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Still Behind
It’s Saturday and I still have a crapton of stuff to do. Somehow, no matter how busy and harried i continue to be, the backlog never seems to clear. This is no state to be in on a sunny pseudo-summer Saturday, y’all.
Better Half
Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes. ~Jim Carrey
So, here’s me trying to fend off another bout of depression.
Not sure I’m going to succeed this time.
Despair is closing in and my primary ally has things to do today.
I know she can only do so much but this is a really bad time for her to have to go to work.
I’m pretty upset about the state of things.
Stuff isn’t getting done around here because we’re both too busy with other stuff.
Sure, just knuckle down and get it done, you might say. Easier said than done.
Everything is so much harder when you have the wet blanket of depression dragging you down.
I just want to go back to bed and say fuck it.
That won’t get anything done, though.
It will just make me feel worse about not getting anything done.
My life is actually pretty great but having these periodic bouts of depression sucks the joy out of even the tiniest of life’s pleasures.
I’d like to let Kelly help me shoulder some of the burden but she’s busy, too.
So, I’ll do what I can do and hope there’s time tomorrow to get through whatever doesn’t get done today.
Sunny pseudo-summer Saturdays aren’t meant for slogging, but here we are…
🌞 Sunny? 🌞
No wonder I’m depressed.😞
🌡️ It’s supposed to be 89°F today. 🌡️
😒 Pseudo-summer
Blech!
🎅 Only 2🍪4 Days Til Xmas 🎄
🎼Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat. Please bake some keto cookies when it comes to that.🎵
I’ve had to give up a lot of things in order to deal with my new situation but Christmas Cookies simply could not go on the “Gone” list.
| Rescuing Christmas From Diabetes | |
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Thank goodness for monkfruit extract, stevia and other kinds of faux sugar.
Thank goodness for creative bakers who share their skills with us.
Christmas is saved!!!
I wonder if there’s a safe version of jellied cranberry sauce. I’ll be plenty sad if I’ve got to do 🦃 Thanksgiving 🍽️ without that glorious burgundy cylinder of culinary joy. Creative chefs of the world, do your thing!
Heroic Credentials
Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome. ~Margaret Atwood
I was thinking about how to explain exactly what it is that The Sentinels do in Empire City, but the first thing that came to mind is The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything. This is not strictly true.
When Lucius “Lucky Dog” Deagle and Tim “Foxfire” Wisler first met, Tim had just begun his superhero career. Lucky sought him out to see if they might collaborate on a superhero team like those in the comics. Tim had asked some fairly obvious questions.
Are there any others? As far as anyone knew, Tim was the only person with powers. Lucky’s godfather, Matt, had super strength and decades of service in the Army. From Lucky’s perspective, this was the kernel of a comic book-style super team. Fair enough, Tim figured, but…
What would this superhero team do? There weren’t any supervillains that they knew of or impending alien invasions or any of the things that comic book teams usually stood against. They spent years thinking about the answer to this question.
What they decided was that they’d partner with the police to provide whatever assistance the police felt they could best use them for. They also decided that they’d dedicate twice as much effort to preventing crime by reaching out to kids with a philosophy of civic duty, kindness and personal responsibility.
In 1992, Lucky convinced Mary Christmas to join the team and they formed The Sentinels at long last. They began a tour of the Empire City school system to introduce themselves and their plan to make Empire City a model for the rest of the world. They also joined the ECPD in a campaign to end a violent gang war that was raging at the time.
Since then, they have continued making the rounds at schools, community centers, churches and comic book conventions while also providing backup for the ECPD’s Tactical Division (TacDiv).
Sometimes, routines turn into ruts. Being busy being busy can pass the time but it doesn’t necessarily accomplish anything.
They have a fairly solid fan base and a line of merchandise that helps to fund their mission, but it’s been 13 years of same ol’ same ol’. Until Tanda came along, Tim feared that the team and the mission would simply fizzle out after he got too old to keep at it. Even so, he felt that she could only carry the team another 25 or 30 years. Matt could simply return to the Army and gosh knows what Mary would do.
What none of them know is that there is another organization with a longer view of how they’d like Empire City to be and the capacity to carry it on for decades and centuries. That sounds ominous, and it’s meant to be, but I still don’t really know what they’re up to. That makes it rather difficult to add them to the plot.
They’re bad and they need to be defeated but I’m still not sure what it is that they’re doing or what it will look like when they’re gone. I want them to be the invisible hand pulling the strings in Empire City. So, what happens when those strings are cut because the hand is gone?
Dunno
I’ll let you know when I figure it out. In the meantime, I’ve still got improvements to make on the chapters that introduce the viewpoint characters.
Tanda was well-received. Dave is engaging but they wanted more visceral details to get the reader into the actual setting.
That’s the value of letting other people read or hear what I’ve got so far. The details they’re looking for are already very vivid in my head.
I’m used to seeing that when I read back over my work. Someone with no context isn’t getting those details unless I share them.
My first draft tends to be primarily dialog. Painting the scene doesn’t come naturally to me because it’s so firmly in my head that I don’t realize that everybody isn’t seeing what I’m not describing. That’s a whole new learning curve for me
| Villainous Mood Music | |
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Well, that’s enough moping for now. I’ve got tons to do and time’s a’wasting.