The three Ws

Writing, web design, and wideo games (shut up!). The three ws of my life right now. The fourth, wife, is busy getting ready to put up a show about a crazy pilot or something. I am looking forward to seeing it, because it will be a nice break from the three Ws.

Here are some updates on my relatively boring life at the moment.

Yesterday, I got my first pair of shoes that cost more than $20 in at least ten years. I go for cheap because I beat the crap out of them by pulling them off without untying them and that sort of thing. I realize now that the whole reluctance to untie my shoes started because I was so overweight. It's a fat guy behavior and I still have a lot of those ingrained in me even though I'm more of a "mildly overweight guy" now, aiming for "healthy guy." And hey, if a depression is on the horizon, we'll see just how thin I can really get!

Anyway, shoes. I got some Timberlands that are brown and very nice looking. Only thing is, they don't even begin to approach the comfort of my busted-in black velcro sneakers that I bought from Walmart for $10 over a year ago. The left heel keeps digging into my ankle and I'm sure I'm going to get a blister there. It's also a bit too tight across the ball of my foot, and so my toes feel a bit scrunched. Yesterday, they fit a lot better than this. I suppose if I can just keep them on my feet for a couple of weeks, I'll bust them in.

Writing-wise, I'm struggling to outline a steampunk sword & sorcery piece. It has hellfire mined from Hell to power steamtech, surgeons with ghostly arms that perform vivisections on nature spirits, steam-powered rubber bullet-firing machine guns, vampire bat tribesmen, and paddle boats on a rain forest river that more than passingly resembles the Amazon. Second world fantasy is HARD. There's nothing you can count on. You need to consider every aspect of the world building. Right now, I have a simple adventure plot skeleton, and I'm searching/developing my protagonist concepts to see if I can find that emotional core to crisscross with the adventure plot. The ol' tripod method, still as handy as ever. Thank you, Ted Chiang.

I'm sorry that I haven't been reading and commenting on your blogs lately. If there's been a post in the last week that I didn't comment on that you think I should have read, will you point it out to me in the comments? Killing all my feeds makes me feel so disconnected from the world. I think this is the first stage of my information addiction recovery.