Category Archives: Personal Observation

Round Number Problems

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An Anniversary

I didn’t start off intending to write about my anniversary. I had other plans for the evening. Plans that generally didn’t involve being sad, crying or going over list upon list of things that are different. There have been a lot of days that haven’t gone as planned in recent times.

Next week as I write this, would have been my wedding anniversary. This year would have marked the 31st year that Beck and I would have been together, but then the round number anniversaries were always times when something big went down.

I couldn’t remember what happened at our 5th anniversary for the longest time, but I actually think that was the year we bought our house. A large expense and definitely a positive and worthy thing to have going on around our special day.

Then there was our 10th. We thought that we should do something special for number ten. Maybe take a special trip, maybe make an extravagant purchase but something to celebrate a nice, round milestone. That was when Beck told me she was pregnant. Super positive, amazing thing for the tenth and definitely not time for traveling or making purchases that didn’t relate to all things baby.

Fifteen is the one, right? I mean it’s not a ten or a twenty, but fifteen is definitely a respectable time to celebrate. We started figuring out what we wanted, where we thought we might go, how travel would work with the kiddo… and Beck landed in the hospital. Her health had been ‘bumpy’ since giving birth and this was just one step of many on our long journey through the health system.

Fine. Twenty. A big deal to make it that far. Kiddo would be old enough that arrangements would be easier, we were more mature in our spending choices but we could still come up with something. This was going to be a great thing! It was going to be BIG! And then I got laid off and was out of work for three months. No money for celebrations. We’ll definitely do something for the twenty-fifth. Twenty five is a full quarter of a century!

Twenty five rolled around. Silver anniversary. We were making plans. It was going to “be a thing”. We were cautiously optimistic, but we could make it work. We had dealt with fifteen years of health issues but we seemed to have those in hand. The kiddo was older now and understood what it meant for Beck and I to go and do a special thing. We were going to make this happen! And then everything shut down because of the pandemic. Nobody was going anywhere. Hunker down and hope you survive.

Last year was number thirty. That’s the ‘pearl’ anniversary if you’re interested in the traditional gifts or labels. Thirty was a struggle. Beck had had a stroke, then another. She struggled to walk. She was slightly off, even on good days. There was no plan. We made it to the little restaurant at the end of the street for a dinner that she only ate half of, then we came right back home. I didn’t complain about it. What was the sense in that? We were together and that was the part that mattered. Big deal celebrations never seemed to be something that worked out for us. It was the last time we had a ‘romantic’ dinner out together.

That’s the round number problem. Did we wait for those round numbers? Absolutely not. That’s something we got right. If we had an opportunity to go do a thing, take a trip or celebrate being together or being a family that’s what we did. We started to get a sense of the round numbers thing so we did a really big anniversary trip for our 24th. It didn’t make any sense to others, but we had an amazing, wonderful, memorable trip. It was such a fantastic thing that will live in my memory forever.

Next week… I don’t know how I’ll navigate it. We never really got into making a big deal of the day itself. We would always recognize it. We always did something but the most important thing was that we did it together. I don’t have that this year for the first time in more than half of my life. It’s a Wednesday, and I have to work, but then what? I don’t know.

Don’t hesitate. Tell people you love them. Give an extra hug. Go on that trip you’ve been putting off. It matters.

Journals Past

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A lot of my energy (emotional or otherwise) is still going toward… I don’t even know. Holding things together? Trying to move forward with my creative desires again? Writing without real inspiration is a struggle right now. I’m going to keep putting these things up here for myself, as a form of journal, but also as a reference for anyone who might need them and stumble across my page.

Things will never be the same again. Things can’t be like they were. There is only moving forward. There will be a new normal, although there’s no way to tell what that actually is. Things that have been habits are now coming into question. Why renew something that won’t see the use it did before? Is this box of stuff just uncovered something that needs to actually stay in the house? There clearly hasn’t been a need for it anytime in the past year (or more). Where did all of this stuff come from and what do we do with it now?

My wife had a habit of starting a journal, making three entries and setting it aside. It’s an odd thing to only notice after she’s gone, but there it is. There are easily a half dozen very nice journals with excellent paper and fun covers that have the first three pages or so written on and then added to a stack.

I recently found a journal start from back when her mom died. Beck tried to write out what she was feeling. I’m glad that she did. It’s an odd thing to still have her words, but I am glad for it. She was scared and sad and desperate to have things ‘be right’ again. If I had found this before her passing, I’m not sure I would have understood it well enough. Now I understand it all too clearly. The gap left by a person is never truly filled. I still have moments when I expect her to still be here. Those are not good moments. They are fewer now, but they still happen.

Maybe, in the future, I will pull the first few pages from each of the journals, scan them and create some kind of archive. I’m not sure Beck would like that, but I think my kiddo and I might need it. We shall see if that becomes a reality or not.

Remembering

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I have been working on something for a while now. It’s taken a lot of effort, emotionally, to get it all done. I can’t say that it’s everything I imagined, but it’s worthy and it’s mine.

I’ve put together a tribute video for my wife. I’m going to continue to game. My group is happy to keep joining me and I’ll keep telling stories with them. It felt important to put together some small pieces so that her game is complete. I know that she left our sessions relatively early on, but her influence continued.

Head over to the channel to check it out if you’re so inclined:

Resolute

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I’ve said it for years and I’m certain I’ll continue to say it for many more – I don’t do resolutions for the new year.


Many years ago I made a new year’s resolution to never make a resolution just because it was the new year. It is one that I have managed to maintain ever since. True, meaningful change will be a choice in time that doesn’t need to be dictated by the flip of a calendar. New projects or self improvement can happen at any time, it’s all about committing to the change.

Will things change in the coming year? Yes, absolutely. 2025 is easily the worst year of my life. I don’t think I can emphasize that enough. Absolutely awful, across the board. The past 5 months have been a constant challenge filled with emotional wreckage. Days, weeks, months of things that will never, ever be the same. So the coming year can’t help but be different. It will be a year of firsts, or things that are happening again that haven’t happened in a very, very long time. There’s a gap in my life right now that I will need to navigate around or through, depending on the situation.

There will be ups, there will be downs and there will still be the grind. The day job is still there, no matter how much I don’t like it right now. My game is still going along with my YouTube channel, and that’s a very positive thing for me. I hope it brings some small amount of joy to others as well. Life is going to keep moving forward and I’m going to keep trying to do better.

There will be at least one convention this year, hopefully a new published story and if all goes right, a big, fancy vacation. More books will be read and reviewed. More games played, and perhaps even reviewed or discussed here as well.

Here’s hoping the coming year is better than the previous. Strive for the good. Move toward the betterment of yourself and others, and do everything you can to bring joy.

Happy New Year.

Reading Statistics

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I posted up a summary of a decade of reading last year. I am not a spreadsheet person, nor did I make a graph but I did lay out the numbers. I averaged just a little over 22 books a year during that time. Pretty close to two per month.

This year I made it to 19 (20 if you count the one I’m reading right now because it will probably be done by the end of the week). All things considered, not a bad amount. The month to month has understandable gaps, and some of the selections I made were decidedly shorter than others, but they were still books and they still counted as reading.

If I stated some kind of goal or set out to specifically read any number of books for the coming year I think that would turn something enjoyable and relaxing into work. As if I just had to get to that next or last book to make a quota. I do things like that (personal goals that mean nothing to anyone other than the voices in my head) but I think for relaxation time it would become a problem.

I’m pretty sure I’ll hit 11 in the coming year, as that’s how many meetings of Watch The Skies we’ll have and we pick a book each month, but beyond that I just hope the book selections I get will be really good stories. I want to have a book that I sneak a peek into while I’m on a break at work. I want a story that inspires me to go and create fan art for it. That’s the sign of a good year of books in my mind.

How did your year of reading go?

An Anniversary

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Today, the 28th of December, is the anniversary of The Pretend Blog. No, it wasn’t always on my own website – it took time to reach that level of understanding and commitment. I’m sure the Live Journal stuff is still out there, I’m just not sure who owns it now and that’s part of why I moved to my own site.


I’ve been writing here and posting whatever I feel like for years now. As I said at the very start, I do this because it’s a thing I want, not a thing that is required in some way. I try to post things on the regular, but that has never been my strong suit. My writing is mercurial and moody on a good day. That’s one of the biggest reasons why I don’t believe I could make it as a freelance writer. I’ve gone weeks without the ‘mood’ moving me to write. That’s fine when the day job fills that space and a paycheck still comes in. Not so good when getting said paycheck means slapping words onto a page… or piling up some pixels.

The Pretend Blog is going to continue. I intend to maintain it as long as I am able. I want there to be a place that is controlled by me. What I post here is mine. No, I still don’t know anything about making my web spot fancy. Yes, the colors should be better and an actual graphic artist should have done my site picture… but that’s just it. What is here is mine. My good stuff, my ugly stuff, all of it.

I’m hoping to have a more consistent presence here, but I’ve said that in the past and it hasn’t happened. I need to be real with myself and just keep posting as I go and putting the things I want up here. Yes, some of the things will age well. No, some of what’s up here won’t age well. People can grow and change and become better than they were. For better or worse, I’m going to continue to pretend people read my blog.

Quiet

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It’s the quiet times that get you.

Everyone has significant concern about the mental health of others during the holiday season. I get that to a certain degree. Times of celebration when you’re not feeling the least bit happy. Seeing people when that sounds like the most soul consuming thing possible. I understand this now more than ever. The thing is, it’s not the hustle and bustle or the crowds or the music that are really the issue. The issue is the quiet.

My daughter went out with friends tonight. No work tomorrow, time to go and catch up and celebrate a little. See a movie they’ve wanted to catch or a concert or something. I absolutely approve.

That leaves me here, in the quiet.

Quiet is the dangerous part. It’s when you’re not interested in watching anything or reading anything or listening to some podcast or interview or sports report. There’s so much noise and nothing that has anything that makes me want to pay attention. It’s empty and they know it as much as I do, and media is desperate to keep us hooked. So I shut it all off.

Stillness, dim lights and lots of time to think. To remember. To cry again.

I have one small advantage. I remember that Rebecca was absolutely NOT a fan of the Christmas season. She actually kind of hated it because it meant that all her “we put the fun in dysfunctional” family was getting together again and something bad was likely to happen. She used to volunteer to take holiday shifts at work for other people and did her level best to avoid the whole thing. She didn’t want to join my family for the holiday either, but did so to avoid making things awkward.

So, many years ago, Beck and I set out to create our own traditions. We decided on the things that would be important to us about our holiday and what we were going to do. We would order Chinese take-out on Christmas eve. We would watch The Grinch, Charlie Brown’s Christmas and maybe Frosty if we had the time (after all, much like Professor Hinkle, we were busy, busy, busy). We made up a theme for our tree so that no two years would be the same. It was glorious.

This year would have been our 28th (I think, the accounting is fuzzy at this point) tree, but Beck isn’t here to see it. That’s the sort of thing that sneaks in during the quiet times and punches you in the feelings. That’s when the quiet gets you.

My daughter and I decided that it was important to continue all these traditions this year and in honor of Beck we decorated our tree in the same colors as the Bisexual pride flag. We won’t be alone here either. Friends help. Here it is in all its unbalanced glory. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, to all others, have a safe, joy filled and wonderful holiday season whatever you celebrate.

Old Man Indeed

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The first time I read “Old Man’s War” was back in 2009. I checked the date on Goodreads… and I suspect I was lucky because I don’t think I started posting books there much earlier than that (although it’s shocking to me that I’ve been posting to Goodreads for 16+ years at this point).

I had a very positive review at the time and it was very focused on the action. I complained about the 150ish pages of set up.

I saw that the latest in that series was published a couple of months ago. It’s the seventh! book in the series – he must be doing something right. I thought I’d dive back into the series and see about cruising through a nice space opera with some action and plenty of fun stuff to read. I picked up a new copy (e-reader this time partly for convenience and partly because I coudln’t find the other one) and dove in.

To carry forward the diving analogy… I dove into the shallow part of the pool and it didn’t end the way I thought it would.

The part I didn’t remember was the basis of these stories is that the military uses old people. The ‘magic/science’ allows all the knowledge and experience to be swapped into a new, supercharged body that is built to fight. That also means the characters in the stories have a ton of life they have lived… and lost.

The book opens with the main character visiting the grave of the woman he’d been married to for decades who died after having a massive stroke.

That just crushed me. I had to stop almost as soon as I started.

When you read a book matters so much. All the other parts, the style, the characters, the plot are the core but the timing is everything. Back in ’09 I gave no thought to what that meant. I wanted to push past all that ‘old man’ part and get to the war part. Well, here we are 16 years later and the ‘old man’ part is intensely difficult to read. I did finish the reread of this one. The book is still good, but it’s not the same excitement driving work that I read earlier in my life.

I still like the book. I’m not nearly as enthusiastic as I was. I struggled with the main character seeing his wife so clearly in others in so many places. I see the found spirit part but I don’t think I believe it. Maybe if I read this again in a decade or so it might be different, but I don’t think I’m going any further with the series right now (or maybe ever). We’ll see how the timing works out in the future.

Grief is Weird

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I have been struggling to post here. Grief is likely the biggest culprit in why I haven’t been able to. Grief is weird and hits when you’re not looking for it. I mean, there’s the immediate stuff. That’s the part most people recognize. Up front, right after the shock wears off. Tears, snot bubbles, and all the red faced terrible that goes with it. It’s expected and relatively understood.

It’s later. Sometime down the road, after the dust has settled and people have gotten back into their daily routines… there’s still this thing that can happen. Grief just keeps showing up.

There’s insomnia. That’s a fun one. You just can’t sleep because something’s not right and it will never be all the way right again. You look terrible, your eyes are already bloodshot and this is just piling on. There’s all the things still jumbling around in your head. Your brain won’t shut down and even when you think you’re too exhausted to go on it pops up some other thing that you needed to do and forgot.

There’s the diet plan – or lack of plan. You eat take out more times in a month than you have in the past five years. The things you paid attention to slide to the side and things don’t really taste as good as they did before. In our case particularly, we had a host of dietary restrictions we were working with for my wife. Lists of things we could and couldn’t get. None of that mattered any more. That’s a stutter when you look at the prices you had been paying and realize you don’t have to now.

Even that settles after a while. You sort of try to get a new routine. You figure out things, make lists of paperwork and stop missing deadlines. Changes are there, but they’ve settled down and day to day function happens.

Then the stupidest detail slams into you, or somebody very close to you and you’re a weeping mess again.

I woke up to find my daughter asleep in her mother’s chair one morning rather than in bed. I was a mess for days and I didn’t know what to say to her about it.

We ordered pizza. I thought it would be a great idea to add dessert, so ordered the brownies. She opened the brownies box and it was cut into nine pieces. Perfectly divisible for the three of us and now we’re crying all over again because nine divided in half means Beck’s not here. You can’t just do 3, 3 and 3. Half a brownie is terrible.

So, I’m working on it. 95 days as of the first of November when I’m writing this. Just outside those 90 day business windows. Too long and somehow just as if it was yesterday. I’ve been told that things get better. I’m starting to see changes, but I don’t know that I would call any of them better. We will see as time marches on. We’re heading into the holiday season and it’s going to be rough.

I will get back to this. I will continue to tell stories and to write and play games. It will just take time, because grief is weird.

Missing Parts

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I broke down and went looking for stuff on the internet. Almost everything out there is aimed at women – widows as opposed to widowers. I suppose that makes a certain amount of sense given that women tend to live longer. Usually. Except when they don’t.

People keep asking how I am. How the hell do you answer that? I’ve taken to saying “I’m still here…”

One of the things that I’ve struggled to put into words about this massive loss is a lack of intimacy. Not just sex stuff. While that is ‘intimate’ that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about all the little things of a shared life. Tiny moments from every day. Shared life experience that’s not there with anyone else. Even when Beck was sick and couldn’t do much she was here. I could sit and smile and hold her hand while we talked about dumb shit we used to do. She knew every part of me and I knew every part of her. We spent more than 30 years having dinners, going to the gas station, having fancy nights out or throwing parties (then clinging to each other at the end). That is gone now and it hurts – more than I ever understood what hurting could mean. I’m a fucking wreck just typing this. I haven’t cried in decades until this summer. Now I can’t stop. Everyone tells me that’s expected but that answer doesn’t help. I don’t have my person – the one who was always there for stuff like this.

I asked at one point, “Who will I travel with now?” and friends pointed to my daughter. I know I am biased, but I’m going to say it anyway – my daughter is a delight. I love her like mad and going places with her is great. While being great is true, it’s not the same as being able to take a romantic vacation to a mountainside in Tennessee. It’s not the same as waking up with somebody in a beach hotel and wandering down to a brunch with crepes and mimosas because you’re going to stay in and just be with each other all day. This is all of the intimate crushed up into a condensed time frame. Going out someplace new and creating new memories.

As my wife continued with her health struggles over the years the adventures changed in tone and type. They were less active and more thoughtful. Things we didn’t do for various reasons, but we were still out there. It was us against the world, wherever in the world we were. She struggled, but we were together. Toward the end Beck’s conversations tended to be less conversational, and she became all but a shut in. Her ability to walk deteriorated under mysterious circumstances and she spent a lot of time in her chair in the living room. She was still here.

I would take any day of that for any price right now. I am missing part of me and I don’t know how to fix it. Like any wound, I suspect it will heal over time. I’m just not sure how long that will be. Eventually I hope to post more regularly here – but I don’t have any spirit to get there right now. We’ll see.