"We spent the whole day shopping, but all she got was a picture."
Connection
Show me the peach sunshine rays at sunrise and the marmalade sunset skies.
Show me the velvet flower petals dressed in dew beside fern and moss.
Show me the trees clawing their way toward radiance and their multicolored leaves blanketing the earth.
Show me the whiskers and wet snout of the animal companion on your daily walks.
Show me the endless streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans you visit to escape the summer's sweltering heat.
Show me the double rainbow you found after a torrential spring shower and the crystalline snowflakes caught on your cotton scarf.
Show me the landmarks I've never seen and the history I've never read when you go adventuring. Teach me the little known facts. Expand my vocabulary of concepts.
Show me the cover of the book you last shed tears over. Show me so I can learn the lessons you did within its pages.
Show me the playlist you pull up in the car and the station you turn to when you can no longer abide the ear-splitting silence. Let me hear the notes of the melody attached to your most precious memory.
Show me the yellowed recipe card handwritten by your great-grandmother so I too can prepare your favorite meal. Teach me the house rules of the games you grew up playing.
Show me the collection of teacups and seashells and pins and coins from foreign nations.
Show me the fingerprint-laced mug of clay and the canvas filled with your uneven brushstrokes.
Show me the table you sanded down and varnished, the dress you sewed with curtain fabric, and the miniature model you glued together and painted.
Show me the steaming loaf of bread fresh from the oven and the crooked wooden spoon carved with your blade.
Show me, not because they are perfect, but because you are the one who made them.
Show me the bright smiles and squinting, starry eyes when you gather with long lost friends and beloved family members.
Show me the laughing faces from your last celebration forever frozen on film.
Show me your milestones, anniversaries, and days of remembrance.
Show me your greatest accomplishment.
Show me your deepest loss.
Show me all the ways we are different.
Show me all the ways we are alike.
Show me there is a light in the abyss of darkness.
Show me we can choose joy and peace over bitterness and war.
Show me we can choose compassion and kindness over cruelty and hatred.
Show me we can choose goodness, faithfulness, self-control, and gentleness in a universe screeching division, deception, degradation, and destruction.
Show me your faith and why you believe it.
Show me what brings you hope.
Show me love.
(Alt title: the only reason I still use social media)
Video games! I enjoy video games. They are what I do in my free time. At the end of the day, after work and chores are done, with the little energy I have before bed, I reach for a console controller.
If it's been a particularly rough or draining day, I pull up a single-player game. If I'm feeling social, I'll jump into a multi-player game and see who else is online. I have several different consoles and I play several different games. It's a form of entertainment.
What amazes me is the impact these games can have. A story in a book can get turned into a video game. A movie can get turned into a video game. A number of board games are also video games. A game can get turned into a movie or tv series or a book (you go, Scott Cawthon). I especially enjoy the subculture of musicians who make video game-based music. Not just the background scores (which are amazing and beautiful), but lyrical pieces that can apply even outside of their intended video game context.
Most games are driven by stories, though they don't have to be. A game can start out as one little character trying to find a dungeon in the middle of the woods with relatively no story at all. And several iterations of the game later, you have a world of interesting characters, epic villains, and cutscenes where the game is heavily story driven. A game's story can be all of: "please protect our village from giant monsters and use their parts to make better weapons so you can fight even bigger monsters." Sometimes the game is about how long you can survive in a specific setting or overcome an incredibly difficult challenge. But these games all started out as an idea someone took the time to develop and share with the world.
Communities are built around those ideas and stories. Friendships are made through those connections. We're in a weird period of time where the majority of people my age grew up playing at least one video game or are familiar with them in concept, even if they never play them.
If I say, "War never changes," a large group of people know that's the opening line from Fallout.
If I say, "Hey, you're finally awake," those are the opening lines in Skyrim.
"Eyes up, Guardian," - Destiny
"Hey, listen!" - Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
"You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?" - Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
"Our princess is in another castle" - Mario
"The cake is a lie" - Portal
"Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer" - Darkest Dungeon
"Flawless victory" - Mortal Kombat
"So, you want to hear a story, eh?" - Borderlands
"A wild (insert name here) appears!" - Pokemon (all of them)
"Stay a while and listen" - Diablo
"Lettuce away" - Fire Emblem: Three Houses
(Okay, that one was more of a meme, but moving on...)
There are many different types of games: scary games, puzzle games, farming games, real life simulators (farming, hunting, fishing, flying, truck driving, powerwashing, etc.), platform games, role playing games, strategy games, survival games, sports games, dungeon crawler games, the list goes on and on and on. In this day and age with digital downloads, if you aren't enjoying a game, you can easily switch to a different one without ever leaving the house. *salute to Gamestops and secondhand game shops everywhere*
I played Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, Spyro, Megaman, Lego Island, and Crash Banicoot games with my siblings. I played Half-Life, Doom, Heart of Darkness, Tomb Raider, King's Quest, Command and Conquer, and Castlevania with my father. My husband and I played through all of the Halo games while we dated. We've played tons of video games together since then. I've played plenty of games on my own too. I've played single-player, couch co-op, multi-player, and massive multi-player online games. I've played Fire Emblem, Hollow Knight, Runescape, Luigi's Mansion, Guildwars 2, Portal, Lords of the Fallen, Minecraft, Stardew Valley, and almost every Lego game out there.
Platformers and creative games are typically my jam, but I also enjoy first person shooters, puzzles, and action adventure games. Btw, if you enjoy platformers, go play Ori and the Blind Forest (and its sequel, Will of the Wisps). They are excellent. I go back and play through both games every few years just to relive the story. Makes me cry every time.
Surprisingly, I didn't love and play Destiny for the looter-shooter aspect. My husband handed me the controller in the middle of a Player vs Player match with his friends and said, "Keep me alive." (I hid under a rock and died instantly when I was found). The mic was hot, but I didn't dare breathe a word, worried about what his friends would say when they found out their friend got swapped out with a girl. After that encounter, I played Destiny specifically so I could get gud and be useful the next time something like that happened.
His friends turned out to be super chill and welcoming, by the way. When I got my own console, they welcomed me into their fireteam, taught me how to play the game, helped me level up, helped complete exotic quests, and we went on to beat several raids together. It was awesome! Much love to my fireteam, you all are forever immortalized as side characters in Fire Sword Chronicles.
We picked up a few more MVPs when we moved on to Call of Duty. I wouldn't have had those experiences and those memories if I didn't learn to play the game.
I don't always have the resources to play the games I want to (time, money, platform, energy). In such cases, I watch someone else play through it. It's like watching a movie or a sport being played out. It allows me to experience the game when I don’t have the ability to play it myself. Sometimes, groups of people streaming gameplay will collaborate for charity events. Viewers watching gamers will donate toward worthy causes. What a time to be alive!
It's not always fun and games. Sometimes your favorite game will get an update that changes a mechanic, making the game lose the thing that made it fun. Sometimes the developer will adopt money grabbing practices that capitalize on the fear of missing out to increase their sales. Sometimes the community will turn sour and super toxic or gatekeep new players. Sometimes a streamer or speed runner you were watching turns out to be a terrible person. Maybe the organization you supported changed their vision or got themselves into hot water and drama that you no longer want to be part of. *cough* NaNoWriMo *cough* Sometimes you need to delete favorite games to make room for new ones. Humans still fail. Disappointments still happen. It's okay to let go, change course, and move on to something else. Something better.
This was supposed to be a less serious post so let's get back to the lighthearted stuff. I'm all about music. Here are some of those gaming songs I was talking about. Enjoy!
"How are you holding up? Because I'm a potato." - Portal 2
The director walks out of an interdepartmental meeting. Seeing me, she stops and says, “I heard about how you did x, y, z out west a few years ago! That’s so cool!”
Oh, I guess my previous manager told you about that.
***
I attend a coworker’s retirement event. He looks at me and grins. “I’m so glad you could make it! You know, I still tell people about the time you helped us out with a, b, c.”
I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, but I guess it makes for an interesting story.
***
I leave some standard operating procedures behind for the new person so they aren’t as lost as I was when I first started. A year later, I get an email from the replacement. “Hello, thanks for all those guides you wrote. Everyone in the office still talks about how helpful you were. I’m trying my best, but you left some big shoes to fill!”
I’m sorry…? I was trying to make your life easier.
***
I send a note to a friend because I haven’t heard from them in a while. I get a response back a week later. “You have no idea how much I needed your words of encouragement. Even if we don’t talk much, I see you out there doing stuff. You inspire me!”
What stuff? I do the same thing every day. How is that inspiring?
Then it hits me.
Someone’s using me as a success story.
That doesn’t sound right. That’s actually kind of terrifying. For whatever reason, someone somewhere looks at me and goes, “THAT. That is someone who is succeeding. That is a person who will help make the world better. That is someone to look up to.” I don’t feel that way. Not at all. I see myself as a light, yes, but not a spotlight or a lighthouse. More like a tiny, little candle flickering in the corner. Fragile. One sigh away from darkness. I’m in my little sloop on life's ocean. Adjusting the sails, patching the holes, cooking the fish. Holding on for dear life in the storms. I make mistakes. I have plenty of flaws. Someone’s still watching.
Guess what? YOU are someone’s success story. You might feel like that’s impossible. You sit there and think, there’s no way. I have made every bad choice, every wrong decision, and broken every single thing I have ever put my hand to. You’re thinking, if anything, I’m the person people point at and say, “Pay attention kids, this is the perfect example of what NOT to do with your life.” Maybe. Even so, there are still people who will look at you and think, “I wish I had their resilience. Their patience. Their perseverance. Their determination to keep going, in spite of everything they’ve been through.” Someone’s still watching.
Or maybe you’re someone who made every correct decision in life and still feel like you have nothing to show for it. You do everything by the book, do exactly as you are asked, follow every rule, and everything still crumbles to dust under your fingertips. You still have to scrimp and save, fight tooth and nail, and struggle just to get by. You look around and see the people taking shortcuts to get what they want while you can’t catch a break. They say things and do things you wouldn’t dare and they get rewarded for it. Someone’s still watching.
“They don’t see everything,” you say. “That’s not a fair comparison. There is no reason for them to look up to me or want what I have. They don’t see how much I struggle with… (insert any and every personal struggle here).” No, it’s not fair. It will never be fair. We are conditioned to only share the highlights and the mountain peaks, if we share anything at all. You know what happens when someone overshares their struggles and valleys. Squeaky wheel gets the grease? Not in this world. The noisiest plane engine gets shot down. The loudest cry gets silenced. Silence is safer. Of course we’re mostly going to see the good, but some of us can see the bad too. Grass looking greener on the other side? They put hard work into their yard (or it's artificial). Water your own grass. You don’t think you’re worthy of being looked up to? None of us are. But we’re still looking for glimmers of light wherever we can find them. Maybe there is a glimmer in you. Someone’s still watching.
So keep getting up. Keep trying to do your best with what you have. If you make a bad decision because you didn’t know any better, do better when you know better. Keep persevering. Keep holding on. Keep staying the course. Keep doing the right thing. Leave people better than you found them. Keep trying. It’s worth it. You may not see it for a while, but it's worth it in the long run. Even if you don’t feel like you’re much of a success, someone somewhere still sees you as one and looks up to you. So be the best you you can be.
Someone’s still watching.
Reflect the Light.
~ Always hope ~
“But isn't it beautiful, the way we fall apart?
It's magical and tragic all, the ways we break our hearts?
So unpredictable, we're comfortably miserable.
We think we're invincible, completely unbreakable and maybe we are.”
“A very long time ago, there lived a beautiful princess in a mystical land…”
~ A Little Princess
Why are stories so important? Are they important? I think so. Maybe because it's easier to observe and analyze someone else's story than it is to observe our own. Maybe because we look for meaning, purpose, and understanding in stories. Maybe because we want to distract ourselves from what's happening around us.
“Everything's a story - You are a story - I am a story.”
There's a story about a little girl who gets uprooted from her home and placed in a boarding school while her father goes off to war. A number of bad things happen, but she always finds a way to keep her spirits up through fairytales and her imagination. That's how she deals with the horrors of reality. Not by pretending they don't exist, but by meeting the challenges with fortitude, compassion, resilience, and imagination.
“If I go on talking and talking...and telling you things about pretending, I shall bear it better. You don’t forget, but you bear it better.”
A scene in this story that has always stuck out to me is when the girl is at her most vulnerable. Her world has collapsed and she is left with nothing. Remembering one of her stories, she draws a circle on the floor with chalk. “This is a magic circle. So long as you stay inside it, no harm can come to you.” Inside the circle, she sits and cries and calls out for her missing father. The circle isn’t really magic, it's just a line drawn with chalk. But in that moment, she needed to feel protected. She did what she could to provide a sense of safety for herself when no one else could. I woke up from a nightmare with that scene playing in my head. Two years after my father passed and I still have nightmares.
“What you have to do with your mind, when your body is miserable, is to make it think of something else.”
Do fairytales have a place in the real world? Does imagination?
~ Stories help us see through someone else's eyes - Go read a book written by someone from a different background, religion, ethnicity, or country from yours and tell me what you learned.
~ Stories help us preserve history - Read the stories of survivors and witnesses of the holocaust, 9/11, or even the current wars and tell me you can still look at the world the same.
~ Stories help us understand - how many times has someone tried explaining a concept to you over and over again and it didn’t click until the concept was shared in the form of a story?
~ Stories help form our core beliefs - good, bad, right, wrong, parables, fables. So many lessons of what is praiseworthy or vile behavior are taught through stories and we decide which ones are true and worth keeping.
~ Stories keep people alive - in both senses. Stories help people keep going and persevere through life’s trials. But stories also preserve the memory of those we have lost.
~ Stories give us hope, courage, faith, and empathy.
“‘If Sara had been a boy and lived a few centuries ago,’ her father used to say, 'she would have gone about the country with her sword drawn, rescuing and defending everyone in distress. She always wants to fight when she sees people in trouble.’”
I remember random details in stories. Ehud was left-handed. Shammah defended a field of beans. John was the only one to tell us it was Peter who cut off Malchus' ear (seriously, John? You tattletale. Even Luke didn't bother with those details and Luke loves attention to detail. And Peter, it's a miracle in itself you didn't hit any vital organs. What would your wife say?). Why is it important that I know those details? I don’t know why. I just know they're important. Are my stories that important? Not in the grand scheme of things, absolutely not. But they’re still important to me. I don’t know why. I’m not sure if I’m trying to preserve something old or reveal something new. Maybe both. Maybe I’m trying to recreate a time when the world to me was predictable.
I was hoping to have Ice Sword Chronicles: Book One's editing finished by the anniversary (May 5th of all days), but I don't think that's going to happen. I'm aiming for June at the earliest. It is still a priority. The clock is still ticking. I know I'm running out of second chances to wrap this up and get it out there. But it's also been a very long two years and I needed the time away for a bit after November. I know I should have started/finished this process years ago. I know I'm too late. 15 years later and this story has gone nowhere. Didn't help I went radio silent 7 of those years.
Like returning to the town of Spectre in the movie Big Fish (don’t ask me why that bizarre story has stuck with me. I haven’t watched it in years). Too late. But better late than never, right? I don't know if I'll actually achieve my dream of seeing ISC complete and published. I know I'm not a great writer. I put words on a page and hope they make sense. I don't know if anyone will even read it. But I cannot give up on it. I’ve tried letting it die and it keeps coming back like EDJ. By the way, the next batch of chapters covers a big, epic fight scene so get ready. They're gonna drop all at once when I finish them.
So here’s to pretending. Here’s to all the characters we created and brought to life and to all the stories we’ve lived and all the memories that have stuck with us, real or imagined.
I may not be of royal blood, but I’m still a daughter of the One True King.
“’It’s true,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I do pretend I am a princess. I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one.’”
~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess (All quotes taken from either the 1995 movie or book).
Oh look, a song about the duality of man with themes of frost. Who's surprised? No one.
Update: I'm still writing Ice Sword Chronicles. (Recap of all my writing projects in this post). Yes, it's slow. Yes, it's all over the place. Yes, I should invest in an editor. After it's written. Any progress is still progress compared to the last.... ten to fourteen... years or so. Yeah, Hanna's character is awful. I've got major development in store for her. Trust the process. Believe me, it’s slow for me too. I keep writing notes for stuff I want to add that will end up in books 2 and 3 (please don't let it expand into a 4th, please, that's so much writing). I want to keep my promise. I've got stuff to do. I wanna wrap this up before life hits again.
Again, if you want to keep up with the rewrite of the story, follow the FB page or check out the ISC blog. I know I need to revamp the fb page. There are too many bots and fb as a platform in general isn't what it used to be. If you have any suggestions on how to handle that, let me know. It will sit there and I will keep posting to it until I figure out an alternative.
Second update: I've share another song I wrote. It's in the previous blog post, but wanted to give it some context. This is one I wrote a long time ago. I don't think I shared it with very many people at the time. I wrote it during one of the (many) darker times in my life (little did I know). I didn't share it because I thought it was too dark for my usual content, even though the lyrics are pulled from and inspired by the scriptures. Too dark. Too uncomfortable. Too raw. But I wanted to share it now for a couple reasons.
1. I've written a lot between high school, college, and present day. Songs, poems, stories, etc. But a lot of that content is lost or locked away (old laptops, forgotten accounts, packed in a box that's been moved too many times). The fact that I was able to get back into this old place and resume posting is almost magical. I consider this place an archive of sorts. A library of a forgotten age, lost in the sands of time, of which I am its caretaker. So for now, this place is as good as any to get my works out to where I can still find them. On that note, if I've shared any of my songs, stories, poems with you and you still have them, let me know. It'd be cool to have access to it again. (I wrote this really cool poem once about an angel who dimmed her light so she could walk beside others through their darkness and now I can't find it anywhere. DX )
2. If by some chance someone finds my song, maybe it can help them. I've always thought there were too few solemn, minor key hymns. Everyone likes to sing about joy, heaven, mansions, and sunbeams. All well and good. But my favorites were always the sad songs. The ones that acknowledge the sorrow, pain, and disappointment believers go through while on earth. While On The Sea. Poor Wayfaring Stranger. Abide With Me. When I Survey The Wonderous Cross. It Is Well With My Soul. Songs that make you (me) cry. I'll sing Poor Wayfaring Stranger over Mansion Over the Hilltop any day. .... maybe that's my problem... you can add it to the list. This song, my song, has been on my heart and mind. I still remember the lyrics and the melody after years of not seeing it. My point is, maybe my sad song will resonate with you. Maybe it won't. If it does, just know you're not alone.
