Welcome to a very special Monday edition of Bottom of the Deck, which only exists because last week was so busy that I didn’t get a chance to type up anything.
The day job took up the majority of my energy last week, so I won’t dwell on it too much; the weekend was far more enjoyable, so let’s focus on that instead. It was my fiance’s birthday, and the celebrations took up both Saturday and Sunday; while my social batteries were completely drained by the end of it, it was a good time all around. We got to see a lot of friends and family, went out for dinner one night while ordering in on the other night, and there were three separate cakes throughout; all in all, fun times. Given how hectic the year has been, it was a great prelude to the holidays; Americans have Thanksgiving, we have a birthday that just happened to line up with the Black Friday weekend, so it evens out.
We also have some good news on the house-hunting front, and just in the nick of time too; like I mentioned last month, my fiance has landed her learnership as a student teacher for next year, which means we have to move closer to the school where she’ll be practising. While we continue to wait for a potential purchase to eventually come through, we have taken matters into our own hands by looking for a place to rent, and it looks like we may have found the perfect spot. This place checks off all our boxes for location, pet accommodation and affordability; we were practically ready to take it sight unseen, but we scoped it out tonight just to confirm, and are now eagerly awaiting a contract. Fingers crossed, over the course of December we’ll be able to start transferring our belongings across, so that come January we’ll be moved in and ready to take on the next stage of our lives. Plus, with a new residential address all but confirmed, I can finally take my job hunting seriously; once I can definitively say where we will be based, I can put out my feelers in a focused radius, and look for something that is more convenient for my income, my commute and my mental health.
While life seems to finally be progressing, creativity is still in a bit of a holding pattern; it’s been hard to maintain with everything else, and at this rate the Fifth Ace Showcase might only return next year, depending on how busy December is. There’s always a lot of social obligations over the holidays, so squeezing in some “me” time can be tricky, and I don’t intend to burn myself out like I’ve done in the past. Most nights lately I’ve been playing Minecraft, Stellaris, or more recently Deep Rock Galactic to destress; funny how my game choices seem to involve digging, space, or digging in space. On the other hand, some days my creativity runs away in different directions than I want it to, and I splurge it out in the form of free writing or conceptual art just to empty my head a little; here’s a little something my brain decided to throw out last week:
It’s probably a fantasy story, it might be sci-fi, I’m not sure yet. The basic premise is that a pair of twins on opposite sides of a conflict clash for the final time, and only one of them walks away; the survivor is heavily scarred and amnesiac, and does not know which of the twins they are. Do they want to know? What happens when the people who think they know, come for them? I plotted out a first chapter, but I’m not sure where the story might go from there, or when I’ll get around to actually telling it; this is what my brain does instead of focusing on existing ideas.
So that’s what I’ve been up to instead of getting blog posts out on time; I don’t know if I’ll post again this coming Thursday, it all depends just how much can happen in the next three days. Otherwise, we’ll be back on the regular blogging schedule next week once again.
Ciao for now.