Oh, er.
Um. Hi. As you may – or not, as the case may be – have noticed, I haven’t written on this thing for a long while. There are a plethora of reasons, but mostly it has just been a distinct lack of energy.
I am working things, again.
Anxiety, depression, losing the writing Zen, and not letting everyday life overwhelm me to the point of hermitdom (of a variety of forms).
Anywho, as part of my author-Zen reclamation, I am going to attempt to write on here, every day.
Not huge amounts. Just…a bit. A hundred words a day for a bit. Then two hundred. And so, and so forth. I’m not promising that I will always make a post, at such and thus time, every day.
But, I do promise to make the attempt.
Most mornings, I run the Girl to her swim team practice. It’s in the next town over, about 10 miles away. The kicker is that I am doing this at 6AM. In order to maximize our rest, I tend to sleep until the last possible moment and then just thrown on whatever clean clothing is close to hand. This often includes a lounging/sleeping bra.1
So. Girl dropped off and I am returning home via the back roads. Which are paved in name only, really. There was …jouncing.
At the height of one of the bounces, THIS song came on the radio.
You guys know that I started to serenade my boobs along with the radio, right? 2
1 – I’m willing to be that anyone out there with anything larger than a C-cup will know exactly what I am talking about. But, for those of you that don’t – basically, one that kind of/sort of offers support. You’d wear it around the house for minimal “don’t jiggle as I type” sort of support.
2 – I know there is something wrong with me. But, at least I amuse the fuck out of myself most days. J
As some of you may know – I have been tabletop gaming for nigh on 30 years, now. Let us consider that. 30. Years.
*SIGH*
I was going to just post an image of a walker, to give y’all the “aged Bon” impression. But, the image search results amused me to no end. So, I share. Because I am cool like that.
I have been in many groups over the years, but my favorite is the one I am in currently. We’ve been together1 for fifteen years, give or take. The membership has flexed a bit as we have gone along. People have moved (or divorced, please see footnotes) away for jobs, marriages, and school. However, the core has remained pretty solid. The same five or six people, getting together on at least a monthly basis, for fun and mayhem. And maybe a glass of wine or two.
Over the years, we have all taken turns with the GM responsibilities. All of us are freaking brilliant, btw. I mean that, without any artifice or false humility. Brilliant. Most of the players in this group are writers, of one stripe or another. All of us love the game, love building worlds and characters, stories and plots2. We live for the moment when we see the shocked look in our players’ eyes. The look that tells us that the story grabbed them, taken them to a place that they never expected. Making someone cry because of what you have done to their character – happy tears, mind – is one of the better feelings you can have. It’s like watching someone experience the story you have written, as if it were real. I can only hope that this makes sense to the non-gamers out there.
ANYhoo. I tell you all this to relate an amusing anecdote.
My personal favorite GM within our group is a fella by the name of P. P is literally a gamer for a living. He makes and writes and helps put out into market video games. I am totes jelly.3 On top of all this, P has a voice and personality like Brian Blessed (if you don’t know who that is, shame on you) and Jim Carey (of Grinch fame) had love child who was subsequently raised by Bill Hicks.
And poor P. He had to put up with all of us. Because we don’t – and I think are physically and mentally incapable –actually follow the plot as set down in a game. Even with a tasty, tasty set of plot hooks scattered before us, we generally wander off in a completely different direction.
ooh, look! Shiny plot hooks. Let’s go the other way!
Or, as has happened on a couple of different occasions, accidentally kill the NPC with the information that we need to complete the campaign.
We considered making these as T-Shirts to wear whilst GMing.
Oops.
It got bad enough that one of the guys running our tank started to beg us to please “don’t touch ANYthing” or, as inevitably happened, when the explosions started, would scream “WHAT ARE YOU TOUCHING?!”
The Process 