Maebius Musing

Muse-inspired poetic prose. I did a little free-association meditation this weekend regarding the nature of the current Imbolc season, which I somehow don’t really ‘FEEL’ this year. Winter for me hasn’t really even Started yet, much less broken up in hopes of spring. Not sure why that is, but will probably be a topic for an upcoming moon-post. (what to do if the holiday spirit is not in you yet?)
In the course of my meditation, I had a really nice solid visualization. Usually I tend to get little daydreams, but this was one of those rare “forget-I’m-sitting-here” types, so I wrote it down immediately. This is stream-of-conscious, so forgive any strange metre or awekward wordings. If I waswriting this as “actual Poem” I would heavily edit it, and possibly lose some of the subtle images I was seeing/remembering.

Also, I must admit reading this in the daylight when I’m near the computer to post it, it seems REALLY depressing, though not even remotely meant to be. I did not FEEL sad at all, when writing this. I was actually quite happy and grounded. So, read it in a balanced peaceful mood, and let me know your thoughts?

Darkness falls with wintery blankets over field and farm, and the clouds dance briskly with the silvery pale sky-sickle. At some hour, in some place, lights are burning,and flowers strewn in festive spirit.

But here, it is cold, and the celebration is one of solitude. Spring is coming, they say. The grasses and bulbs stirring amidst the packed earth, under this snow and ice. Soon, as the season tells, the world will change and bloom. But here, it is dark. It is cold. It is winter.

Across the clouds, a distant caw echoes. Shadowed flocks of crows are shifting roosts, driven from their initial sleep by some unknown disturbance. They shimmer almost invisibly against the moon-touched clouds, racing opposite the wind, and seem not-quite real. Like spring, they are half-seen, half-heard, and distant. But they are here.

I light a small candle, huddled as I am against the slight breeze. I envision the flame reaching outwards, a symbol of that season-to-come, the merest pinpoint of hope among the snowdrifts here.

And try as I might, to shelter it in a glass chimney, to block the breeze with my hand…it flickers out again. It is cold. It is dark.

Spring is coming, for nothing halts the wheel of time and the cosmic dance continues unabated. But right now, in this place, it is winter.

-Nate (Imbolc ‘08)

Thoughts?

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Feel free to ignore this post, if you are not interested in world of Warcraft…..I’ll be using game-terms here, sorry forfolks who may not play and be confused.
Recently, I have been playing world of Warcraft very regularly, slightly more than every other night and both weekend evenings. My new favorite character is a Troll Holy Priestess named Kanandi, on the Farstriders realm, and she is currently level 57 at the time of this writing.

The guild she is in, known as “The Refugees”, was one which had existed long before, and collapsed. After the collapse, it was three people around level 25-30, and I joined up with them after a really enjoyable dungeon run. The main folks I ran around with are a real-life couple (from Mexico & Canada, moved together to Connecticut!). We had a blast, quoting movies, being silly and all wiping after some crazy strategy like “lets fear the patrol and see how many we can get at once. Keep us healed, Kanandi!” All in all, the fun of playing the game became much more than the completion of quests and earning new items.

Time passes, a few other friends-of-friends and random great people joined the guild as a result of our quirky recruitment “rules”, which mostly revolved around knowing the meaning of ‘42′, and which positions Ruby Rod wanted in that movie. (you don’t know?! Be gone from this blog!… /sarcasm)

Currently, the guild is comprised of 61 characters (many alts), and around 35 actual people behind keyboards. We range from folks being online once every other week, to some hardcore PvP folks who chat infrequently, but enjoy the game as a game. I’ve been an officer for the entire time, and my progress in-game has slowed due to helping out others instead of completing (mostly green/grey) quests.

We have a few brand-new players, who received the game over the holidays. I never have encouraged running low-levels through high-level content, but will gladly answer questions and make suggestions on their particular situation, to help avoid unnecessary hassle (like hunters just learning how to tame/train their pet skills).

I have maintained the guild website as a sub-domain of Everthorn, out of my love for the game, and to help keep tabs of things for folks who are away from their home computers and such.
Last week, the leader decided to step down from the role, and passed it to me after what apparently was a unanimous vote from the other officers. I am honored, and yet, this has changed the entire game for me…not sure for the better or worse quite yet.

One one hand, I am now in charge of maintaining the guild bank, to consolidate the accumulated wealth of 20+ people. I am the de-facto mediator in all drama such as the recent invite of a very chatty, teenager who is a nice person but was irritating the others with constant babble about school and “Epic Lootz” he hoped to get someday. I am now in the process of delegating a few roles to other officers, which is something I had campaigned for with our old leader.

The issue is our founding principles, which are to be a casual, friendly group who likes to play the game. If we sometimes do things “wrong”, if it’s enjoyable, its “Right”.

We do not raid for epic loot (though when the high-level folks explore dungeons they do get nice new toys!).
We do not concentrate on dominating the PvP battlegrounds (though there are two or three folks who created characters specifically for this type of gameplay).
We do not enforce strict roleplaying rules, and in-character discussion (though there are a buch of folks, myself included, who are more in-character than OOC).

The problem now is, that I feel this unspoken weight regarding the game.

This past week our officers have ‘been gellin’ and seem to honestly appreciate a rather forceful takover, to define our goals and provide contacts for various types of things like who can manufacture crafted items for the younger folks. I created a few more ranks with different permissions to access guild-related things in-game, so it was not simple “members” and “officers” like it had been. Basically speaking, trying to organize a group of thirty middle-age volunteers with a myriad of interestes, backgrounds, and playstyles who all enjoy playing the game in their own way.
I’ve even drained my own meagre gold-coin into making sure all our active and “member-rank” folks are outfitted with some bag-space for their inventory, and encouraged everyone to at least create a profile on the website so we can try to coordinate guild events, or provide help for the new players.

The thing I mostly want to do now is get back to our roots, hash out the drama that seems to be inevitable in any group that undergoes a change in leadership, and figure out where/if I want to continue leading. It’s tough to simply login and go kill some random critters to de-stress when I’ll get whispered chats from others for some reason or another. It’s usually good stuff, as the drama is starting to die off, but it’s a whole different level of meta-game that I was not quite prepared for.

Wish me luck!

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Sorry it has been quiet around here lately, there is at once little, and yet much to report on in the Land of Maebius. First and foremost, I have officially given up NaNoWriMo for a number of reasons, the least of which is feeling like a quitter so close to the end of the month. (I made it to 13,500 words, rounding it)
I have abandoned the NaNoWriMo challenge for this year in order to save my sanity. Many guides and pep-talk suggestions have indicated that the third week is the most difficult of times, when the plot falters, and the novel-in-progress just seems to fall flat of our initial giddy expectations. This actually happened to me around the second week, starting just before the New Moon posting, where I realized I just had to keep flogging along.

However, the more I flogged myself, the unhappier I became. It was not merely the chore of writing, it was a Chore itself. I wanted to participate in the challenge. I wanted to finish with something to read, and was honest enough to admit I would probably not hit the 50,000 word mark, but I wanted that Something would get written.

But what I realized instead was that for all my love of Roleplaying, and making up Character Biographies, and generally Writing Stuff…this novel challenge was not my cup of tea. I simply came to the understanding I don’t WANT to write a big long novel right now. I actually prefer little snippets of 3-4 pages of story. So dropping the challenge felt like a HUGE weight off my shoulders. Strangely, more fulfilling than actually making it to the 30th probably might have felt. It just started to seem so hollow a reward for what was noticeably causing me INSANE amounts of stress and angst. (Ask my wife, I got VERY bitter and sour, and it was not fair to the family to lose sleep and yell at my kid for petty annoyances all day, over a self-imposed challenge like NaNoWriMo)

I still have an idea that I want to flesh out, but at my OWN pace now, instead of being dictated that my evenings of fun and relaxation were instead to be spent on pulling my hair out and typing disjointed stream-of-conscious crap. It’s more fair to the story I started getting into, and much more fair to the family and friends I was getting pissy with due to lack of sleep and over-stressing. I had started to fall into a trap of staying up until 2am, playing Warcraft for an hour to settle down from the stress and agitation of writing a wall of text and being unable to sleep until I calmed my nerves. Of course then getting up to be at work around 7am….not much time for restful REM there.
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And on an unrelated note, my son requested to have his bed moved into his own room back on the 17th. as it was, he slepy with his bed pushed up against ours, so we essentially co-slept. But, after two more days of mentioning his bed in his own room, we figured it was not a passing request and moved him over….and he slept alone all week!

I got put on night-shift for work, and my son got a nasty head-cold so he moved back into our bed temporarily over the weekend, but last night he went back to his own room without much fuss at all. We were worried about “breaking the habit” of sleeping with us eventually, but are non-mainstream enough to support the Co-sleep idea for as long as he held out, or until it became a necessity.

However, just like his potty training, our fears of a protracted battle were unfounded. We would mention having his bed moved every few weeks, but would not push the issue and his saying no would be welcomed and accepted with a smile and a hug as we all snuggled in our adjoining mattresses. Then, when he was ready (and before my wife was honestly 100% ready to follow through with the action), he asked to move his bed into the other room. So he helped us tear down the frame, carry it across the hall, and used the screwdriver to put it together himself. No fuss, no muss, and he has his own flashlight which he used once or twice to come visit us in the middle of the night to make sure things were alright. But each time, he allowed us to carry him back to his room after asking for a bathroom break or a small sip of water.

It’s adorable really, and amazing how kid’s little minds develop and go »Bing« to the next stage of independence. On one hand I miss getting kicked in the head in the middle of the night. But on the other hand, it’s nice to snuggle with the wife again for a few hours.

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The whole idea of NaNoWriMo is quite interesting. Write 50,000 words in one month.

I’m not sure I can make it due to work schedules and kid-time after work. Heck, even World of Warcraft is being put aside other than a token hour every few days, in the stress and hassle of coming up with some excuse for Not Writing.

And I think, last night, I figured out my stress. I wanted to Write a Story. I have this Plot that is forming in my brain that twists off into the future, but is not yet Written. When I sit down to type, I agonize over where to lead the current story down to that half-conceived path. I start to think in short cuts and skip to the juicy parts in my head, and thus am not really writing anything but cliche over-dramatic prose.

But last night, I realized the goal was NOT to write a 50,000 word tale of grandeur and epic award-winning novel. It was to WRITE FIFTY-THOUSAND words. It does not have to be perfect. It does not need to be coherent in any deep philosophical way….yet. It DOES need to be put down in word-form though. Editing and clean up for proper grammar and such can wait until next month. November is to Write…

It’s an interesting lesson. and now that I’ve pondered it…I am going to stop blog-posting this entry, and start continuing that story-thing I’m creating.

See you at the Full Moon!

((PS: my personal goal is 20,000 words. I’m about a tenth of the way there, and a third of the way through the month already. Wish me luck!))

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Well, this month will be rather spartan with the Blog posts, but I wanted to post a picture that Summer is officially over here in upstate, NY. Yes, that is snow in our yard, taken this morning, November 8th, 2007.

( click here for full-size)

NaNoWriMo is more of a pain than I envisioned, but in one way is kinda neat. I just need to get the time set aside to actually write things. I have ideas now, it’s just finding a block of time that is NOT after 10pm to sit and type it out. I have penciled a few things at work on tablets, but more sentence fragments and ideas than actual Writing Words. (though I have another 865 words done today so far, not including this blog entry!)
For your viewing enjoyment, here are some random pictures….

Firstly, the roadkill bird we had for lunch on Saturday. Delivered fresh right to our driveay as I was outside cleaning up the porch. This represents Maebius’ first ever attempt to prepare from-whole a wild game animal. It was a rather interesting learning experience in anatomy and such. Tasted pretty good, though a bit dry and tough. Learned afterwards a better way to cook such things…

Lastly, we had friends come up from PA to visit for my birthday (I am 33 now, yay!) which is one BIG reason I’m behind on NaNoWriMo since my computer is in the “spare room” they slept in. Here is a cute pic of my boy and theirs watching TV.
Enjoy!

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