Author: admin

Comic idea: I see a row of tents lined up to the building being constructed near my house. I head over and ask if they’re waiting for a new Apple store or something. They say no, it’s a new daycare. You gotta get in early. Maybe somebody in the line is single, I dunno.

This week my creative times have been put to use taking pictures and writing on my new tumblr, which is dedicated to cataloging the bizarre games of a small arcade machine that a friend gave me. At first I hunted high and low for a small, affordable tripod solution so that I could record the screen directly from my phone. I didn’t want to buy something expensive because I didn’t know how long I would actually stick with the project. My solution came from raiding a “Stikbot” set (stop-motion animation toys for kids) that was on clearance for $7, which included an extremely basic but functional tripod.

I filmed my first game and immediately realized I had no interest in editing said footage, so, still photos it shall be! Glad I didn’t spend more money 🙂

Anyway, I may not work on it every day, but the amount of time that making a post takes has so far fit nicely with my weekly SMART goal discussed previously.

Thing I Saw: My daughter, who is big on climbing things lately, sitting atop her little art table and yelling “HELP” at passers-by because she thinks she’s stuck now. We ignore her for a little while because we’ve specifically asked her not to climb on tables, and we feel it’s useful for her to reflect on how this situation came to be. On the other hand, she’s 2, so probably not doing a lot of reflection.

Thing I Learned: I’m on a second (or fourth maybe?) major playthrough of Skyrim, and until this character I’ve never done the Aetherforge quest chain. In it, you discover that the famous author of books on a specialized dwarven forging technique (lost to time) is actually a fraud who murdered his research partner to take their findings for himself. After adventuring about with the ghost of his partner, you find the forge yourself and make a nice piece of equipment with it. But! Well after this quest is over you can randomly run into the author and his guards, who recognizes the Aetherforged gear, flips out, and tries to kill you. And in my case was successful because of powerful magics. So I ran away :3

I’m Grateful For: Family in my life.

What I’ve been finding lately is that I don’t look up very much. Inside, outside, wherever. As soon as I’m waiting for something or lost in thought I tend to hunch over and look down, but there are interesting things above you that are worth looking at, if only to see something new about your environment and help re-ground yourself in the moment you’re in. Rather than, say, arguing with people in your head while staring at the floor tiles 🙂

I have started and restarted this thought several times but I am grateful for the capacity to listen, and learn, and grow, and change because for a while there I was totally convinced I was going to be another Bigoted Grandpa someday. I thought that there were experiences of living on this planet that were just So Different from my own narrow frame of reference that I would be unable to properly empathize and would just have to throw up my hands in ignorance. And yeah, even with the Power of Learning I am not going to say and do the right thing all the time, which is why it’s so important to keep trying and to listen when people from those other frames of reference challenge me.

Thing I Saw: The Fellowship of the Ring, non-extended cut, for the first time in years. It really holds up, and I can’t say I hugely missed the extended scenes either. Can’t really remember what most of them were, tbh

Thing I Learned: “Madeleines” are little sponge-cake treats that go great with a cup of coffee. I know this because I took a gamble and bought a big thing of them at Costco.

I’m Grateful For: See above!

A lot of folks seem to be doing the #10yearchallenge wherein you post yourself from 2009 and 2019. I became curious so I hunted through my archives and actually…didn’t find a lot that weren’t really dark, but I did get this one:

Let’s compare and contrast with:

I don’t have a lot to say other than the 2019 guy looks like he’s Seen Some Things, and cameras in phones have come a long way in 10 years. 2009 guy will have been feeling very twitchy at that time — September — because for the first time in years he wasn’t heading “back to school” in some capacity. Earlier that year he’d completed his first year of practicum, still (thankfully) one of the most stressful times he’d ever experience, though not the only stressful time, either.

I believe that in a lot of ways, 2019 me is better off than 2009 me. So that’s good.

In other news I’m attempting to revive the “Recently Completed” things I used to write on my tumblr. This year my goal is to do stick with it and write short reflections for each game I complete. I know that I like to seek new experiences in games rather than complete what’s in front of me already, so doing these forces a small moment of reflection before just moving on. We’ll see if I hit my goal!

Thing I Saw Yesterday: A roomful of kids with their hands up, desperately trying to get my attention so they could say the thing they were thankful for. I lead music with a local kid’s church group once a month, and I cap things off with a fun song called “We Thank God” where I take suggestions for things to shoehorn into the lyrics. Some kids raise their hands well before we’ve finished a verse. It’s super sweet. And as I always remind them, “If we didn’t get to the thing you wanted to share, remember that you can just thank God whenever you want!”

Thing I Learned Yesterday: The Pokio creature in Super Mario Odyssey can do a special spin attack with its beak extended, if you shake the controller as much as Lori does when she’s trying to do something else lol

I’m Grateful For: A warm home on a cold, windy day.

Heading to session three of counselling this afternoon. I really like my counsellor, as I discovered last session that he strongly dislikes Donald Trump and enjoys “The Good Place”. The homework from last time was 1.)pick one of my “miracles” and make a SMART goal around it, and 2.)draw Marvin, the Low Self-Esteem creature.

The miracle I picked was that I want to have another creative project going. I miss aspects of making my comics, and as a creative person I like the idea of having something on the go. I was also making those “Nathan Plays” gameplay videos but I’m not feeling those at the moment either. So I want something new. But I realized: I’m not really prioritizing “creative time” at all these days. If I have a spare moment I often plop down on the couch to play a game. How am I supposed to get a project going if I’m not taking time to try anything, or just let my mind wander?

So in brief, the goal is to spend an hour a week either doing something creative or just taking time to doodle and let my mind wander. That’s less than 10 minutes a day. Of course if something is going well I can stay with it for longer than 10 minutes, that’s kind of the point too. I’m doing this throughout 2019 and we’ll see if anything exciting comes out as a result. If nothing else, I’ll know I at least gave myself time to create.

I drew Marvin in a new notebook (because I like buying new notebooks) as part of my ‘creative time’ last week. Maybe I’ll post the picture sometime.

Thing I Saw Recently: Lots of speedruns as part of AGDQ 2019, which at this writing are still being uploaded to their Youtube channel. Inspiring, entertaining, sometimes even heartwarming??

Thing I Learned Recently: I don’t want to do it all the time because it’s a lot of work, but I really enjoy making replacement videos when I can’t be at Sunday School to read the story for the kiddos.

I’m Grateful For: The space in my life to make something that’s mine.

Hello it is 2019! Good of you to join me.

My Christmas went really well. Relaxing times, family times, lil’ bit of tense/stressful/weird times. I felt my mother’s absence very keenly on the 26th, when we had our family gathering, and had quite a cry about it on the drive home. (Lori drove). Not unexpected at all. And I got some exciting gifts. So that’s fun.

Had my first counselling session last Thursday, a good chat with a very chill fellow named George. We talked for an hour and got to know each other, and I got some homework;

First thing is to decide on what I feel is my biggest problem, and give it a name. George explained that when we experience problems in life we tend to internalize them and make them part of the stories we believe about ourselves; that when we experience, say, a lot of anxiety, we think of ourselves as an “anxious person” when we think back on those times. Part of his strategy is to help folks picture those problems as being once again outside of them; that people are not the problem, the problem is the problem. So we’re supposed to visualize problems as an outside entity speaking to us, and then name that entity (preferably something that’s at least a little humorous for us).

I haven’t spoken to him about the results of my homework yet, but I’m thinking I’m going to name my low self-esteem “Marvin”, as in Marvin the Paranoid Android from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This fellow:

Homework part two was to list ten “miracles”. (Hopefully George is not upset that I’m passing along his counselling techniques for free??)

Imagine that you’ve had a normal evening and gone to bed. The next morning, as you look at yourself in the mirror, you know that overnight, something has changed within you. It’s a miracle! But, what happened? Caveat: the miracle must already be within your power to do. So for instance, “win the lottery” is not a good answer, but “I fully believe that I matter” is.

Last thing was to listen to an excerpt of the book The Mindful Way Through Depression which I did, and it was very interesting. One takeaway is once again that you are not the problem, and that expending a lot of metal energy trying to logic and reason your way out of a depressive episode is almost definitely just going to make it worse.

My next appointment’s Friday, and I’m actually really looking forward to it!

Thing I Saw Yesterday: This!

Thing I Learned Yesterday: The game Drawful 2 is brilliant and a lot of fun.

I’m Grateful For: The feeling of being able to start again. I believe 2019 is going to be better.

Today I’m going to talk about The Lookout, my idea for a podcast set in the Paw Patrol world.

Cassidy loves Paw Patrol, I guess because of the dogs and bright colours. So I’ve found myself watching a lot more of it than I might like, and being a cynical adult I ended up with a lot of questions about the world of the show. As a joke, I tweeted this in August:

I was pleased with my tweet and life moved on. Except…I couldn’t quite shake the idea. I kept thinking of segments I might do, or questions I’d ask, or how I could keep a count of the number of times I’d called for the Mayor’s impeachment. Also, I just really enjoy doing podcasts? Sunday Night in Canada is essentially done, and I’ve had a ton of fun guesting on Whatevertown. I’ve been thinking “Podcast” as a new creative outlet for a long time, but haven’t found an idea to seriously jam on.

What held me back from this one was feeling that the internet doesn’t really need a guy of my demographic snarking about a children’s show. So I felt like I didn’t have a good angle. Until a few weeks ago, while chatting with my friend Mike, who misinterpreted my description of the show and gave me the angle I needed:

The show is from the perspective of a citizen of Adventure Bay!

This allows me to ask the questions I want to ask in earnest rather than sarcasm, and also (if done well, which I wouldn’t guarantee) would allow for some good satire of small-town life. As Mike and I discussed, my character (the host) would be convinced that life in Adventure Bay is not normal and his mission would be to bring on guests in an attempt to gather facts and convince others. After all, don’t other towns have, you know, a police force? Fire department? Coast guard? And more importantly, aren’t those staffed by humans, rather than six dogs and a young boy of indeterminate education level?

The issues we discuss in each episode would be based on the events of a particular episode, so it retains a bit of the original “recap” idea. Guests, aka my friends and family, could be other citizens of Adventure Bay or experts in fields related to whatever just happened, and I’d interview them. The smalltown satire part is of course that nobody else thinks anything is out of the ordinary, and my character would get a benign side-eye for even questioning the status quo.

The tone would not go to edgy or mature places. Episodes would be short. Essentially people could sit at a mic, we improv Q&A for a bit, then I edit an interview and record a short beginning and capper.

So, off and on I’m working on writing the first episode. Please look forward to it!

Thing I Saw Yesterday: Six dogs in an hour at the Winnipeg James Richardson airport. I pet one of them, a rambunctious Havanese puppy.

Thing I Learned Yesterday: George Michael performed every part of “Last Christmas” himself.

I’m Grateful For: Things winding down for the holidays, and I’ve actually been feeling really good today.

A thing about me is that I am very much a person who tries to bottle up emotion and not ‘burden’ other people with my problems. But another thing about me is that I wear my emotional state incredibly obviously, through facial expressions, tone, and body language. So, while my first impulse is to keep my issues deep inside so nobody will notice or ask me about them, people can immediately see that something is wrong and ask anyway.

I’m not saying any of the above is healthy, it’s just an observation.

I have officially crossed the last thing off of my Christmas shopping list today, a gift for my Dad that my brothers will chip in for. Hopefully, because we are all terrible at actually squaring up debts and expenses. At least we’ll say it’s from all of us. Getting everybody to agree to something isn’t easy, and for some reason I decided to take the lead this year? Probably not something I’ll try again for a while.

This entry needs something positive. Let’s see. Here, this is a thing I saw today and loved:

Thing I Saw Yesterday: A new snow person by my family. Warmer temperatures wiped out the old one (also it was v.small) and this one’s a little bigger. Hopefully it will last.

Thing I Learned Yesterday: Neither Lori or myself want to go to a certain thing that we’re going to, but we’re committed because we both thought the other person wanted to go. Communication! Not just for modems! 

I’m Grateful For: Normal times with friends during a challenging Christmas season.

So, just now I reached out to get counseling via Lori’s employee benefits program. I gave them my information and now I’m waiting for them to connect me with somebody in the area who I can talk to. The anxiety and feeling of being overwhelmed that I’ve described in these posts doesn’t seem to be going away, so I think it’d be good to talk to a professional about it. But! Because I’m who I am, there were a few roadblocks I had to overcome just to make the call to the benefits people;

“Things really aren’t that bad right now. You probably don’t feel bad enough to try getting help.” 

The Healthlink BC website addresses this and says “Unfortunately, many people don’t seek treatment for anxiety disorders. You may not seek treatment because you think the symptoms are not bad enough or that you can work things out on your own. But getting treatment is important.” 

Also, one time on Christmas Day I thought I had appendicitis and went to the ER. After seeing a doctor it was determined not to be as bad as I thought at all. But I didn’t feel like a rotten person who wasted everyone’s time; I felt relieved that I’d spoken to an understanding, reassuring professional. If it’s true that my problems “aren’t that bad”, it’ll still be good to speak to a professional about them and get advice.

“You don’t really want to bother those nice counselors, do you? Leave them be so they can help those who really need it.”

I’m not “bothering” a counselor to access their services. Talking to people like me is literally their job. Also, as someone once said, the fact that another person has a broken leg doesn’t mean your ankle isn’t sprained. Still needs attention! 

“Since you can only use the employee benefit plan a certain number of times, hadn’t you better save it for when you really need help? “

Nope! As Lori wisely pointed out, she pays the same amount into the plan whether or not we get any use out of it. So I might as well!

Thing I Saw Yesterday: A variety of so-called “Neon LED” decorations at an electronics store in town. They’re things like flamingoes and cacti shaped out of strings of LED lights. But like, the words “Neon LED” next to each other don’t make sense to me, because an LED isn’t a Neon Light, because neon’s a gas, and and and anyway a good fix would be to say “Neon-style LED” decoration.

Thing I Learned Yesterday: Playing Skyrim on Switch with good headphones makes some dungeons legitimately tense and creepy again, especially anything with those friggin’ spiders. I never minded the spiders when playing on the Xbox 360, but now they’re seriously unnerving me. 

I’m Grateful For: Access to health benefit programs through work!

This morning I’ve been thinking about an episode from my university days.

My friend Mike were roommates, and we both took a “Film & Literature” course. One of our assigned readings was a story called The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford. I had read it a little before the deadline, but Mike decided to leave it until the night before, so he’d shut himself up in his room to burn through it. Periodically he’d emerge for a snack or to tell me how much he disliked the story (a lot). Here’s the Amazon summary:

Eight-year-old Molly and her ten-year-old brother Ralph are inseparable, in league … against the world of authority and perhaps the world itself. One summer they are sent from the genteel Los Angeles suburb that is their home to backcountry Colorado, where their uncle Claude has a ranch. There the children encounter an enchanting new world—savage, direct, beautiful, untamed—to which, over the next few years, they will return regularly, enjoying a delicious double life. And yet at the same time this other sphere, about which they are both so passionate, threatens to come between their passionate attachment to each other….Youth and innocence are hurtling toward a devastating end.

Warning: Spoilers Follow! I mean the book is like 71 years old but I feel obligated to warn anyway

On one of Mike’s appearances he stood in my doorway and angrily declared that the only way he wanted this to end was with the brother killing the sister, simply because he disliked the story so much. I didn’t say anything, because that’s exactly what happens; I’m a little hazy on the details, but essentially the brother ends up shooting his sister in the wilderness on a hunting trip or something. A little later Mike yelled “YES” from the next room and I knew he’d gotten his wish. We laughed about his prediction coming true and discussed the story a little afterward.

The next day, in class, the professor began to talk about the story and excitedly praised the ending, claiming there was “no way anybody could have predicted the ending.”

You should have seen Mike and me light up and look at each other, but neither of us said anything. I guess nobody would have believed us anyway.

Thing I Saw Yesterday: A very good episode of “Would I Lie To You?”, one of those British panel shows that is a rare thing; comedy that both Lori and I laugh at. 

Thing I Learned Yesterday: How to do an F# on a ukulele. It’s way up on frets I never use! What’s up with that! And I’m supposed to go D -> F# -> Bm for this song? Seriously??

I’m Grateful For: A much calmer 2nd half of the week. Seriously, I was ready to quit everything on Tuesday, but I’ve been much more well-adjusted (and sleeping properly, which I think was a big part of the problem). 

Lori had leftover pumpkin stuff in a can, so she made pumpkin oatmeal for us for breakfast and neither of us really liked it very much. So my breakfast was pretty light and I had to run to get to work, but when I arrived, a coworker’s wife had dropped off a big thing of Tim Hortons coffee, donuts, and muffins!

A Christmas Miracle! 

This Christmas season I discovered a men’s choir from Vancouver called Chor Leoni, and they made a Christmas album (“Star of Wonder”) that is so good. It is beautiful and warm and full of the “hopes and fears of all the years”. If you have Spotify you can use this embedded thing, and if you don’t, please find a way to hear it. 

In other news I am using our superfast work internet connection to download all my archived games from GOG.com before finding a way to close or deactivate my account. I loved their service in the beginning but a recent series of troubling social media posts have soured me on them quite a bit. Their social media person was fired, but the vibe I get from the company is that they aren’t committing to being better, just hoping it’ll blow over. 

Thing I Saw Yesterday: New episodes of Counterpart are appearing on Crave! This was one of my favourite discoveries last year, a mature sci-fi spy thriller set in Berlin and starring a (quite fantastic) J.K. Simmons. 

Thing I Learned Yesterday: Like three different people voice Dorothy the Dinosaur in the Wiggly, Wiggly Christmas! special on Netflix. No wonder she always seems to sound slightly different. Also there is a Wigglepedia because of course there is

I’m Grateful For: New musical discoveries to broaden my horizons!