Divisions and Precisions

Gaming and Stress Intensive

Ever have one of those days where you get so swamped you just say 'fuck it' and start goofing off? That's about where I am right now. Good god. Now, logically, aside from heavy call volumes and a coworker on vacation, I'm not really any more swamped than I usually am at the beginning of the month, but I feel like I am. The first week of the month is when my big projects are all due, and of course, given my procrastination, that's when I do most of the work. Well, that and I really can't do most of the work until month end reports have been done. So, I'm feeling buried, and I'm writing this.

The game from last week went well. Not quite as I'd hoped, due to a missing player, but well enough. The story got started, and I think people are interested. Interested enough that I picked up a new player. Jason's little brother Adam was there to play in Jason's AD&D (again, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, for the uninitiated) campaign. He watched the first half of my game (which is set in the modern-day Seattle, with all the characters everyone's been playing all along), and looked through the Changeling game books that were lying around, trying to keep up with what we were talking about. Then came the second half, my big surprise. I'm telling a story of political upheaval and intrigue, and to point that up, and to add some depth to it, the second half of my game is set in New York City, 1969 -- which in Changeling history, is a time of similar political upheaval. (If anyone's really interested in details of my plan -- and if you're playing in my group, this offer doesn't apply to you! -- email me and I'll give you the whole rundown. I'm pretty proud of it.)

So, parallel stories, with different characters. I came up with characters for each of the players based on what I thought they'd enjoy playing and what I needed for the plot. Problem: I was missing two people! Now, I'm used to playing multiple characters. Not a problem. But in this case, these characters needed to be separate people. So I sorta grinned at Adam and asked if he wanted to play the extra character I had. He did, and am I glad he did! By happy accident, he and his real life brother were playing twin brothers in the game. By further happy accident, they were playing a type of fae known as nockers, who are the builders and engineers of the fae, cranky and the type who gets along better with machines than people -- did I mention that Jason's an engineer and Adam's an engineering major? They both dove into an in-character discussion of the events of the game, which included the Apollo moon landing. That was fun.

So now, I need to come up with a 1969 character for Eric (who was originally supposed to play Adam's character) and Adam needs to come up with a modern day character to join with the rest of the group. And I need to figure out what's going on this week. I've got a skeleton idea in my head, it's just a matter of refining it and getting it on paper. (I'm discovering that I'm definitely a note-intensive GM.)

On the personal front, things have been a little rough. Mostly just because when I get stressed I get tired and when I get overly tired I can't do all the things I usually like to do, so I start to feel withdrawn from my friends, which stresses me more and I end up feeling generally rotten about myself. Talk about a vicious cycle! Monday was bad. Yesterday was better. Today... well, I managed to drag myself here. That was an accomplishment. Monday I was cranky at myself and everything was turned inward. Today I'm cranky at everybody else. I suppose that's an improvement.

But, I do have two positive notes. I have some great pictures from gaming last weekend. (The above came from that series. The golden retriever is named Lion and belongs to Alex and Heidi.) Oh okay, most of them are of Alex and Heidi's new baby Joshua. I'll have them up on a separate page later tonight. I also started changing some of my truly, unbelievably, you-wouldn't -believe-it-if-I-told-you bad eating habits. Gradual stuff. Right now I'm just trying to drink more water, stop drinking pop and make sure that I'm actually eating fruits and vegetables. Small steps.

Oh, and another good thing: I finally resubmitted "At the Ocean's Edge" to another magazine. This one an online one: Intertext. I have high hopes, as they published one of the best short stories I've ever seen on the web, and a huge favorite of mine, "Sea Change" by Susan Stern. Go read it. It won't take long to figure out why it's a favorite of mine. Posted by Lisa at May 3, 2000 02:00 PM