It's My Last Weekend Being "Gainfully Unemployed"

I've had a lot of ways of spinning my year-and-half off of working. I've used the term "gainfully unemployed" to emphasize that I'm doing more with my time than just playing video games (though playing video games has been a significant component). I've used the term "self-financed sabbatical" to further press the idea that I am working on education and creativity during my time off. I've also used the term "convalescing" to remind myself that there is a strong element of healing, both physically and emotionally.

And as I reflect on my last weekend before starting my new job, I have this sense that all of these terms are accurate and true. The amount of good that this time off has done for my physical health is apparent in a 5 second glance at the mirror. The good it has done for my mental health can be discerned by a momentary reflection on my mood, which is generally relaxed and cheerful these days. The amount I have learned in the last year and a half is enormous. Then there's the experiences I gained from living in another city with wise and intelligent room mates and their wise and intelligent dog.

I'm a bit nervous about the new job, but that's to be expected. I also feel confident that I'm up to the challenge. I'm excited about the fact that it's a long but reasonable walk and close to the kung fu studio's new location, so it'll be easy to get lots of exercise while working a desk job.

I'm a little bit sad that I'll have less freedom. On the other hand, I will have to carefully consider how I use my free time in order to still be constructive with it without undermining the restorative necessity of it.

And it'll be nice to have a new desk to store some of my toys. In the game industry, it's not just possible to be an unapologetic nerd, it's an asset.

Should be a good time.

'Sup, Beamdog?

Just a quick bit of news:

I have accepted a job at Beamdog, a video game developer in Edmonton famous for updating old BioWare titles for modern consumption, especially on mobile devices.

I'll be heading in for my first day this Monday. :)

Condolences, Fort McMurray

How soon is too soon? Then again, maybe the real problem is that it's getting to be too late.

What's happening in For McMurray is a tragedy. It's inspiring to see Alberta working together, spontaneously, to assist, to encourage, and to empathize.

It would be crass to use this moment for any kind of political manoeuvring, or to push any kind of agenda. But at the same time, this suffering is exactly what makes it so important that we talk about why this happened, and how we can prevent it from happening again, even if this topic is unpopular with many Albertans.

There have always been fires, of course, but fire fighters have stated that this one is especially destructive because of soaring temperatures and dry conditions. Increased temperature and reduced moisture are what models of climate change predict for our province. Without climate change, this fire likely would have occurred anyway, but it wouldn't have been able to spread so quickly or inflict so much harm. Climate change doesn't cause fires, but it does increase the chances that they will be bigger and more devastating.

Of course, we've seen economic disaster in the oilsands region this year as well, thanks to plunging oil prices, so many Albertans are afraid that if the world turns away from fossil fuels, we'll lose many livelihoods. But solar panels and wind farms don't install themselves; there will be many jobs implementing these solutions. It's just as possible to create jobs with renewables as it is with fossil fuels. And how useful is it to create jobs with fossil fuels, when those fossil fuels then destroy everything that so many people worked to acquire?

I hope this doesn't come across as opportunistic or partisan. This is just a plea to see this tragedy as something more than a stroke of bad luck: this is our future if we don't do something to change it, and the solutions are not only good for us environmentally, they're good for us economically. We can't turn off the oil and the pipelines tomorrow, but tomorrow we *can* invest in developing more solar, wind, carbon capture, and nuclear solutions that don't destroy the lives we're working so hard to create.

Check-In: 2016-03-31 (Thursday)

Diet: fruit, moderate sugar
Exercise: walking
Sleep: a bit short, though wake-up time was reasonable
Mindfulness: need to do some meditation
Spirit: walking in sunshine, games, visiting with friends, corresponding with family

I am starting to get settled into life in Edmonton again, a process that was thrown off a bit by my getting sick within a few days of arrival. In particular, this disrupted my sleep, which I am once again struggling to deal with. My plan is to get out of bed consistently in the morning and train myself to get tired at night again. I'm only a couple days into the plan so I'm pretty tired today. Hopefully tonight I'll be able to implement a midnight lights out and get to sleep by one or two.

I could use some meditation time, too, a practice I have fallen out of. I will try to get some in this afternoon.

Otherwise I'm doing pretty well. Good to see friends and family again. I'm currently gathering up tax documents to get them out of the way and looking into getting my car insurance lowered since I'm not commuting right now.

Of Wheat And Hayfever

Sorry for my long absence from the blog, but I have recently been hit with a wave of vegetative erotic activity--that is, plant pollen. For the majority of the past week, I have been getting hit with classic hayfever, including the sneezing, itchy throat and eyes, and immense lethargy. And this is while taking anti-histamine.

What's interesting about this is how long it has been since I have had bad allergies. I noticed that last year, I had much milder symptoms. I had also hypothesized that it might be the reduction in wheat that reduced my allergies, since my aunts have found other auto-immune disorders like arthritis were better on a low-wheat diet. And recently I have been eating a lot of wheat.

So for the last several days I have returned to a low-wheat diet, and lo, my symptoms have tamed themselves quite a bit. Now this is bad science, of course, because there is only one data point, no control group, and I am unable to control the variable of how much pollen is in the air. In fact, I don't even know how much pollen is in the air. It's possible that the season for poplar pollen has ended and that's why my symptoms have abated. But it is still one more datapoint suggesting that wheat somehow causes the immune system to go rampant.

So I'm going to stick to the philosophy of, "I don't know the science of the low-wheat diet, but I feel better when I am on it, so I will keep going with that."

Check-In: 2016-02-25 (Thursday)

Diet: fruit, vegetables, moderate sugar
Exercise: walking, swimming, chi kung breathing
Sleep: a bit late to bed, but good hours
Mindfulness: meditation, breathing
Spirit: meditation, breathing, walking in nature, sunshine, games, movies, friends, corresponding with family

One of the disadvantages--such as it is--to staying in a place where plants bloom in February is that some of these plants cause my immune system to go into complete fits. I think we're just coming up on poplar fluff season, which means the poplar trees are currently spraying their gametes over everything around them. So I suddenly find myself at the height of allergy season.

Fortunately I've been dosing myself with antihistamines which takes the edge off. Also, the frequent rains here do help keep the air clean on a regular basis.

Mark, Karen, and I watched the original Star Wars last night. It was interesting to compare and contrast to the new movie. In particular, I can see that the new movie copies the original even more than I thought, including the same arm on C3P0 being damaged. I wonder how the two movies compare on a beat-to-beat level--do they match timing as well as content?

I'm not sure this changes my opinion of the new movie, exactly. Sure, I'm less impressed with the new movie now, but the viewing strangely brought the original down a little as well. Something felt less magical about it than the last time I watched it. Sure, it is still a great, fun adventure flick, but it no longer makes me want to write "jedi" in response to my religion on a census form. Then again, it was always Empire that really brought the force to life, so we'll see what happens when we revisit that one.

I should probably write up a review of the new movie now that I've had a chance to meditate on it a little.

Check-In: 2016-02-22 (Monday)

Diet: fruit, vegetables, moderate sugar, moderate wheat
Exercise: walking, swimming, light yoga
Sleep: late to bed but well rested
Mindfulness: light yoga
Spirit: walking in nature, dog, friends, corresponding with family, old Star Trek, Star Wars, imagination, ASMR, digging a hole, contemplating the future

Looks like a bit list under Spirit lately. Maybe I'll dig into that since the other categories are maintaining the fairly consistent refrain of the past year.

So first up is dog. Dog--in this case, one named Luna--is an interesting experience because she is such an emotion mirror. She tends to reflect back at you what you are feeling, though she does have her own feelings occasionally of course. But it is easy to get her to go on a walk with you if you can express your own excitement at the idea, getting her all excited too. It is also very easy to calm her if you project your own calm. It's interesting to have this constant emotional reflection.

Karen and I are still making our way through season 1 of the old Star Trek shows, with Mark swinging by occasionally for his favourite bits (he has seen them all so many times he doesn't need to watch the whole show). I'm listing this mainly for its entertainment value, and for the fact that I have seen many of them, but so long ago I only remember fragments. We just watched the first appearance of Khan, so now I'm interested in following up with Wrath of Khan. Probably after the end of the original series.

We also saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens for a second time on Friday. It is a flawed show, and there is a split in the house as to whether or not these flaws are forgiveable or not, with me and Karen in the forgiveness camp and Mark and Karen's son, Brendan, being less forgiving. The show is, as Mark put it, just a game of moving some archetypes around, and I think he is right. It is not original in terms of its plot line. But I find that the plot is well executed at least, and I really enjoy the texture of the archetypes, if that makes sense. I like the way the archetypes are expressed, and I find that expression emotionally effective.

Regardless, my interest in the Star Wars franchise has been rekindled after being turned off for many years by prequel garbage. I am now daydreaming about lightsabers again, and this has generally led to a desire to do imaginative and creative things. Which is why I have decided to walk to a coffee shop where I can do a little bit of blogging and email clean-up in the interest of getting back into the writing role, even just as a hobby for a bit.

The phrase "digging a hole" is code for "playing Minecraft", a game in which a lot of time is spent punching trees to turn them into wood, using the wood to build picks, using picks to mine rocks and gold and diamonds, and all of the above to build a giant LEGOlian monstrosity. I'm current constructing a giant marble tower with an enchanting table at the top for making magic tools. It's pure entertainment, but does provide some creative outlet as well. I just need to make sure I don't disappear down the hole I've been digging there.

As for the future, I'm currently researching degree possibilities. I know I contemplated kinesiology last year, but my experiment with learning anatomy didn't go well, my interest instead being captured by tornadoes, meteorology, chaos theory, economics, French, artificial intelligence, and futurism in general. I'm beginning to think that I am more academic than I previously thought, and might enjoy a more academic career. To that end, I'm researching a little bit about Masters degrees. Though my list of mad schemes does still include the possibility of teaching Yoga in Edmonton for a bit--and these may not be contradictory schemes.

More on that later. For now, I need to go tidy my inbox and learn a little more about how Masters degrees even work.