Love Stories

I've spent many nights alone now. Recently those nights involve an indeterminate period of staring up at the cold concrete ceiling, marveling at the slabs that were poured in forms at ground level, then hoisted by cranes 22.9 floors into the air before being fitted together with their new neighbors by a network of protruding rebar to be forever sealed to each other with a bead of wet cement, drawn closer by nuts and bolts. It strikes me how much finality there is in the process. It's that finality that I find so lacking in creative writing.

I love creating, and I love writing. Code, mostly, but sometimes creatively as well. The problem I have with creative writing that programming doesn't touch on is the infinite flexibility and fluidity that the written word can have. Code has that too, but the flexibility and fluidity are always available with a purpose. When I write programs, I have a set goal. A point. Something to drive towards. Creative writing has always been harder though. I can pre-plan a program with ease, but can I assemble a simple short-story plotline that's cohesive and interconnected? Not usually.

In the last two days I've spent twenty-four hours working on a coding project. I completed it during that time, writing 570 lines of code to perform a task that took 253 seconds. A task that, by hand, would have taken in the order of days for a single person to perform. I typed 18,809 characters over seven pages of PHP. I only had to stop and analyze a few times. Perhaps for a grand total of two hours during that entire period did I have to stop and figure out what I was supposed to have been doing, and how to make it happen.

Why is it then, that when I want to write a story, it never comes through like that?

I can have all the ideas in the world. Description can flow forth from my mind like steam bursting through the crack in a copper pipe stowed in a basement, but when it comes to a story, I lose track of my direction. Where to go, what to have them say, who needs to be involved. My characters all end up being a variation on me that leaves the story free of dialogue because they all know what the other me is thinking through the whole story. Many knowing glances are exchanged between them, as if they always know what the other would have said, but are the readers to be left in the dark too? Perhaps this communication flows in monologues inside each character's head, where they speak the dialogue of the other in self-reflective sentences uttered in the first-person narrative of the scene.

Perhaps in this lies the real problem. Perhaps I'm having such a hard time writing about what these characters would say and do is because they ARE a part of me. Is it that the part of me that flows onto the page is so bland and unnecessarily useless that nothing I can do can usher this character into action? Maybe it's just my depression leaking out into the world. I've heard depression likes paper.

What if it was, though? What if it is the depression that seems to have slowly crept into my life that's causing this void of imagination and creativity that I so often steep in. If that's the case, then the longing itself is also self-defeating, as there's nothing more disheartening than being down so far that I can't even write about it.

I've heard it said that some of the best love-story writers are good at what they do because they're depressed. Happy, fulfilled people don't write good love stories. They don't have anything to write about. It's hard to write about how you feel right now, this moment. If you were to sit down and ask yourself to write about a character that's in your same mood, and passed that on to someone else, unless you are among the pantheon of emotional description, they likely wouldn't have any idea what you're talking about. The writing would likely be bland and uninspiring. The mood would probably be completely missed in the vocabulary and form that your writing took. But if you write about how it is to be happy, as someone who's depressed... You find that it's a lot easier to write about the feeling of relief, serenity, and wonder that accompanies true happiness. 

It doesn't really accompany happiness though, does it? A person can read your description of happiness and determine that yes, that is how they feel, but they would never have been able to describe it for themselves.

So I suppose then that it's only logical that someone dealing with depression and loneliness would be the perfect person to write a love story. They know the kind of longing and tension that accompanies being alone. And they know how they want to feel. They know how they would want it to go. Maybe a chance meeting at a coffee shop spurred by a quick glance at a computer screen revealing that a person nearby shares an interest in some cult-film that nobody's ever heard of. They dream about the day where they casually walk by, point out the similarity and continue on, turning back to see a smirk in the face of the owner of the laptop. They dream about a chance circumstance in which they run into the person again, this time sticking around for a conversation. They feel the tension as they lead up to asking the person out, and the relief and excitement that comes from the accepted invitation. You can feel the throbbing of their pulse in their neck as they stress about what to wear, what they're going to say, what they want to order at dinner, whether they want to mention that they've always noticed their date at the coffee shop or not.

The date comes and you can again feel the tension and excitement creep slowly up your spine as they meet at the restaurant. You feel the anxiety as the main character looks around the room for their date, half knowing that they might not even be there, but hoping that out of the corner of their eye they'll spot a hand waving from a table. There it is. The anxiety lessens as the excitement rushes in. Disbelief leaves the pages as they describe to you the scene in front of them. The busy restaurant, the noisy clink and clank of pans and dishes being rearranged in the kitchen off in the distance as the world slowly drifts away. The restaurant gently drifts out of periphery as the main character's gaze fixes squarely on the subject of their affection, dressed exactly as they've always imagined they would be.

The story continues exactly how it would go if they would have their way. If they'd just run into the perfect person at the coffee shop tomorrow instead of spending the whole day tucked into a corner with their laptop browsing Facebook and grumbling about people posting "couples" pictures and changing relationship statuses. They write the story they want their life to be, leaving the happy writer at a disadvantage.

The happy writer writes the story that's already been, driven by the smile of the one they love, or while being reassured that all is in order with only the slightest murmur of a sentence in the other room from the voice they long to hear when they're alone.

And here I lay, describing how a group of cement slabs became my ceiling.

Maybe I should stick to code.

Code isn't ever depressing, it just works.

Gamify ALL THE THINGS!

So, last night I had a bit of a revelation: I'm not getting enough done. Well, okay so that's not much of a revelation, especially if you know how much stuff I get done on a regular basis (it's sad really, especially with all my aspirations).

But I had an idea, brought about by all my favorite TED talks that speak on making everything into a game with the purpose of making it fun. Do Stuff, Get Points, Receive Bacon(Or some other such reward).

Here's what I'm thinking: days dedicated to specific tasks.
Mondays are going to be creative days. Tuesdays, a personal "do whatever" day. Wednesday and Thursday Production and Social/relaxation days respectively. Friday dedicated to other people, friends/family/etc. Saturday dedicated to team-building things with whatever group of co-workers are available, and Sunday free for catching up on the previous week's missed points.

For each day, there's a different point goal, and for each specific task, a different number of points. Like this blog post, this is a personal blog post, so for this week, that would be one point towards Wednesday's "Production Budget" of points.

My preliminary list of Creative things for Mondays include:
Starting or Finishing a short-story - 1 point
Write based off of a new Writing Prompt/Storymatic pair - 1 point
1000 words for H+ - 3 points
Practice drawing, trace/analyze a character - 1 point
Practice Animation - Vector Trace a character concept, animate 12 frames of walking/talking motion - 2 points
Draw/paint a new landscape - 3 points
Draw a new character pose - 3 points
Record H+ Project video blog - 5 points
Write a COMPLETE short story - 2 points

Right now, I'm looking to do 5 points of creativity every Monday.

This is just a preliminary idea, so it might not stick, but I think it's a bit of an interesting idea considering the push toward gamification. Maybe I'll code a web application to track points for people, if they think this is a cool idea. Anyway. 1 point down for Wednesday, now to work on Monday's points.

The SimCity Snafu, Why I'm proud of Maxis

Since the release of SimCity, there's been a constant struggle for stability that EA and Maxis hasn't quite managed to fix. Maxis is trying their hardest, as seen by the numerous updates and additional servers they've brought online since the game launch, but they also know they aren't quite up to snuff yet, and are still working hard to make their customers happy. They've even offered a free EA game to anyone that's registered their copy of SimCity at this point. So why are gamers still so mad?

Well, let's take a look at the traditional SimCity editions. When you look back, you see games in which cities had to be pretty well self-sufficient. Cities which, without your careful planning and attention, would be horribly ill-conceived blobs of zones with not enough fire, police, and hospital coverage, and if you weren't bussing around the ill in your hard-to-drive ambulance, you sometimes weren't able to make ends meet in the grander scheme of things. Running a city in SimCity 4 wasn't easy, and that was kind of the point.

The fun thing about the city was seeing how far you could get before you failed. That's really what the game is about, if you look at it objectively. It's a strategy game where you have to figure out how to get your city to work. If you somehow manage to get the city to run on its own, making more money than you were spending, it became a rewarding screen saver to look at... at least, until the aliens descended from the heavens and blasted your city with their giant laser, destroying half of your buildings, and your world wonder, and setting another quarter of your city on fire. And then you'd rebuild.

But you know, Maxis is one of those companies that, much like Valve, are constantly striving for better and more interesting gameplay. In this instance of SimCity, they found that through the power of the internet. This is the primary thing that people are complaining about, but if you look at the game and how it has progressed since it's first release, taking it to the internet is the most obvious next step. What Maxis is trying to do here is make the game a little bit more like running a real city, and the only way to do that is with a real working economy, and the only way to achieve that fairly is online.

While yes, you can set up your own region, leave it private, and run all of the cities in the region by itself, that's not really the point. The reason the game is online only isn't because of some silly DRM scheme implemented by EA, and no number of angry anti-DRM gamers are going to convince me of that. And while yes, I can see how having the game online only does help protect against game piracy, the point of the system isn't that. The point is that you are supposed to be playing this game WITH OTHER PEOPLE. If it weren't so hard to manage a world economy with the number of players Maxis was expecting to get with their new title, I'd even say that we wouldn't be limited to regions, but instead all placing cities on one really big world map.

To me, the vision Maxis was going for in creating SimCity is a smaller-scale attempt at creating a global community of cities. I'd even posit to say that the next Maxis title might be more akin to an MMO, with cities being created as cities in states that interact with each other in countries that then interact with the rest of the world. SimCity: Planets?

What I'm really trying to say here is that I believe the gamers crying out for the ability to play offline, single-player only, no internet connection required, are completely missing the point. SimCity 4 was pretty close to the best single-player SimCity experience I could hope for, and I'm ready to step into the realm of online, multi-player, region based gameplay, and I think that the gamer population as a whole should take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Maxis has been a company I've respected for what they do, and for that, I trust that they are following their vision. If that means that SimCity is going to remain online only, so be it, I'm going to continue to play and enjoy crafting regions with other players, and I'm going to love it.

Tornado Alley? What?

So I had a dream a few nights ago. There were a few things about this dream that set it apart from some of the others I've had.

One: It was not about anything happy at all.
Two: It still had a happy ending.
Three: Well, MY world was unaffected, but everyone else's world was rocked.

It started off pretty simply, I was opening presents from some sort of gift-giving holiday at my grandmother's house. Maybe it was my birthday, I don't know for sure. Whatever day it was, it started with everyone gathered around a table eating lunch. I opened my gifts, an Apple set (Macbook Pro, iPad, iPhone), from my grandmother. I wasn't able to get to any other gifts, as at that moment, it started getting very very windy outside. I stepped outdoors to investigate the wind, and saw a funnel cloud barreling down from the sky. I freaked, tried to get everyone inside but it was too late. The cloud sucked us all up into the air, and threw us all around the city. I passed out, recovered, and woke up in the arms of my stepdad, who revived me.

I got up, looked around, and found that I had landed in a grassy field with several of my friends from throughout life. My stepdad helped me get to my feet, and we spent the next few hours wandering around finding all of my family members as I ran into more and more people I used to know. Once we managed to recoup the family, who were entirely intact, we rallied to go back to my grandmother's house to see what damage had been done.

I volunteered to go, since it was only half of my childhood and I held no real attachment to it other than it having been my home for ten or so years. I peaked a hill and looked out on devastation like I'd never seen before. I spent another hour or two trying to get my bearings. Instead of being a vast wasteland of destroyed homes, there was only dirt. The tornado(?) was powerful enough to take everything off the face of the map. Fences, streets, houses, cars, they weren't damaged or destroyed, they were disintegrated. I walked through the "wastes" for another hour at least before spotting the house in the distance. My grandmother's house laid nearly untouched, with the only damage being that the porch that usually hung off the back of the house was instead skewered into the kitchen. Otherwise, the house was pristine.

I entered to find the house nearly as we left it, looking no more worse for wear than if it had only been a gusty day. I wandered around to make sure nothing inside was damaged. Everything important was intact, the only thing damaged was the window the porch was now hanging out of.

For some reason, my attention was directed toward the "Mac Pack" I had acquired, and I retrieved it, walked for about 20 minutes in a slightly different direction, and found my family staying right on the outskirts of the damaged land.

This dream seems meaningless. Maybe a dream about how the destruction of an environment has no impact on the strength of my family? Perhaps it indicates the "pillar" or "central point" of my life?

Not sure, but it sure was trippy.

Strange.

Someday.

You know, there are days in my life when I really understand what's going on around me, in the world, and within myself. Today's one of those days.

I just got home after a Josh Groban concert. Now, I've done this before, but this time it was a "game-changing change" kind of experience, and I remembered why I love singing so much. It's not about me, or how I feel when I sing. Singing for myself isn't what's exciting, it's singing for everyone, bringing my talent to the world.

During the show, Josh went out to answer questions the audience had texted him before the show. One was "You're my inspiration to sing, Can I sing something with you?". If I'd known that his answer to that question was going to be "I'll come to you, meet me at the bottom", I'd have asked that question myself. It's a dream of mine to sing with Josh, not necessarily in front of a crowd of thousands of people, but maybe just to a small group backstage or something at some point.

Now, how one pursues that kind of goal, that's the real tricky part.

Maybe, Someday. Once I'm a little older, have been singing a little longer, and have a little more talent, I'll give it a try. What's the worst he/his management/his bodyguards can say? No?

Days of Summer

Well, Blogspot. I fail. Not at the things you would expect, just basic things, like posting often and keeping you updated. There are a few major new changes in my life, things that modify my core essence.

Biggest of these probably being my change of job. I finally got my happy-ass out of Geek Squad, and now I'm working in some downtown student lofts. One of the many changes this brought about is that I now LIVE DOWNTOWN.

Super cool, yeah?

It has been, and it's been another case where all I did was say I wanted to work there, and then I did. The application process was similar to Geek Squad, only it took a little more time between when I applied and when the actual job appeared ready for me. Though, it kind of did it at the right time. I got the letter of recommendation at work before I really felt ready to leave, but when the job was offered to me, I'd really set my mind on wanting to do that. So I did.

Really it's kind of put me in a place where I really feel like I can do anything just by thinking about it hard enough. If only relationships worked that way, I'd have been bunking with Emma Watson for the past five years.

Living in the heart of downtown Denver is going to be good for me. It's already made me a much more social person than I already was, and that's saying something, if you'd seen me the past six months as it is.

I'm going to try this AGAIN and hope for the best.

Don't know how well that's going to fly, but then again, I live with Comp Sci students... with an Accounting major thrown in there for good measure.

Love You All

This one's just an open shout to all my friends, all my family, for being who they are, and a quick rundown of why each and every one of you is just so damned important to me:

Mom: You're my mother, Duh. But beyond that, you manage to look beyond anything else and dig up that sense that only a mother can have to keep me safe. You're always open to having long, drawn out, wandering conversations about anything and everything, always offering advice and guidance when I'm the most lost.

Vic: For sticking to your morals, and being the father figure I needed, when I needed one, and being a friend when I didn't. Though I don't always agree with your methods, you hold true to what you believe, and it's made you into a place where you CAN do something about how you feel about the world.

Autumn: For being strong and pushing through everything you've been through in life, and for being stupid, because it gives me someone that has worse problems than I do sometimes. Helping you keeps me sane, what can I say :p

Jerod: For having broken me out of my shell, taken me to places I'd never been, showing me how life should be: LIVED.

Matt: For being a constant source of entertainment, support, encouragement, and knocking me down to size when my ego gets a touch out of control, which it does constantly.

Andy: For keeping your cool, introducing me to new ways of thinking, always having your head on your shoulders and answering so many silly silly questions about absurd things.

Erik: For always having that comment that makes me go O_o

Angela: For having that drive to get shit DONE that's inspired me to do things every once in a while and not be such a lazy bum.

Aimee: For having shown that no matter how much you do, you can ALWAYS do more, and it's ALWAYS worth it.

Sidnaceous: For having practically been a third parent for me, despite having been on the other side of the country

Tarnagh: For being my e-aunty of awesomeness.

Teyla: For being my conscience so many times I can no longer count them. Always making me think about all the consequences of my actions, no matter what they are.

Richard: For being someone I can spar with, who's mind is on a similar level as mine. The debates will rage forever, because it's just that damn fun.

Annalisa: For having shown me the forgiveness I never deserved.

Ammarina: For having been there when I finally got comfortable being me, and being able to listen to me babble on about shit for HOURS instead of just bailing on me when I'd drop you off.

And the rest of you: For all the little things you do every day that just make life worth living. No matter how bad a mood I'm in, even five seconds in the presence of any of you makes me forget what was troubling me, if only for a while.

It's friends like these that make me possibly the most lucky man in the world, and having made me a man while doing it. I look forward to DECADES with all of you. Thank you. I love you. All of you. Yes, even you.