This blog post has been a long time coming. I also want to say thank you to those who have asked for it. It means a lot to me that someone would not only read these blog posts but ask for more. And I'm sorry to all the friends who I haven't talked to or given an update to in quite some time now.
As always, things in my life and in my head have been rather up and down. I've got a job now, I've been at it for just over a month, and it's been exhausting. There are days when it is alright, when I make it hope with energy to spare, but most of the time I honestly don't know how time can move as slowly or painstakingly as it does. And neither can my feet. There have been times I really wanted to give up. And not just on the job.
But I've found some help. And things are better than they were the last time I had a cashiering job. The Lord has protected me, for the most part, from the consuming dread that I felt at previous jobs. The distracting, soul crunching dread that haunts you during hours and days when you should be free of work. It's not like I ever "took work home" as some people with office jobs might - I'm a cashier it's not like you can work from home. But it's like.. you know that feeling when you have some important event in the evening, and your whole day feels like "6 hours until I have to leave" "4 hours until I have to leave", etc? And you feel like you can't get anything done because you have to leave soon? It's like if it was that feeling, but stretched out for days - an unreasonable, debilitating distraction. That's what it was like a few summers ago. But its better this time.
I've been trying to focus more on the day at hand. Trying to do the work given to me, and recognize that it is indeed work that has been given to me, and not just my ill-fated attempts to do something rather than nothing. I've actually taken to reading from the daily lectionary and the book of common prayer when I can, especially if I have a few minutes in my car before work (because I'm paranoid of being there late I often arrive 5-10 min early). I've been trying to tell myself that all I need is strength for the day, and hope for tomorrow, and that I have both of those.
All the same, I'm wishing the year would just hurry up and end already. I got hired for the holiday crunch, and although they've made it seem like I can stay longer if I wish, I don't have much intention of staying past the new year. I will stay until then only because I feel I made a commitment, and it would seriously put them out to lose a team member - or try to hire one - during the holidays.
The really good thing is that I should have at least some for of employment lined up for the new year, as I'm in the middle of the process of becoming a substitute teacher for the local school district. This is something that a lot of my friends have done, and I am excited to be able to gain teaching experience, but I have to be honest that it's super intimidating too. You see, unlike most of the people around, I have literally zero experience in normal school classrooms before undergrad. I have no idea how they work! I don't really know what's expected, and it's hard to communicate that, since I've been in education my whole life - but none of it public school, and most of it seminar-style learning. So I guess... we'll see how this goes. One great thing about subbing is that I would have a lot of control over my own schedule, and could more easily do other things, including continuing work on the podcasts I'm on/will be working on.
Podcasting is still going pretty well, I think. I'm still on the one, The Liberal Aren'ts, and have two more in the works that will hopefully start recording soon. A lot of my free time is taken up my skype calls either to friends in the UK in the morning, or to play D&D in the evening. The rest of my time is, yes, still being spent watching Xena: Warrior Princess. I only have 8 episodes left, though, so I guess that will be changing soon.
Let's see, what else? I've gotten to play some really good games recently, and see some good good films. Standouts in both category are Thor: Ragnarok and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Honestly I could go on about both of these - especially Hellblade - for ages. And I'm thinking of doing that on a separate blog that I haven't made yet. It's funny that they're both sort of about Norse myth. (I blame Xena for starting this trend with that whole Valkyrie trilogy).
That's all for now I guess. TL;DR: Jobs are tiring but I'm still here. It's been rough but not as rough as a few years back. And thank you so much for continuing to listen and ask.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Rissa
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
Sunday, September 17, 2017
What Next?
As always, it's been a while.
I'm home now. Or at least, I'm back. State-side, I mean, back with my family, back in the house I grew up in. I'm still not really sure what to do with that.
When I started this blog I hadn't really thought about how to end it - or what to do with it after I left Oxford. To be honest I'm not sure that when I started at Oxford - or, honestly, most of the time I was there - I had considered the time after I graduated as an actual possible time that I would reach. It's not that I thought it was impossible, it's just that I didn't think about it, you know?
In any case, I guess these aren't the Oxford Comments anymore. Should I change the name? Maybe.
Right now I'm in a place that's a bit too familiar. Stuck in a rut and doing nothing. But this time - for the first time in my life - I have honest to God no idea what comes next.
Every season in my life to this point has had SOMETHING that was coming after it. It's been temporary in some way. First grades - after first comes second, third, after middle school is highschool - then semesters, after fall is spring, summer, fall again. Then there was grad school, and its terms. Then it was moving home. These periods were long or short but they were all, as it felt, inevitable. They were set. There was always at least one of them ahead of me. I knew before I finished at JBU that I'd go to Oxford. And I knew even before I went to Oxford that I would be leaving it. But now? Now I don't know. Now, I guess, I have to choose. To make it up on my own.
And it's not just the big things either, I'm having to choose what to do every day. Without any real requirements, demands, or deadlines. There is no homework, no project, and no date at which I know that I will be moving on. It's... freeing, and unnerving, and paralyzing all at once.
So far I've been spending my time on some projects that I thought up while I was away, but never had the time or resources to pursue. I've been working on some cosplays for the first time, and binging TV shows that I didn't have access too in the UK. I've also been applying for jobs. So many I've completely lost count of when and where. But no one has gotten back with me yet. Not even I say that don't want me. My attempts to call people to make inquiries have also not gone well. Lots of answering machines and no returned calls.
I need work. I need to have an income, I need to gain experience, and I need something to do with my time before I go mad. But it's not the specific struggle of finding a job that's heavy on my mind right now. Although that is getting frustrating. It's just a complete lack of purpose.
People have been asking me - as they have been for the past several years - what I want to do. In the long run. If I want to teach, that sort of thing. And I've been saying yes. I've been saying yes I'd quite like to teach at the undergraduate level - but I've been saying this mostly because it's easier to have an answer, and this one might be true. It was true a few years ago. And life would be easier if it were still true now.
In reality though I don't know what I want. And this morning in church I realized something else. What it really comes down to is that I don't want to have to make it up myself. I want a mission. A commission. A personal directive. And not a grand big-picture, general principles thing either. I want someone - alright lets be real here not just anyone, I want the Author of the Universe himself - to just flat out tell me what to do, and how to do it.
Thing is, I know me. I know that I have a disgust of discipline and an idiotic and selfish drive for unearned independence. So even if he did, I would more than likely whine and complain and hate it.
I know I keep coming back to this, but I think that's why I like Joan of Arc so much. Her mission was so clear cut. You WILL do this thing. You must do this very specific thing. That's what I want. A more specific commissioning - for someone ELSE to tell me how I fit in and what my skills are, not just a "do good", you know?
I've gotten more and more into content creation recently - podcasts I mean. I've overcommitted, to be honest, but I'm excited for these projects. I'm not confident in them - in me, I mean. But I'm glad they are happening. I don't know how I would make THAT my main focus, my job even. I'm not sure I'd be up to it.
I think what it really is is that I hate the idea of doing a job just so that you can pay the bills and do something ELSE (that is a job in and of itself) for your "real" life. And I know that for millions of people, that's every day life. But I find something about it so essentially wrong, you know? And I think I am right to. But I am sure that I don't have to right to let that stop me from doing it anyway. I am sure that in reality I need to suck it up and function like everyone else does in this world.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this blog. I've also considered making a second blog, one that would be less personal and more focused on the art and fictions I enjoy and my thoughts on them. Just to give me an outlet that isn't ranting and rambling to my friends who haven't even seen the show or played the games I'm talking about, and making them listen to it all. I don't know if anyone would even read it but at least it'd be written down. If you've got a title suggestion I'd love to hear it. It would probably be as lose and unedited as this. Which probably isn't the smartest way to do things.
Thanks for continuing to read these. I guess I have to assume that you're reading this, in order to tell you that. If you've any thoughts on what I should do - with the blog I mean, but I suppose in life in genaeral, I would LOVE to hear them. Please. I need some correspondence here.
Thanks,
Rissa
Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
I'm home now. Or at least, I'm back. State-side, I mean, back with my family, back in the house I grew up in. I'm still not really sure what to do with that.
When I started this blog I hadn't really thought about how to end it - or what to do with it after I left Oxford. To be honest I'm not sure that when I started at Oxford - or, honestly, most of the time I was there - I had considered the time after I graduated as an actual possible time that I would reach. It's not that I thought it was impossible, it's just that I didn't think about it, you know?
In any case, I guess these aren't the Oxford Comments anymore. Should I change the name? Maybe.
Right now I'm in a place that's a bit too familiar. Stuck in a rut and doing nothing. But this time - for the first time in my life - I have honest to God no idea what comes next.
Every season in my life to this point has had SOMETHING that was coming after it. It's been temporary in some way. First grades - after first comes second, third, after middle school is highschool - then semesters, after fall is spring, summer, fall again. Then there was grad school, and its terms. Then it was moving home. These periods were long or short but they were all, as it felt, inevitable. They were set. There was always at least one of them ahead of me. I knew before I finished at JBU that I'd go to Oxford. And I knew even before I went to Oxford that I would be leaving it. But now? Now I don't know. Now, I guess, I have to choose. To make it up on my own.
And it's not just the big things either, I'm having to choose what to do every day. Without any real requirements, demands, or deadlines. There is no homework, no project, and no date at which I know that I will be moving on. It's... freeing, and unnerving, and paralyzing all at once.
So far I've been spending my time on some projects that I thought up while I was away, but never had the time or resources to pursue. I've been working on some cosplays for the first time, and binging TV shows that I didn't have access too in the UK. I've also been applying for jobs. So many I've completely lost count of when and where. But no one has gotten back with me yet. Not even I say that don't want me. My attempts to call people to make inquiries have also not gone well. Lots of answering machines and no returned calls.
I need work. I need to have an income, I need to gain experience, and I need something to do with my time before I go mad. But it's not the specific struggle of finding a job that's heavy on my mind right now. Although that is getting frustrating. It's just a complete lack of purpose.
People have been asking me - as they have been for the past several years - what I want to do. In the long run. If I want to teach, that sort of thing. And I've been saying yes. I've been saying yes I'd quite like to teach at the undergraduate level - but I've been saying this mostly because it's easier to have an answer, and this one might be true. It was true a few years ago. And life would be easier if it were still true now.
In reality though I don't know what I want. And this morning in church I realized something else. What it really comes down to is that I don't want to have to make it up myself. I want a mission. A commission. A personal directive. And not a grand big-picture, general principles thing either. I want someone - alright lets be real here not just anyone, I want the Author of the Universe himself - to just flat out tell me what to do, and how to do it.
Thing is, I know me. I know that I have a disgust of discipline and an idiotic and selfish drive for unearned independence. So even if he did, I would more than likely whine and complain and hate it.
I know I keep coming back to this, but I think that's why I like Joan of Arc so much. Her mission was so clear cut. You WILL do this thing. You must do this very specific thing. That's what I want. A more specific commissioning - for someone ELSE to tell me how I fit in and what my skills are, not just a "do good", you know?
I've gotten more and more into content creation recently - podcasts I mean. I've overcommitted, to be honest, but I'm excited for these projects. I'm not confident in them - in me, I mean. But I'm glad they are happening. I don't know how I would make THAT my main focus, my job even. I'm not sure I'd be up to it.
I think what it really is is that I hate the idea of doing a job just so that you can pay the bills and do something ELSE (that is a job in and of itself) for your "real" life. And I know that for millions of people, that's every day life. But I find something about it so essentially wrong, you know? And I think I am right to. But I am sure that I don't have to right to let that stop me from doing it anyway. I am sure that in reality I need to suck it up and function like everyone else does in this world.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this blog. I've also considered making a second blog, one that would be less personal and more focused on the art and fictions I enjoy and my thoughts on them. Just to give me an outlet that isn't ranting and rambling to my friends who haven't even seen the show or played the games I'm talking about, and making them listen to it all. I don't know if anyone would even read it but at least it'd be written down. If you've got a title suggestion I'd love to hear it. It would probably be as lose and unedited as this. Which probably isn't the smartest way to do things.
Thanks for continuing to read these. I guess I have to assume that you're reading this, in order to tell you that. If you've any thoughts on what I should do - with the blog I mean, but I suppose in life in genaeral, I would LOVE to hear them. Please. I need some correspondence here.
Thanks,
Rissa
Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
It's Finished
I'm... done.
It's been a while, y'all. Sorry about that. I've actually been done for a while now - over a month. And I've been officially done since Friday afternoon. But I just... I don't know what to do with this information yet. Still.
I finished my thesis. I finished my degree. I passed. I'm done. I have a Bachelors of Philosophy in Philosophy from Oxford University. It's mine now. And now, in just over a week's time, my ~2 years living in Oxford will be over too.
I've changed. A lot. I'm... not sure how I feel about going home. People keep asking me if I'm excited. I'm not, I'll tell you that. Now don't get me wrong! I'm not like dreading going home or anything like that - there are a lot of things I'm looking forward to! I am VERY excited to see my family again. And to be in a time zone that's not 5-7 hours away from most of my friends. And I am looking forward to no longer living in this super transient state, where "I would do/get that but I'm leaving soon" is something I constantly think. I'll also be glad to have an income, assuming I can find a decent job.
At the same time - I love this place. I have friends here. And it's beautiful. I love the people, I love the parks, I love the buildings, I even love the food and the weather. I've gotten to know this place - know it better than I know Flower Mound, the city I grew up in and am moving back to. Because I walked it streets. Because its streets were meant for walking. I love my church family here. And I really don't know what I'm going to do back home.
At first, when the end of term came, I had this bit of a shock - I had been mentally preparing myself for so long to come to terms with the fact that I was leaving, that I totally forgot to prepare myself for the fact that most of my friends, especially at college, were leaving first. But I'm actually glad they did. It'll make it easier when it's my turn. Less people to bid farewell all at once.
So yes. Excited is not the word I would use to describe my feelings for the next stage of my life. I'll be honest - right now moving back home feels like taking a step back in time. Back to the time when I used to live there. And that's not okay. I've changed so much over these past two years - for better and for worse. And I cannot allow myself to regress back to the person I was.
One thing I'm a bit worried about is if everyone back home expects me to be that same person they knew. But then, maybe I should be more worried about myself being convinced that home should be exactly as I left it, when it's not, and shouldn't be. The real thing I'm worried about tho is just myself getting complacent - myself LETTING me go back to the way I was before. I shouldn't villainize my former self - there were some things I was better at then. Like early mornings. And there's a lot that I want to get better at now that I have told myself "I'll start when I get home" but for some reason haven't started here.
Ok. Where was I. Started rambling there. I'm done. That's what I was talking about. I'm done and it feels oddly anticlimactic. I finished up my thesis two days before the deadline and just kind of felt like "welp. that feels done i guess". I read it over in full the next morning, out loud, and then took it straight to the printer, and an hour later I was headed to exam schools to turn it in. As is my tradition, I went and got an ice cream after. Since then I've been... well not doing much really. I'm still in town because I have a conference this weekend (more on that in a bit) but I have honestly mostly been in my room playing videogames... Sad, I know. I take a walk every day but often it feels like I just don't have anything to DO. And several of my friends are out of town - either for the summer or for the week. Packing is a daunting challenge which I have been attempting to chip away at but it's slow going, mostly because I don't have to leave right away.
I guess I should talk about this conference, huh? Because I'm... terrified really. Maybe that's too strong a word. Highly intimidated. It's not my thesis I'm presenting at this conference, it's a short essay I wrote in like December. To be honest, this paper was written from the get-go for this conference. I needed to write a short essay, I found out about this conference, I looked up the invited speaker's work, and decided to write a response. I submitted to the conference and was accepted, but it's hard to tell how big a deal these things are. All the same I don't think it really clicked in my head that I was going to speak at a conference in which I would present a response to one of the invited speakers. Like I knew it was a bigger deal than any other conference I'd been to - mostly because the man organizing it was in my bibliography. But then we got the talk schedule. First, unlike the smaller conferences (or should I say bigger? More people but less important) I've been to, there's never more than one talk going on at once, so everyone there is around for all of the talks. Which is intimidating enough, knowing that everyone on the list will likely be there for my talk. But then there's the order. First is the invited speaker, of course, to open up the talks. And then there's me. Right after him. Going second. Responding to his paper by basically saying why I think he's wrong, and I have a better theory. Yup. I'm sweating just thinking about it. Now don't get me wrong, I'm excited - I'm excited to meet the people who I've been reading and citing and all of that but my STARS is it intimidating. I hadn't realized it, but I guess I haven't really ever been to or been a part of a "grown up" conference like this. But yeah. That's what I'll be doing on Friday morning. How about you?
I am really glad it's like first thing tho - get it over with. And I am looking forward to a lot of good discussion. But for now I'll just sit here shaking, trying to think of ways I could prepare for this, and wondering how you present a paper when 2/3rds of your major sources are sitting in the room with you.
But hey! At least my thesis is done! And I received some really phenomenal feedback on it! Seriously, both of my assessor's responses were some of the highest compliments I have ever received, and the mark was 5 points higher than my highest essay score (and 10 points higher than my lowest)! I'm so amazed, I keep re-reading over it. Only thing left to do now it turn in a copy with my name on it for the library. And then eventually I'll have to come back and graduate. One of these days. It's kind of nice having that small promise. That I'll be back if for nothing else than for that.
Finally, there's the question of what I should do about this blog. This blog started for a few reasons. One, because I'm bad at journaling and I've heard it's good for you. Two, because I wanted to host open discussion about stuff people don't always want to share about, like depression. But MOSTLY because I was sick and tired of repeating my life story to all of my friends separately while I was away and wanted a place I could direct them all instead. And a lot of the need for that might be going away. But then again, it might not - as I move back towards my US friends I leave all of my UK friends - and international friends - behind. Maybe I should keep this blog going. Should I change it's name? Hmm. Let me know what you think.
As always, thank you for reading. Really. It's been nice to hear that people are reading this, and I'd love to talk to even more people about this stuff. Thank you.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Rissa
I finished my thesis. I finished my degree. I passed. I'm done. I have a Bachelors of Philosophy in Philosophy from Oxford University. It's mine now. And now, in just over a week's time, my ~2 years living in Oxford will be over too.
I've changed. A lot. I'm... not sure how I feel about going home. People keep asking me if I'm excited. I'm not, I'll tell you that. Now don't get me wrong! I'm not like dreading going home or anything like that - there are a lot of things I'm looking forward to! I am VERY excited to see my family again. And to be in a time zone that's not 5-7 hours away from most of my friends. And I am looking forward to no longer living in this super transient state, where "I would do/get that but I'm leaving soon" is something I constantly think. I'll also be glad to have an income, assuming I can find a decent job.
At the same time - I love this place. I have friends here. And it's beautiful. I love the people, I love the parks, I love the buildings, I even love the food and the weather. I've gotten to know this place - know it better than I know Flower Mound, the city I grew up in and am moving back to. Because I walked it streets. Because its streets were meant for walking. I love my church family here. And I really don't know what I'm going to do back home.
At first, when the end of term came, I had this bit of a shock - I had been mentally preparing myself for so long to come to terms with the fact that I was leaving, that I totally forgot to prepare myself for the fact that most of my friends, especially at college, were leaving first. But I'm actually glad they did. It'll make it easier when it's my turn. Less people to bid farewell all at once.
So yes. Excited is not the word I would use to describe my feelings for the next stage of my life. I'll be honest - right now moving back home feels like taking a step back in time. Back to the time when I used to live there. And that's not okay. I've changed so much over these past two years - for better and for worse. And I cannot allow myself to regress back to the person I was.
One thing I'm a bit worried about is if everyone back home expects me to be that same person they knew. But then, maybe I should be more worried about myself being convinced that home should be exactly as I left it, when it's not, and shouldn't be. The real thing I'm worried about tho is just myself getting complacent - myself LETTING me go back to the way I was before. I shouldn't villainize my former self - there were some things I was better at then. Like early mornings. And there's a lot that I want to get better at now that I have told myself "I'll start when I get home" but for some reason haven't started here.
Ok. Where was I. Started rambling there. I'm done. That's what I was talking about. I'm done and it feels oddly anticlimactic. I finished up my thesis two days before the deadline and just kind of felt like "welp. that feels done i guess". I read it over in full the next morning, out loud, and then took it straight to the printer, and an hour later I was headed to exam schools to turn it in. As is my tradition, I went and got an ice cream after. Since then I've been... well not doing much really. I'm still in town because I have a conference this weekend (more on that in a bit) but I have honestly mostly been in my room playing videogames... Sad, I know. I take a walk every day but often it feels like I just don't have anything to DO. And several of my friends are out of town - either for the summer or for the week. Packing is a daunting challenge which I have been attempting to chip away at but it's slow going, mostly because I don't have to leave right away.
I guess I should talk about this conference, huh? Because I'm... terrified really. Maybe that's too strong a word. Highly intimidated. It's not my thesis I'm presenting at this conference, it's a short essay I wrote in like December. To be honest, this paper was written from the get-go for this conference. I needed to write a short essay, I found out about this conference, I looked up the invited speaker's work, and decided to write a response. I submitted to the conference and was accepted, but it's hard to tell how big a deal these things are. All the same I don't think it really clicked in my head that I was going to speak at a conference in which I would present a response to one of the invited speakers. Like I knew it was a bigger deal than any other conference I'd been to - mostly because the man organizing it was in my bibliography. But then we got the talk schedule. First, unlike the smaller conferences (or should I say bigger? More people but less important) I've been to, there's never more than one talk going on at once, so everyone there is around for all of the talks. Which is intimidating enough, knowing that everyone on the list will likely be there for my talk. But then there's the order. First is the invited speaker, of course, to open up the talks. And then there's me. Right after him. Going second. Responding to his paper by basically saying why I think he's wrong, and I have a better theory. Yup. I'm sweating just thinking about it. Now don't get me wrong, I'm excited - I'm excited to meet the people who I've been reading and citing and all of that but my STARS is it intimidating. I hadn't realized it, but I guess I haven't really ever been to or been a part of a "grown up" conference like this. But yeah. That's what I'll be doing on Friday morning. How about you?
I am really glad it's like first thing tho - get it over with. And I am looking forward to a lot of good discussion. But for now I'll just sit here shaking, trying to think of ways I could prepare for this, and wondering how you present a paper when 2/3rds of your major sources are sitting in the room with you.
But hey! At least my thesis is done! And I received some really phenomenal feedback on it! Seriously, both of my assessor's responses were some of the highest compliments I have ever received, and the mark was 5 points higher than my highest essay score (and 10 points higher than my lowest)! I'm so amazed, I keep re-reading over it. Only thing left to do now it turn in a copy with my name on it for the library. And then eventually I'll have to come back and graduate. One of these days. It's kind of nice having that small promise. That I'll be back if for nothing else than for that.
Finally, there's the question of what I should do about this blog. This blog started for a few reasons. One, because I'm bad at journaling and I've heard it's good for you. Two, because I wanted to host open discussion about stuff people don't always want to share about, like depression. But MOSTLY because I was sick and tired of repeating my life story to all of my friends separately while I was away and wanted a place I could direct them all instead. And a lot of the need for that might be going away. But then again, it might not - as I move back towards my US friends I leave all of my UK friends - and international friends - behind. Maybe I should keep this blog going. Should I change it's name? Hmm. Let me know what you think.
As always, thank you for reading. Really. It's been nice to hear that people are reading this, and I'd love to talk to even more people about this stuff. Thank you.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Rissa
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
It's my birthday!
Or at least it is while I'm writing this. ;D happy birthday to me! It has been a very happy birthday indeed. In fact these last two weeks have been shockingly good.
I'm about a week away from my final deadline today. And if you asked me even a week ago, much less a month ago, if I would be this calm and free a week before my deadline I would never have believed you. These last few weeks have been amazingly productive and it is 1000% God's work.
If this post turns out to be anything like I want it, it may be pretty heavy, but not very sad. I may have to write this in several sittings tho so it might not be my birthday or even before my deadline before I post. So we shall see how this goes.
As for my birthday, I got so much done yesterday that I decided to turn in a draft to my supervisor (for the last time!) half a day early and take all of Tuesday off. It's been nice. I started the script for my next colloquium on The Liberal Aren'ts (a podcast I am making with the Hannim :) ) and then had a really long REALLY great conversation with my friend Lindsey over lunch. By then the rain had cleared so I went on a long windy walk in Port Meadow - and I saw a steam train pass by in the way! As I write this in in a little cafe, waiting to meet a friend or two at the pub for dinner tonight, and then some other friends to see a new Miyazaki film tonight. Tomorrow around noon I have a final meeting with my supervisor, and then I think I might get lunch at the town market and then watch Wonder Woman again because Y'ALL. I am in love.
I didn't actually come here to talk about Wonder Woman, but if you get me started believe me I will.
What I did come to talk about is a lot bigger than that tho. I haven't posted in a while and that's mostly because life has actually been really good, and I think I've been making real progress. Part of that is either because it has at least resulted in freedom from depression of late.
I'm not entirely sure to talk about my spiritual life. For all my Christian upbringing I'm not sure how to talk about real stuff without it sounding fake. My spiritual life seems to have had some important turning points since November or so. I don't think I'll go into all of it. But recently I made a bit of a revelation.
I've known for a long time that my biggest struggle is sloth, or apathy, or laziness, or whatever you want to call it. I've said that for years. And it's true. But I had a realization about it, and it came from, of all places, a joke I made, and a reference to Fullmetal Alchemist.
For those of you who don't know FMA I'll try to explain a bit. Fullmetal Alchemist is a manga/anime (called Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) which features, among other things, a villain with 7 servants named for the 7 deadly sins: Pride, Wrath, Greed, Gluttony, Envy, Lust, and Sloth. Sloth isn't the most interesting character and is introduced rather late but he's very well imagined. Sloth is one of the biggest and strongest baddies and is the fasted being there is. He can move extremely fast. He just doesn't. He's tired, and although he does what he's told his eternal refrain is basically "uhhhgggg but that's such hard work." When he is finally killed (um, spoilers!) he says "dying is such hard work" (or something like that. It's been a while since I read the actual quote). I was joking about this the other day but like. That is me. That is EXACTLY my thought process. Living is too much work. Dying is too much work too.
I've been thinking about this for the past few days, and I realized at church a few weeks back that by laziness isn't mere apathy. It's fear. Fear of hard work.
God has been working on my heart for the past several months, certainly since November and especially since March, in requesting his, for lack of a better word commission on my life. The problem I have run into again and again is this knowledge of myself - this resigned knowledge that even if God DID give me a mission to do, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't defiantly refuse. I just wouldn't do it. I wouldn't get around to it. It would just... Pass me by. And I would let it. I know.
Anyway. I realized that I was afraid of hard work. Extremely afraid. Afraid of my future, no matter what it contained. I asked God to remove this fear from me, and forgive how I have given into it in the past.
To be honest? The whole thing still does frighten me. But you know what? I have had one of the best most productive and enjoyable two weeks that I have ever had. And in only a week away from a final deadline that by all rights should be stressing me out!
Somehow I feel weird talkingn about the GOOD things that happen to me, even though I am apparently fine with telling you the bad. I'll try to keep going.
Whether it has been my spiritual journey, or the coming of wonderful springtime, I have been experiencencinf a real relief from depression these past few weeks. And that's really amazing. I pray it keeps up.
My biggest worry right now is the fact that I will soon be moving home. Everything has just gotten perfect and soon I have to leave. But I think maybe I should talk about that another time.
I just wanted to give yall an update while I'm feeling alright. Thanks for reading!
Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Rissa
I'm about a week away from my final deadline today. And if you asked me even a week ago, much less a month ago, if I would be this calm and free a week before my deadline I would never have believed you. These last few weeks have been amazingly productive and it is 1000% God's work.
If this post turns out to be anything like I want it, it may be pretty heavy, but not very sad. I may have to write this in several sittings tho so it might not be my birthday or even before my deadline before I post. So we shall see how this goes.
As for my birthday, I got so much done yesterday that I decided to turn in a draft to my supervisor (for the last time!) half a day early and take all of Tuesday off. It's been nice. I started the script for my next colloquium on The Liberal Aren'ts (a podcast I am making with the Hannim :) ) and then had a really long REALLY great conversation with my friend Lindsey over lunch. By then the rain had cleared so I went on a long windy walk in Port Meadow - and I saw a steam train pass by in the way! As I write this in in a little cafe, waiting to meet a friend or two at the pub for dinner tonight, and then some other friends to see a new Miyazaki film tonight. Tomorrow around noon I have a final meeting with my supervisor, and then I think I might get lunch at the town market and then watch Wonder Woman again because Y'ALL. I am in love.
I didn't actually come here to talk about Wonder Woman, but if you get me started believe me I will.
What I did come to talk about is a lot bigger than that tho. I haven't posted in a while and that's mostly because life has actually been really good, and I think I've been making real progress. Part of that is either because it has at least resulted in freedom from depression of late.
I'm not entirely sure to talk about my spiritual life. For all my Christian upbringing I'm not sure how to talk about real stuff without it sounding fake. My spiritual life seems to have had some important turning points since November or so. I don't think I'll go into all of it. But recently I made a bit of a revelation.
I've known for a long time that my biggest struggle is sloth, or apathy, or laziness, or whatever you want to call it. I've said that for years. And it's true. But I had a realization about it, and it came from, of all places, a joke I made, and a reference to Fullmetal Alchemist.
For those of you who don't know FMA I'll try to explain a bit. Fullmetal Alchemist is a manga/anime (called Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) which features, among other things, a villain with 7 servants named for the 7 deadly sins: Pride, Wrath, Greed, Gluttony, Envy, Lust, and Sloth. Sloth isn't the most interesting character and is introduced rather late but he's very well imagined. Sloth is one of the biggest and strongest baddies and is the fasted being there is. He can move extremely fast. He just doesn't. He's tired, and although he does what he's told his eternal refrain is basically "uhhhgggg but that's such hard work." When he is finally killed (um, spoilers!) he says "dying is such hard work" (or something like that. It's been a while since I read the actual quote). I was joking about this the other day but like. That is me. That is EXACTLY my thought process. Living is too much work. Dying is too much work too.
I've been thinking about this for the past few days, and I realized at church a few weeks back that by laziness isn't mere apathy. It's fear. Fear of hard work.
God has been working on my heart for the past several months, certainly since November and especially since March, in requesting his, for lack of a better word commission on my life. The problem I have run into again and again is this knowledge of myself - this resigned knowledge that even if God DID give me a mission to do, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't defiantly refuse. I just wouldn't do it. I wouldn't get around to it. It would just... Pass me by. And I would let it. I know.
Anyway. I realized that I was afraid of hard work. Extremely afraid. Afraid of my future, no matter what it contained. I asked God to remove this fear from me, and forgive how I have given into it in the past.
To be honest? The whole thing still does frighten me. But you know what? I have had one of the best most productive and enjoyable two weeks that I have ever had. And in only a week away from a final deadline that by all rights should be stressing me out!
Somehow I feel weird talkingn about the GOOD things that happen to me, even though I am apparently fine with telling you the bad. I'll try to keep going.
Whether it has been my spiritual journey, or the coming of wonderful springtime, I have been experiencencinf a real relief from depression these past few weeks. And that's really amazing. I pray it keeps up.
My biggest worry right now is the fact that I will soon be moving home. Everything has just gotten perfect and soon I have to leave. But I think maybe I should talk about that another time.
I just wanted to give yall an update while I'm feeling alright. Thanks for reading!
Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Rissa
Monday, April 24, 2017
How is it term time and how do we make it stop?
Y'all. What happened? How did this happen?
It's Trinity term. The break is over. I have 8 weeks to finish this thesis.
What?
Sorry I've been absent so long again this time. My last update was about Rezzed - I have been sick basically all of the time since then. At Rezzed I started feeling poorly, like the start of a cold or hay fever. It got pretty bad but a week later I felt a lot better - I basically lost my voice but I felt better. Three days after that I woke up at 4am feeling like I had been punched in the face and unable to breathe. It got really bad and a week or so later I had a fever, and finally went to the GP. Got on antibiotics, and by the time I had finished them I had been sick for a solid 3 weeks. I got of meds on Thursday and it's now Monday. I'm feeling a lot better but still have some coughing etc. problems.
so yeah thats been a great way to prepare for term. Except that it wasn't. It simply does not compute in my mind that it is term time again. Like it doesn't make any sense.
I turn in my draft for the first half of my thesis tomorrow, and have a meeting about it the day after. I am not ready for this either but I very much want it to just come and go already.
Besides "I've been sick" and "I am very scared of this thesis and am not at all sure that I will be able to finish it or write it well" I don't really have much to say? I can't believe it's nearly May. I'm trying not to think about how soon I will be moving home.
Sorry this is so short. Very distracted today. Will try to write again soon.
Thank you for reading.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Rissa
It's Trinity term. The break is over. I have 8 weeks to finish this thesis.
What?
Sorry I've been absent so long again this time. My last update was about Rezzed - I have been sick basically all of the time since then. At Rezzed I started feeling poorly, like the start of a cold or hay fever. It got pretty bad but a week later I felt a lot better - I basically lost my voice but I felt better. Three days after that I woke up at 4am feeling like I had been punched in the face and unable to breathe. It got really bad and a week or so later I had a fever, and finally went to the GP. Got on antibiotics, and by the time I had finished them I had been sick for a solid 3 weeks. I got of meds on Thursday and it's now Monday. I'm feeling a lot better but still have some coughing etc. problems.
so yeah thats been a great way to prepare for term. Except that it wasn't. It simply does not compute in my mind that it is term time again. Like it doesn't make any sense.
I turn in my draft for the first half of my thesis tomorrow, and have a meeting about it the day after. I am not ready for this either but I very much want it to just come and go already.
Besides "I've been sick" and "I am very scared of this thesis and am not at all sure that I will be able to finish it or write it well" I don't really have much to say? I can't believe it's nearly May. I'm trying not to think about how soon I will be moving home.
Sorry this is so short. Very distracted today. Will try to write again soon.
Thank you for reading.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Rissa
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
All Rezzed out
Hey guys! I know I haven't been posting a lot this term but I'm back now to talk about my holiday so far.
First let me say, technically this hasn't been just one long holiday. We're off-term and I REALLY need to be working on my thesis now - which I did get some work on yesterday - but I've had altogether about a week's worth of being out of town and it's been very good.
But I am also sick - again. Y'all. I. Keep. Getting. Sick. I don't know if it's the stress or what. I'm used to my body doing whatever this is - basically a cold, though I have been told before it's allergies? I don't know. It acts a lot like a cold, normally lasts ~5-6 days. Anyway I'm used to my body doing this 2-3 times a year, but I think this is the 3-4th time since January, and it's only just now April. And I am getting real sick of it. Mostly it is constituted by an extremely sore throat, a stopped nose, and by far the worst of these, really terrible pressure between my ears and on my sinuses. Like this time it's especially bad -even moving my eyes too quickly actually hurts/gives me a headache. I've been taking a great deal of medicine and that seems to be helping but uhg. Yuck. I am very tired, and wearing my glasses can be difficult. They make my eyes feel better but my nose and face feel worse.
Okay anyway enough about that. Holiday!
First, the real holiday, my terrific friend Lizzy invited me to go with her to north Devon, because I said that I hadn't ever really been to the sea, besides the gulf of mexico and the northern Irish coast. And so, we drove out to Woolacombe, to a flat of her grandparents', and spent four days my the sea. It was REALLY lovely. I could sit for hours just watching. We took a few walks along the rocky parts of the shoreline, and spent some time down on the sand too, and eventually donned wetsuits and took to surfing! That was amazing fun! I've never really understood the appeal of surfing before, but it was REALLY fun. Also utterly exhausting. (also: I don't mean like long-board-standing-up surfing. Shorter boards and laying down, but still REALLY fun.) We also played a LOT of board games, which I enjoyed - I've found that all of my Oxford friends love board games, where very few of my US friends do (with the exception of Settlers of Catan, for some). We even played through a game of monopoly in pretty good time - something which I don't think I've ever actually done. The only problem we ran into during this trip was that when we first got there, there was some electrical trouble, and the boiler stopped working. As such, we didn't have hot water on tap or the radiators working for heating. We mostly compensated via the use of blankets and tea and a hot water bottle. But all in all it was really great. Lizzy taught me to surf and at least tried to teach me how to throw a cricket ball, and a new board game (well, and old game which I hadn't played before) which was really fun called Millionaire. The sea and whole area there was simply gorgeous, and I had a wonderful time. Thank you, Lizzy!
After coming home very VERY exhausted, I had about a week to attempt work on my thesis before just last weekend heading out again, this time to London, where I met up with a friend, Nathan, to attend EGX Rezzed - a three day game dev conference. Now mind, this wasn't comic con - this wasn't the kind of place where big companies have big panels and lots of celebrities and actors are there. This was a place where a lot of indie game devs got together to show off their awesome and innovative games, and give talks on game development, journalism, etc. I had a really great time going around and playing new games, and attending some of the talks. So I'm going to try and split this up in a more rational order:
First, games! My favorite game at Rezzed, one of the few I bought while at the conference without even waiting to get home was Stories Untold. To describe Stories Untold all I need to do is ask: Have you seen Stranger Things? If you have, know that while Stories Untold is not based on Stranger Things, it fills the EXACT same aesthetic niche. It's spooky, and retro, and amazing. There are four chapters, like four short stories, and I've only played the first one, but it is SO good. And very innovative, very different from most games I've played. The first chapter, The House Abandon, is like game is like a game within a game, and is a text adventure like none I've played before. Really great. Even watching other people's reaction while playing it was great! And I got to talk to one of the lead devs who made it too - that's one of the funnest parts of Rezzed. Even if you don't normally play games, if you like Stranger Things, PLEASE go try Stories Untold. It's pretty cheap on Steam!
Another game which really interested me was called Herald. Herald is a point-and-click adventure, very narrative driven, with multiple ways the plot can go, which the dev team calls "An Interactive Period Drama" - like how could that be bad, right? But it's even better. It's set an an alternate version of the 19th century and stars one of the most diverse cast of characters I have seen in any video game - it's about dealing with inequality and dealing with other people and it's just REALLY REALLY PRETTY. The art style is a gorgeous mix of 3D and 2D art and animation and I am in love with it after just playing the demo! I bought the game at Rezzed and look forward to playing the rest. Once again, even if you're not normally into games, if you like stories with very diverse casts and you like period dramas, please go look up Herald.
Lets' see, what else? One game I really enjoyed but isn't available to buy (I talked to the dev and he called it a "proof of concept" and said that Rezzed was helping him find the bugs - was a tablet game called Uncanny Valerie. It is from what I can tell about a disgraced robot engineer who has made a robot using personality aspects based on her ex-girlfriend. It was a really clever form of narrative delivery, and though it had some mechanical bugs, I really enjoyed it.
The team that made Sir, You are Being Hunted was also there with a new game called The Signal from Tรถlva, that was pretty fun. You explore a world dominated by three factions of robots by hacking into robots of your own. There was a beautiful little game called Lost Words told through a girl's journal and about her imagination. There were several cool VR games, including one which I didn't get the name of about a blind woman who suffers from paranoia, and a cool turn-based cyber-punk game called Augmented Empire. I got to play a few indie games on the new Nintendo Switch (the controllers are smaller than I imagined), and loads of other very creative titles, I wish I could remember them all, but they do blur together a bit. Had a great time. Went to one of the partied afterwords where they had retro games too, won my first ever try at Street Fighter, and found out that I am very very good at the old game Duck Hunter.
I also got to meet most of the team from one of my favorite YouTube shows, Outside Xbox (and Outside Extra, their second channel). They were amazing, and REALLY nice. They had an official meet and greet which I was unfortunately a bit late for - the queue was so long they ran out of time! - but fortunately when Nathan and I stopped for lunch, I ran into 4/5 of them in the hallway and got to say hi, and thank you, and get a picture. Like I said they are all super nice. As I told them, watching them do what they do was one of the things that inspired me to try out podcasting! They are also the reason I came to EGX Rezzed - not just to meet them of course, but I hadn't heard about the conference at all until they mentioned it on their show. I'm sure none of them are reading this now, but thank you, Jane, Andy, Ellen, Luke, Mike, and the rest of the Oxbox/Oxtra team!
As for the more serious side of this conference - not that games aren't serious, but I mean personal to me. There was also a side of this conference aimed at people who want to get involved in the games industry. Which hey, that includes me. When I decided to go to Rezzed I was really excited about this - I thought that maybe I could finally find someone and ask them "so what can a philosopher do in videogames, and how do I start that?". I thought it would bring some confirmation that this IS a thing I can do! But... I don't know that it did. In fact, maybe the opposite. I talked to a few people. There were several Universities there, but all of them mostly run Bachelors courses in game design, programming, and art. And... I really don't want to dive back into a Bachelor's degree. I talked to some devs, but all of them to be honest kind of looked at me funny when I said I was neither programmer nor artist, but doing a masters in the humanities. Most of them tried to encourage me saying that well a degree in gaming isn't needed if you just have a good portfolio and can show that you're passionate and willing to learn. And.... guys let's face it I don't have anythign LIKE a portfolio. I've got a few academic papers - maybe like 2 that I am actually proud of - and a half-assed go at a home-brew Mass Effect RPG based in D&D 5e, and three episodes of a podcast that Hannah and Hannah and I are making. I have basically NO practical skills at anything, and even less to show for it. :/ And I honestly don't know what to do about that. I don't know that I can work in gaming. And I'm not involved in the community enough to handle that side of it either. I don't want to be steeped in the drama and I kind of hate Reddit.
Right now I feel like the only things that sound at all appealing are working in the games industry or in eduaction, and I feel like I am nowhere near qualified nor have the skill to actually work in either.
As I've said before, for a while now I guess my kind of "dream job" would be to work for a team like Extra Credits (or Outside Xbox!) on YouTube. But all of those people already HAVE their teams, and they certainly don't need my help! The Extra Credits team uses lots of artists, sure, but I'm not an artist. I guess I could offer to help writing, but they already have James and Dan and Chris and... yeah. They've all got experience in the industry, and I just don't. I'm not creative. I don't have ideas for games. I just want to help make them better, and talk about what they can teach us. I don't think I have it in me to do a PhD. ... right now I just want to line up a job that can support me which I don't hate. But all of them seem to be locked off by either a PhD or by an industry with no use for me.
Sorry for ending this on a bit of a downer. I shouldn't talk about this stuff when I'm feeling sick. In other news, I've been playing Mass Effect Andromeda, and liking it more the more I play! It is, as I fist imagined, basically just Dragon Age Inquisition In Space, much closer to that than it is to Mass Effect 3 (which is probably the best videogame ever made). But hey - DAI is a good good game, and setting it in space is working!
Okay, I'm gonna go take a shower now. Just wanted to give an update, since it's been a while, and one heck of a break so far. Thanks for reading.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
R
P.S.
First let me say, technically this hasn't been just one long holiday. We're off-term and I REALLY need to be working on my thesis now - which I did get some work on yesterday - but I've had altogether about a week's worth of being out of town and it's been very good.
But I am also sick - again. Y'all. I. Keep. Getting. Sick. I don't know if it's the stress or what. I'm used to my body doing whatever this is - basically a cold, though I have been told before it's allergies? I don't know. It acts a lot like a cold, normally lasts ~5-6 days. Anyway I'm used to my body doing this 2-3 times a year, but I think this is the 3-4th time since January, and it's only just now April. And I am getting real sick of it. Mostly it is constituted by an extremely sore throat, a stopped nose, and by far the worst of these, really terrible pressure between my ears and on my sinuses. Like this time it's especially bad -even moving my eyes too quickly actually hurts/gives me a headache. I've been taking a great deal of medicine and that seems to be helping but uhg. Yuck. I am very tired, and wearing my glasses can be difficult. They make my eyes feel better but my nose and face feel worse.
Okay anyway enough about that. Holiday!
First, the real holiday, my terrific friend Lizzy invited me to go with her to north Devon, because I said that I hadn't ever really been to the sea, besides the gulf of mexico and the northern Irish coast. And so, we drove out to Woolacombe, to a flat of her grandparents', and spent four days my the sea. It was REALLY lovely. I could sit for hours just watching. We took a few walks along the rocky parts of the shoreline, and spent some time down on the sand too, and eventually donned wetsuits and took to surfing! That was amazing fun! I've never really understood the appeal of surfing before, but it was REALLY fun. Also utterly exhausting. (also: I don't mean like long-board-standing-up surfing. Shorter boards and laying down, but still REALLY fun.) We also played a LOT of board games, which I enjoyed - I've found that all of my Oxford friends love board games, where very few of my US friends do (with the exception of Settlers of Catan, for some). We even played through a game of monopoly in pretty good time - something which I don't think I've ever actually done. The only problem we ran into during this trip was that when we first got there, there was some electrical trouble, and the boiler stopped working. As such, we didn't have hot water on tap or the radiators working for heating. We mostly compensated via the use of blankets and tea and a hot water bottle. But all in all it was really great. Lizzy taught me to surf and at least tried to teach me how to throw a cricket ball, and a new board game (well, and old game which I hadn't played before) which was really fun called Millionaire. The sea and whole area there was simply gorgeous, and I had a wonderful time. Thank you, Lizzy!
After coming home very VERY exhausted, I had about a week to attempt work on my thesis before just last weekend heading out again, this time to London, where I met up with a friend, Nathan, to attend EGX Rezzed - a three day game dev conference. Now mind, this wasn't comic con - this wasn't the kind of place where big companies have big panels and lots of celebrities and actors are there. This was a place where a lot of indie game devs got together to show off their awesome and innovative games, and give talks on game development, journalism, etc. I had a really great time going around and playing new games, and attending some of the talks. So I'm going to try and split this up in a more rational order:
First, games! My favorite game at Rezzed, one of the few I bought while at the conference without even waiting to get home was Stories Untold. To describe Stories Untold all I need to do is ask: Have you seen Stranger Things? If you have, know that while Stories Untold is not based on Stranger Things, it fills the EXACT same aesthetic niche. It's spooky, and retro, and amazing. There are four chapters, like four short stories, and I've only played the first one, but it is SO good. And very innovative, very different from most games I've played. The first chapter, The House Abandon, is like game is like a game within a game, and is a text adventure like none I've played before. Really great. Even watching other people's reaction while playing it was great! And I got to talk to one of the lead devs who made it too - that's one of the funnest parts of Rezzed. Even if you don't normally play games, if you like Stranger Things, PLEASE go try Stories Untold. It's pretty cheap on Steam!
Another game which really interested me was called Herald. Herald is a point-and-click adventure, very narrative driven, with multiple ways the plot can go, which the dev team calls "An Interactive Period Drama" - like how could that be bad, right? But it's even better. It's set an an alternate version of the 19th century and stars one of the most diverse cast of characters I have seen in any video game - it's about dealing with inequality and dealing with other people and it's just REALLY REALLY PRETTY. The art style is a gorgeous mix of 3D and 2D art and animation and I am in love with it after just playing the demo! I bought the game at Rezzed and look forward to playing the rest. Once again, even if you're not normally into games, if you like stories with very diverse casts and you like period dramas, please go look up Herald.
Lets' see, what else? One game I really enjoyed but isn't available to buy (I talked to the dev and he called it a "proof of concept" and said that Rezzed was helping him find the bugs - was a tablet game called Uncanny Valerie. It is from what I can tell about a disgraced robot engineer who has made a robot using personality aspects based on her ex-girlfriend. It was a really clever form of narrative delivery, and though it had some mechanical bugs, I really enjoyed it.
The team that made Sir, You are Being Hunted was also there with a new game called The Signal from Tรถlva, that was pretty fun. You explore a world dominated by three factions of robots by hacking into robots of your own. There was a beautiful little game called Lost Words told through a girl's journal and about her imagination. There were several cool VR games, including one which I didn't get the name of about a blind woman who suffers from paranoia, and a cool turn-based cyber-punk game called Augmented Empire. I got to play a few indie games on the new Nintendo Switch (the controllers are smaller than I imagined), and loads of other very creative titles, I wish I could remember them all, but they do blur together a bit. Had a great time. Went to one of the partied afterwords where they had retro games too, won my first ever try at Street Fighter, and found out that I am very very good at the old game Duck Hunter.
I also got to meet most of the team from one of my favorite YouTube shows, Outside Xbox (and Outside Extra, their second channel). They were amazing, and REALLY nice. They had an official meet and greet which I was unfortunately a bit late for - the queue was so long they ran out of time! - but fortunately when Nathan and I stopped for lunch, I ran into 4/5 of them in the hallway and got to say hi, and thank you, and get a picture. Like I said they are all super nice. As I told them, watching them do what they do was one of the things that inspired me to try out podcasting! They are also the reason I came to EGX Rezzed - not just to meet them of course, but I hadn't heard about the conference at all until they mentioned it on their show. I'm sure none of them are reading this now, but thank you, Jane, Andy, Ellen, Luke, Mike, and the rest of the Oxbox/Oxtra team!
As for the more serious side of this conference - not that games aren't serious, but I mean personal to me. There was also a side of this conference aimed at people who want to get involved in the games industry. Which hey, that includes me. When I decided to go to Rezzed I was really excited about this - I thought that maybe I could finally find someone and ask them "so what can a philosopher do in videogames, and how do I start that?". I thought it would bring some confirmation that this IS a thing I can do! But... I don't know that it did. In fact, maybe the opposite. I talked to a few people. There were several Universities there, but all of them mostly run Bachelors courses in game design, programming, and art. And... I really don't want to dive back into a Bachelor's degree. I talked to some devs, but all of them to be honest kind of looked at me funny when I said I was neither programmer nor artist, but doing a masters in the humanities. Most of them tried to encourage me saying that well a degree in gaming isn't needed if you just have a good portfolio and can show that you're passionate and willing to learn. And.... guys let's face it I don't have anythign LIKE a portfolio. I've got a few academic papers - maybe like 2 that I am actually proud of - and a half-assed go at a home-brew Mass Effect RPG based in D&D 5e, and three episodes of a podcast that Hannah and Hannah and I are making. I have basically NO practical skills at anything, and even less to show for it. :/ And I honestly don't know what to do about that. I don't know that I can work in gaming. And I'm not involved in the community enough to handle that side of it either. I don't want to be steeped in the drama and I kind of hate Reddit.
Right now I feel like the only things that sound at all appealing are working in the games industry or in eduaction, and I feel like I am nowhere near qualified nor have the skill to actually work in either.
As I've said before, for a while now I guess my kind of "dream job" would be to work for a team like Extra Credits (or Outside Xbox!) on YouTube. But all of those people already HAVE their teams, and they certainly don't need my help! The Extra Credits team uses lots of artists, sure, but I'm not an artist. I guess I could offer to help writing, but they already have James and Dan and Chris and... yeah. They've all got experience in the industry, and I just don't. I'm not creative. I don't have ideas for games. I just want to help make them better, and talk about what they can teach us. I don't think I have it in me to do a PhD. ... right now I just want to line up a job that can support me which I don't hate. But all of them seem to be locked off by either a PhD or by an industry with no use for me.
Sorry for ending this on a bit of a downer. I shouldn't talk about this stuff when I'm feeling sick. In other news, I've been playing Mass Effect Andromeda, and liking it more the more I play! It is, as I fist imagined, basically just Dragon Age Inquisition In Space, much closer to that than it is to Mass Effect 3 (which is probably the best videogame ever made). But hey - DAI is a good good game, and setting it in space is working!
Okay, I'm gonna go take a shower now. Just wanted to give an update, since it's been a while, and one heck of a break so far. Thanks for reading.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
R
P.S.
Monday, March 6, 2017
Saint Joan
It's been two and a half weeks since I first started talking about this again, and no, I haven't stopped.
Hey y'all. How's it been? I know it's been a while since I posted on here. I guess I feel like I don't have a ton to say, but I do, I'm just really lazy. Let's see if I can't do something about that.
I have a lot of thoughts to share. I'll try to order them at least a little bit. We'll start with life stuff.
Good news, all six of my short essays have now officially passed on low but passing marks. So it's just my dissertation now. Which is... very very slow work. But I've got something. It's not a dissertation yet but it's something. I've been having a lot of trouble forcing myself to work on it tho. More on that later I guess.
Second, Lent. I've kind of done Lent before once but... I didn't really "do" lent I guess if you know what I mean? Like I nominally gave up something but it wasn't like a prayerful thing. This year is the first time I really want to try this as a spiritual practice. I've chosen to not do anything food related but instead re-structure my mornings, by basically giving up sleeping in. Those of you who've known me for a while will be shocked to hear that this is even an issue for me, as I used to be up at 6:30-7:30 every morning without any problem. But recently I've been allowing myself to just lay in bed for hours after I wake up, and so for Lent I am putting a stop to that, and trying to wake up and get out of bed early. I think it's been good for me so far.
Winter is ending, which is very nice, but it's still not warm enough to really just sit outside for the most part. Still I'm glad to see much more sun. I need to get outside more.
Okay time to stop delaying and talk about the thing that's been holding my mind hostage of late. You may or may not have known that in the last year of my undergrad, I did a church history course that was supposed to cover stuff after the protestant reformation. I somehow convinced my professor that, despite the fact that I was assigned to write on something to do with this reformation, which started in the early 1500s, I could TOTALLY write an essay on the death of a Roman Catholic Saint in 1431, and it would definitely count. And so, I wrote a short research paper on the trial and death of Joan of Arc. If I remember correctly, I wrote the whole thing from scratch in a matter of about 7-10 hours, sitting on my friend Rachel's bed. It wasn't by any means a good essay. I shudder to think what any of the history professors would think of it. But I seem to have made a pattern of these papers - I've written one on the death and trial of Socrates as well. In any case, it first got me interested in Joan and her story. I think I may actually have cried while reading for this essay.
Fast forward a few years. I've moved across an ocean. Last summer I got the chance to visit Paris. By far my favorite part of that three day visit was Notre Dame. I remember seeing the statue there of Joan. I don't think she ever actually set foot in that cathedral, but still. I cried. Not just at the statue of course, at the whole cathedral. On my last day in Paris I also went slightly out of my way on the metro just to see an equestrian statue of Joan I happened to have found on my map of the city. Travelling alone is great because you can do stuff like that.
And fast forward a few months again. About two and a half weeks ago, I got to see the NTLive screening of Saint Joan, a play by George Bernard Shaw. And I just.... fell in love with it. In fact that night I went home and just in case but expecting nothing, checked to see if they were still performing live and if there were any tickets. The Donmar Warehouse is a very small, intimate theatre, so I didn't expect much. They were performing for two more days, giving them three more shows. There was exactly one seat left available. I bought it immediately, and so, two days after I had seen it on the screen, I found myself on the train to London to watch Saint Joan again in person. I even got to shake hands with the actress and one of the actors afterwards. That was just over two weeks ago. Tomorrow there is a theater here in town doing an encore screening, and I am going to go see this play again. A few people have asked me why, so I wanted to write a post giving a few of my thoughts.
This won't be a full account because - oh! How did I fail to mention this in the section on my life? Me and two of my friends, Hannah and Hannah, have started making a podcast together! I've become very interested in and into podcasts recently, and we thought why not? We are interesting funny people who like chatting about interesting and funny things, why not make this a group project? It's been difficult, with us living in three time zones on two continents and having very different work/life schedules. But anyway, I will be giving a much fuller account of my thoughts on Joan via that podcast, eventually. It will take a while. I have a lot of thoughts. But this blog post will be the more personal side.
Joan of Arc has become more than an academic interest to me. My interest in her has been in a way academic - I have four books on Joan checked out from the history faculty library at the moment, have read a full book length biography online, and most of the original records of her trial (translated to English of course). I have put together a ~5000 word biography/timeline/story myself, for the podcast, and it's only going to get longer. Studying Joan's story has started to take over from my real work, which should be to study video games. BUT the reason for this is that Joan is of much more than academic interest to me.
I don' know how to say this in a way which people won't think is weird or perhaps even bad or dangerous. But encountering Joan's story, and doing so at the point at my life that I am at, has had a really significant impact on my spiritual life. It's made me rethink a lot of stuff, including my relationship to the Church, and to God.
First I have to make plain: I don't know how much you know about Joan or her story or what you think she was up to, but I do, unlike most historians, actually believe Joan, that she was a prophet and heard from God. I don't know all the details but I am much readier to trust Joan's word on this than I am to make up excuses for her.
Now let me be clear, I am not a Roman Catholic, nor am I becoming one. I do not mean to revere the Saint in the sense that a Catholic might. But Joan has got me thinking a lot more about the importance of the history of the church - making me want to connect with church tradition, making me think more seriously about "high" church tradition and about the importance of the sacraments. Growing up in the Baptist church, I feel there is a lot of liturgy and stuff I was never taught the meaning of. There is so little history there, and there is such a very rich history of the church to connect to. I'm starting to realize that that is important to me.
Joan has also really changed the way I think about prayer and talking to God. One of the reasons Joan attracts me so much is her pure conviction that God had spoken to her, and instructed her, and made her a promise. And as such, that was that, this isn't a question, it WILL happen. I don't think I had ever before, until very recently, ever prayed with the mindset that I might actually hear back from God. I pray God teach me his promises, and give me a mission, and make it that plain to me. I want that conviction and direction. I pray God commission my life - and actually tell me and promise me what I am to do. Because his instructions seem far far too vague most of the time. This desire has got me reading his word more, as I think the only thing I have heard from him myself so far is that he HAS spoken and given promises, and I need to read them first. So I am doing that, slowly.
I really don't know what it is about Joan that has me so captivated. She is the foundation of the archetype of most of my favorite characters in fiction, I think. And I have fallen in love with fictional characters before, but never with a real person who really lived, whom I will meet in heaven or the new earth.
I am also very interested in how Joan has been portrayed in art - Shaw's play not least of all. It is a very very good play but I do of course have critiques. Any play about such a Christ-centered person written by a non-christian is going to have some shortcomings, and I think mainly one which effects all stories of that description, that that is that while the author is clearly astounded by the character's faith, they place little importance on what that faith is IN, which is, in reality, key. Joan was not made great through her faith in faith, but through her faith in God, a God who spoke to her, and it really does matter who this God is. Another work that I love which Joan heavily influenced falls into the exact same trap. The Dragon Age game series features a fictional religion clearly based on Christianity, but made deistic, so that it is the faith that matters, while the being whom this faith is in is nondescript, faceless, impersonal, as if it doesn't matter WHO God is. But it does. It matters a lot.
I am sure that I have more to say, but I need to get started on my day. I just wanted to share some of these thoughts, to get them out there and out of my head, and maybe to give a little explanation for those wondering at my new obsession. I am drawn to the story of Jehanne d'Arc by something very very deep within me, and I cannot quite explain why or how.
Thanks for reading
Rissa
P.S. Please do look up our podcast! It is entitled The Liberal Aren'ts, and you can find it on iTunes or at theliberalarents.com Thanks!
Hey y'all. How's it been? I know it's been a while since I posted on here. I guess I feel like I don't have a ton to say, but I do, I'm just really lazy. Let's see if I can't do something about that.
I have a lot of thoughts to share. I'll try to order them at least a little bit. We'll start with life stuff.
Good news, all six of my short essays have now officially passed on low but passing marks. So it's just my dissertation now. Which is... very very slow work. But I've got something. It's not a dissertation yet but it's something. I've been having a lot of trouble forcing myself to work on it tho. More on that later I guess.
Second, Lent. I've kind of done Lent before once but... I didn't really "do" lent I guess if you know what I mean? Like I nominally gave up something but it wasn't like a prayerful thing. This year is the first time I really want to try this as a spiritual practice. I've chosen to not do anything food related but instead re-structure my mornings, by basically giving up sleeping in. Those of you who've known me for a while will be shocked to hear that this is even an issue for me, as I used to be up at 6:30-7:30 every morning without any problem. But recently I've been allowing myself to just lay in bed for hours after I wake up, and so for Lent I am putting a stop to that, and trying to wake up and get out of bed early. I think it's been good for me so far.
Winter is ending, which is very nice, but it's still not warm enough to really just sit outside for the most part. Still I'm glad to see much more sun. I need to get outside more.
Okay time to stop delaying and talk about the thing that's been holding my mind hostage of late. You may or may not have known that in the last year of my undergrad, I did a church history course that was supposed to cover stuff after the protestant reformation. I somehow convinced my professor that, despite the fact that I was assigned to write on something to do with this reformation, which started in the early 1500s, I could TOTALLY write an essay on the death of a Roman Catholic Saint in 1431, and it would definitely count. And so, I wrote a short research paper on the trial and death of Joan of Arc. If I remember correctly, I wrote the whole thing from scratch in a matter of about 7-10 hours, sitting on my friend Rachel's bed. It wasn't by any means a good essay. I shudder to think what any of the history professors would think of it. But I seem to have made a pattern of these papers - I've written one on the death and trial of Socrates as well. In any case, it first got me interested in Joan and her story. I think I may actually have cried while reading for this essay.
Fast forward a few years. I've moved across an ocean. Last summer I got the chance to visit Paris. By far my favorite part of that three day visit was Notre Dame. I remember seeing the statue there of Joan. I don't think she ever actually set foot in that cathedral, but still. I cried. Not just at the statue of course, at the whole cathedral. On my last day in Paris I also went slightly out of my way on the metro just to see an equestrian statue of Joan I happened to have found on my map of the city. Travelling alone is great because you can do stuff like that.
And fast forward a few months again. About two and a half weeks ago, I got to see the NTLive screening of Saint Joan, a play by George Bernard Shaw. And I just.... fell in love with it. In fact that night I went home and just in case but expecting nothing, checked to see if they were still performing live and if there were any tickets. The Donmar Warehouse is a very small, intimate theatre, so I didn't expect much. They were performing for two more days, giving them three more shows. There was exactly one seat left available. I bought it immediately, and so, two days after I had seen it on the screen, I found myself on the train to London to watch Saint Joan again in person. I even got to shake hands with the actress and one of the actors afterwards. That was just over two weeks ago. Tomorrow there is a theater here in town doing an encore screening, and I am going to go see this play again. A few people have asked me why, so I wanted to write a post giving a few of my thoughts.
This won't be a full account because - oh! How did I fail to mention this in the section on my life? Me and two of my friends, Hannah and Hannah, have started making a podcast together! I've become very interested in and into podcasts recently, and we thought why not? We are interesting funny people who like chatting about interesting and funny things, why not make this a group project? It's been difficult, with us living in three time zones on two continents and having very different work/life schedules. But anyway, I will be giving a much fuller account of my thoughts on Joan via that podcast, eventually. It will take a while. I have a lot of thoughts. But this blog post will be the more personal side.
Joan of Arc has become more than an academic interest to me. My interest in her has been in a way academic - I have four books on Joan checked out from the history faculty library at the moment, have read a full book length biography online, and most of the original records of her trial (translated to English of course). I have put together a ~5000 word biography/timeline/story myself, for the podcast, and it's only going to get longer. Studying Joan's story has started to take over from my real work, which should be to study video games. BUT the reason for this is that Joan is of much more than academic interest to me.
I don' know how to say this in a way which people won't think is weird or perhaps even bad or dangerous. But encountering Joan's story, and doing so at the point at my life that I am at, has had a really significant impact on my spiritual life. It's made me rethink a lot of stuff, including my relationship to the Church, and to God.
First I have to make plain: I don't know how much you know about Joan or her story or what you think she was up to, but I do, unlike most historians, actually believe Joan, that she was a prophet and heard from God. I don't know all the details but I am much readier to trust Joan's word on this than I am to make up excuses for her.
Now let me be clear, I am not a Roman Catholic, nor am I becoming one. I do not mean to revere the Saint in the sense that a Catholic might. But Joan has got me thinking a lot more about the importance of the history of the church - making me want to connect with church tradition, making me think more seriously about "high" church tradition and about the importance of the sacraments. Growing up in the Baptist church, I feel there is a lot of liturgy and stuff I was never taught the meaning of. There is so little history there, and there is such a very rich history of the church to connect to. I'm starting to realize that that is important to me.
Joan has also really changed the way I think about prayer and talking to God. One of the reasons Joan attracts me so much is her pure conviction that God had spoken to her, and instructed her, and made her a promise. And as such, that was that, this isn't a question, it WILL happen. I don't think I had ever before, until very recently, ever prayed with the mindset that I might actually hear back from God. I pray God teach me his promises, and give me a mission, and make it that plain to me. I want that conviction and direction. I pray God commission my life - and actually tell me and promise me what I am to do. Because his instructions seem far far too vague most of the time. This desire has got me reading his word more, as I think the only thing I have heard from him myself so far is that he HAS spoken and given promises, and I need to read them first. So I am doing that, slowly.
I really don't know what it is about Joan that has me so captivated. She is the foundation of the archetype of most of my favorite characters in fiction, I think. And I have fallen in love with fictional characters before, but never with a real person who really lived, whom I will meet in heaven or the new earth.
I am also very interested in how Joan has been portrayed in art - Shaw's play not least of all. It is a very very good play but I do of course have critiques. Any play about such a Christ-centered person written by a non-christian is going to have some shortcomings, and I think mainly one which effects all stories of that description, that that is that while the author is clearly astounded by the character's faith, they place little importance on what that faith is IN, which is, in reality, key. Joan was not made great through her faith in faith, but through her faith in God, a God who spoke to her, and it really does matter who this God is. Another work that I love which Joan heavily influenced falls into the exact same trap. The Dragon Age game series features a fictional religion clearly based on Christianity, but made deistic, so that it is the faith that matters, while the being whom this faith is in is nondescript, faceless, impersonal, as if it doesn't matter WHO God is. But it does. It matters a lot.
I am sure that I have more to say, but I need to get started on my day. I just wanted to share some of these thoughts, to get them out there and out of my head, and maybe to give a little explanation for those wondering at my new obsession. I am drawn to the story of Jehanne d'Arc by something very very deep within me, and I cannot quite explain why or how.
Thanks for reading
Rissa
P.S. Please do look up our podcast! It is entitled The Liberal Aren'ts, and you can find it on iTunes or at theliberalarents.com Thanks!
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Twenty Serpentine
'Sup, y'all?
It's been a while. Since Thanksgiving actually. And HOW THE FRICK IS IT FEBRUARY???
Like seriously, what?
Ok. Anyway.
Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy Chinese New Year. (Happy Candlenights and welcome to Twenty Serpentine. If you do not understand either of these please go to McElroyShows.com right now. You will thank me later. You are welcome.)
I suppose I should catch you up on my life. I've been meaning to post for some time - mostly because I just feel bad for losing contact with SO many people and contacting those I love so little. Sorry mom. Sorry JBU. Love y'all!
Let's see, what have I been up to? Not work, that's for sure. My depression has been really off and on this past month. Some days are fine, and good, others are... the opposite of that. But BOTH good and bad have coincided with me getting basically NO WORK done. Which is... not at all good. Basically, when I'm in a depressive slump, I lose all power to focus. I can sit down to work and then 3 hours later have... nothing. I don't even know HOW. And then on good days? Those are normally days where I get something other than work done, or when I skip work to be outside because the sun is out for once.
In any case, it's Thesis time now and that's pretty scary. I've got a deadline for a draft of an outline on Feb 14th. tomorrow is Feb 1st, and I have... 3 pages of notes. So yeah. I've got my work cut out. Or... not cut out. uhg I don't want to think about it anymore. Pray for me. Please.
Let's change the subject. What else has been happening? It's been since Thanksgiving so a lot actually. Let's see...
I got sick, and then Shannon and Danica came up to visit London. That was very fun. I love you guys! I had a good time, despite being a bit sick. Got to go on the London Eye, I hadn't ever done that before. Then I went home - besides the fact that I woke up so early that I got to the airport before I was even allowed to check in my bags, that was a smooth trip. Then I was home! It was good.
Being home was kind of odd for a few reasons. Mostly, because I feel like 99.9% of it was so focused on "well, when you come back...". Like just constant comments and plans and stuff for my coming back. It really made me forget that I had two more terms and a thesis inbetween then and when I move home. It made me kind of uncomfortable, I won't lie. In the end it seemed to get better - I got a bit more confident that moving home wouldn't be awful, feeling like I could really fit if I got a decent job this time... Since then, I don't know.
One part of me is ready to move home. To be done with this degree. SO much of my life seems to be just waiting around for when the "rest" of my life can start - when I move home. But at the same time I'm dreading going home. I'm not above admiting that part of this is bceause I will have to search for and then actually perform a JOB. But also? I feel like I am just now finally really settling in here in the UK. I realised a few days back that 1.) There are no pubs in Texas 2.) I have nearly no friends in Texas (blood relations and former roommated on the other side of town aside), and 3.) I will be moving back in the HEIGHT of Texas summer. All of these sound terrible. On top of this, 4.) I won't be anywhere near Uni parks or Port Meadow. Man I'm getting sad just thinking about it. Let's stop.
Other things... I've kind of started recording a podcast with some friends. I'll post about that when there is more to post. Hopefully that will be fun. OH! My big project over break: I have been creating a game! It's not a video game, it's actually an altered version of D&D 5e, modified to function within the world of the Mass Effect games. I created everything for it: Classes, Races, Equipment, two separate spell books, a new system for gun combat and high tech armor, a new system of elemental effects, a story to follow, a map for the first "dungeon", a few NPCs, the works. All designed so that someone familiar with the Mass Effect games will know what they have their hands on, designed to feel and sound right to the player, so they know what to expect. I spent basically ALL of my freetime over the Christmas break working on creating this, learning D&D 5e, and doing research in the ME world. Last week I finally got my first three ginuea pig players to start the campaign! (Which was originally called "The Shrike Abyssal", but has been rechristened by my players "Omega Nine-Nine".) So that's fun. I've never DMed before and honestly never played D&D5e! But hey, I've listened to The Adventure Zone! So I figure I'd just do everything Griffin does. What could go wrong? :P
What eeelllssseee? I'm still going through some audiobooks - listening to Neil Gaiman's American Gods right now. And loads of podcasts - not only The Adventure Zone, but My Brother, My Brother, and Me, and also Shmanners. For more of those good, good McElBoys.
I have to have been doing other things, right? How do I seem so busy with so little, and still get ZERO work done??? I guess I've played a few new games but I seriously have been cutting back on them. I've played SUPERHOT, and Dishonored 2. Both are very good.
I've been semi-attempting to ignore politics. I know it's not good to ignore stuff like that but I just mentally can't take a lot of it right now. I am happy that I'm not in the US for the moment, let me just say that. Moving back will be a real adjustment. My views, upon review, have changed a good deal since leaving home. But let's not get into that right now.
At the moment, I am getting sick. My body always warns me the day before I have a cold/terrible 5 day long allergy attack. And it often happens right after my period - which is, yes, now. So that's no fun and also kind of scary because if I haven't said it I NEED TO GET SOME WORK DONE.
I've been trying to use the lamp I bought - one of those super powered sunlight lamps designed to help S.A.D. I don't know if it's been helping or not. Oh also I've been seeing a chiropractor, for something I did to my back, I think in the summer with my backpack, and then re-hurt over the holidays (probably the same backpack). He's been SUPER DUPER helpful. Finally, I've gotten to know a few of the Chaplains in town, which is very nice. It's great to live in a place with so many chapels and stuff.
I said finally, was there anything else? The DCM conference was last weekend, that was really good. I won't lie I was expecting it to be a little more surface-deep and "I've heard this before" but it was actually really good. Talked a lot about I guess what I would call the ethics of academia and about the big picture of faith and how it interplays with different areas of study. It was good. I've made taquitos twice. They are very good. I made soup once, but then it went bad and I ate it and I was sick. That was a very not fun night. Ummmmm.... I guess that's it. Took me a while.
I'm sorry to everyone to whom I have promised letters. I still haven't written them. It has been several months. It's very hard to find motivation. It's not you, I promise. It's all me.
I guess just.. pray for me. And thank you for your prayers. I'm going to need them.
Thanks for reading
Rissa
Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
It's been a while. Since Thanksgiving actually. And HOW THE FRICK IS IT FEBRUARY???
Like seriously, what?
Ok. Anyway.
Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy Chinese New Year. (Happy Candlenights and welcome to Twenty Serpentine. If you do not understand either of these please go to McElroyShows.com right now. You will thank me later. You are welcome.)
I suppose I should catch you up on my life. I've been meaning to post for some time - mostly because I just feel bad for losing contact with SO many people and contacting those I love so little. Sorry mom. Sorry JBU. Love y'all!
Let's see, what have I been up to? Not work, that's for sure. My depression has been really off and on this past month. Some days are fine, and good, others are... the opposite of that. But BOTH good and bad have coincided with me getting basically NO WORK done. Which is... not at all good. Basically, when I'm in a depressive slump, I lose all power to focus. I can sit down to work and then 3 hours later have... nothing. I don't even know HOW. And then on good days? Those are normally days where I get something other than work done, or when I skip work to be outside because the sun is out for once.
In any case, it's Thesis time now and that's pretty scary. I've got a deadline for a draft of an outline on Feb 14th. tomorrow is Feb 1st, and I have... 3 pages of notes. So yeah. I've got my work cut out. Or... not cut out. uhg I don't want to think about it anymore. Pray for me. Please.
Let's change the subject. What else has been happening? It's been since Thanksgiving so a lot actually. Let's see...
I got sick, and then Shannon and Danica came up to visit London. That was very fun. I love you guys! I had a good time, despite being a bit sick. Got to go on the London Eye, I hadn't ever done that before. Then I went home - besides the fact that I woke up so early that I got to the airport before I was even allowed to check in my bags, that was a smooth trip. Then I was home! It was good.
Being home was kind of odd for a few reasons. Mostly, because I feel like 99.9% of it was so focused on "well, when you come back...". Like just constant comments and plans and stuff for my coming back. It really made me forget that I had two more terms and a thesis inbetween then and when I move home. It made me kind of uncomfortable, I won't lie. In the end it seemed to get better - I got a bit more confident that moving home wouldn't be awful, feeling like I could really fit if I got a decent job this time... Since then, I don't know.
One part of me is ready to move home. To be done with this degree. SO much of my life seems to be just waiting around for when the "rest" of my life can start - when I move home. But at the same time I'm dreading going home. I'm not above admiting that part of this is bceause I will have to search for and then actually perform a JOB. But also? I feel like I am just now finally really settling in here in the UK. I realised a few days back that 1.) There are no pubs in Texas 2.) I have nearly no friends in Texas (blood relations and former roommated on the other side of town aside), and 3.) I will be moving back in the HEIGHT of Texas summer. All of these sound terrible. On top of this, 4.) I won't be anywhere near Uni parks or Port Meadow. Man I'm getting sad just thinking about it. Let's stop.
Other things... I've kind of started recording a podcast with some friends. I'll post about that when there is more to post. Hopefully that will be fun. OH! My big project over break: I have been creating a game! It's not a video game, it's actually an altered version of D&D 5e, modified to function within the world of the Mass Effect games. I created everything for it: Classes, Races, Equipment, two separate spell books, a new system for gun combat and high tech armor, a new system of elemental effects, a story to follow, a map for the first "dungeon", a few NPCs, the works. All designed so that someone familiar with the Mass Effect games will know what they have their hands on, designed to feel and sound right to the player, so they know what to expect. I spent basically ALL of my freetime over the Christmas break working on creating this, learning D&D 5e, and doing research in the ME world. Last week I finally got my first three ginuea pig players to start the campaign! (Which was originally called "The Shrike Abyssal", but has been rechristened by my players "Omega Nine-Nine".) So that's fun. I've never DMed before and honestly never played D&D5e! But hey, I've listened to The Adventure Zone! So I figure I'd just do everything Griffin does. What could go wrong? :P
What eeelllssseee? I'm still going through some audiobooks - listening to Neil Gaiman's American Gods right now. And loads of podcasts - not only The Adventure Zone, but My Brother, My Brother, and Me, and also Shmanners. For more of those good, good McElBoys.
I have to have been doing other things, right? How do I seem so busy with so little, and still get ZERO work done??? I guess I've played a few new games but I seriously have been cutting back on them. I've played SUPERHOT, and Dishonored 2. Both are very good.
I've been semi-attempting to ignore politics. I know it's not good to ignore stuff like that but I just mentally can't take a lot of it right now. I am happy that I'm not in the US for the moment, let me just say that. Moving back will be a real adjustment. My views, upon review, have changed a good deal since leaving home. But let's not get into that right now.
At the moment, I am getting sick. My body always warns me the day before I have a cold/terrible 5 day long allergy attack. And it often happens right after my period - which is, yes, now. So that's no fun and also kind of scary because if I haven't said it I NEED TO GET SOME WORK DONE.
I've been trying to use the lamp I bought - one of those super powered sunlight lamps designed to help S.A.D. I don't know if it's been helping or not. Oh also I've been seeing a chiropractor, for something I did to my back, I think in the summer with my backpack, and then re-hurt over the holidays (probably the same backpack). He's been SUPER DUPER helpful. Finally, I've gotten to know a few of the Chaplains in town, which is very nice. It's great to live in a place with so many chapels and stuff.
I said finally, was there anything else? The DCM conference was last weekend, that was really good. I won't lie I was expecting it to be a little more surface-deep and "I've heard this before" but it was actually really good. Talked a lot about I guess what I would call the ethics of academia and about the big picture of faith and how it interplays with different areas of study. It was good. I've made taquitos twice. They are very good. I made soup once, but then it went bad and I ate it and I was sick. That was a very not fun night. Ummmmm.... I guess that's it. Took me a while.
I'm sorry to everyone to whom I have promised letters. I still haven't written them. It has been several months. It's very hard to find motivation. It's not you, I promise. It's all me.
I guess just.. pray for me. And thank you for your prayers. I'm going to need them.
Thanks for reading
Rissa
Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
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