Day 35 - Decisions that cannot be reverted are the hardest

 

Day 35 of an NPC-like log.

Finally feeling better! There was a spirit in my house apparently. Some mischievous demon tied to one of the clothes given to us by neighbours. As a natural protector of my home I got drained to hell and back from it's presence. My wife got rid of it, candles drums and all. After leaving house we got clearer heads, figured out what was going on and prepared a full battle-plan. In the end I had to discard that garment away from home. 

I cleaned out the upstairs bathroom. It's not much of a bathroom to be honest. Just a place for washing machine. Still I feel better after cleaning all the trash that amassed there over the year. 

Carving is hard, or rather feels hard to me. I'm not used to hobby that doesn't allow mistakes. In writing or IT you can always remove mistake and do it again. In carving that piece of wood is lost, you cannot undo a cut. This is what is hard for me in woodcarving.

Kida like with life.

Day 34

 

Day 34

 

Started to whittle a little fox.

 

Translated some pages of my book into english.

 

Still tired.

 

Is there some magic solution to this? 

Day 33

 

Day 33 and friday!

I'm tired.

I wish to not be tired tomorrow.

Goodnight.

Day 32 - fear and excitement are two sides of one coin

Day 32! A round number!

So it seems I will be leaving my current company. Not sure what exactly was the tipping point. Incompetent management, boss firing people by screaming at them during meetings, or just how outright bad is the product. At first it was stressful to take this step. Now I'm more excited than afraid.

I translated a few pages of my book to english and wrote another short story from Blackmist Woods. This time about witch helping young girl win the heart of a cursed hunter, by cleverly re-interpreting words of the curse.

I also bought some pieces of wood for carving. I have two ideas. One is to carve out a fox figurine and the other to make a few relief trees from flat wood. Idea is that if I can manage that, I will buy a sheet of magnet and glue it to the backside of those relief-carved trees. Should be fun.

After weekend in my wife's world I got sick. To avoid making it worse I decided to skip this weeks fencing lessons. I'm getting better but hell, how I hate situations when I don't have even an ounce of strength, energy and motivation.

Day 31 - Some nights I stay awaye, cashing in my bad luck

 

Day 31

Sometimes I'm sick of it all. Some days having wife and kids is not all that fun and happiness many may think it is. Some days their behaviour infuriates me to the point of boiling, breaking, reaching limit.

My wife is a lovely woman of a sporty girl disposition. Also a total slob unable to keep any place around her from succumbing into a mess. She is smart, clever girl that could forget her own head on a bad day and learn advanced abstract concepts in tenth of normal time on a good day. In stressful situations she tends to make matters worse by never being sure of anything and constantly changing her mind.

My daughters are two joyful, energetic, healthy little scoundrels that leave constant mess in their wake. Older one can't focus on a single thing for more than a few seconds, while younger one can... but only to cause some mischief. Older one has enough charisma to convince a wooden statue of the dog to bark, while younger has a mix of empathy and insight into others that allows her to steal a cookie right from someone's hand.

On a good day they are my joy and love of my life. On a bad day they are constant sources of stress and exhaustion.

Today, when situation cornered me into a rage I ended up grabbing a sword and hitting my training dummy. Is it normal for a flat-edged dull training sword to cut into spruce wood up to a centimetre deep? I hope so, otherwise there must be something wrong with my dummy.

Day 30 - time flies, slightly worse than fruit flies

 

Day 30, so it has been a month.

 

A long month during which each day I wrote something here.

 

I used to write my own blog with more of a philosophical purpose. Blog full of my thinking and rambling. Back in the day, I guess, I had nobody to share my thoughts with. So just writing them down in electronic form on blog was enough. Nowadays my life is much better.

I sometimes wonder what the future will bring, what will happen, what will change. In the end though I find it futile. Future is unknown, unpredictable and uncertain. I will know what happens tomorrow precisely tomorrow and not a day earlier.

Day 29 - bets are off!

 

Day 29, it's almost a month now.

 

Health getting better but probably will miss training this week to get myself back into acceptable shape. Perhaps I will write more, I lost some of writing sessions due to all the chaos recently.

Work is boring and kinda vague now. New version dropped on Friday and it works... erratically. Not sure what the problem is, but it's my job to diagnose this app.

I'm thinking about ordering some carving wood and making something bigger. I'm eyeing ebony fox figurine from Elder Scrolls Online as a model I would really like to do. Not that I'm guaranteed to succeed...

Still tired though...

Eh, life is life. I'm finishing Boku no Hero Academia. Friend told me that ending was controversial among fans. For now plot is quite similar in beats to Fullmetal Alchemist. My current bet is that Deku is gonna end up quirkless at the end.

Day 28 - home sweet home

 

Day 28... and it's good to be home!

 

I'm not a big fan of travelling. Seeing new places is okay, but all the trouble one has to go through for it doesn't seem worth it. Eating food you can't be sure of, uncomfortable beds, hours spent in car, train or plane - too much for me.

I enjoy staying at home, rarely leaving my country or even region. I had some really nice trips, places far away that I have fond memories of (like Prague) but in the end I'm a stay-near-home person. My own comfy bed, my family, my favourite food, everything tailored down for me over the years.

Perhaps this is why in the end I like reading and writing slice of life. Stories that show characters normally associated with grand action living a much more mundane life.

Day 27 - can we leave now?

 

Day 27.

 

Going on, continuing the work for someone else despite exhaustion and pain. This, I think, is love. Also accepting someone's shortfalls and weaknesses.

 

I'm sick and tired. If I could I would return home today. But for my wife I stay, I take care of our child so that she may have some time for herself, her hobbies, her world. 

Day 26 - so sick and tired of being sick and tired

 

Day 26. I fucking hate day 26.

I'm heavily under the weather and my latest training was too much. I feel sick and tired and I'm sick and tired of it. I'm trying to be better, to be more than that. For my wife, for the woman I love. But I'm not a robot, ya know? I can't just swap some wires and postpone flu and muscle pain for a few days like it's some bad alarm clock.

Talking about robots and time. When I write science fiction I do not find IT, my own field of work, to be interesting or cool. I find mechanics, engineers, people doing physical work on a spaceship to be much more amazing. I guess I'm a bit burned out. I loved IT for years, I was maniacal about AI! From elementary school up to the end of my university years. But after a few years of having it all as my day job... it all lost it's magic. Or rather became the type of magic I don't really like.

A soft type of magic without clear rules is something I don't really like. I still can enjoy the story and world building around it, but there is something fundamentally wrong with it that makes me disconnect from magic system. This is why it's easier for me to fantasize about being a mage in the world of a game than in, say Harry Potter series. I'm no superhero in Boku no Hero Academia, I'm not a wizard like Gandalf nor Harry. I love rules. I'm a warlock from D&D, a Nen user from HxH, even a sorcerer from Dark Souls or a Witcher.

IT is very much like soft magic. IT being like magic was part of the reason why I loved it in the first place. It still retains a lot of that, like literally creating something from nothing. However IT gained a lot of arbitrariness from soft magic. Hacking into something often relies on enemy making mistake, being lazy or just undiscovered flaw in security. Modifying footage from camera or photos is now just "AI did it".

This is why when I use IT people, hackers and the like, in my stories I treat them like arbitrary wizards. They have exactly all the abilities needed for the plot and nothing more. And they use them only when it's plot relevant, being too lazy to solve other issues with their magical powers. Or sometimes their powers just don't work, who would expect?

Installation wizard will now proceed to fuck up your day.

Day 25 - I'm soo tired

 

Day 25, I wonder how long will I keep it up?

 

Another fencing lesson, this time footwork. Damn footwork, my legs hurt. Not as bad as when lady novice dentist fucked up my tooth of course, that one I will never forget.

 

My daughter doesn't accept anyone from close family (mother, father, sister, dog) to be away. She panics and gets almost hysterical, hard to calm down. Today it hit me - she was for almost whole life raised with our cat, who died this summer. From her perspective cat just one day went to the doctor in car and never returned (diagnosis was dire, to say the least and cat was put down there, I sometimes still cry, I miss him). Now anyone leaving seems like a death sentence.

 

Recently I don't get enough rest, enough sleep, enough time to recuperate. Kids, training, work, housekeeping, it all takes both energy and time. 

I may not be able to make the next post in time. Or maybe I will. Time tells.

Day 24 - between love and a sharp blade

 

Day 24! I feel like this number is somehow significant.

Woah, it seems my boss really fired someone on a team meeting again. Today he tried convincing people it's not his normal behaviour, but as I already said - it was not his first time. 

Another afternoon fencing lessons. Long-sword in a stormy weather, hoping no lightning decides a tall guy with steel bar is a good target. Also dodging hail and drying off your wet clothes with breathing techniques. Surprisingly fire-type meditation breathing technique is amazing for turning up the internal heat. Wim-Hoff tricks are similar but without visualisation. My master is already trying to persuade me to go to another tournament. I don't feel ready though.

This week my wife has her own tournament. A horse riding one. I'm taking care of our kids in the meantime. I hope everything goes well and she achieves what she set out to. She got some praise from my fencing master after participating in open tournament with me, we also have a funny photo of use crossing swords with description "how to solve marriage arguments 1o1". Between my fencing and her horse riding we are practically one functional knight!

I never really liked concept of animation cancelling in games. It felt like character has a seizure trying to do even most basic combo. Thus I was thinking about another way to do combos in my game. For now my idea is that auto-attack has three to five animations in a chain. Every skill also has starting position that matches end of one of the auto-attack animations. If you fire skill after correct auto-attack it fires immediately. If you fire it after wrong one your character will first assume correct position creating delay. In addition each skill also should end in position for next auto-attack so that players can weave them together easily. Of course delay from changing position could be also used to fool enemy. Now to hammer out the kinks, make animations and figure out how to implement this system.

Day 23 - chugging the hope-filled coffee

 

Day 23.

 

I tried to keep myself up but exhaustion of last three days caught up with me and I ended up with several naps today. Still feel tired as fuck, will most likely go back to sleeping after this post.

 

Talking with a friend it hit me just how bad official (and often famous) campaigns and scenarios for D&D are. Curse of Strahd basically starts you with bulky description of the area and a few over-tuned encounters against your first level players with nothing more than "good luck not killing your players". Nothing really useful for dungeon masters, just like books and other sources it all caters to players. As someone who ran D&D, Savage Worlds, Apocalypse World and a few other systems over the year, with addition of being a pretty good writer, I could probably write scenarios/campaigns that would be much better. perhaps I could even write them system-agnostic with special pages on which monsters to use in my favourite ones.

Yes, I'm feeling pretty good about my writing. I just noticed I recently got royalties for my books from Amazon, meaning I officially earned some money from my writing. 

Other than that - my co-worker shared with me that he doesn't feel good coming back from holiday leave to his job. I guess I can't blame him. Project we work is is a failure on basic premise, like teaching cat to do your taxes. Every manager that was competent enough to notice this was fired by higher-ups and now we are mis-managed by horde of idiots. Like literally - one of the competent ones had to be replaced by five people, and those five still can't do together all he been handling alone. Today they started upgrading the product to newer version, and there are already problems on installation. They have already at least five issues before we testers even got to see new version. That's insane to me.

And yet the world keeps turning.

Day 22 - Corporations ara amazing at wasting everyone's time

 

Day 22, and what a tiring day it was!

 

Six out of eight hours of my work today were taken by meetings. In which I truly participated and should have been invited for only half an hour, give or take a quarter. I got to hear my boss threaten another manager with loosing the job. It was kinda hilarious exchange:

 

Boss: Since you have trouble keeping this report up do date, perhaps we should give it to someone else...
Manager: oh yes, that would help a lot
Boss: ...alongside your job and pay, since this report is practically your only responsibility here.

Why a lowly tester was invited to listen to managers discussing high level reports is beyond me. Listening to them was almost like psychological torture. Bad stuff.

And so another day ends and I'm tired. Tired mentally and psychologically, while my body haven't yet fully regenerated from the weekend. I did nothing productive, stuck to my seat and headset while people I do not care about talked about stuff I do not care about. I'm not even employee of their company, just a contractor from third party. 

Mug of tea and dwarf fortress is probably all I need now.

Day 21 - the great gamble

 

Day 21 of NPC-like log!

 

While I usually tend to keep it safe there were some situations in my life when I had to take a gamble. One of those gambles was buying a house with a loan. Back then I took a generally considered worse option - higher inflexible payments instead of inflation-adjusted lower ones. That gamble certainly paid off with my country sliding into so-called populism. Government after government kept buying votes from the poorest people in the country by increasing minimal wage, which in turn caused high inflation... and now my monthly payments on house loan are inching dangerously close to be equal to the minimal wage. In addition assets I planned to sell in the future (like plots of land) raised in price too. Sure, my own job isn't as well-paid as it was before, but shrinking my loan down to the minimal wage expense by sheer stupidity of politicians is luck beyond measure.

I think people nowadays are shit scared of risk. Everyone follows guides, reads a dozen opinions, ratings etc. Just to not have that risk pinned to them. If decision was right - they attribute it to thorough research on topic, if decision turns out disastrous - they simply blame the sources for "misleading" them. Or perhaps they just don't want to be responsible? "God wills it" has been replaced by "guide says so" or "research shows that". Nothing changed. No personality, no responsibility, no risk. Just a five star review of a leftmost toilet stand because even most trivial decisions are taken way too seriously. Holy shit replaced by shitty research. Grab a google maps and even streets are rated in terms of congestion, where people go is shown and controlled by algorithm, by ratings.

Ah, yes... fellow NPCs.

Day 20 - I love fencing!

 

Day 20.

 

I participated in a fencing tournament today! Not a professional of course, but this means it was my second tournament ever. I managed to snatch third place, my greatest accomplishment ever in this topic. Despite the fact that I last used sabre like two or three years ago. Most of my tactic came from sword and rapier training. Still, third place out of six people - nice.

Funny enough trick to winning came from my wife's advice. She decided to sign up too, even if just for laughs and fun. After seeing me fighting and then fighting me she said most curious thing - "you fight completely different depending on whether you consider opponent to be superior or inferior to you". For some reason just thinking that I'm better or worse than my opponent causes me to be better or worse in fencing. I guess it all starts in the mind.

I gave it all, now my body hurts. Oh well - c'est la vie or something.

Among other news - today rained cats and dogs for the most of the day, especially morning. Rain stopped for a bit during tournament but otherwise we had small rivers flowing down the streets.

I would like my game to allow skill-based combat. I always liked Dark Souls series, and games made by From Software in general. I will be working on camera lock-on during combat sooner or later. But what about magic? Well, I was thinking to make magic more limited, like D&D4E did. All weapons will have up to five attacks/skills so that gaming mouse can have them all on. I'm thinking about limiting players to swapping between two weapon sets. It will limit tactics, but allow me to show the other set on their character - like for example staff or great-sword on their back.

Day 19 - strutting towards darkest horizon

 

Day 19 of NPC like log, feeling more like NPC today.

 

I'm tired of my life today. I'm in a "father leaves to buy milk and never returns" foul mood. Luckily I'm a dutiful person who would never do such thing, though I must admit I often contemplated suicide back in my younger days.

I was never rebellious in a common image of this kinda kid. I am used to resign myself to the situation, no matter how bad it is. Thus I never ran away from my parents, almost never got into fight, never had an emo or punk phase. Instead, every day when I walked home from the school, I stopped in the middle of the bridge and wondered. How does it feel to fall? What happens after we die? Should I do it now? Thoughts like those, I had them every single time I crossed that bridge. Obviously I never did it, otherwise I wouldn't be writing those words now.

Work is taking a stressful toll on me. I'm surrounded by incompetence, lies and unreasonable demands. I'm not even sure what to do, all is in the hands of others right now. Waiting for others to do something that affects whether I can finish my work or not is the most stressful part of working in corporations. My co-workers from another teams are uncooperative, manager that's supposed to help in this is a very definition of an ineffective person and product owner above it all might as well disappear and nobody would notice.

Funny thing - I'm getting racist from this all. Incompetent person always playing for time? From India of course! Who will be doing everything twice as long while being twice as vocal about their work? USA! Who will follow procedures only when it causes malicious compliance? Polish! Most depressed employee using big words and exaggerations to stress others? Mr British!

I dunno, I wish to be left alone to think and rest, but that's not something you can ever have once you start a family.

Day 18 - life is crazy, but that's peanuts for me

 

Day 18! My log is officially an adult now!

 

 I'm a sucker for abnormal things. For combinations of events and circumstances that while possible, are really implausible. Like two spies from opposing sides living together as family without knowing. Like the mysterious artefact that everyone's after is revealed to be something completely trivial hidden in plain sight. Like people meeting or seeing each other in absurd situations.

At hobbies - I finished several animations today. Current player character got replaced by one that can be modified a bit during creation, also can now walk and run with weapon kept on right arm. Good.

Today, since my kids woke up sick in the morning, I replaced fencing lessons with writing, from which I can return earlier and on-demand. My whole family (except for me) went to sleep mid-day while I worked. Tired I wrote something for fun - a Savage Worlds system based isekai story.

I sometimes wish my life was as exciting as fiction, but then I remember that I actively avoid such excitement and prefer quiet and peaceful life. Still, absurdity of life finds me anyway.

Day 17 - over time chances are always higher than zero

 

Day 17 of NPC-like log!

 

Another afternoon of fencing lessons behind me. I'm tired, my muscles were hurting, but I'm happy. It feels good to move around, use my strength. 

 

Preparing spells for others, how quaint, I never thought in my younger day I will ever be doing this. Some part of me still considers magic to be just a charlatan deception instead of reality. Despite all I've experienced those doubts stay with me like old scars.

 

 I started out relatively young, in middle-school. Intuition and knowledge combined created methodology that became basis for my spells. The idea that you cannot cheat on the laws of physics, but you can cheat on probabilities. Everything that is uncertain can be manipulated. Back in those days I achieved limited mind reading, caused sickness in people, and once even controlled where thunder will strike during stormy weather. 

Silliest thing is that after achieving all of this I wasn't proud of myself. Young me was scared shitless and decided to go to catholic middle school, burned his spell-books etc. In catholic school I lost my faith in monotheistic god, but I never returned to magic.

 

That is - until last year, when my wife got interested in topic. I dusted off my old sources of knowledge surprised to see some webpages still standing. Who pays for their upkeep I wonder? I started keeping new wizarding book. Making notes on experiments, collecting information etc. She is more into natural, witch stuff like meditations, shamanic journey and dealing with spirits. I'm into spells, old rituals and divination. I should probably try her methods too, perhaps some knowledge that I'm missing is hidden there.

Life is like a sword - sometimes it hits hard, sometimes you're the one who swings it.

Day 16 - I need AI to clean my house!

 

Day 16 of the NPC log!

 

At work I seem to be a bit blocked by people who never answer my questions. Guess I'll have to figure some things out myself. What a waste of time.

At hobbies not much, I codified all I want to have in my game to keep track of what I made and what I still need to make.

Today was pretty hectic. Wife went to office, daughter to her dance lessons, all the while I had to juggle the car between their needs. I like to wander, I hate to traverse cities. When stuck in the traffic jam, blocked by a crowd or dealing with idiots on the road I feel strong desire for ability to just explode all the cars and people in the vicinity. Gods shouldn't give me destructive superpowers, I would use them on the first source of frustration!

Interesting trivia about image I used today and a few I considered using. Those are made by AI, which is not surprising nowadays. Many wannabe artists simply grab their favourite artists, mash their works into the algorithm without asking for permissions, and then sell the output as their work. But I noticed something funny - have you ever used Google Image search? Specifically feature that looks for pages where image appears on the internet. Many AI-generated images cannot be found! Not because they are rare or unused, but because AI that matches those images usually cannot tell those images apart. So instead of image I had saved on my disc I got countless similar AI-generated images.

Wonders of 21st century, no?

Day 15 - I like the cold

 

Day fifteen!

 

At work... once again I wonder why do they even keep most of people. If my half-assed work is enough to bring a happy "wow" from our manager, the bar to pass is lower than the basement floor. 

At hobbies I managed to make separate animations for standing, walking and running in the game, changing fluidly with what character is doing. Of course those animations exclude hands, which looks kida creepy. My next step will be to create a few weapon models that could be carried by character. This will make it easier to create hand animations.

Today summer weather finally broke and we had slight drizzle for nearly whole day. Wet and cold seeping into everything left outside. I feel as warm as always, I guess there are benefits to regular exercise and physical hobby.

Day 14 - what makes a good story?

 

Day fourteen!

 

Quite a lot of media recently advertised My Hero Academia to me and I finally decided to give it a try. I find story to be quite fun, though I would most likely never write something like this. I don't like arbitrary "super-powers lottery" magic systems too much. I find systems that have rules much more interesting and elegant. 

 

 I sometimes wonder whether what I write is good or not. And I wrote a lot in my life. There was a meme I liked some time ago. It went like this "every story includes authors core political views, at least on of his fetishes and one of his traumas". And honestly, this speaks to me quite a bit. I could find those things in my stories. Like the character I most identify with will end up with a girl matching my preferences, even if they are just background characters. Trauma from my first love led to at least three different stories where at some point hero is betrayed by his special other. And don't get me started on politics - I portray every single form of government in the worst light possible, drilling the idea that people will cause each other to suffer no matter the system they live in. Of course with time I learned to suppress that. I started adding genuinely good leaders to my stories, no matter how their political position works. I learned to let go of some of my traumas from the past and write different kids of relationships. It took time, but I got there. I can also attribute this to my wife, who talked some sense into me on topic of never finishing the books. Without her I would probably never write my first full book (something I will never release since I do not want legal trouble with D&D owners). By writing the whole book from start to finish I slowly got better at story-writing. The technique was almost unrecognisable between first and last chapter. Then again - I wrote this book for two years straight, at least five hours a week. 

Now I write fantasy slice of life. Focus of my work is on relationships, everyday squabbles and misunderstandings, honest work and cooperation. Whether the world is magical or science fiction is just a background. I could use the same characters and tell the same story in every world.

Day 13 - some stories just write themselves

 

Who said 13 is unlucky?

 

 Today is a fifth anniversary of my marriage. Neither me or my wife remembered, family member reminded us. Funny. We remembered our fifth anniversary, but after that... I guess having kids is too hectic to remember. For my wife those five years were extremely short, she still isn't bored by me. For me those five years were extremely long, I feel like my life before meeting her was just a pointless wait with nothing important happening. We decided to have a little outing tomorrow, assuming her parents can take care of kids for an hour or two.

Today was mostly centred around my daughter. There were try-outs at local dance school and she ended up signing up for one of the courses. Sounds fun, I was never good at dancing but I admire people who do this.

One thing I love about books, that I cannot ever have in other media, is the power of imagination. Discussing my book with my wife I noticed she imagines one of the crewmembers completely different than I do. I think it's fine. If a hundred people read my book and each of them has completely different image for the same character, that only adds to the book. Each of those readers had extremely personal experience, despite book being written only once.

That being said - I'm thinking about next story!

Day 12 - fridays are always lazy

 

Dozen days behind me in this NPC log.

 

Today at work I mostly done what every corpo-rat has to do. Log hours spend this week and write down what I aim to do next week. I ended up making decisions others were too hesitant to make.

 

In hobbies department - I'm still translating my book. Using translation tools between languages I understand not only saves my time (after all I only need to fix bad parts of translation) but also detects any spelling errors that I would normally overlook.

 

After two days of fencing practice I always have two days of muscle pain. Perhaps one day I will not have those pains. One day...

 

On other topics - I wonder if I should make something from leftover wood. I still have some spruce wood after making scabbard out of it.

I had a strange inspiration today, a story about a woman anonymously involved in a forum about sex-topics. Like discussing exotic fetishes and so on. As a throwaway comment she states she would like to be kidnapped by a mysterious lover for her birthday. An on her birthday happens just that - she is kidnapped by a man strong and gentle with her, he makes love with her following closely all the information about preferences she shared "anonymously" on a forum. The following morning she wakes up alone in a love hotel room no longer bound or blindfolded. Her things taken care of and waiting on the table in neat stack. Alongside a letter "I hope the experience was to your liking". I though about writing this, since I don't often write erotic scenes. It also explores concepts of "anonymity" and "be careful what you wish for" in the ways I like.

Day 11 - talk less, do more!

Day 11.

 

Oh how my work bores me! I spend countless hours in pointless meetings. I can't even say that they could be an e-mail because no normal person would send e-mail empty or with lorem ipsum. Nobody wants to make a decision, nobody wants to do anything. Decisions are just an endless hot potato thrown between people "we need another meeting to discuss this topic". Oh come on! You spent three hours talking about trivial bullshit and still can't decide on action that will take five minutes or less to do! And don't even get me started on over-inviting people to meetings! What am I even doing on half of those? Today I got an unimportant task and I did it straight away, while more important work is boggled down in fruitless meetings.

I started translating my latest book into english. Not that one about mage and woodland spirit, but Stellar Debris - a science fiction story I decided to continue in the future. During boring meetings I shall be translating last book on the side. 

Today - rapier training. With dagger in the left hand. I'm terrible, I suck. It's difficult enough to keep track of one weapon on both sides, two is too much for me. Not gonna give up though. With enough time perhaps even I can be at least decent at fencing.

Day 10 - probably the least eventful day so far

 

Day 10, a small milestone!

 

At work - boring. How do they keep making those meetings that last too long and achieve nothing or less? It's dumbfounding for me, flabbergasting even!

At hobbies - not much today. I had great sword training session with amazing people. My scabbard proven useful and I got some compliments about it. Good day.

I... reworked walking animation from scratch using some internet guides. I can accept myself half-assing something, but quarter-assing is too much.

I still haven't decided what kinda story I will be writing next. I'm slowly inching towards fantasy, but at the same time science fiction has characters I've spent a lot of time developing.

Day 9 - we live for small victories

 

Day 9 of NPC log.

 

 I did it! I finished my scabbard. In truth it looks like for a dark souls broadsword instead of my long sword, but at least it's finished and practical. I oiled both sides today after sanding. When the last layer dried up I screwed them together and added rope connecting both ends. Now I can wear it on my arm or back if needed, freeing one of my hands when carrying it.

I also added walking animation to my game project in Godot. Completely not synchronised with movement speed but that will come soon. At least it's no longer creepy T-posing naked lady. Now it's creepy slow-walking naked lady. Progress!

Funny how my co-worker did almost nothing in my two weeks absence and then immediately took his own two week vacations. Really funny.

I also finished story of Blackmist Woods and the mage. With a "happy" ending because all stories should end with success, no matter it's price, right? Can't spoil the ending here, there's a chance my wife reads this post before reading the story.

This means next time I'm either writing new fantasy or continuing science fiction. Decisions. Decisions!

Day 8 - Am I the only one working here?

 

Day 8 and first day back at work.

 

Today I made a lot of progress on a scabbard for my sword. It's made of two pieces of wood - one is actual scabbard, shape of my sword carved inside and it fits well. The other piece of wood is a cover with decoration in form of carved runes. Since I'm still a novice... bah! I'm a literal first-timer in the craft of woodcarving! Decoration is just "BRAVE" in runes. Now it needs only sanding and oiling. Something I hope to do tomorrow morning so that I can have it ready for Wednesday when I meet my fencing master. It will make carrying my sword a lot easier, since now I can put it on my back... like a witcher! I will probably hit the tool shop tomorrow morning too, grab a slightly bigger wood drill to fit internal screws - protection for wood from any wear and tear sourced from rope or leather strap.

Back at work today. It seems there was no progress and nothing happened fot the two weeks of my absence! Seeing this shit I spent most of the day going through old e-mails and woodworking. I feel like my position at the company is pretty much "they loose more than me if they fire me". Well, I'm kinda white raven in terms of qualifications profile so I will find a job for as long as companies need IT department. Right now I'm finding job through and intermediary that take their cut. I could get more money if I was working directly for my target employer, but back when I joined the middle-man company I valued not having to deal with  bureaucracy way above more money. Perhaps in the future this will change.

Magic works in mysterious ways. Localised storm from day 6 seemed to affect only a direct line between my home and home of the people my spell is supposed to protect us from. Just a few kilometres of storm in an otherwise hot summer weather. Funny that it could be one of the interpretations of my spell. Though when I wrote it I did not expect that "things going down for them and up for us" will be atmospheric pressure.

Beware the wild magic wizard! His magic works, but even he does not know how.

Day 7 - I don't feel rested

 

Day 7 of NPC log.

 

 So today is my last day of vacations. Well, technically last day would be friday since weekends are off anyway. Wasn't restful, but still quite fine. A trip to another city, some work on my game, then my wife visited her horse.

As for what I did for the game - to test out animations in Godot I decided to start with something smaller. I animated a torch flame and made it smaller (it was human sized originally). It was easier than I expected, but Godot crashed and had to be opened again during almost every step. Curious.

Next time I'll go writing I'm finishing the story about Black Mist Woods and the mage parleying with spirit ruling it. Then I guess it's back to fantasy as my idea for the next science fiction piece kida spoiled from waiting, and I guess getting exhausted by characters and world. My wife finally picked up my latest book! After some fixes I will translate it while looking for errors and then publish.

I wrote a story about a group of players and their dungeon master getting transported to fantasy world rules by logic of the game they played. Isekai meets Dungeons&Dragons. It's something I first wrote back in university and then did a re-write few years back. I'm not gonna publish it, people would now think I ripped main idea from Baldurs Gate 3, since the story revolved around town being surrounded by essentially shadow lands from act 2 of the game. I also want to focus less on interpersonal drama and make characters less of a caricature of "typical D&D group". I had a permanently horny bard, kleptomaniac rogue, an anarchist ranger and meta-gaming wizard. And of course their dungeon master who was the only one to even want to go back to their original world. 

I must admit sometimes I hate having kids. I hate their angry screams when they are bored and impatient. I hate when my wife screams at me because of something kids did. I hate unending stream of cleaning they create and mess they leave everywhere.
 

It's worth it, I'm happy, but damn... I'd like them to have some kind of "do not disturb" mode. I accidentally managed to raise my older kid in a way she thinks watching Netflix is boring! She constantly wants to play, run around, dance, eat, drink, hide, seek, sing etc. all AT THE SAME TIME.