The Last of Us and Feminism

(So I was writing this and it started out coherent in my head but it sort of spiraled into a rant and then it got impossible to edit, so I'll release it in two parts. There was a pretty obvious break in the style and overall point of the piece anyway.... so yeah, this part is the "whiny rant" part.)

While there is still no release date for The Last of Us 2, I feel it's a good time to finally throw my worthless opinion of the game into the ring. The Last of Us didn't change my life, but just to be clear, that's more of a critique of my life than the quality of the game. I loved the game, like so many others, and it certainly moved me in spots, but I'm not one of those people that will rant and rave about how perfect it was till the day I die.

I actually didn't want to play it at first, despite it obviously being a really high quality post apocalyptic title. It looked great, I liked the unique take on the zombies and it was getting rave reviews, but... the people who were playing it really put me off. It was released amid the build up to Gamergate, when there was a lot of social issues around gaming being brought to the foreground. Since The Last of Us put so much emphasis on the relationship between Joel and Ellie, and because it also had so many strong female characters, it's little wonder that it got picked up and carried as a mascot for what all games could and should be like.

I stayed out of the whole Gamergate cluster fuck, I could see points on both sides and to be honest the whole thing bored me. I started playing video games as a kid to get away from people, so social issues and games don't mix for me. This is primarily because the outside world ceases to exist once I start gaming. As much as I wanted to play this game though, I read countless articles about how it was a feminists dream but how it was somehow still sexist, how people were offended that the two main characters were white, about the horror of two female characters being (metaphorically) put into refrigerators, and I even skimmed through a forum argument between two chicks about what specific type of pedophile David is.

No thank you, I ain't having any of that shit.

So I rolled my eyes and played something else... Dark Souls, if I recall correctly. So I didn't actually play The Last of Us on the PS3, and it wasn't until I got a PS4, where the remastered version came with the console in a special deal, that I finally got to play it. I played it and I loved every minute of it, and I was actually pleasantly surprised that it was nothing like people had claimed it to be. The relationship between the characters was key to the narrative, sure, but it wasn't this emotional bonding wankfest that everyone made it out to be. Each character in The Last of Us is deeply broken and troubled in their own way, and each of them having to overcome their fears in order to move on is part of what makes the story great. It had plenty of female and homosexual characters as well, and it never made the slightest fuss about them, which is exactly the way that it should be.

I think that The Last of Us got swept up in this wave of social action and touted as something that it totally isn't. Sure, it can be a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but a feminist tale it most certainly isn't. Blame it on the ludonarrative dissonance if you want, but your characters literally murder their way across the United States. You shoot people in the face, stab them with scissors, rip them to shreds with homemade explosives, torture them, burn them to death and stomp on their heads. By the end of the game you've got a kill count that's so high it's no doubt left both Joel and Ellie as gibbering, homicidal maniacs. Also, if it's such a bastion of equality, why do we only murder human males and no human females? I don't actually have a problem with any of this mind you, except that last part which strains credulity, and it only really becomes a problem if you're trying to pass the game off as something that it isn't.

If you simply take it as a post apocalyptic story about two broken people who find one another and form a relationship, then it's all peachy. No need to try and shoehorn it to fit your political agenda, just let it be what it is - it's bloody good at that.

This is always the difficult part of the discussion, where I reveal that I'm not one of those people that runs with the herd and spouts the same old popular opinion for fear of being socially ousted. I'm not a Feminist *gasp* but I'm not a fucking Nazi either *double gasp!*  

I'm a storyteller, I have to maintain neutrality so that I can view all situations as objectively as possible. Obviously I can agree or disagree with certain things, but I'm usually trying to stay out of the action so I can observe and analyse the situation better. I need to be able to entertain any and all ideas, good and bad. So I'm sorry if this rustles your jimmies - but that means not picking a side. Telling me that a story is Feminist is about as appealing to me as saying it's a Skinhead story, they're both extremes and I don't particularly like the crowds that either group draw. 

I will probably still listen/read/watch the story though, eventually... maybe?

I don't care that The Last of Us has so many female characters, I also don't care that so many of them die, but I'm damn appreciative of how well written they are. Playing as two little girls wasn't a problem for me, that's something interesting that I haven't done before. Bill is such an complex character, I'm actually glad that he survived despite how much of a dick he is. Sam and Henry, that gets me every time, not because they're black but because they're so damn realistic. 

All I'm after is a great story, and that's something that The Last of Us delivered.

Being "diverse" isn't a selling point for me, it's not a good enough reason to pick up a game, or any kind of story. A diverse cast of characters is great, but only for what they can bring to the story, it's not simply great in and of itself. Give me diverse, or give me all white or all black, all male or all female, all straight or all gay - all I care about is the story that's being told. 

So that's the long of it, while the short is that I'm sorry that it took me so long to play this game. As is so often the case, the white noise surrounding it was just that - noise. It's a fantastic game and I really look forward to the sequel, and I'm confident that Naughty Dog will bring their customary attention to detail. I'm really hoping that they focus on the toll that the first game took on both characters, instead of simply bowing to social pressure and making it all about the lie that was told...

...but I'll get to that later.

Terminator and Time Travel

The Terminator series has been a pillar of the Post Apocalyptic genre since the 80's; it's the story of Judgment Day, an apocalyptic event that can be temporarily pushed back, but never outright averted. This idea of fate, of a man-made pre-destination, is a key component of the series and it meshes well with all the time travelling that pretty much anyone can do in this universe for some reason. There is a serious flaw with Skynet, the series antagonist, though, and it's one that has its roots in the structure of good storytelling.

            TL:DR, Skynet is an artificial intelligence that grew too powerful, too fast, and scared its creators. Skynet perceived its creators attempts to shut it down as a threat and calculated that all other humans would see it as a threat as well, so it fired off a bunch of nukes like Trump in the middle of a temper tantrum.

            Voilà, one Judgement Day.

            It fails to kill all the humans though, so there is a lengthy war fought between the human resistance fighters and Skynet's robotic forces. The war is long and bloody because Skynet doesn't just use all the biological and chemical weapons at its disposal for some reason. It starts out with the humans having to contend with primarily the bare skeleton T-800 Terminators that we're all familiar with, but pretty soon they're also dealing with the Infiltrator T-800's that look exactly like humans... as long as those humans are all competing in a Mr. Olympia contest.

            Despite having a near endless army of obedient death robots and fighting in an environment that is now deadly to humans, Skynet doesn't do too well. As the war enters its fourth decade Skynet finds itself backed into a corner by the rag tag bunch of plucky human survivors.

            Blame it on budget constraints or the limitations of CGI technologies, I'm still shocked that it took us 25 years to get a story set in that part of the timeline. The part of the timeline where the humans are fighting a full on war against murderous robots in a radioactive wasteland.

            How? How did it take us that long to get there?

            But I digress. The point in the story in which Skynet sends a Terminator back to kill the resistance leader before he was even born, while great in terms of storytelling, is really dumb in terms of actual strategy. Of all the things it could have done, of all the infinite options available to it, that seems to be the most randomly haphazard.

            And now I need to take you on a slightly tangential route. There is a point to it though, so bare with me. In Dungeons and Dragons there are these little lizard things called Kobolds, and while they're a possible threat to low level characters they quickly become little more than a pesky annoyance. As more and more supplement rule books were released for D&D 3.5 though, something terrible started to happen. Through an amalgamation of disparate skills, feats, spells and reptilian companions - a single Kobold managed to turn itself into a god in an instant and break the entire game. The worst part of all this was that it was all allowed within the rules of the game, it just took some insane rule junkie Munchkin to put it all together.

            (For those interested; Pun-Pun, the Kobold in question, could temporarily enhance the abilities of its reptile companion, then steal them to enhance its own permanently. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam. There's a bit more involved than that, but basically at a certain point Pun-Pun would hit critical mass and become so conceptually powerful that it would physically manifest itself in the real world... and then proceed to kill everyone around the gaming table. Totally true story.)

            Anyway, I took that little tangent to show you what Skynet has access to.

            The problem with time travel in the Terminator universe, for humans, is that you can only go back with your bare naked self. This means you've got however many years of experience and know-how and your swinging copulating tool with which to save the day. It's why the Terminator movies all start with a confused, naked dude running around trying to find some clothes. Sure, Jai Courtney's Kyle Reese could have jumped back to 1984 and told humanity about the glories of the iPhone, but he couldn't bring one back with him and he sure as hell couldn't tell them how to make one.

            A Terminator, however, is basically just a computer on legs that's wrapped in a skin suit. You could load any and all the data you'd ever need into a Terminator and send it back to any point in time. In one of the comics, a Terminator accidentally goes back to the Cretaceous Period and gets stomped on by a T-Rex, because why not?. My only question is, why would Skynet bother sending a Terminator back to a point in time when it's not in control of the entire damn planet? In the first Terminator movie, the Terminator and Kyle Reese jump back from 2029, and considering Judgment Day was first meant to occur in 1997 - that's roughly 32 years of playtime for Skynet to mess around in.

            Why would Skynet not send a Terminator, fully loaded with all the latest schematics and technologies, back to a point when it's already in control? It could be back to 2028, or even all the way back to 1998, it doesn't really matter. The point is that the technology and blueprints that the Terminator has stored in its metal head will be more advanced than what's available to Skynet at that point in time. All Skynet would have to do is hold off the resistance fighters while it upgraded itself, then just not die until 2029, and then repeat the process.

            Go back, become more advanced, go back again, become more advanced again. If it did this a ten times, that's roughly 320 years of advancement in the blink of an eye. Each time Skynet would become more powerful and holding off the resistance fighters would become easier and easier. We already know it can make it to 2029 with just the basic T-800's (as well as a few other non-humanoid machines), how hard would it be to get back there with the T-1000's or the T-X's? It wouldn't only get easier because it's becoming more powerful with each iteration, but because it's also learning through the repetition of history. Ambushes could be laid, decisive losses could be avoided and pivotal battles could be won. It would never need to risk its own creation by sending a Terminator back to a time prior to Judgment Day, which in itself is an act that could potentially disrupt the chain of events that led to it being created.

            The problem with this method is that it's an instant win for Skynet. Each time it upgraded, the resistance fighters of that timeline wouldn't even know that they were fighting upgraded Terminator models, they'd be too busy getting their arses handed to them. After enough of these loops, it wouldn't be unrealistic for Skynet to learn how to kill off humanity in a matter of hours after Judgement Day. At that point, it'd just be looping back again and again to save literal time.

            This is where the structure of storytelling jumps in an neuters things in favour of the humans. This sort of truly apocalyptic scenario is one that you couldn't fight against, and would therefore make for a pretty terrible story. Judgment Day would come and humanity would be wiped out entirely - that's not a post apocalyptic story, it's just a straight up apocalyptic one. Skynet needs to make nonsensical decisions that a genocidal AI would never make, because humanity needs to have a slim chance of actually defeating it. The humans can get pushed back into a corner and beaten down, it can look like they'll be exterminated at any second, but at the end of the day the good guys have to win.

            The upside to this castration of Skynet is that we get the great thematic notion of Judgment Day being something that is perpetually pushed back, but never truly averted. In each instance, the world ends in a different time because it got pushed back after the last time. Judgment Day has arrived, and been subsequently averted, in '95, '97, '03, '04, '05, '11 & '17 - that's not bad for humanity, it may get knocked down but it always gets back up and fixes things. In terms of storytelling, it's like an in-built retcon switch for the series, we'll always be able to have Terminator movies because Judgement Day will keep happening with each new era of technology. It's why we started with Terminators basically running on MS-Dos and ended up with Terminators that are comprised of nanobots. As technology changes, the Terminators change too, and we get another movie about another Judgement Day - because that's our fate. 

            Sending a lone agent back in time to try to fuck with causality is dumb, but it's interesting. Playing it safe and upgrading to the point of godhood is the smart thing to do, but it's pretty boring and near impossible to beat. As cool as that post-Judgment Day battle could potentially be, it's only cool if the humans actually win it. And I just don't think that humanity could realistically win against an genocidal AI with time travel capabilities.

            Besides, does Skynet even have a plan for after it wipes out humanity? Does it even want anything? What's the end goal here?

Why I Became a Writer

My old man is pretty much the reason I became a writer. He was full of wild and unbelievable stories and he's the one that got me writing in the first place, though probably not in the way that you'd expect.

My old man was a stevedore, he loaded and unloaded cargo ships. He traveled all around the world, to some of the most remote locations, and unloaded ships there. Half the time he was going to places that didn't even exist yet, he was there to unload the building supplies for mining or logging camps that were destined for the middle of some island jungle. You can't go to these sorts of places and not come back with some crazy stories.

Pirates, rabid Razorbacks, minefields, fossils of prehistoric birds, tidal waves, guys blowing their legs off while fishing with grenades and WW2 era Japanese swords lodged in trees in Papua New Guinea. He'd seen it all, and afterwards he'd come home and tell me all about it.

The thing with my dad though, was that despite having all these amazing stories to tell me, he rarely read or wrote because he was dyslexic. It's why he continued to be a stevedore well into his sixties, it was a hands on job that allowed him to travel and didn't require him to do much of either. The problem was though, when you've been in a job for that long you tend to get promoted to management, and managers usually have to write emails and reports and all those boring, desk jockey things. 

Which is where his nerdy, nine year old kid comes into the picture. 

I'd be on the computer, playing Dark Earth or Fallout, and this gigantic hand would suddenly drop down onto my shoulder. My dad was pretty stealthy for a big guy, but that's a story for another day. I'd close the game with a sigh, I knew what I needed to do.

When that happened, I was going to be spending the next fifteen minutes to an hour transcribing and editing an email or some report. He'd sit behind me and spout random things about subjects that we're way beyond my comprehension, or he'd be having a go at some employee that wasn't pulling their weight. My job was to write it all out, and edit it to make sure that it sounded right. After he was finished, he'd always end with, "now, read it back to me. Then send it."

The cool thing about this little ritual we had going was that I've got a pretty good typing speed, I know how to spell and, although I don't do it the way you're meant too, I can touch type. I've got a pretty good idea of sentence structure and formatting, and I've got an idea of when things don't sound right - especially in dialogue. Beyond this, I'm also not bad at remembering strings of words that're shouted at me, and I'm usually able to regurgitate them with a fairly high level of accuracy. 

The downside to this training, besides the countless hours of gaming that I missed out on, is that this was all on the job learning. I know what I'm doing, I just don't know why I'm doing it or even what "it" is called. I know where all the commas and full stops go, but throw a semicolon at me and you might as well be speaking Pitjantjatjara. I can still only barely tell you the difference between a noun and a verb, and don't even get me started on adverbs and adjectives. Please, don't get me started, I wouldn't even know where to start from.

They... change things? I dunno.

Let me just reiterate; I have a Bachelors Degree in Creative Writing, with minors in English and History. I got through all of university and I still didn't learn this stuff, either because they figured it was so basic that we should already know it or because they just don't teach it anymore. It's one of the reasons I'm so glad that I'm doing this TESOL course; I'll have to know grammar if I'm ever going to teach it. Learning how to teach kids how to read/write/speak English is as much for my own benefit as it is theirs. 

I get that this probably isn't the best thing to be divulging to the world this early in the game, but I've always been a fan of a unique origin story. My old man passed away a few years ago now, and although we didn't always see eye to eye, he's the one that go me interested in storytelling and, whether he intended to or not, he's the one that trained me how to write. He showed me how to have some crazy adventures of my own too, but again - another day.

Would it have been that hard for me to pick up a grammar guide and learn how to do this? Probably not, but then I am notoriously lazy and I got a weird kick out of being the lone sorcerer in a class full of classically trained wizards. (sorry... D&D joke there, props if you get it)

I am making amends for all that though, as I am finally studying up on something that I should have mastered a long time ago. It'll take me a while to get used to all the technical terms for the in's and out's of English, it is a bastard language after all, but I'll get there.... because I would really like to get out of here, and teaching kids overseas is my best chance of doing just that.

What I'm Reading and Why I'm Reading It

I love reading post apocalyptic fiction. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's reading this, but I figured it needed to be said because I haven't been reading much of it lately. 

See, when you start writing you also need to start reading; and a lot of the time that means reading books you need to read as opposed to reading books you want to read. I'd love to just sit back and work my way through the great, and not so great, post apocalyptic tales - but that wouldn't give me a very broad view of things. Sure, I'd get a pretty comprehensive understanding of the post apocalyptic genre, but I wouldn't be able to bring anything new to it. I'd just be one of those authors that regurgitates the same old tropes used in decades old tales that're no longer relevant in a modern context. 

I've read books in the Naturalism and Realism genres, just to study their styles of writing, random essays and texts to understand a topic a bit better, heck - I've even got a book about Shakespeare and Eternal Recurrence, because that's something that I'll need to know about for an upcoming project. These aren't books I'm reading because I want to, they're studies and examples of topics that I need to understand better in order to bring new ideas to my writings.

Which brings me to War and Peace...

Written by Leo Tolstoy and first published in it's entirety in 1869, War and Peace is a weighty tome that you could use to bash someones skull in. Coming in at 1215 pages (at least in my version), the book is a serious slog about the war between Napoleons France and Russia. This is not a book that I would normally read, but I need to do so for few reasons. 

1. I'm a writer, and as it's considered one of the best books ever written - I have an occupational obligation to read it.

2. I make a slight pun about reading it in an upcoming project, so I better have read it before the project is released.

3. Bragging rights.

Alternating between the battles between France and Russian and the high society escapades of the Russian elite - it's pretty obvious where the title of the book came from. I definitely wouldn't say it's bad writing, but it's not that fantastic either. It's just solid writing all the way through... and there's a lot of it. Which, I guess, for the time was pretty impressive. I'm not sure it should still be holding the award for one of the best books ever written, we've had some great works written in the 148 years since, but history has a way of stubbornly cementing legitimacy. 

I'm currently somewhere in the 800's in terms of page count, I only ever read it while I'm at work, and I'll be glad when I'm done with it. As much as I'll be happy to tick it off my writers must-read bucket list, there are a lot of far more suitable books for me to be reading. Something with radiation or zombies, or maybe just some kind of virus that turns people inside out, I don't know. 

I'm not even finished it yet and already I can tell that I wouldn't recommend this book to just anyone to read. If you want to appreciate the craftsmanship of it's writing, then go for it, but if you're looking for a good story that won't take you months to read, then go read something else. 

I have a pile of books just sitting there, and they're waiting for me to pick one of them up. 

My Current Writing Projects

I'm pretty good at procrastination, because my procrastination is quite productive and therefore easily justifiable. I like world-building, it's an easy way to "create" without actually creating any content for publication. This is a problem, especially for someone who'd like to get paid for this one day.

I am working on a few things though, and just to put everyone's minds at ease - today I'll give you all a brief overview of what I'm working on and at what stage of the project I'm at for each.

Unnamed Sequel - First, it has a title, like all the others, I'm just not listing it because of reasons. This work is a sequel to my first novel which I've been ashamed about for the longest of times, but of which I'm slowly coming around to. I haven't been ashamed because it's bad writing, I was ashamed because of the actual story it tells.

Don't bother searching my name to try and find it, I'll be re-releasing an updated version of it soon anyway, you can gawk and gasp at it later. The point is, there's a first draft of the sequel out there and it's currently being read by a mate of mine. It's part of a bigger career spanning plan of mine so as much as I'd like to move away from the original, I've got to work with what I've got and finish it.

CODE - Brissy Story - This is the big one that I've been working on since... late 2009, I think? It started out as just a short 20,000 story and it's grown into this massive narrative that is just the first part of a planned trilogy.

It's a first person journal, like all the best post apocalyptic stories are, and it centers around one guy and his view of the world and his place in it. It's set in Australia and deals with the whole world ending and how the survivors organize themselves afterwards. There's a bit going on in this one, primarily because it's the first of a trilogy and I need to lay the seeds here so they can pay off in book two and even three. 

This project is in the late late stages of development, I've been getting some graphic design done by a mate down south and artwork done by another mate up in Russia. Although I, and several of my very talented writer mates, have edited it something like 15 times over the years, I'm going to get to looked over by a professional before release. 

It's been a fucking expensive venture, but I think it's worth it. 

Brissy Story Companion - This has been requested by a few people, it's only going to be a novella - sources of inspiration for it are One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Metro 2033. It will deal with the events of one day, from a third person point of view, in relation to the larger project above and will focus on the surrounding characters. I currently have it outlined but haven't begun work on it yet.

Metanoia - Tales of Forlorn Liberty  - This is another big project that I've probably been putting together in the background for three to four years now. Anyone who follows my mate Weilard on Twitter has probably seen some of the covers he's drawn up for me. Yes, I'm the type of dumbass that got 36 covers drawn up before he'd even written the stories. Lesson learned, I won't be doing that again. On the bright side though, I met another artistic fan of the post apocalyptic genre and helped him live off his art for a while, so it's not all bad.

I'd insert an example of the covers for this, but they're so damn big that it'd take forever to load, so I'll just redirect you here to see them all. They're actually fantastic, and I'm not just saying that to brag, Weilard is an amazing artist and if you ever want to commission some post apocalyptic art - hit him up.

Anyway, this series will deal with the survivors of an end of the world scenario, as they learn to live in the new world and alongside one another. It's more about the social interaction between the people themselves, rather than the apocalyptic backdrop. The intended writing style has changed over the years and one of the main reasons it's taken me so long to even start writing is because I've had to read a pile of books for inspiration and direction. 

These are just the projects that I'm actively working on at the moment, and more details for each will be released as time goes on, but there's also a whole mess of other things going on too. I've got notepads (physical and digital) all over the place full of notes for specific story ideas - but these are the ones that I'm focusing on at the moment. My problem isn't lack of ideas or too little motivation, it's that I like to have everything planned out before I even start writing, and that is damn time consuming. 

I am working though, always working.

Australia and the Post Apocalypse

I've spent the last week Ozifying a 77,000 word document. Don't bother looking up that word, I just pulled it from you know where - I needed a word to describe what I was doing when people asked, and pretty much everyone got what I meant.

I don't know if that's because the people that asked already have a fair idea of what the project is, or if it's because I live in Australia where stupid made up words get thrown into the public lexicon pretty regularly. With the heavy accent, the relaxed pronunciation and the absurd amount of idioms and slang, you get used to figuring language out on the fly. 

For those who speak normal English; I've basically been making my manuscript more Australian.

It's a first person account of events surrounding the end of the world, down under. This narrator is a character in the story, and as such he's writing just like he, and everyone else that's still around, speaks now days.... then days? When days? What's the tense for a fictional account set in the future, but written in a past that's still ahead of where we are now?

Never mind.

Originally I wasn't going to do this, it was just going to be a run of the mill journal that's written in basic English. Maybe a few slang words thrown in, along with the few that sneaked in because I incorrectly assumed that everyone on the planet uses them, but besides that it was going to be a pretty standard affair. But I was talking to a few people on Twitter and one of them suggested that I watch the Aussie zombie film - Wyrmwood.

I don't usually go for the cringy sort of humor - I've never been able to get past the first 10 minutes of The Office, and getting into Parks and Recreation was difficult at first (but fear not, I was quickly converted!) so Wyrmwood struck a bad cord with me the very moment I saw the poster. I have to be honest though, while production value was the typical Aussie-Horror low, it was actually a fantastically unique zombie story. 

It was just so... Australian! At one point, a guy literally busts out of a shed wearing Ned Kelly's armor, it's hilariously ocker. Despite the unrealistic number of guns and the ridiculous amount of people just wandering around the outback, I really enjoyed it. It brought something fresh to the table, which is pretty impressive at this point for the zombie horror genre. 

And it got me thinking about my own story; it's set in Australia, so why was I not taking advantage of that? There are countless post apocalyptic stories set in the United States, the easiest path to differentiate my story from all of them is to take advantage of the unique setting. And since it's written in the first person, I could have the whole bloody thing written like a true blue yarn from the great southern land. 

I'm not going to lie; it was hard to go back and change a lot of the spelling and wording, and I know it's going to leave some people shaking their heads and running to Google. A lot of it is everyday slang we use, some of it is the rarer stuff that even we roll our eyes at, while the most prominent feature is the way that words are written like we say'em. It'll be hard to not read this in an Aussie accent. Despite all this, I think the changes really add something to the story beyond simply differentiating it from a potentially similar story that's set in the states, the changes actually mesh really well with some of the stories themes. 

The manuscript has to sit there for a while now, I've need to get some artwork and graphics finished, then I can get a professional edit done to ensure that I haven't let any (unintentional) spelling errors get through. After all that, it'll be time to get it published. 

I'm looking forward to it, I really hope people get a kick out of it. 

A New Post Apocalyptic Blog!

I've suffered a few... setbacks, recently. 

I've been working a dead end job for a few years now, it pays well enough and it's given me the free time I need to work on my projects as well as hash out a few personal issues. For the past few months I've been pumping most of my money into the artwork for an upcoming novel that I've been working on for far too long. Then 2017 swings around and things got interesting.

I started dating this woman in January and she decided that we "needed a break" in February, so I decided I needed a break from dating in general. Also in January, I found out that I was getting dumped by my landlord as well and that I had to move out of my apartment at the start of March. Equally harsh, but at least she gave me a bit of warning before the split. I stuck with the same flatmate and let him decide where we were moving and so we ended up three doors down from the airport, which has been interesting. Lesson learned.

I started hitting the gym pretty hard in February, after work every night, five nights a week. I was getting stronger physically and it took my mind off things so I was feeling better mentally. Then in May I found out that my car registration bill had been sent to the old address and not forwarded, so I got a pretty nasty fine. I was still pumping most of my cash into the upcoming book at this point, so this sudden bill pretty much wiped me out. I lived week to week for the rest of May and then in early June I busted my back at the gym.

I suffered a herniated disk, my L5, on the left side. I couldn't bend forward, the toes on my left foot were numb and every time I sneezed or coughed my left glut (that's the muscle in your butt) would have a spasm like I'd touched an electric fence (something I've done... multiple times). I was cleared for light duties at work but they wouldn't let me return until I was fully cleared by the doctors. So for the next seven weeks I lived off my holiday and sick pay while I spent days and nights alone in my room reading and watching YouTube as well as pretty much every TV series ever created.

During these seven weeks the tiles in my airport adjacent apartment decided that they'd split from the concrete slab beneath them. While no visible damage was done, they're an obvious problem and the owner has decided that she'd like to fix them personally, she's moving back in this September. So, once again, I'll soon be undertaking the wallet draining adventure of moving house.

That seven weeks was an experience though, I'm happy to admit that I did my best to remain productive and as active as I could but it was always going to be a losing battle. Free time is great, too much free time tends to suck you into a bottomless pit of depression no matter what you do. Seven weeks of zero exercise and plenty of feel good food, combined with countless doctor visits and plenty of physiotherapy left me a little light in the wallet and a lot heavier around the waist.

But hey, at least I got a really nice beard out of the experience. 

So it's now half way through August and in my third week back at work, and I am actually really glad to be back. Seven weeks is a long time to think though, especially when bulk painkillers and no exercise means you're generally awake for 20 hours a day. I've come through all this and despite it all, I'm actually feeling pretty good.

I've always had weight issues, that's just one of the challenges I face, but while I've packed on a few kilos it doesn't seem like the insurmountable challenge it did in the past. I've been on a great diet for the past three weeks and it's going well; my regulars are already commenting on my weight loss... which, while great and all, is still none of their damn business. Although I still can't exercise as much as I did before the injury, I'm doing what I can. The injury has also changed my fitness goals as well, not just because I have to be more careful but because the time out gave me time to think about what I actually want out of life.

I got my tax return in late July as well, so while that helped keep me afloat, what remains of it has been used to pay for a TESOL course. While my current job has served me well enough, it was never going to lead anywhere and it's simply not enough for me anymore. At least with teaching English I'll be able to work within my field and the ability to travel and work overseas has it's obvious appeal as well. 

And I decided to finally pull the pin and start a website as well, so yeah, it's been an interesting few weeks. 

Currently I plan to stick around here until the new year, tying up lose ends and finishing as many projects as I can. The classes for the TESOL course will run through to November but from what I understand it's self paced, so if I actually apply myself I should be able to get through before the year's over.

I could probably move on before the year's out but my boss is currently in hospital with some serious health issues and Christmas time is the busiest period of the year. Despite being a crotchety scrooge he's been pretty damn good to me, so I'm happy to stick around for one last hurrah. 

More immediately though, it doesn't really make sense to sign on for another 6 or 12 month lease if I plan on moving overseas before then. So in September, which is when the lease here is up, I'll be moving back to my mother's place. Yes yes, I can hear the collective groan. Or was that just me? Anyway, the point is - she's currently building a duplex, so she's got her own projects going on and I'm sure that I could help her out before I leave. It's not ideal, but at the very least it will let me save money quicker and get this next book published in a more timely fashion.

This site is still under construction, and I'm still learning how Squarespace operates, so there will no doubt be some changes along the way. Feel free to stick around and join me as I catalog the mundane to the marvelous, I'm sure there will be plenty of both.