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.