I had wanted to do as a soldier. Needs of the service, I suppose. At this point, I'm staying in my unit for my comrades who supported me in my struggle to swear in. I'm staying in because hell, I just got here, and I want to do something significant before I get out. I'm staying in because I'm to embarrassed not to.
OK, so gaming. We've got our character generation rules locked down, more or less. What we're working on now is the back end stuff - we're borrowing Pendragon's concept of a "Winter phase" between campaigns. I like the idea of the MechWarriors going back to their holdings and taking care of the business of being knights/nobility since that was a trope of the original MechWarrior material.
TO BE CONTINUED.
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