Wrapping Up 2014

WRAPPING UP 2014 Two years in the past, nearly to the day, I wrote this: * * * For 2012, I need to do one thing a little larger picture. One big uber-resolution that I suppose is not going to solely make me a better individual general in 2012 but may just have a ripple impact that may assist me solve those other issues that I proceed to struggle with. In 2012 I resolve to reside totally sooner or later. I know, that sounds somewhat Oprah Winfrey, but hear me out. Like (I daresay) most individuals, I have a tendency to complain about what has occurred, bemoan what could have occurred, and endlessly undergo over what ought to have happened. And I do this more usually and with greater vigor than I plan for what’s about to happen or go out in search of what could occur. For instance, as a lot as I tried not to, and stated I didn’t, I did hold a grudge about how issues got here to an finish for me at Wizards of the Coast. No matter how many instances I promised I wouldn’t, I nonetheless stored my ea r to the ground there, nonetheless gossiped with people who, like me, have better issues to do and extra essential issues to fret about. I’ve been gone from there for eighteen months. It’s someplace I used to work, and although my time there was well spent and necessary to me, I use the lessons learned there (both positive and unfavorable) every single day, and I will nonetheless keep up a correspondence with a small army of excellent friends and priceless allies from TSR/WotC past, present, and future, I hereby resolve in 2012 to spend no more time struggling over why I received fired from there as I do over why I don’t work for Rose Records anymore. Like WotC, they might have done issues in another way in order that I didn’t get bounced out of a job 5 days after the start of my first youngster. That was fun. At least Hasbro had a better-than-common severance package deal, and my children were older. But it’s under no circumstances just WotC. Believe me, most days go by o nce I don’t truly spend any time serious about Wizards of the Coast in both a positive or unfavorable light in any respect. I also bitch about politics, together with issues that have occurred, that everybody seems to accept have been unhealthy, however that won't ever be fixed. No one will stand trial for causing this depression we’re in. Most folks participate in the large lie that what’s taking place now is a “recession,” or even have the balls (pardon me) to make use of the word “recovery” in any however the past tense. This is the kind of shit (pardon me once more) that makes me loopy. This retains me dwelling in a shoulda-woulda-coulda life that’s of no use to anybody. No one wants to listen to me bitch in regards to the Hope and Change candidate I was excited to vote for but who has changed fuck all (pardon mâ€"aw the hell with it) and most of us are only much less hopeful now than we were in 2008. Okay . . . see what happens? This is no good. You’re no high er off for having read that, and I’m no higher off for having written it. Here’s one factor I’ll do, proactively, to maintain myself moving ahead: I will stop watching the TV news. I know this looks as if I’m simply putting my head within the sand, but I’m the kind of person who, when confronted with an issue, sees that as a request, a problem, a mandate to repair it. But I can’t mild a fire underneath the legislature. I have no entry to President Obama. I can’t discuss Al Qaeda out of this loopy shit they’re doing. No one at Goldman Sachs goes to take my calls, let alone supply me their apology for cashing out on America. I can’t stop radon from leaking up through the ground. Who do I call to persuade television networks that when persons are being forced out of their homes daily for the sin of getting sick with no medical health insurance the small print of an ideal stranger’s product-placement superstar wedding ceremony isn't just unimportant and uninteresting but obscene? If I might, I’d invent a clean, renewable vitality source that makes fossil fuels out of date. I’ve sat through the endless “health reviews”: carbs make you fatsâ€"no, it’s fats that makes you fatâ€"no, wait, it’s fruit, no riceâ€"no, wait, it’s . . . shut up already. The sugar industry releases a examine that claims that corn syrup is unhealthy for you and it’s reported as science. Then the corn growers pay a number of million dollars for a industrial to let you know that sugar and corn syrup are the same factor. Finally Michelle Obama warns you to avoid both of them. It will drive you mad. It will. I can’t stand it. I even have actually sat by way of episodes of TV news exhibits that have made me so offended I couldn’t sleep. Commercials for payday loans and chapter attorneys ship me into panic assaults. The re-introduction of Depression Era packages like “layaway” makes my hands shake. And supposedly “upbeat” stories of nameless millionai res paying off strangers’ layaway items for Christmas doesn’t make me really feel betterâ€"that’s not hopeful, that’s another sign of the pathetic, whimpering finish of the American Dream. I can’t carry this weight anymore. I don’t know the way to begin to repair any of these issues. So what’s left to me after an hour of all that's impotent rage. I flatly refuse to crack and go off on some type of shooting rampage, so the only different possibility for me is to step out of the madding crowd and get on with doing what I do. I write tales. I’m going to focus on that. And typically, I’ll should do research and I will, and Twitter will inform me if one thing massive happens, and I’ll hunt down informed and balanced data on events that interest and/or impact me directly. But don’t ask me about Wizards of the Coast, Kim Kardashian, Rick Perry, or Rachel Maddow. I’m not going to have an opinion. I’m going to get to work. I’m going to work my ass off. And if the only hope for middle class Americans like me is to buy our way into the 1%, well, then, 1% right here I come. I’m not saying I’m abruptly going to “promote out”â€"after all, as soon as I put pen to paper to write the Baldur’s Gate novelization that ship properly and completely sailedâ€"it simply means that I’m going to point at the sunrise, not the sundown, get busy being busy, and do for me and mine. After all, they obtained this Depression on. * * * Looking back this morning, December 23, 2014, at some of my 12 months-finish and New Year’s Resolutions posts I’m as soon as once more struck by all the issues I haven’t followed by way of on. I lost no weight. I nonetheless have played neither Smallworld nor Risk: Halo Wars. I nonetheless swear up a fucking blue streak. And so on . . . But this one from two years ago, where I kind of admitted failure on those different issues, reveals me that I can, when I really feel sufficiently pressed, truly modify my conduct. Si nce scripting this, two years in the past, I even have watched no TV news. In reality, earlier this 12 months, I realized that The Daily Show, though humorous and good, really counted as information and so I stopped watching that. I don’t watch Stephen Colbert or John Oliver either. I actually have no real interest in something said on either Fox News or MSNBC, and every thing I said above still applies. And let me let you know, individuals, wow have I been a happier individual! That’s not to say that I don’t have my moments. I’ve spent this yr in an ongoing wrestle with a mortgage lender over nonsense that appeared to have been resolved but still lingers as a result of some sort of “coding error” on their half. This makes me need to stomp sure people’s intestine out. Luckily for all of us, I’m in Seattle and they’re in New York. And there are always setbacks and inconveniences in modern life. So what? All in all, 2014 has been a good 12 months. Financially, we’r e going to end this year having made extra in precise earnings than my wage at Wizards of the Coast after I was laid off in 2010. That was a bit of a longer battle than I’d hoped for, but dogged persistence, exhausting work, and no frickin’ choice in the matter pushed me via. I’ll be working on scheduling my very own time more intelligently and so forth as we get into 2015 and surf that high-power start, low-power end to the 12 months once more like I at all times do, but this stripping out of adverse enter, of the barrage of unsolvable issues, has made me a greater particular person and has made my life a lot more attention-grabbing, less irritating, and extra livable normally. This is an fascinating concept for a personality. How many villains are people who are simply overwhelmed by the sensation that they have to resolve an unsolvable downside and discover themselves willing to do horrible issues in order to get some desired result? What is a terrorist however someone so c onvinced that he’s obtained no other different than to blow something up so as to struggle the unfightable, or be heard above the static? Am I attempting to say that by ignoring the unforgivably biased “news” media for two years I avoided becoming a terrorist? No . . . I’m just not a violent individual, and I’m smart sufficient to know that the primary man who throws a punch loses the argument, however then I guess that’s what makes me a hero. Now, on to the War on Christmas! â€"Philip Athans About Philip Athans Things like “Live extra sooner or later” are good, however they don’t work as resolutions. They work as, “Oh, that seems like nausea in my head. Maybe I shouldn’t think about that a lot right now.” I hold wishing for time travel because I can’t think about attaining what I want without hindsight. I’d be better off wishing for luck, perception, or even delusion. Those may occur! And again, writing myself a decision is somewhat like writing a memo to the executives about the janitors throwing things away inefficiently. Insight has to come back in the intervening time of determination. Not watching television news? Now that seems like a choice you'll be able to run by way of your Executive Mind. This is one other thing I’ve carried out (I fast ahead through commercials, too. ) Let me know on the end of the year should you find it’s as productive as you thought- bet will probably be!