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| An old journal: the beginning |
> It started at 3:30 AM on Easter (April 7) 1996, while the rest of the family was off on vacation. I began with the comment that it was the third journal I'd kept, having lost the floppy I kept the previous one on and the one I'd written on a Commodore 64.
I covered some basic facts, such as where I was working (Response Management Systems) and that I was, at the time, a brand spanking new FGM in DragonRealms who'd not yet gotten his first royalty check yet.The real payment though is the wonder of players discovering my creations, the joy of the creation itself.
I went on to talk about music and stuff, and mentioned that I had bought 9 CD's at the store that day and more were coming via mail order. That's kind of disgusting now. When I was living with my parents I could afford to do that on a regular basis, but now? The last CD I bought was The Fragile and I probably haven't bought more than 9 all year.
I had an interesting thought then, about somebody trying to figure me out just by looking at my (cluttered) room. They'd see CDs, fantasy artwork, books, and "geek junk" scattered everywhere.
But then I had to ruin it with some comments about myself that were so inane I won't quote them. At the time I thought of myself as sort of a Celtic pagan geek. Here's something I inserted later:
[9-25-98: though the sentiment appears several times below in this journal, I just have to say again, the previous paragraph sucked. It's tempting to delete it. We now return you to 1996.]
Then I went on to talk about my harp and my guitar, both of which have stories of their own. I bought the harp at the SCA Pennsic War, which is as you might guess in Pennsylvania...
Imagine if you will, five people and their camping gear for two weeks -- one being a fighter and needing his armor, one selling jewelry and needing her pavillion, tables, and stock, and one being a vain clotheshorse -- packed into a Lumina APV minivan with a less-than-UHaul trailer towed behind it. Imagine the look on this writer's face when the owner of the vehicle asked him how he planned to get this 3.5' tall harp home.
The guitar was Steph's, and she'd put it up for a charity auction at the 1995 Dragon*Con. I got into a small bidding war with Mark Shepherd and finally won at $70.
Both guitar and harp are still in Florida and I miss them from time to time. I'm not good at either, but playing them is relaxing. In fact I was kind of going nuts at Pennsic that year due to circumstances beyond my control, and when I finally had a chance to get away from people I played the harp until I lulled myself to sleep.
The next thing I wrote about was a dream I had in 1987 that I still remember. It was a turning point in my life, and it makes a lot of sense now. But at the time I made some wrong assumptions about it that I kind of cringe at now. I haven't shared it with many people, in some of those cases I think it was a mistake to bring it up... so I won't go into it now.
Later that day I wrote another entry in which I babbled about some Celtic BS, then related a mini-event I did in DR:
I had a bit of fun on duty in DragonRealms today, bringing in "a huge goblin" that grunted, snorted, howled, and let out such gems of wisdom as "Mrgghghgrrgh!" A spontaneous event like that depends entirely on the reaction of the players, and in this case they befriended the ol' ugly beast and tried to figure out what he was after. A good question since I hadn't come in there with any particular goals in mind. I lost them well on the way to Leth Deriel and watched from my place "backstage" as they wandered all about looking for "Gobby."
I remember that fondly actually. Smahsh, and I think Itharr, were there. I kinda miss those old days of GMing before I got too wrapped up in the technical end of things.
That night I had the "spirit ditch" dream and wrote about it the next day. |
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| horses and crows |
> April 28, 1996
I got all excited about a dream where I was riding a dirty-white shaggy pony, the color of horsehair for violin bows. As I rode, the hair fell out to reveal a glossy black mane that a thoroughbred Arabian movie would envy.
For some reason this made me juxtapose a pair of old folk songs. In "Twa Corbies" a dead Scots knight is picked apart by a pair of crows, who discuss their chances of getting caught (slim) and the uses to which the various body parts can be put (many). In "Bonden Og Kraka" a Norwegian farmer shoots a giant crow and makes such sundries as rope, shovels, window glass, and a church steeple from its parts.
Um. Okay. |
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| the foundations shake |
> July 15, 1996
Reading over this one reminds me that last year was hardly my first one for weird sh*t. I wrote an email to my confidant and best friend at the time, Morgan, outlining some of the weirdness.
The company my dad worked for got bought out. Over a period of several weeks, they found excuses to fire most of the managers, and eventually got around to my dad (who was planning to quit at the end of the month anyway 'cause the new management was basically a pack of rotten bastards).
We had been looking into the idea of moving, remodeling the old place and selling it. After one deal got dropped when it turned out to require $400 a month for flood insurance, and another fell through when they sat down to do the paperwork, we gave up on that. I guess that's less stressful than actually moving, but getting mentally prepared to live somewhere else was weird enough.
Then I found out that two of the four guys where I worked were quitting because they'd found better jobs. We were already stretched thin at four. Shortly afterward, someone from Bell+Howell called for the boss while he was away and wouldn't talk to anyone else; B+H is a huge corp that gets into a little everything, and it just so happened that they had a software product rather similar but less feature-rich than ours. Could be interested in a buyout, we thought.
And then Simutronics announced it was going to hire four OSGMs. They'd made hints before that they were considering hiring GameMasters as full-time employees, and I was drooling over the idea. But then they dropped the bomb: they wanted *onsite* employees. As in, packing up and moving to Missouri of all places.
I'd always lived with my parents up until then, even commuting to college. I paid them a measly $200 a month for room and board. Working for Simu would mean an increase in pay but a much bigger increase in expenses.
I applied for it but admitted I wasn't sure whether I really wanted to move. Possibly because of that hesitation, I didn't make the final cut that time around. But I did take over Steph's position as senior tech GM for DragonRealms. |
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| the boot |
> September 2, 1996
Entry starts off with an old and recurring complaint about being lethargic. I knew I wasn't lazy because of the effort I put forth for DragonRealms... but every moment when I wasn't working on DR I felt guilty. It was addiction of a sort, maybe.
As of the previous Monday I was no longer an employee of Response Management Systems. I'd been given a two-week leave of absence to think about it, and at the end of those two weeks I gave 'em their key and their loaner computer and said goodbye. It was overdue really; I had no interest in what I was doing for them anymore, and was spending more time and much more energy working on DR. They were paying me half what they should, and I was giving them less than half what I should. The actual parting was not what I'd call an enjoyable experience, but it was inevitable.
So I learned what it was like to have my parents pushing me to get a job. Heh. But I was already starting to prepare myself to move to Missouri and become an OSGM -- at least in my mind. Actually cleaning up my room, sorting the years of accumulated junk and packing or discarding it, was one of those things I didn't feel like doing yet.
Religion was another. I admitted then that I wasn't sure what or whether I believed, or whether that even mattered. I went into more detail about that in an entry twenty days later, saying that my quasi-religion didn't make me smile anymore, didn't touch my heart, and that I realized I was just clutching on to it out of lack of anything else to hold onto. |
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| I'm in! |
> November 11 -- December 10, 1996
Skipping over a couple of entries to save embarrassment...
This was the day I was officially hired as an OSGM. I was pretty excited but I kept the entry brief, because "a journal's not going to offer congratulations, support, or advice."
I was busy for the next month, doing that cleaning and sorting I was talking about. I had a belated Thanksgiving dinner with Morgan and some SCA friends of hers. Both Morgan and Lori were into Tarot so I let them read for me. It was the most favorable reading either of them had ever seen. Supposedly, I was heading for a big change and I would be very happy, financially well off, and I'd "put some of my old demons to rest". I didn't (and still don't) know what to think of Tarot, but it was nice to get the encouragement anyway.
(Results: well, anybody could have predicted the big change. I am happier, mostly. I am most definitely not financially well off. I think I've put some old demons to rest.)
December 10, the day before the move began:
My thoughts? I'm calm now. Kinda looking forward to the adventure again. The past couple of days have been hard -- nobody should leave their family during the holidays. :(
So I reminisced about what I'd miss. Not the place, I thought, just the people. Turned out to be wrong about that though; though Bradenton was nothing special, it was home and there are things I miss. |
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| the move |
> December 13, 1996
It was not a good trip.
I'm writing this in a new Holiday Inn Express in O'Fallon, Illinois, about an hour from St. Charles. The trip has been hard on my nerves... Dad's sick, Mom's not doing great, the car's got a brake problem where it makes awful grinding noises when I drive slow, the weather was bad for most of Thursday, Atlanta traffic was its usual "adventure," we found through calling Chris that [Mooville Apartments] left a message about a change in plans (I'm getting a different unit 'cause 3007 "smelled bad"), and today we lost an hour or so in a weird series of events. I thought I'd lost $480 worth of traveller's checks, and we pulled off to look for them but had to get off the on-ramp... I wound up losing my folks and following the wrong Budget truck back east a couple of exits before I realized it, and on the way west again I passed them doubling back east. After pulling off again and searching around, I found them in the back of the car... apparently they'd fallen out of my jacket pocket. Sheesh.
Oh, and I saw a nice, big, pretty dog get hit by a car today in Chattanooga. :( |
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| settling |
> January 2, 1997
I was settling in, and writing settling-in thoughts. I don't remember it now, but I complained that the loudly humming electrical box outside my bedroom window was driving me crazy. Wrote about working on Christmas Eve, Christmas and New Year's Eve and missing my family terribly on those holidays especially.
I described the job a bit; it's really changed over the years. At the time, it was mostly a matter of babysitting the servers while doing regular GM stuff, with too-frequent character restorals and transfers and lockouts and such.
I described life at my new home, and what bothered me the most at the time: eating meals alone. On the other hand, there's something to be said for not having crazy arguments about where, what and when to eat. I was really missing the family, but starting to enjoy independence. |
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| K.O. |
> April 4-14, 1997
So here I am, after 3 more months. I've bought a computer (an Acer Aspire Pentium 166 with MMX), gotten one at work also (finally), gotten Missouri tags for my car, done my taxes, and had a visit from Mom and Chris, not really in that order.
But the big thing in these two entries was my "discovery" of Kemetic Orthodoxy. Or Steph's discovery actually. She had been talking to another GM at the time, who happened to be a priest. She asked me if I knew anything about "kemetic religion" and I said I had no idea. But I was suddenly very curious, and hit the web to read up on it. At the time, I had very little interest in Egypt and its gods. Everything I'd learned about it came from middle school, &how the heck did they build the Pyramids?" documentaries, and, sad to say, Stargate.
What drew me in though was the concept of Ma'at. Universal, absolute truth, justice, order, and rightness. We have no word in English that really sums it up and I'm not enough of a poet to adequately describe it. But as soon as I read about it, I got it right away. And I wondered why the heck I hadn't run into the idea before; why wasn't it the central part of every religious and philosophical system?
So a few days after Steph joined the House of Netjer, I did as well. I asked myself if I was joining just because she was, but I knew I wasn't. It was Ma'at. |
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| report card |
> April 15-16, 1997
Did some reflecting on my life. I was amazed at how much had changed since April of 1996 (moved out on my own and halfway across the continent, new job, new religion), and I took stock of myself in terms of how proud I was of my life.
Yeesh, I've done some dumb things. Kept myself out of jail and off drugs and out of serious trouble, but I can't say 100% of my life was something to be proud of. The main thing is procrastinating or just plain skipping things. I did it then and I still do it now. I'm facing the possibility that I'll always be like that. I'm conscientious about doing things for other people -- getting assignments done and the like -- but I'm lax about taking care of myself. Still need to get my spare tire fixed, optometrist appointment, call AT&T about cable modem, call Sprint about upgrading my phone plan, do dishes, clean the apartment... |
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| getting mistakes out of the way |
> April 20-28, 1997
That week was my first doing "shrine stuff" (senut, the Kemetic Orthodox semi-formal daily prayer. It was a learning experience. Stuff like that, you still have to be practical... in fact you really have to be practical. For instance, make sure you can sit there comfortably so you don't spend more time thinking about how much your butt aches than you do thinking about God. :)
During this period of my life, I wrote a lot of personal religious stuff which I'll spare you all from in this recap. The sort of thing that you write just to get it straight in your head, rather than for posterity. |
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| for the birds |
> April 29, 1997
I noted that I'd been startled and freaked out more than once by the sounds of something scratching around in the walls. Mice? Squirrels? Rats? Ninja penguins? Pygmy were-cows?
I wasn't afraid of any physical harm or serious damage to my stuff, but those sounds gave me the creeps anyway. I'd hear them, freeze, and it'd take some time to calm back down again.
Well, when I took out the trash on the 29th I discovered that my nemesis was a family of swallows or some other teensy birds. They were nesting in the dryer heat exhaust pipes, one of which ran through the wall behind my shower. Heh. At that point not only did they lose their power to terrify, I quit even noticing the sounds. |
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| setup |
> May 19, 1997
As if to prove my procrastinatory habits, I wrote that I finally took care of car and renters' insurance... 5 months after moving in. Better late than never, right?
Also wrote about preparations for... |
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| SimuCon ][ |
> June 9, 1997
My old friend Morgan's mother passed away that weekend. Morgan's own health wasn't very good, and her reply to my letter of sympathy was the last I heard from her. I'm getting this out of the way first so I don't end on a depressing note.
This was the first SimuCon for most of us -- the original was in 1990, called GemCon, and had less than 15 attendees.
I went on and on about how great everybody was, how much fun it was and how they brought me out of a bad mood. I also described my first experience with a steak in 7 years -- I had been a vegetarian since 1990, and decided to toss that aside for the filet mignon at 94th Aerosquadron. It was like a drug. I couldn't finish it, things were just getting too weird. But that filet marked the end of veggieness for me. Whee! |
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