Back from a Long Hiatus and Other Musings

Preamble: So I've actually had several half-written posts sitting in my drafts queue for well over a year now. Some touched on writing-related insights, others were just borderline random nerd-outs, but there was at least a tentative plan to get them polished up and posted on a quarterly basis starting in 2020. Little things like that help keep the creative juices flowing when my regular 9-to-5 drudgery makes it tough to stay motivated. Plus, it's at least a kind of accountability, even if that's the equivalent of online journaling or whatever we call blogging these days. I suppose it's a greater, more impactful level of accountability to myself since writing things out like this feels vastly more permanent and tangible. Kind of like etching my to-do list and other musings in (digital) stone for future reference. As a TBI guy, I'm always worried about forgetting stuff, and this helps me look back, remember, and refocus when I need to. And then the pandemic hit. 

I've thankfully been able to get vaccinated and boosted without issue, and I was able to work remotely for most of 2020 and nearly two-thirds of the way through 2021, which was enormously protective in practical terms and good for (my) morale. But I'm back in the office now and finding that the chronic stress and uncertainty of those "lost years" has worn me down in unexpected ways. All that lingering, amorphous fear and anxiety have hardened into something much more insidious and difficult to shake. It feels like an awful chimera of PTSD and the siege mentality born from a collective trauma that only half the country fully acknowledges. Or at least that's how I conceptualize it; mental health theory is admittedly well outside my lane. My actual academic background in political science has often inured me to how often people vote and otherwise act against their own self-interests, but the enduring and deeply nihilistic wave of anti-vaxxing and anti-masking sentiment in the US has still been difficult to accept on any rational level. Seeing that pattern endlessly repeat itself as cases spike again (and again) is sobering and disheartening in the extreme, even for my world-weary and cynical pragmatism.

Fortunately, both my state government and local employer were very proactive with their mitigation efforts. The kind of administrative work I do can mostly be accomplished remotely, and it was far easier to tackle contract writing and other focus-intensive tasks while at home (being a max-level introvert and tech-savvy nerd surely helps here, too). That near-total lack of interruptions was the kind of blissful flow state that even a proper office and good noise suppression headphones can't match, and it's at least part of the reason I often spend my nights typing away at a draft or my worldbuilding compendium while humming along to my favorite tunes. But many other folks weren't even half so fortunate, and I want to acknowledge my privilege explicitly here. More people should be able to WFH, and as a society, we should push for more flexible work schedules, a truly livable wage, and better work-life balance all around. 

But with all that said, I've been extremely lucky so far. Although it's disappointing how few folks in our community seem to be masking these days, I haven't gotten sick or, by extension, knowingly risked getting anyone else sick this entire time (although I wish more people prioritized that second part at least as much as the first). The specter of asymptomatic infections is hard to dismiss entirely, but that's much less of a concern when I'm rarely around anyone but PROTH and still mask regularly in public. My fairly extreme introversion and lack of any kids (minus our fur babies) have made this period of relative isolation much easier to deal with. Frankly, it also confirmed something I've always assumed about myself: working on writing projects from home is the ideal end game. I fucking love it. Full stop. Similarly, until I can make homegrown self-publishing happen, tackling my regular 9-to-5 duties as remotely as possible is the next best thing, so I'm on the lookout for any hybrid or fully remote roles with my current employer. 

Unsurprisingly, progress on the RW project stalled out during COVID. My motivation to write had, at least until very recently, fallen into the same black hole that gobbled up aspirational content for the Orbital HQ. I kept a completely unrelated side project kinda-sorta in motion during this period, but even that slowed to a glacial pace compared to where I was at with it in 2019. But because that work has progressed at least somewhat over the last 18 months, I'm focused on its completion now so that I can return to RW drafting more fully by the end of the year. This authorial side hustle is being done under a pen name and is mostly a trial balloon for an experimental story. It's also an opportunity to get more comfortable with using Scrivener to compile a manuscript and the actual self-publishing process on Amazon, which I think will benefit from a low-stakes "trial run" before anything related to the RW sees the light of day. I don't plan on discussing the side hustle's particulars here, although I'm looking forward to the experience and seeing whether or not it's worth continuing in any capacity. As Mr. McCall would say: "Progress, not perfection." 

So what have I done beyond not-writing and stressing about the pandemic? A veritable shitload of gaming. 

I normally number my weekly game time in the tens of hours anyway, but those tallies exploded during COVID. My Steam, GOG, Epic, and Ubisoft profiles tell a clear but sobering tale of how I prefer to cope with health and job-related anxiety. Now don't get me wrong here: gaming is a fun, imaginative distraction that helps to tune out shitty real-life stuff pretty much on-demand. Full marks for that. Movies, TV shows, and books do that for me to a lesser extent, but gaming has always topped the list. The bit about distraction cuts both ways, though, and I find it's gotten a little too easy to stay distracted.

Notable examples include Skinner Box-style looter shooters and ARPGs like Outriders, Path of Exile, and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands; charming puzzlers like Dorfromantik; chill building sims in the vein of Kingdoms and Castles; the endlessly delightful Viking survival simulator Valheim; and more recent gems like Age of Darkness: Final Stand, The Riftbreaker, Diplomacy is Not an Option, and the absurdly good and nostalgic Songs of Conquest (and, I should add, the spiritual successor to my beloved HOMM franchise). It's a great time to be a gamer, folks. 

I could go on, but this surely paints an instructive enough picture: these are only some of the games I've chewed through of late, and that doesn't leave much time for passion projects. So I've been trying to find a better balance between work and play during my off-hours. That has meant a more explicit writing schedule, setting reminders, and directly linking the "reward" of game time with the completion of drafting work, Orbital HQ content, or other support tasks that I already enjoy doing but have too often neglected. I'm a lot more intentional about this stuff now, largely because building up positive, self-reinforcing loops that help me feel and actually be more efficacious seems like the better longer-term strategy. My hope – and dare I say, plan – is to counteract the unproductive inertia I've built up since 2020 by displacing it with better, more sustainable work habits going forward. I'm not an especially motivated person by nature, so I don't have much raw ambition to fall back on. I do, however, fall into habits easily, so I may as well make those tendencies and compulsive tics more productive than not.

Of course, there's nothing special or revelatory about this; it's really just figuring out what healthier habits look like in practice for me and how best to implement them. Some of these insights have even helped me at my day job, where smarter triage is critical for dealing with staffing shortages, increased workloads, and simple self-care. I even used a habit-building app for a few months – no, really: it's a cute pixel art service called Habitica – to help corral writing tasks and consolidate my typical mess of to-do lists into a single spot. I've since moved on to a leaner, less distracting utility called Dynalist and limited use of Google's "Tasks" and "Keep" services, but the specifics don't even matter here. This "slow but steady" approach isn't particularly sexy or showy, but so far it's keeping me fresher on the material, more motivated, and seems to synergize well with my tendency to want things planned out in advance. I wouldn't call it a perfect approach, and there is clearly a balance that needs to be struck between finding the right tools to support my work and not unproductively fixating on the tools themselves, but this particular kind of structure already feels better and is forcing me to break my writing objectives into smaller and more measurable chunks in the service of larger project-related goals. I'm hesitant to call any of this SMART, if only because that sounds so pretentious and I've generally been terrible about self-imposed deadlines, but that's at least the gist of what I'm moving toward.

The initial draft of this post covered my thoughts on a "modern mythology" of superheroes and dystopias. It drew parallels between our media and real-life instances of heroism and villainy, and the ways in which that kind of media can be enormously gratifying but also dangerously limiting in how it influences our ability to understand and tackle real-life structural problems. I'd like to return to that subject in another post after I've had the chance for more substantive rewrites, but I think this is plenty for today. 

I wish you folks luck in dealing with whatever roadblocks life throws your way. Whether COVID-related or otherwise, I hope you find a way past it. Oh, and maybe flip it the bird in your rearview mirror as you drive by. Just a thought.

Orbital HQ, out.

Lord of the Rings-a-thon: A Holiday Tale

As a quick aside, PROTH and I have nearly finished our annual viewing of the Lord of the Rings extended editions – a holiday tradition that has become a warm, 11ish hour-long blanket of nostalgic bliss over the years, and a never-ending source of all the feels (spoilers) – but we still have a lot of fun critiquing certain parts as we watch, and especially the large scale battles and sieges. 

So I was understandably excited when I found out about A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, which is an absolute gem of a website that breaks down pop culture representations of premodern combat and societies to fascinating effect – including a six-part series deconstructing the Siege of Gondor and a larger worldbuilding page. Kudos to the site's operator and military historian extraordinaire, Bret Devereaux, for putting such a phenomenal, insightful, and entertaining resource together.

Orbital – or maybe this time terrestrial? – HQ, out. 

Closing out 2019 with a few updates...

The last half-year has really flown by for me, although I don't have much to report on the RW project since my June update. I've kept at basic worldbuilding and plotting work in my spare time, but that's been more so "indulgent tinkering" than anything noteworthy since my imagination often strays there anyway. My current day job has kept me super busy with contract-writing and related support, and I've also been dealing with some health stuff that's been fucking with my sleep – AKA the only thing that I really can't skimp on – and creating a stress-fatigue feedback loop that worsens things further.  

Getting a solid 8ish hours of sleep every night is pretty much non-negotiable for me if I want to avoid the "shambling, zombie-Nick" phase of the day, although I fondly remember my high school and early college-age epoch of pizza-crushing "game all night, sleep all day" marathons of fun (and to any fellow gamers who are too young to have ever experienced a proper LAN party, my condolences). Unfortunately, a serious TBI from more than 15 years ago (a story for another time) means that any sleep debt I accrue now in my mid-30s hits me far harder than it should and compromises my cognitive function for days afterward. This sluggish brain-drain is further compounded if I sleep poorly for more than a few nights in a row, which is a recuperative tailspin that's hard for me to pull out of.  

Fortunately, a combination of more naps and avoiding the siren song of late-night gaming sessions is slowly turning the tide, but I find that getting back to a well-rested baseline is a weeks-to-months long process for me. I'm also tackling the peripheral health issues that have worsened things and which I have at least some control over, but again: they won't be fully sorted for a while yet. 

At any rate, even though I had hoped to be further along with prep work on the RW project by year's end, I recognize that my writing still has to take a back seat to my health and staying on top of my regular 9-to-5 responsibilities. Being not-sick and adequately housed, clothed, and fed necessarily takes priority – although it's worth emphasizing that my having a reasonably well-paying job with solid benefits in the first place is a privileged position to be in, and it's something I try not to take that for granted when waxing philosophical here in my tiny corner of the blogosphere. The longer-term goal of indulging my inner recluse by writing full-time remains unchanged, though, even if it's more of an 8-10+ year plan based on current projections. 

I've at least managed to stay on top of my recreational reading, which is both instrumental for winding down at the end of the day and for immersing myself in relevant genre fiction for the sake of professional development. On that note, one of these days I'll try and get back to doing commentary and review posts on media I've consumed, either recently or as a kind of nerdy retrospective, but at the moment I don't have the mental bandwidth to do it justice (although honorable mentions for The Power Mage trilogy and The Lightbringer pentalogy, both of which I finished since the summer and enjoyed quite a bit).

In other domestic news, PROTH and I have fully settled our new place and are really digging it. It feels like home already and is just the right size: big enough for us to relax and work in without feeling cramped, plenty of storage, and most of its usable, heavily-trafficked space is on the first floor (which my knees and our heating/cooling bill appreciate). We've also talked about a few choice renovations in the coming years that can help beat back the turbo-charged winters more effectively and really ratchet up the creature comforts, as money and time allow (if you guessed "hot tub" here, you'd be right). I even splurged on a super comfy recliner that should be here in the next month or so – we're pretty remote up here, and I didn't want the floor model without a discount – which will be an ideal long-term napping station.

I'll resist the urge to declare some kind of New Year's resolution or pledge in relation to any of the above. I'm either too self-serious or irreverent (or both, probably) to give those declarations any real weight, and my social circle is far too circumscribed for any valuable peer-pressure to come of it, either. So unless I stumble upon some otherworldly means of achieving my goals – you know, the standard ancient and forbidden magicks, Faustian bargains, or maybe even a fortuitous accident in an intrinsic field generator – my plan is to keep hammering away at the twin titans of getting my shit together and then building on as many of those gains as I can. 

Either way, I wish you all the same in 2020 and beyond.

Orbital HQ, out.

A busy-but-quiet summer, settling in, plus big workstation upgrades...

We're mostly settled into the new-to-us house as of late June, which has really proven to be a wonderfully private, secluded refuge of comfort and all-around nerdery for both PROTH and me. We've got a handful of small projects and repairs to get taken care of this summer, but being real-deal homeowners feels pretty great so far. At the risk of being cliche, it already feels like a home to us, unlike the rental that was only ever a waystation of sorts – a place we lived while we sorted out jobs and longer-term plans, but were never really fully comfortable in.

I'm also getting a much better handle on the workings of my new department. We're knee-deep in one of our busiest times of the year, but I already feel as though I understand the extent and nature of this position far better at barely two-months in than I did after more than half a year in my previous role. A much narrower focus on contract management, account tracking/receipting, administrative support, and work on specialized IT-adjacent projects is much more so my jam. It's a challenging environment, but it also feels like there's room for growth, and I'm excited at the challenge of making this position my own and building out bigger-better-faster-stronger tracking systems and workflows in the coming months.

In unrelated nerd news, the core rebuilds for both my and PROTH's workstations are now complete. I tend to go for a tick-tock (or sometimes tick-tock-tock) pattern when it comes to upgrades, where the "tick" involves changing out what I consider to be mission-critical "core" gaming components – the CPU, motherboard, GPU, memory, and maybe the PSU if I'm starting to worry about its longevity – while the "tocks" are typically just a GPU upgrade every 1.5-2.5 years, and sometimes adding extra system memory or moving to a markedly faster kind of storage tech for the OS drive (like the jump from spinning mechanical HDDs to SATA-based SSDs, or the leap to their M2-based cousins). Core rebuilds tend to be far more expensive and time-consuming, since changing to a new CPU architecture generally requires an involved tear-down of the current rig and replacement of its highest-cost components, but the gains in IPC (and sometimes clockspeed and/or core count, too) can be pretty great when you're effectively going up at least 2-3 generations in processor tech at once. That's definitely the case here, and – unlike more modest, less cost-effective upgrades – I can really feel the difference in performance in all the right ways.

My now-demoted i7-2600K was a remarkably good performer for years, so it currently lives on in storage as a backup machine along with other similarly-retired (but still functional and compatible) components to serve as a hedge against catastrophic hardware failure with either of our new machines. There were worsening issues with PROTH's i5-3500K and its motherboard, so very little from that machine survived the culling aside from its PSU. Fortunately, serious hardware failure (short of direct lightning strikes or other environmental hazards) doesn't seem likely at this point, and the nature of my upgrade cycles makes it fairly easy to keep at least one computer's worth of prior-gen hardware in reserve at all times just in case.

As for the details, I opted for the second-gen Ryzen parts for this core upgrade. Namely, the Ryzen 5 2600X, MSI's X470 GAMING PLUS, and a 16 GB kit from the G.Skill Ripjaws V Series. While the additional gains in IPC, clockspeed, and power efficiency for the third-gen parts coming later this summer from AMD looked promising, I didn't want to risk being a first-gen(ish) adopter or have to wait until later July or August to take the plunge. Similarly, I didn't feel like gambling on there being adequate stock of the third-gen parts or whether or not they'd line up with their MSRPs, so that plus all the discounts and free bundled games (World War Z and The Division 2) made this a pretty easy choice. I had purchased a Black Edition EVGA 2070 RTX earlier this year, so that is part of the mix as well and also what I'll likely purchase for PROTH's machine (if need be) in the next few months.

The Ryzen 2XXX chips boost aggressively and run pretty hot, so I'm weighing supplemental cooling options right now. I'm not that excited about the closed-loop water cooling options currently available for AM4, but more case fans are definitely on the menu and possibly a higher-end HSF unit as well after further investigation. I can accept that these Ryzen chips just have higher operating temps, but I'd still like to rein them in a bit if it's practical and feasible to do so. Beyond that, setup was simple and the stock Wraith coolers from AMD seem solid and easier to manage than Intel's stock HSFs, which was a welcome development since I needed to (re)build two largely identical versions of the same PC in quick succession.

In short: the new machines are humming along nicely and more than pulling their own weight, which is just as well, since the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge chips they replaced were really starting to show their age. Plus, the occasional hardware refresh for headquarters never hurts.

Speaking of which: Orbital HQ, out.

Big News: A new job *and* a new house!

Whew. March and April were pretty rough on the job front. What I once saw as a short-lived, high-impact prelude to more sustainable workloads – a few months of serious overwork to get caught up and maybe even a little ahead, before tapering to more survivable levels and largely known quantities – didn't play out that way at all. I likely brought this on myself, at least in part, due to borderline perfectionist tendencies in how I work in certain areas, but I unquestionably bit off more than I could chew, professionally speaking. So I transferred to another department in May.

It wasn't anywhere near as spontaneous as that. In truth, I'd been having misgivings since late March/early April when it started to look like the operational reprieve would never come, but I was too busy to give it much sustained thought. I also didn't really have any credible "off-ramp" available at the time even if I decided to leave, so I figured it was something I'd reevaluate over the summer when things slowed down a bit. But then I heard about an open position at my classification level that seemed like a much better fit. It was in a more technical department with a much narrower scope, but still with the kind of larger mission that I could feel personally invested in. I'm excited about what's to come, although I also think it's important to check my privilege a bit here: plenty of folks aren't able to switch jobs so easily, or this quickly, so I'm feeling fortunate in that respect as well.

In similarly good but less complicated news, we found a house! It's got a very "cabin in the woods" look and similarly rustic feel, albeit safely within city limits and with enough modern amenities to satisfy homebodies like PROTH and I. Most of its usable space is on the first floor, which my knees appreciate greatly, and what's there is really open. The kitchen itself is also absolutely massive compared to our rental, and it opens into a big combination family/dining room that we're already planning to turn into a giant office/media/gaming space as time and funds allow. We're stoked about the official move-in day later this month and finally being real-deal, Big Kid™ homeowners.

Even Spring has finally come to the upper mid-west, however grudgingly, and we're happy to have it. All in all, I'd say things are looking up.

I've got more thoughts on the coming computer rebuilds which are very much underway, but for now I must bow to the demands of sleep and hopefully catch assorted typos or copyediting whiffs sometime this weekend. Orbital HQ, out.