Tag: Ego Trip (Writing About Me)

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Honesty and the Brain

Today’s the last day I’m on a rough medication folks, so you’re going to get only the lightest fraction of filter. August has been a harrowing month, and September doesn’t want to break the streak. Frankly, I had debated forgoing this post entirely and just scrubbing the whole thing, but we’ve managed to get a monthly post out for over almost a year now and I want to keep this as a triumph. I’m in a bad place but the thought of breaking that streak was threatening to put me into a worse one.

We’re here sitting on the precipice of a post that’ll sound like it came out of my early 2000’s brain and is getting ready to post up on my Live Journal. Well, not that bad. I have a better understanding of my mental health and a grasp on why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling. I have a greater understanding of the part of my life that depression, medicine, and overall healthcare plays in the way I respond to things and how I deal with the event and aftermaths. I also have a better understanding of how to use commas but have elected to not restrain myself in this post. So, that’s a thing.

Writing has been a hard thing this summer. The enthusiasm I possessed early in the year has eroded away for a number of reasons, not the least of which is my own mental health feeling like I’m wading through a pool full of marshmallow fluff. Add into the equation a migraine that has only gotten worse over the season, and you start to get a grasp of how I’m feeling. Before the sun goes down, I’m a hot mess that lumbers through the day. Afterwards, I’m a nocturnal goblin whose brain won’t stop pressing the “worry” button. This has culminated in a not exactly comfortable creative workspace.

It has permitted me enough to manage streaming to a certain degree. We played two new games last month, Owlboy and Shovel Knight, and two major patches in our regular titles, Warframe, and Final Fantasy XIV. I touched on Owlboy in the previous post, as we knocked it out early in August. Shovel Knight came nipping on its heels and that was a lovely experience. I’ll be working on getting the year’s game reviews caught up, so keep an eye on the usual space. The FFXIV patch was… well… problematic. 5.3’s release happened the same day I had the doubling down of health issues in the start of the month. Because of that I lost a lot of the steam I hoped for the stream. We caught back up with the Heart of Deimos update for Warframe, but since its release the game sits in my back burner until the next big patch drop. These days I find myself drawing solace in the calms of a lunar base, in Space Engineers. That game has been a staple of our “chill streams” and it’s been a welcome companion these past few cycles.

But even those were no match for the medication of this past week. If you watched last Saturday’s VOD, you might have noticed it ended a touch early. Day three of a six-day steroid treatment, and I found myself having an honest to goodness emotional breakdown. I survived it, but it was a shock. I needed to listen to what was going on within me. I took the cue and put down the streaming mic for the weekend, my first real break since we started last year in July.

And that leads us to today, where the biggest thing sitting on my plate is this. I’m glad to be writing this, to be honest about what’s going on and the word flow of my mind. This is what the writing looks like before the editing, the paring down, the flow set on super soaker instead of being properly managed. It’s not something I’ll do on a regular basis, but it’s an honest taste of the mental state I’m in. It feels good to be writing, even if it’s a non-fiction sarcastic essay on my state of mind. It’s something.

Tomorrow is the first day I’ll be post medication. I don’t pretend to think I’ll “snap back.” I won’t make that kind of promise. But I can promise to try, to do what I can with the spoons I can wield. This is the first writing I’ve managed in over two weeks, and the first thing I’ve finished since I made a post turning the Patreon off for a month. That’s heavy to think about, maybe too much for the time being, but that’s the truth of it. I’m hoping to do more. Little things, like those game reviews, are where we’re going to try to start. After that? Well, we’ll see.

Thanks for sticking with me. It means the world.

FEATURED IMAGE SOURCE: Photo by KAY JAY From PEXELS AND PIXALBAY From PEXELS
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January in Retrospec

It took me quite some time to get used to writing out 2010, and let’s not even talk about the complications of the 19 to 20 conversion ten years prior. Here we are on the dawn of a decade, getting ready to break muscle memory and set our sights forward to a new era.

At least, that’s what we culturally tell ourselves. That these sets of ten we’ve assigned in the concept of recording the time our rock successfully orbits that big ball of plasma herald new periods on our society’s existence. But change is never quite that fast, is it? As if great change comes with the coin flip of the new year. Changes to culture comes as a patient hunter, a slow-moving glacier that grinds against our sense of identity and self.

This isn’t to say we can’t use these moments to mark milestones in our lives, our cultures, to take a step back and look at where we stand and see what direction we’re going. Our years, our seasons, our months mark the rhythm of our lives. Bills, the phases of our moon, pay checks, biological cycles, how long it’s been since we took care of that bedroom closet and making yet another plan to clean that sucker out; we mark ourselves by these spokes on the wheel, and the year and decade changes are a wider view of those patterns.

So, as has become my tradition, I mark the start of these months with an introspective view of the month in review. With it being January, the herald of the new year, we are tempted to look back at the year and see where we’ve come and gone. And with it being a year ending in that lovely null zero, we fulfill the promise of the greater spiral and look at where the years have brought us.

Let’s talk about here first. A decade ago, we weren’t here. Originally The Hiddennode was my blog, and until 2014 I kept my thoughts, updates and public writing on that site. In 2012 I started using The Hiddennode as a podcast/audio journal and once the written blog fell out of favor, the podcast took over. During my reconstruction phase in 2016, the blog officially moved over to J Samuel Diehl and we’ve intermediately used it as our update/journaling site. Since then we’ve created fifty-three posts offering updates to my writing, podcasting, and creative efforts.

Speaking of writing, the decade saw the greatest two milestones of my writing career to date: In 2013 for the first time I finished a novel, and in 2018 I published my first novel. That first novel, still unpublished, was a challenge to my hand wriggling, start a new project every three months, and never get things done mindset. Writing about Rebin, his challenges, and his growth, was a wonderful experience and let me know I could manage that dream. 2018 saw the publishing of Draco Artifactium: Doppelganger, and let me present the world with my ideas of dreaming worlds. It let me explore Micara’s fight, present shades of grey in a world of good and evil, and to envision some rather dark dragons. Five years was a long time between novels, but it was growth. The next one won’t have such wide spacing.

Podcasting, as a part of my life, rose and fell over the span. I started out as a fan going back to 2007, and stepped into the world of podcasting at the start of the decade. Hiddennode, Five Things We Like, Five Sentence Fiction, and Trans-dimensional Café were all projects I started, and have mostly sunsetted. Hiddengrid became mine during those years, and after three wonderful seasons of The Sixth World Chronicles, it was set to rest. I’m still a cohost on Seize the GM, but that seems to be my last consistent bastion of being a podcaster. Instead, I find my sights set on video and streaming. I don’t have as large of an audience yet as I did with Hiddengrid, but there has been growth since the middle of 2019. Even as a listener, podcasting’s presence has dropped heavily from my life and I find live streams and VOD’s as my choice of entertainment. This came from a change in lifestyle, but I’ve gone from listening to twenty to forty hours’ worth of podcasting a week to maybe less than a dozen in a month. The two are likely tied to one another.

While my health has shifted much in the years of my late twenties and through my thirties, no greater change of health came than in 2017, when I lost useful bioptic vision. The second retina detachment took me by surprise in the summer, and by the start of 2018 I knew I had permeant irreparable vision damage. Now I see the world with a shroud of darkness and blur in that eye. But all is not lost. I still have a “good” eye, and with it I am more appreciative of the beauty I see.

I’ve had family come see me in those years. I’ve become closer to my brothers and talk to them near nightly as we game together. I have plans to stream with one of them this coming month.

I’ve been to lovely Asheville, and fell in love with the place my wife dreams of living.

I’ve been to conventions big and small, and have become closer to my tribe of nerdiness.

I’ve found strength in the serenity of knowing who I am in my gender identity.

I’m the most me I’ve been, a me I never dreamed I could be ten years ago.

The 20’s, these new 20’s, do not come with the promise of ease. It comes with the promise of a fight. It comes with a promise of new dangers; social, political, technological. There’s been dark times this past decade; struggles, fights, losses, and hurts. New terrors are visible on the horizon, and perhaps more shadows ahead. But shadow comes with light, and with it comes the chance to grow and temper ourselves.

To strengthen myself.

To know myself.

Ten years have gone behind me.

I look forward to the challenge of the ten to come.

.

.

.

Shit, wasn’t I supposed to review the year?

Uhm, *checks notes*

*paper shuffling sounds*

*deep sigh*

Yeah, I think we sort of did that up there, didn’t we? Kind of covered the highlights worth mentioning. Guess we move onto the month.

It is January, and thus the start of a new month. The two big projects currently underway are the short story for Patreon, chugging along, and the streaming. The rest of December’s works took collateral damage in the holiday season. Teaches me a lesson about promises in the holiday season and I know to prep December’s offering earlier in the year. Other projects mentioned last month had work done but not to the degree I’d hoped.

The core of the month is going to be a schedule. I’ve done well with keeping to it for the streaming, but now I need to make sure to stay on top of other projects. It’s not done yet but as I develop it, I will hold myself to posting about it. Let’s say the 20th. Mark the day. That gives me two weeks to develop and get it written up for sharing.

That sounds right.

Alright, back to work on the short.

Want more? Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Twitch. If you’re really looking to help out, check out the Patreon for earlier news and updates.

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Status Update

Let’s say it’s early May 2017. My wife is recovering from her hip replacement nicely, I’m still taking care of her but she’s getting stronger every day. I’m in between projects at the time, the plans being put on hold while I perform the important duties of household caretaker during her healing. One night, as I’m indulging in the grind for video game supremacy (really it was just trying to max level all jobs in Final Fantasy XIV before the Stormblood expansion drops), half of my left side vision drops. It’s like a curtain falling before my face and a cold fear fills my gut. I know what this is. I’ve seen this before.

It’s a retina detachment.

I debate what to do. Trish is recovering, but she still needs my help. If I go down for surgery I won’t be able to help her move about or take care of things around the house. I’ll be useless as caretaker and instead need a separate caretaker of my own. I’m quiet for the first few hours, but in the end I reveal my fears to her in the morning. She insists I go to my eye doctor. I relent, I go, but the doctor declares it’s just likely map dot fingerprint dystrophy. Nothing to be concerned about. Schedule an appointment with a retinalogist for next Friday and we’re good.

Cool. Nothing to worry about despite my vision darkening over the weekend. Nothing to worry about except that growing fear in my gut. I see the eye doctor at the specialist. Trish comes with me. She’s there when the gut punch come.

It is a retina detachment. No mistake this time.

There’s complications, issues with getting the surgery planned (What doctor can’t do surgery at a hospital?), and delays. I don’t have my surgery until early June.

The eye does not do well.

I’m out of sorts over the next year. Fear of loss of sight, the depression that sparked, my muddled mind between recovering from the anesthesia and pain meds after the surgery; it all adds up to a mess of creative garbage.

October comes, I have another surgery.

January comes, I have another surgery.

My vision isn’t restored. The eye isn’t dead, but it’s not working right. Daylight, bright lights, anything beyond a dimly lit room is rough for it. I wear a patch these days. Things are spinning.

But March comes. March brings with it desires for creativity. I start editing the book again, I start wanting to play role-playing games again, I want to do more than what I’ve been doing in the quagmire that’s been the past year, and I’m doing more. I’m doing this.

So after almost two years it’s time for a status report. The last one was July 2016, but it’s never too late to start back up. Because we’re starting back up we need to develop what we’re going to make the status report. I want this to be something valuable to me as well as followers of my content, so we’re going to start each report with a blotter on a given a section then thoughts on that section. Afterwards we’ll have a round up of what’s to come in the next month. Consider this our June 2018 update.

Writing

Focus: Editing Novel for publication

  • 61,515/136,966 words edited
  • We’ve completed part 1 of 3, and part 2 is editing smoothly
  • The blog is now relaunching

March saw us start the editing of DA:D, and the first third of the book held us up in April. We’re going to be doubling down in the coming days as I’d like to see part 2 finished by the beginning of June and have part 3 ready for Alpha Reading/Editing by no later than mid-month/the 15th. Once that happens we’ll pass this along to a few interested parties and then get started immediately with another novel. I’m still debating if I want to work on the TA.M. stuff or if I want to work on the J Samuel Diehl content. We’ll see.

Important links:

https://www.patreon.com/jsamueldiehl – sneak peeks, weekly updates, and more.

https://twitter.com/jsamueldiehl – Announcements and thoughts.

Steaming

Focus: Reaching Twitch Affiliate

  • Completed 2 of 4 needed achievements.
  • Completed 2 of 3 needed achievements for partner.

In early May we began streaming. This week marks our fourth week at the project, but it’s been slow going. I’m looking to expand my advertising of the stream over the next few days to try and draw people in. I also want to look into joining a community that might be able to assist with getting me into a group of active streamers. Admittedly this might mean pulling away from some of the normal folks I game with to get this occupation rolling.

Important links:

https://www.twitch.tv/nulloperations – The official stream

https://twitter.com/nulloperations – Stream announcements and schedule changes

Podcasting

Focus: Hiddennode reboot, StGM assistance, Starting the new RPG project

  • Hiddennode has been silent since November.
  • Seize the GM has reached a nice biweekly schedule
  • The New RPG podcast announcement is coming in a few minutes

We’ve been out of podcasting really since March of last year when Trish went into surgery. While we did some NaNoWriMo and Dog Days of Podcasting work, we couldn’t find the focus we needed to complete those projects. The Seize the GM work I’ve participated in is helping me to get back into the grove and the software I’m using for streaming will help me get recordings out the door quicker.

Important links:

http://www.hiddengrid.com/ – the podcast that was

http://www.hiddennode.com/ – the podcast that is

http://codexpodcast.com/ – the podcast that will be

https://www.patreon.com/hiddengrid/ – change is coming to this

http://www.seizethegm.com/ – Affiliated show, great RPG discussions. My voice returns in June/July

June Goals

  • Complete editing of Da:D
  • Weekly episodes of Hiddennode
  • Weekly episodes of Codex Podcast
  • Develop and stick to Streaming Schedule
  • Weekly blog posts here
  • Weekly updates on both patreons

The next six weeks are about getting on schedule. I’m cleaning up my language too going forward. I notice while writing these I say we, we’re, etc. I use a plural for myself when I should just say I, me, mine. I’m also taking out words like trying, going, or other “maybe” statements. The lack of definitive statements gives my mind the chance to “cheat” goals. I’ve built myself an out. So that’s two new June goals.

  • Stop using passive “maybe” language
  • Use definitive self-identifiers in my statements

I’m set to have a strong showing in June with these goals. With that the June Status Report is good to go. I hope you’ve stuck around long enough to read this, and if you have please leave me a comment. Feedback is something I’ve sought but haven’t asked for a ton. This time, I really mean it. Let me know if I’m reaching anyone out there. Let me know if my textual voice is carrying. I want to succeed, and I need your help to do it.

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Mile Markers

Hello spring. It’s good to be here again. Last time we sat on the edge of the hot season we were still struggling to get our gears rolling in terms of projects, goals, and desires for the exciting new year; the year I was given a chance to make my dreams a reality. On March 16, 2016, I started the latest draft of the novel Draco Artifactium: Doppelganger. March 23, 2017, 121,468 words, 372 days, and many outline revisions later, I finished it. I can’t tell you the jubilation I feel from this marker.

That’s draft one, though, and we’re not ready to go into production. Not yet at least. The current goal is to go through the second draft corrections before May, and after that a dialogue pass before I send the manuscript to an editor. I expect things to be brutal as this is the first book I’m letting someone edit, and I don’t know how thick my skin is on that side. I know the book needs it as I’m far from the best at grammar, but I know I’ve told a wonderful story. We’ll cover the process more in future updates, but know I’m not just shoving the book out and hoping it’s good enough. It isn’t yet, and I’m willing to do the work to make sure it does.

On the podcast front, I am officially part of three podcasts again. Hiddengrid is doing okay, although I had declared I was going to start doing two episodes a week there. That’s actually not doable with my schedule and work flow. It just isn’t and so I’m unofficially announcing it here the end of the twice weekly show, and later this week I’ll announce it on the Hiddengrid’s various networks. Seize The GM is doing amazing. We had our first interview with Ben Loomes, creator of Syrinscape. Solid RPG soundscape program there; I highly recommend it and the interview that’ll come out later this month. Derek and Joules have been doing great with their work over there and I’m happy to be helping them out as a co-host. Finally, The Trans-Dimensional Café is back. I know, I know, it’s a seven year old beast that won’t stay down, and for that I’m thankful. Dakota is back as host in this iteration, and we’ve got a new podcasting voice along for the ride, Bryan Hessee. We’re retooled the show back to its roots of being about creatives doing their thing before gabbing about whatever, and I think overall while it’s still got growing pains the show is doing great. Again I’ll go over each of these in more detail in the coming weeks.

As it’s the start of a new quarter it’s good to look back over the previous update post to see where we are in terms of our goals. First, we didn’t hit the deadline of February 14th for the finish of the first draft. A month and a half late there. We won’t hit the April publication deadline either, and certain private circumstances will prevent me from saying the I want to be published by the June 1st goal I’d like. Instead, if I need to put down a goal date, I’m going with July 25th. It’s a fairly special day for me, and an ideal day I can gift the new book to someone. We don’t have any short stories written, so if we’re going to reach 10 by the end of the year, we need to get jumping. Same with a second book. We also didn’t return to weekly blog posts. This post is the correction to that. Expect them more often although I’m not posting the schedule I have just yet. I need to be sure it’s the right timing for the various blogs I want to post to. Finally I haven’t read a single book this year. So much for 26 by the end of it.

We’re going to call it there. It’s good to be back at this blog. I’m hoping I have the drive to keep working on all of these projects without losing interest. I just need to make sure I keep up with the momentum and not let anything hold me back.

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Status Report – July 2016

It’s the first second Monday of the Month and that makes it update time.

The end of the second quarter brought many interesting changes in terms of focus for my projects. The first five months of the year were aimed initially at writing, specifically the Draco Artifactium novel and lore works, but June ripped those plans to shreds. While the book work is important, Hiddengrid: The Sixth World Chronicles took the reins. I didn’t realize just how much effort would be needed and spent on the project but I’m happy for it. It doesn’t hurt that the Patreon support for the month old project has already doubled my income, but the immediate feedback and interest from the community has been a major shot in the arm to keep me developing.

In regards to the writing it suffered heavily during June. Hours spent editing audio and recording shows took precious time away from the writing work, but it was time well spent as I now have a solid foundation to work off of. Now I have the ability to get back to work on the Novel and the lore of Draco Artifactium. I’ve even started a new site to help with that, which can be found here. We’re working towards a new lore project regarding this world, and for the next twenty days we’ll be cooking up scripts for a podcast series for the Dog Days of Podcasting 2016. I’ll be spending 30 days reading and exploring the lore of the world as I inject the information back into my headspace. The current goal is between 20-30k words for this project, and hopefully many of them can transition directly into the novel itself. I’d also like to set a personal goal of 20-30k for continued work on the novel as progress there must continue.

That’s really the bulk of it. It’s been a Hiddengrid heavy month. Not much else has happened in terms of projects. There’s musing on the horizon about something involving a Mr. Eckhart and a dream he has. More as that come us.

Okay, grading time:

Writing: I get an F. It was a bad month for it and I need to get back on the horse. That’s two months in a row with a low grade.

Patreon: Solid A. This month has seen some explosive growth and I hope I can keep some of the momentum rolling.

Podcasting: Solid A. Between the Hiddengrid and the launching of Seize The GM, I’m really ahead of the curve. I’ve keep weekly posting for the Hiddennode, except last week when the holiday threw off that schedule a bit. Hiddengrid had no interruptions.

July Goals:

  • 20 k for the novel
  • Complete prep work for the lore project, RE:DDoP
  • Continue productivity with the Hiddengrid
  • Start looking at the special project scripts.
  • Get at least 25% more patrons

I think June turned out well but we can make July a better month.

 

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Status Report – June 2016

It’s the first Monday of the month, and that makes it update time.

The second month of quarter two and we’ve reached a level of productivity and not meeting goals; it’s a weird balancing act I’d rather wish I wasn’t performing. No new Patrons, and nothing to sell. Productivity in May reached 19,168 words, roughly 30-40k shy of my goal. It was a lot of mixed days, and a lot of missed days after I reached the first milestone of the book. Something about that threw me for a loop and I’d point to the fact this is strange territory for me. The first third of the book has been written before at least twice, so getting here again and looking at the wide field of parts two and three I think shook me up a bit. It’s not an acceptable excuse, but there it is. So we’re once again shooting for 50-60k in June. Six days in we’re at 951. That leaves 49,049 words to peak for the month at 2,044 words a day. That’s a word count I can do so long as I get my ass in gear and write. Current grade for the novel writing: D

I’m still a solid D for Patreon support. I need to be doing more to draw people in and give them something worthwhile. That’s not really going to happen though until I get my books out there. Current grade for Patreon support: D

Follow up on the quest giver system leaves me wondering about its effectiveness. It has served me with reminding me of goals and objectives, but I find I’m not quite hitting the stride I wanted to get with it. I tend to do major pushes on a bunch of quests then wander off for a week or two before I look at it again. I think that clearly means I need to look at how it fits into my routine and maybe make it the first thing we do each day. If the quests are dynamic, meaning I can write them on the fly, I may be more likely to keep with the projects I want to be working on while giving me a chance to track my progress. I did reach level 2 in 2 classes though, so I got that going for myself. I did have a goal of gaining a level in all of my classes though; currently I am behind on Word Wrangler. If it weren’t for that, we’d have an A. Current grade for Quest Giver project: B

I’ve been doing really solidly with the podcast, all three of them actually. Hiddennode looks great with its new theme. I’ve posted each week on schedule since the last announcement, although I still need to post today’s content. Hiddengrid officially relaunched today, and I’ve started development on improving how that sounds and feels. Seize the GM is also under development and should be launching soon. Overall the productivity within my Audiogineer tasks has been spectacular. Current Podcasting Grade: A+

So our June goals:

  • 50k for the novel.
  • Continue the good work with Hiddennode
  • Get Hiddengrid
  • Gain a level in all of my classes.
  • Start looking for a theme for the writing site.

June sits in the middle of great preparations. Podcast mechanics are down. The book’s information is ready. Theme and quests are good to go. It’s up to me to make this the best month of the year to date.