This is one of the first and finest pictures I have of me and my daughter. Forgive me the luxury of its size.
It was taken in mid-January of 2006. Kaylee is about three days shy of five months old — about a month older than Sean is right now.
I can’t tell you a lot about the picture. I know some friends were in town to visit and were in the background, chatting away. I know Kate (whom I had just met) took the picture. I have no idea why I was giving my little girl a bath at 10 pm, although I suppose I can make an educated guess.
What I can tell you is that, when I think of pictures of me Kaylee, it is that picture and this one, taken a few months later, that I think of.
It might be safe to say that when I think of Kaylee, these things are what I think of.
Here’s the most recent picture I have of my baby girl.
Kaylee graduates from kindergarten today. My spies tell me that her class will be performing a song called “First Grade”, sung to the tune of “New York, New York.”
I’m leaving, today…
I’ve learned some lessons in the last five and a half years, most of which have been delivered painfully and at regrettable (if ultimately fair) personal cost, and this picture reminds me of the most important.
Be there.
It will never matter, ultimately, how many promotions you got, or how many pages your wrote, or (certainly) how many levels you gained — the final accounting of your life only tallies one thing: the memories of you held by your loved ones.
I am (quite literally) here to tell you that the time you have in which to create those memories is so infinitesimally, astonishingly, vanishingly small, every chance flickering away like a bad film projection in the space between breaths.
Forgive me for the cliche, my loved ones, but they grow up so fast.
I’m so very proud of my little girl for how far she’s come, and I can’t wait to see where she’s going to go.
But goddammit, I wish she’d hold still for a little while.
The world is a crazy place. Unexpected things happen all the time, and while I may plan to be around to have the Important Conversations with my kids, I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Or today. I could choke to death on the ham sandwich I make for lunch. These things happen.
There are things I want my kids to understand about me — what I think about the Big Questions like life and death and religion and Faster Than Light Travel and why it’s important that Han shot Greedo first. I hope I get the chance to have those conversations, but maybe I won’t, so I’m going to write them some letters.
And I figure I’ll put them up here, so there are as many redundant copies as possible.
What I Think About Space and Traveling Faster than the Speed of Light
My life has been roughly analogous to that tired duck cliche: churning madly beneath the surface, but kind of boring and not blogging very much up above. Let’s see if I can’t provide you with a clear view of my feathery, web-footed underside.
Daddy
Obviously, this is the most important news. Sean Douglas was born on January 25th, which mostly explains my lack of internetting during February.
Adorable. Helpless. Determined to destroy your work/life balance (in a good way).
I’ve walked the Daddy Road once before, and while much of it is familiar, every kid is different, and there are all kinds of Sean-shaped cul-de-sacs and loops and trails and dead-ends that I’ve got no previous experience with whatsoever. Still, Kate seems to think I know useful tricks and baby-optimized kung-fu, and I hate disappointing her, so I soldier on.
I’m tired, obviously. Neither Kate or I can really work on anything for extended periods of time without interruptions unless our counterpart takes one for the team for awhile.
And it’s undeniably awesome.
In a nod to parent nerd solidarity, I’ll mention that I was very disappointed that I really had no record (or clear memory) of the first few months of Kaylee’s life, other than a few crappy cellphone pictures, so I’ve endeavored to find a better way to outsource my exhaustion-depleted brain for Sean’s early days. I’d originally bought a nice calendar/notebook to use as a journal (because who doesn’t love to have an excuse to buy another nice notebook?), but in the end the solution we’re actually using is the nerdiest: a private Twitter account on which Kate and I both post notes about our day-to-day challenges (and retweet relevant stuff from our main accounts to capture that information as well), which is then compiled and archived in a blog (again, private).
The end result is a dated journal of thoughts and notes that we can access and update from pretty much any device we own, including our kindles. There may have also been some early use of Google Docs spreadsheets to track feedings while we performed them, but I’m not saying.
Dayjob
Kate was sure that as soon as Sean was born I’d get a non-contract, long-term job offer, simply because that would be the point were it would finally be convenient for me to be home.
I call this "specialworkdrink".
Kate’s very smart. I did in fact get an offer the day after Sean was born — a proper job at a place I’d done some short contract work in the past, so that’s kinda cool.
Health
I hit an age milestone in February, took stock of my condition, found it moderately functional, but in need of a tune-up, so I’m back to tracking my calories using Livestrong and hitting the elliptical whenever the very idea doesn’t make me weep. I don’t know if it’s doing anything other than make me feel better — I’m fairly certain that’s enough.
Gaming and Entertainment
Pretty much none of the gaming we did prior to 1/25 has survived impact with the diaper genie. Basically, most of those activities required (or benefited from) larger chunks of mutual uninterrupted time than we currently have available; other things have swept in to fill that void for a time — things that can be enjoyed in snatches, abandoned in mid-play without serious consequence, and still produce the dopamine kick I rely on such things to generate. Solutions for this include EVE Online, Parallel Kingdom, and (just lately) a crash course in the wonderful comedy television stylings of Community — oh my god that show is funny. If you’ve ever played Dungeons and Dragon (it’s Advanced!) or know someone who has, you owe it to yourself to at least watch the AD&D episode (do it soon before it falls off their ‘recent’ list).
(Speaking of AD&D: I don’t know if I have an immediate solution for the current lack of face to face gaming, but I have high hopes for Yikerz. We shall see.)
Unfortunately, we have time to watch Community DVDs because our DVR harddrive died and took with it entire unwatched seasons of Fringe, Walking Dead, Leverage, Chuck, and… I dunno. More.
Online/Writing
I’m not entirely (or even mostly) silent on the internet. I’m writing regular columns for MMO Reporter and somewhat less regular things for Green Dragon Inn. Of course I tend to do most of my casual online chatter on Twitter, which is one of those go-to places to visit during a 2am feeding.
There continues to be book-related news that I can’t really talk about yet.
I’ve got a pile — an actual pile — of things I want to write about, including more Letters to My Kids, but right now… well, while I certainly could find the time to write them, I choose to spend time on other equally-important things for a little while longer.
That’s it?
That may be it — I’m more than a bit hazy in the graymeat-memory-head-area thing, so I’m sure I’ll remember something else soon. Until then, let’s revisit this nerdrage-inducing image that never fails to make me snicker.
Things have been fairly quiet here on my home-blog, as it were, but nothing’s been very quiet for me, so I figured I’d document my current areas of activity, just so people know.
Those of you who see what I see on Twitter and in GReader might be aware that I’m writing stuff for MMO Reporter now. It’s a newish gig, but a topic I enjoy, and I’m learning a lot about the industry in the process. I’ve also been sharing a less newsy rant or two with their sister site, the Green Dragon Inn, though that’s a bit more intermittent, since I have other ports through which to vent my spleen.
In related writing-for-other-people’s-internets stuff, I’ve been asked aboard a new webzine project targeted towards gamer women ages 25+ with families and/or careers. You might ask why me, since I’m am not a woman aged 25+ and very likely never will be, but that’s OKAY, since I will in fact be providing a weekly column from the point of view of a dad+gamer, something I’ve got some experience with. The title of the column has been determined, though not by me, and it’s not something I’d have suggested, so we’ll just forget to mention it for now, shall we? Title notwithstanding, I’m excited about this project.
There has been some bookish news that I can’t really talk about yet, but I will say: when I got it, it did not ruin my day. So there’s that.
What am I working on? Well, it's not steampunk.
Speaking of writing, I neglected to save my work and lost several key and painfully constructed scenes in my current novel to power failure. There may have been a lot of primal roars and some swearing. I’m quite angry with myself over the whole stupid thing, and have assigned myself nothing but apples and porridge until the scenes in question have been rewritten to everyone’s satisfaction. (Not much of a punishment, since my porridge is actually oatmeal with honey and raisins in it, but it’s the best I’ve got.)
In any case, learn from my mistakes and make sure your autosave function is actually ENGAGED, and not simply adorning your options panel like a quaint but dusty cameo necklace.
Anything else? Oh yes, I’ll be a father (again) in a few short weeks, and we (read: our contractors) are racing to finish Kaylee’s new bedroom in time to get all her stuff moved and all of the bear cub’s stuff in place. Permit delays are a killer. (As is the stress of finding out one of your foundation walls is not so much a “foundation” as a vague suggestion of stability.)
Have I found a “regular” job? No I have not. The market is so terrible it can hardly be dignified with the name; it’s really just ten million people wandering the aisles of eight million empty stalls — bit more of a maze than a market — a maze with no entrance or exit. Cheerful!
And that’s it — now you know where I’ve been, and I’ve blown the dust off this particular window enough to realize I’d like to clean it off properly and do some work here.
My short-term contract job came to an unhappy/happy end on Friday. And while you might assume ‘unhappy for me’, I’d have to say that the real unhappiness was felt by my now-ex-employers, who really wanted me to stay and really liked me; they just ran out of budget.
They liked me so much that my boss basically wrote the new update to my resume, bragging me up even more than I usually do myself. Contract jobs are actually pretty good in that way — you can come in like a superhero, smash the crap out of problems, gird yourself in accolades, and leave before office politics sully your fancy spandex costume.
The big trick is making sure you’ve got somewhere to land when you leap over the next tall building in a single bound. (Freelance writers will find this kind of thing very familiar; it’s a kind of rockstar lifestyle, assuming one reads that to mean “striving to see the difference between homelessness and living out of a tour van.”)
I may have a new gig lined up pretty soon — another -opolis that needs saving from an Atomic Menance — but to be perfectly honest I’ll be happy if there’s a bit of a lag before the next corporate thing.
I am ready to do some other things.
Let’s review what’s on the to-do list.
New cub.
There’s a new kid on the way to the Casa, so there are more than a few home projects going on. The kid’s room is actually pretty much ready to go, but in the meantime we’ve been working on other rooms in the house.
We’ve painted our bedroom and the front greatroom, and of course Kaylee’s new bedroom needs to be framed in and painted and carpeted and all that cool stuff, but we’re letting some professionals handle that, even though I’m pretty sure I could nail (heh) the framing part.
Then there’s painting the house itself. The outside. We must — absolutely must — paint the whole thing before winter, or we’ll need to replace all the siding next summer, and if I’ve got some time before the next gig, I’ll probably be doing that myself and saving us mumble-hundreds of dollars.
The main problem with this cunning plan is that there are three spots where the siding needs to be replaced, and of course the problem spots aren’t anywhere a mook like me could handle it — they’re complicated places like where the chimney meets the house, right under the eaves.
By the way: if you’re in the market for a house, or planning to build one? Fuck chimneys. I don’t care how much you want a fireplace; don’t do it. Embed a firepit in your deck or something. Chimneys are to houses what a bad smoking habit is to an otherwise healthy person.
Anyway. I am pretty much ready to go with the painting thing, but we’re going to have to wait until we can get these sections fixed by someone competent experienced.
Why isn't it ever simple?
NaNoWriMo is on the horizon, and the prepatory murmurs are audible even at this great distance. Some folks have asked if I’m ‘doing’ it again this year which… c’mon. Of course.
But I’ve got a lot of other stuff to do first. A publisher handed me some revision requests which — damn them — are actually really good, so I want to get those done and handed back to my awesome agent before October is dead and gone.
What will I be writing?
Actually, I have a story to finish that needs at least another 50k (well, two, actually, but I’m picking one over the other), so I’ll be getting it down. Yes, I know you’re not supposed to do that with NaNoWriMo, but at this point, I think I’ve done it legit often enough to pfff those kinds of restrictions.
But that’s just me; if you’re trying to finish NaNoWriMo for the first time, BY ALL MEANS OBSERVE THE RULES. Doing it my way (picking up an unfinished story) is actually making the whole thing harder; I’m just stupid self-challenging that way.
What would I write if I weren’t working on something extant? I dunno.
I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t suggest, though: steampunk.
I love the stuff currently lumped in under the heading of ‘steampunk’. Love it. But steampunk is kind of like vampires right now; something people mix in because it’s cool, not because the elements are being used in any kind of meaningful way. I’m getting sick of it.
You want to use the trappings? Fine. Call it whatever it really is, though — zeppelin fantasy, gogglerotica, or whatever.
Punk anything requires class struggle, the social effects of technological revolution, and people with no influence and power rebelling against a monolithic Authority.
Slapping goggles on your protagonist doesn’t make it steampunk.
Ahem. Anyway. Rant over. There’s my advice for NaNoWriMo. At least for today.
Hey, that reminds me.
Last year, I wrote a bunch of NaNoWriMo advice, broken down for day-by-day consumption. People seemed to dig it (and I’ll probably repost them to twitter as appropriate), but would there be any interest in seeing all those posts brought together into some kind of ebook-like thing prior to the start of the madness?
Not to buy, obviously — I’m not wondering if there’s money in it — I’m wondering if there’s enough interest to justify the work of putting it together before 11.01.10.
Is that it? I think that’s it. Damn but I’m out of practice writing these things — this post was all over the place — I’ve got blog-rust all over the keyboard now. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.
Nothing like being blocked from your own site during the day for the last two months to make you really pine to get some blogging done.
Yesterday, I had the very great pleasure of attending the wedding of two friends of mine.
I also got kind of shanghai’d (in a good way) into live-Tweeting the ceremony, because live-Tweeting something automatically takes the Nerd level of an event and doubles it, and this thing was going to be pretty Nerdy.
Super-nerdy. Full-frontal Nerdity.
It was so nerdy that there were whole sections of the evening that referenced nerd stuff I knew nothing about, and I think it’s fair to say I keep up to date on such things. Until yesterday morning, talking with MJ, I had no idea who Parry Gripp was (aside from the guy who wrote the awesome processional for the wedding). I quoted the “shark week” vow in my live-tweets, but I didn’t know it was originally a bit from 30 Rock. I didn’t recognize the recessional music, because I don’t watch Venture Brothers. Most of the boutonnieres at the wedding were made by Paula; I didn’t even know Paula could knit.
Then someone told me they were actually crocheted. Cuz there’s a difference between the two.
Then they explained the difference.
In detail.
That’s actually what I remember most fondly about the dinner after the wedding; the pure nerd-grade enthusiasm I saw over and over again from the people at the party. I passed one table where people discussed the various reasons an Aboleth Slime Mage would ultimately destroy (or subjugate) the (far more impressive looking) Cyclops Warlord that decorated another table. Elsewhere, folks were working out the recipe for a delicious curry soup we were having — reverse-engineering the recipe from scratch.
The thing you love may frighten others.
Kate gave one of our friends a crash course in SLR terminology and some advice on aperture and ISO settings as the afternoon light changed, and a few hours later jumped into a discussion with me and the best man discussing the relative strengths of various MMOs and the fact that Bioware could pretty much take a monthly tithe from our paychecks and just ship us whatever game they released, and we’d be happy.
Maybe this is your nerd thing.
Nerds get categorized and pigeonholed and stereotyped and – broadly speaking – limited by the perceptions of others, but here’s the truth of the matter:
Almost everyone is a nerd about something; passionate, intelligent, enthusiastic, and more than willing to share all that with anyone who asks.
Let me tell you about the Battle of Five Armies, and why it mattered so much to the success of the War of the Ring...
Heck yeah, we’re nerds. Of course we are. We care about stuff.
Like this thing...
Are you nerding out about the idea of a walking/rolling post-apoc town, or the idea of building something that cool in Lego?
Does it matter?
And anyway, those are just the easy-to-define nerd things — the archetypes (or sterotypes).
There’s so much more stuff out there; so much more passion.
“All stuff is Nerd Stuff to Somebody.” — me
There's this...Or this.That...Or one of these.
What I meant by that quote is just that you can find someone who’s passionate and excited about virtually any topic you can think of.
And that’s excellent.
Yesterday, I watched two of my friends get married — vow to always try to be passionate and excited and ready to share — to add one more thing to the list of Stuff they’re Total Nerds about: each other.
I cannot think of a finer promise to make another person, and I am unaccountably blessed to have been a part of it.
This is a post of little to no import for anyone other than myself; it marks the ninth anniversary of the day I moved into this house. That’s it.
I don’t have any pictures from the very first day or anything, but I have some from quite a long way back: one year after I moved in, and the first summer I started doing some serious work on the yard.
