Archive for the ‘Current’ Category

« Older Entries

Too much TV »

Here’s what I think my problem is:

One of the keys to writing is translating the mental image into words. We imagine scenes, voices, characterizations, and we take all of it and put it into words that are evocative and, hopefully, describe everything in a way that measures up against actually seeing it with one’s eyes. The ideal is that we describe it better than one would see it, because we can give more insight into a character than you can get into the guy walking down the street. For a moment, we can make the reader a god.

But I haven’t been living in a world of words for some time.

Posted in
Current
By
Matthew – Mar. 3rd, 2010

Accepting the reality of our situation »

When April and I were shopping for a house, we knew we needed something in good shape. We couldn’t buy a fixer up because 1) we didn’t know how to fix things and 2) we wouldn’t have the time to fix something even if we knew how. Subsequently, we paid more for a house than we otherwise might have, and when we found the one we wanted, we paid full price to make sure we got it. I didn’t feel we had time to fool around with alternatives.

Posted in
Current
Tagged with
accountant, cpa, dishwasher, middle class, money
By
Matthew – Feb. 8th, 2010

Thinking about thinking about doing something »

I wouldn’t call what I’ve been in a “slump.” I’ve had ideas, and they’d be good things to write down; old projects have new life and new projects come to mind on a regular basis. What I don’t have is time, or energy, or desire. I’m busy a lot of the time, and when I’m not busy I’m tired. Even when I could potentially work after resting, I just don’t feel like pushing myself so hard that I burn out.

This is why I wanted to drop out. I just don’t have the energy to do stuff during the semester. I don’t understand why those two nights of classes wipe me out like they do, but between my job (which requires a great deal of extroversion when I’m an introvert, and subsequently drains me emotionally and mentally) and three 12-15 hour days in each five day work week (two of class, one of D&D which, being social activity, still requires extroversion as well as mental work since I run the game), I’m just gone by the weekend. So I don’t write, and I don’t bother to record videos, and I haven’t done a podcast in I-don’t-know-how-long.

Posted in
Current
Tagged with
busy, tired, Work, writing
By
Matthew – Feb. 2nd, 2010

Jiving with the book Ecclesiastes »

Most of what we do in this life isn’t all that important. In the thousands of years of human existence, and the hopefully thousands more to come, our actions are lost in a sea of the mundane. In the millions of years our earth has existed and the hopefully tens of millions more, what I do today has little significance.

I don’t find this thought depressing or discouraging. Instead, it helps me prioritize things differently. The way I see it, there are three types of people in this world in regards to having life goals: those who give themselves a mission, those whose actions just happen to serve a mission, and those who have no mission . . .

Posted in
Current
Tagged with
dragon age, Ecclesiastes, life, meaningless
By
Matthew – Jan. 18th, 2010

Breaking Radio Silence »

Oh, hello there.

Brief recap inside of what did and did not happen this wonderful, phenomenal Winter Break.

I don’t even feel [too] bad about not writing. April made the excellent observation that I really oughtn’t put a ton of pressure on myself to get everything done and caught up in the one week I have off a year. I should enjoy the time instead, and work harder to build writing time into my daily schedule instead of forcing a lot of it into this week. I was gratified by this and went right on playing Dragon Age.

Posted in
Current
Tagged with
april, d&d, dragon age, Family, Games, Holidays, snow, vacation, winter break
By
Matthew – Jan. 3rd, 2010

A Christmas Mystery »

I totally took the weekend off and did nothing but read books I like, accomplishing little of value to the wider world. I hope my promises of productivity will keep you satisfied, dear Internet, because that’s all you have forthcoming for the next week. It’s the holiday season, which means family and more family and, subsequently, no time for locking myself away in the office and writing.

On the plus side, I did get a winter newsletter done on Sunday, though it took much longer than I had anticipated. This will go up either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I’ll decide after I schedule this post.

I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed holiday. Merry Christmas everyone!

Posted in
Current
Tagged with
busy, plans, reading
By
Matthew – Dec. 21st, 2009

Researching the Medieval Inquisition »

I’m not exactly maintaining radio silence this week, and I’ll probably be on Twitter very regularly for the next several days when I am in Blackboard 9.0 training (three days of in-depth training in preparation for our upgrade and migration), but I haven’t gotten any writing done. When I was working over the weekend, I was researching the Cathar heresy and the Medieval Inquisition. I have a paper due on this topic this coming Saturday and lots of research yet to complete.

So I’m going through a stack of books, making copious notes in Scrivener and compiling all of my materials before I actually begin writing. Despite the fact that this paper is worth relatively little of my grade and I’m not generally a very diligent student, I’m actually giving this one some effort. It will probably be the last research paper of my college career, so that’s worth something I guess.

Posted in
Current
Tagged with
class, inquisition, religious studies, research, School, writing
By
Matthew – Dec. 7th, 2009

Discovering my own fear of hugging »

As I wrote this week’s series of posts about hugging, I realized that I have fallen back into that trap of fear and let it keep me from reaching out to others. I have withdrawn physically, afraid to bless others and afraid to let them reach out to me. This is most evident at our church, where I have yet to have any sort of physical contact with most anyone.

We’re still kind of new to the church (though now that I think about it, we’ve been there at least six months), but I feel like we have quickly been drawn into the core of the community, and for this I am truly grateful. We are regularly invited to social events, people greet us on Sunday morning, and we have hosted a number of different dinners and other gatherings at our home. We like the people and they seem to like us. Despite that, I have remained reserved.

Posted in
Current
Tagged with
church, community, fear, Hugging, vineyard
By
Matthew – Dec. 4th, 2009

What I’m working on »

Sometimes it helps me to list out what I’m working on, not just to let people know but to give myself some direction and motivation. It all seems a little more real when I put these goals down in type.

These are the things I’m actually working on, not just the things I want to work on. I’ve also got a few other ideas and projects percolating, but those are less concrete and not being actively written/developed.

Posted in
Current
Tagged with
development, timeline, update
By
Matthew – Nov. 27th, 2009

Impromptu D&D Creation »

I’ve had too much coffee tonight as a means of fueling my Dungeon Mastering, so I thought I’d write a bit before going to bed.

I enjoy playing D&D. I don’t know that I particularly enjoy running the game, and I certainly don’t prepare much when I must run it, but if the options are “run the game” vs “no D&D,” then I choose the former.

For me, the whole point of the endeavor is to build a story together, to laugh and share good times, and to find out what happens next. I come to each session with a rough framework and an idea of what will happen now and what will happen next, but I don’t prepare overly much. Part of that is because I’m afraid I’ll railroad my players if I do over-prepare, and part of it is certainly that I’m busy and don’t want to take the time to work on D&D a whole lot, but there’s something to be said for how fun impromptu creation is.

Posted in
Current
Tagged with
d&d, writing
By
Matthew – Nov. 14th, 2009
« Older Entries