I got an email from Goodreads stating that I was in the top 25% of readers for the year last year. I’ve been logging my books on Goodreads for a number of years now and I’ve always had at least a passing interest in the tally for my previous year. When I looked back I was a bit surprised that I’ve been logging books on Goodreads since 2009. I didn’t realize this was year 15 for me.
Recently, as in the past couple of years, I’ve had a great deal of trouble achieving the level of reading I was previously accustomed to. There are a lot of factors involved there, but in the end those factors combined to stop me from reading as much as I really like.
2023 – 23 books
2022 – 9 books
2021 – 17 books
2020 – 39 books – this is actually a peak year for me
Being in the top 25% with less than two dozen books is, not surprising but a little disappointing I think. Not for me, but for the general statement that makes on how much people read (or more correctly, don’t read).
The numbers for 2023 are a good sign for me. I’m trending back up. I’m working hard at mitigating a large number of the factors that slowed or stopped me from reading. I suspect I’ll be able to meet or exceed 2023 with this year’s total. I’m not going to use a goal setting app or whatever – this is supposed to be a pleasurable thing. I should read new and interesting things and tell people about them because I enjoy it, not because some random app or goal is pressuring me to do that. I’m going to keep reading. I’m going to keep reviewing those books and posting up my thoughts and opinions on them. How many will I get to? Who knows? But I will have read a number of good stories in order to get there.
I’ve talked about my opinion of new year resolutions on here before. I made a resolution a long time ago to never make another one. Real change isn’t a gimmick tied to a date on the calendar. I’ve told the story about the old guys at the gym I overheard one time being grumpy and wishing the pretenders would just get over the fact they’re going to quit and get out of the way.
I related this to a guy at the gym the other day, and he had an interesting thought on the matter. Not something I give weight lifters a lot of credit for honestly.
He said, “Part of me absolutely agrees with those guys. There are going to be two or three weeks of being absolutely annoyed that I can’t get to a bench or a weight stack and wishing the quitters would do just that. The other part of me, the one who really loves this, wishes them all the best. I hope they actually stick with it and get healthy or buff or whatever it is they’re trying to do…”
It was so simple and positive. Yes, newbies are annoying and they get in the way and they don’t know the rules (or ignore them) and they’ll probably quit soon. But we shouldn’t want others to fail that way. Going to the gym to be healthy isn’t about winning some kind of competition. It’s not like they’re going to “use up” all the gym and leave none for others when they get there. People of all levels should be able to get in there and do what they do. It’s not like I’m some kind of record breaking work out monster. I’m there to do what I still can in an effort to stay as healthy as I can. I see people there who look like they’re 80 or older. I’ve seen at least two different folks with what are classified as disabilities who are there working hard at the parts they can work. Dude in the wheel chair benches more than I do by far (part of me wants to make a terrible joke about leg day, but I don’t know him well enough). I see a family that’s in there every morning trying to be healthy together.
So no matter how much I don’t care about the whole “new year resolution” thing, I’m not going to put anyone down for trying to get better. I hope you succeed. I hope you get what you need out of the change you’re trying to make.
I’m going to keep doing what I do, only (hopefully) with a little more regularity than I’ve had for a while.
Happy New Year. I hope your year is amazing and wonderful and all the great things you desire.
Yup. The Pretend Blog has been around for 16 years now. It hasn’t always been on my own website, but it’s always been mine, for better or worse.
These days the creativity is still a struggle, but this place contains various parts of my musings, criticisms, art and general nonsense. More than 590 posts in all. That’s not a lot when spread out over sixteen years. That’s about 36 per year (or around 3 per month) on average. Thing is, “average” took a big hit from about 2016 through Covid reaching endemic stages. There was a lot of depression and inability to create during that time frame. That lingers, even now.
Creativity, and the mindset that comes with it take a long time to recover when suppressed for too long. Much like muscles that have atrophied from lack of use, creative things need practice. They need to be flexed and worked out. Sometimes they even need to be taken out and shown off to others.
I’m going to consider it work in progress. I’m going to stick with it and keep at it – after all, I am still pretending people still read blogs.
There’s a meme out there with a picture of Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan saying, “why of course, it’s me…”
I know that’s a hash of a misquote, but you get the idea.
Found it~
Using a physical DVD to watch a film. Yep, I know that guy, because it’s me. I’ve been one of the red envelope people subscribed to the Netflix DVD service for the past 12 years. It was an easy choice for me. Advertising and unreliable connection speeds meant I could watch what I had on hand without any fear of it failing to work or having the feel of a film wrecked by mid scene advertising… almost all the time. Yes, physical media does have issues. Yes, from time to time there would be a problem, but for the most part it was a fantastic albeit slow system. In all those years I can only think of a handful of times when either the disc was broken or didn’t work, and only once in all that time when I got frustrated enough to just digitally rent a movie when the disc failed – and that was because it failed about 60% of the way through a really good movie.
Now that system is gone.
Yesterday, Netflix DVD made their last shipment. After 25 years (for them) they’re done, and I am feeling a bit nostalgic about the whole thing. The discs have been one of a very few constant things over the years. I was able to pull down a PDF file, created by the Netflix folks, that has my history all packaged up and presented in a report. I haven’t crunched numbers for averages or anything like that, but I have looked at the list of more than 250 rentals I’ve had over that time (quick math, 250/12 = about 20 discs a year or just under 2 per month). I looked at the stats they’ve stacked up for me and wandered down the list of discs we’ve watched, remembering the stories and characters from all those movies.
It’s going to be a minute for me to process the whole thing, but I will miss it. That probably sounds weird, but it has been part of my life for more than a decade. It became something that was just there when I needed it. Recently the streaming services available to us, combined with a more stable internet experience and less available time, in general, have made streaming services far more convenient and my rental rate has fallen off. Sometimes it would be weeks before I could put together the time to sit with a friend or a family member to watch whatever it was we ordered up. Sometimes the streaming service would add the movie before we got to the disc. I’d package up the disc and send it back, eagerly waiting for the next one to arrive. It was there, and it happened when I wanted it to. My viewing experience was not subject to some vague streaming contract a studio made, nor allowed to change based on some other, unknown reason.
The best example I can think of to illustrate that off hand is Monsters, Inc. and how it’s shown on Disney+. My daughter and I sat to re-watch it the other day because it had been a very long time since we watched it originally and we were in just the right mood. We pulled it up on Disney+ and let it roll. When we got to the end we wanted to see the extra bit at the end where the company is putting on the play Mike and Sully improvised during the movie… and it wasn’t there. It was just gone. I was a bit sad, but she was downright outraged. “How dare they? This is unacceptable and look it up on YouTube right now so we can watch it!”. I think that encapsulates the whole thing. The nutshell version – streaming decided to revise history a la 1984 and the modern viewer simply slid over to another streaming service and looked up the part they knew should be there (legality of it all be damned).
So the service is gone, but physical media still exist. I’ll still be watching those, and definitely picking up my favorites in physical form so I don’t need to depend on some company deciding if Ponyo should be available or not. Yes, it takes up space on the shelf. Yes, it’s an outdated method for watching things, but it’s mine and I’ll do with it as I please.
Apparently the folks at Netflix were feeling a bit nostalgic as well. They captured the whole feeling in a quick video… now available from a streaming service.
Back in July I had every intention of posting right away about an American soldier stationed in South Korea who had… somehow… gone across the DMZ to the North Korean side of the line. It felt like it was the sort of thing that I could comment on, and wanted to get it out there in some form of timely manner. There was also the idea of recognizing armistice day and giving a little bit of history. Clearly, given the dearth of actual posts over the summer months that didn’t happen, but that actually makes this post hit harder.
A little background. Back in the early 90s I was in the army. It was a single ‘tour’. I didn’t reenlist and got out when my contract was up. I don’t consider myself a particularly good soldier, nor do I believe I should use my status as a veteran for any kind of advantage. I signed up and did my thing and got out. The luckiest part of my entire military life was not being sent to the desert like so many of my friends (Gulf War time). One thing I did do was a year in South Korea. I left the US and headed to Camp Hovey, around ten miles from the DMZ. It was called a dependent restricted tour (no families) and generally meant spending that year with a bunch of dudes. The male to female soldier ratio was about 18 to 1. There were many, many off duty rounds of drinks and more than a little fighting.
While I was there I learned. I saw things I had never known of, participated in things I had never done before and it became part of the life changing thing that was my military service. One day during my year there I pulled on my full dress uniform and went on a tour to see the DMZ. It was a surreal experience. I got my photo taken inside one of the buildings on the north side of the line. There was a great deal of tension. We were given strict orders not to gesture, make faces or otherwise make any sort of noise or motion that would give the north something they could use for propaganda purposes. I asked when was the last time anyone had actually taken a shot across the line, thinking in my naive way that the answer would be in the 1950s. The corporal leading the tour said, “Two weeks ago. Did you see it on the news?” I shook my head no. He continued, “Then it didn’t happen… did it?” with the sort of emphasis that I inferred to mean, NO, indeed, nothing of the sort would possibly happen.
For emphasis, the ‘shooting’ part of this war was supposed to have stopped back in 1953. About 40 years before I was standing there. As I stated, it’s a bit surreal.
Fast forward to 2023. For those of you not catching the math, that’s 30 years after my trip there. Guess what? Nothing has changed.
That’s right. Nothing has changed. At the 70 year mark there are still people willing to shoot at each other for things that went on during their grandparents’ lives. It’s not like the veterans from that war are going to be standing out there – it will be the 20 somethings in the military today. The saddest part is, the kids on the US side probably didn’t even get a full lesson on the conflict. That makes the ‘running across the line’ that much sadder.
When I said the story hits harder now? That soldier from the US who ‘defected’ or whatever? That was July 19th. It’s September as of this writing – almost a full 2 months later. Have you heard any more about him? Is it still a headline thing?
No. And it won’t be. That kid is gone. IF he comes back, and I think that’s highly unlikely, he will be physically damaged from his ordeal and you will be able to see it. He won’t be the same in his thought process either, though that will likely be harder to see.
It’s been 70 years. Why aren’t we teaching more about what is happening there? What will it take to get people to change their minds?
Some history:
Recognizing “National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day” – July 25, 2023
Seventy years ago on July 27, 1953, the Korean War Armistice was signed. This ended fighting between the parties and left the boundary between North and South Korea at approximately the same location as when the war began a little over three years before.
A look at the numbers:
Over 1.8 million American troops were sent to fight in South Korea
36,000 Americans lost their lives
100,000 came home with injuries from the result of the war
7,500 men and women who still remain missing in action
For reasons that we can only speculate, Korean War Veterans never had victory parades or welcome-home celebrations. They simply came home and were expected to pick up where they left off before they went off to war. Some speculate that there was no celebration because there was no victory, or perhaps the American people were tired of war, this being so close to the end of WW2, and were ready to move on. Or maybe they did not see the importance of war in some far-off land that no one had heard of before June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. Regardless, the Korean War deserves a day of recognition.
By tradition, on July 27th every year, the President of the United States issues a proclamation declaring the day National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day. If you know a Korean War Vet, your father, uncle, aunt, or maybe even a coworker, please thank them for their service. They deserve recognition for their sacrifice.
Sometimes, the most challenging thing to get past is the blank space where your creativity lived. I was reviewing my posts here and realized it’s been about 2 months since I posted. I’d looked at my site and all the things associated with it many times during those weeks between the last post and this one, and every time there was this weight.
How do you deal with the lack? Do you create yet another post filled with reasoning and bargaining and excuses? Do you just go on as if nothing has happened? Do you make radical changes and put that forward as a reason?
In the end, I don’t suspect it matters much. I don’t have many (read ‘any’) fans. I have friends, but none actually comment on what goes up here or doesn’t go up here. I’m genuinely uncertain most days why I keep this site. I suppose that will be something I need to consider moving forward.
Things will pop back up here. There will be more posts. Maybe changes are coming… we’ll see.
It really seems to be a consistent theme. Not just here, but in so many sites that I have followed over the years. There’s a certain amount of content and then there’s this huge gap, the site stops updating OR the site goes away entirely. Creating content and doing it at a consistent level is not an easy thing to do. There will be gaps. Those gaps will vary in size and duration depending on things that happen in the real world, not just here in the magical world of the computer.
So – jumping this gap and moving forward. There will be more, just as soon as I get it all written down…
Doing this a little differently than I have in the past. Much more a “as it happens” thing ~ or as close to that as I get. I’m writing this while in the middle of day 2 at the con. We’ll see how it all shakes out (and if I actually get back to this before I have to go all the way home).
Getting to the con from home was a challenge. There are 0 things the con can do about travel distance or traffic challenges, but it was certainly part of my experience. the 3.5 hour drive that was supposed to get me here took about 5 when I finally got here and got checked in. That was… not ideal. It was a difficult way to start.
Once I was actually here, at the venue, I discovered their wayfinding / signage to be lacking. Getting around here is not an easy thing when you’ve never been here before. There are actually 3 buildings containing various aspects of the convention and NONE of that is clear from the entry drive or signage from the parking area(s). I realize that wayfinding signs are part of my day job / professional life, but it makes such a huge difference to a persons experience. Bad signs meant it was hard to find the hotel registration. Then it was hard to figure out the right parking area / path to my room in the building next door. THEN I had to go and figure out con registration in the third building.
I figured it out, but by the time I got through all that I was just beat. I was done, I just didn’t know it yet.
I grabbed the person I’m rooming with and grabbed a bite to eat at a local sub shop, then came back to find 0 parking spaces available at the hotel lot near my room. Very frustrating.
I headed off to a panel that said it was about role playing informing your writing. What I got from the panel was a lengthy discussion about story telling informing your gaming. NOT the sort of panel that overwhelmed me and filled me with a desire to go and do more.
In the end, I decided that I was well and truly exhausted from the combination of a long work week and a miserable drive. I turned in early… missing out on the kind of fun you find at cons, like light up ice cubes for your party drinks!
Hopefully day 02 will bring more and better things…
I’ve been loosely tracking the mess that has become the open gaming license (OGL) that has been cascading across nerdland over the past 3 weeks. It’s been an emotional ride, and a painful one for many creators out there. I’m going to transfer a part of a social media conversation over here – because I want what I said to live here, where I can get it when I want it. Social media platforms come and go.
My original post:
There’s a lot to keep up with in this ongoing saga, but I think this quote, and the headline says a lot,
“This is a community that literally invented the term “rules lawyer.” WotC simply didn’t realize how literally that would be taken.”
Even this is a bit complicit and extremely naïve, given the repeated attempts a corporate gaslighting. It is also hilariously behind the times, as it has not incorporated their latest retraction and attempted capitulation (which is -still- a half measure, for those who are savvy to the issues).
With each compromise “attempt,” WotC have left something out, and it’s been pretty obvious to those of us invested in this fight. That’s what the author is hilariously and flagrantly blind to, which showcases them as a Corpo stooge, and thus part of the problem.
The notion of these companies (outside of WotC) working together, despite being “market competitors” with differing systems, and ORC being a system agnostic license seems to escape them.
The part I wanted to have here:
Couple of thoughts here –
“behind the times” could be me. I have posted this later than the instant gratification time table. While I am a creator, I am not constantly on here. While it’s important to stay up to date on things, immediate response is not for all. Thoughtful consideration matters, and that can take time.
The various stages of WotC’s flailing response were not the intent of this article (as I see it). The author is attempting to express something ingrained in my own point of view ~ corporations are not your friend, and they never will be. You are a resource to them and given the chance they will strip mine everything they can from you. The fact that the author works for a large corporation making them part of the problem is one opinion… but I think name calling is counterproductive.
One thing I take from this whole, ugly slap of pit fighting for cash is that there is a much, much larger community out there than ever before. Having lost friends as part of the satanic panic (being directly told this is why we can’t be friends – go away) it’s more important to me that we recognize the golden age we live in and work harder to be inclusive. We have more now than ever before – revel in it.
Systems will come and go. Companies will come and go. Communicating and finding new (and profitable) ways to do things will be the constant. Be aware of what corporations are up to, pay attention. Be thoughtful and considerate – and support the creators you know. The best thing we have is each other.
MORE TO FOLLOW
Social media is a tricky thing to manage. I’m sure this conversation will continue, but as I time shift a significant amount of my work, it will take time. Stick with the things you love. Find something that will last a lifetime and create! I look forward to seeing what we all make.
I genuinely did not recall that was the official starting point of the Pretend Blog. Yes, my blog was not always on my own website. I moved it here so that it would be totally mine and I could post, list and keep whatever crossed my mind. History lesson – I named it the Pretend Blog because I knew I was going to be pretending that other people would be reading it. I planned to write whatever came to mind or whatever I found amusing at the moment. I believe I posted a link to a music video that amused me (it still does – check it out here).
I didn’t click on the link. I’m afraid of what LJ may or may not have turned into. I noticed the advertisement that LJ is “in” social networks… I thought they were a social network? It was confusing and one of the red flags that made me thing clicking any link there was suspect.
Here we are 15 years in. Somehow I thought it would be more… something?
Maybe I’ll be able to track anniversaries more accurately moving forward and we can post some kind of fireworks here for 20. Just have to get there.
