As various things in daily life continue to drive me to Lovecraftian heights of peace and contentment, a pair of odd things cropped up only a few hours apart the other day.

I’m reminded suddenly of the need to update NV’s welcome post, but two of my keenest professional interests are writing and voice acting. Interestingly enough, a magazine editor I’ve done work for in the past officially extended an offer to me for another project I had heard was on the back burner.

Things are somewhat hush-hush at the moment, but it’s very good news for my resume and portfolio. Oh, and I have three days to get a first draft done for further conceptual development. Oh well, it’s better than the 12 hour start-to-finish deadline I got one other time (which I pulled off, thanks).

That development alone would have made falling out of bed bearable for the rest of the week, but then I  rechecked my email because I’m an internet paranoiac and hope to trip up the Singularity.

I need to do this again now that the list is  bigger, but I sent a demo recording to several literary podcasts several months ago to see if I could land anything as a contributing reader. After having assumed I’d either been lost in the shuffle or hadn’t provided the right kind of sample, I suddenly found myself with a story to record.

Actually, knowing how busy the next few days are shaping up with that magazine and some other projects, I recorded the whole thing last night. Editing should only take a few hours. The source reserves the right to tell me I suck so I’d rather not name the show right now, but let it suffice to say I did a little spit-take when I saw the editor’s name in my inbox.

The astute observer will notice absolutely none of this is certain, and I realize being happy so soon could just be a case of premature congratulations. The timing, though, feels weird and, whether I say this with tongue in cheek or not I’ll let the reader decide, cosmic. If nothing else, I’ve got some neat stuff to work on this weekend.

Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against New Year’s celebrations. I have nothing against Christmahanzaquannika or any of the other myriad celebrations that crop up in early winter. In my adult life, I have found you don’t have to be personally convinced of a ritual or observance’s correctness to take something away from it. I’m simply in the unfortunate position of never having felt much wonderment at the turning over of the calendar.

Have I reached milestones? Sure, but most of the ones I can think of were academic, and occurred midsummer. The surrounding winters were all either too early for anticipation or too long gone for enthusiasm.

Have I ever hoped for anything? Of course. I’m hoping very badly for something right now, and have been for years. It’s difficult to trust one New Year will bring changes to one’s life when several have come and gone without it.

Pardon the doom and gloom; I don’t mean to piss on your fireworks. I’m only saying that New Year’s has never meant much to me one way or the other. I don’t think, coincidentally, that I’ve ever managed to stay awake until midnight, and I’ve certainly never been anywhere but home. That last part isn’t a complaint. I hate crowds; never bother looking for me in Time Square.

This year, on the other hand, is actually slipping by with some modicum of notice. I am, predictably, in bed. Alone, groggy as hell and in all manner of physical pain from completely reorganizing my room all day, I’m lying here thinking about the few things I’d really like to see come out of 2012. Unfortunately, two out of the three major ones are entirely dependent upon people I don’t even know exist yet. The bit in the Serenity Prayer about “the things I cannot change” has never made sense to me. Why would I worry about something that does lie
within my power to change? I’d just got change it. That doesn’t leave me with much else to indulge myself in worrying about.

I’d keep talking for a while to prove I’m really not in a bad mood, but I really did a number on my back today, and I can’t discuss what hasn’t even considered happening yet. Bear in mind: the Ghosts of Christmases Past an Present had a lot more to say than the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year to you all,
Matt

PS, look at that: I made it past Midnight. Small victories, ladies and gentlemen.

I just thought of the perfect title for an RPG campaign I’ve let bounce around in my brain for years. I wanted to slam it down somewhere with a time stamp before I lose it.

I’ll speak more about it as it takes concrete form, but the single sentence pitch is:
“An exploration of Buddhuist concepts expressed through urban fantasy horror.”

I was heavily influenced several years ago by Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and heartily recommend it to anyone engaged in self exploration. I did not intend to arrive at a name with subtle undertones of homage to that respectable work, but I will admit the obliquely similar phonetics made me laugh when I said it out loud.

“Zen and the Art of Homicidal Maniacs.” It’s taken me a long time to land a title for that one.

As a side note, I recently attempted to record a pilot entry for an audio diary I’d like to start up, mostly for the audio production practice. I chatted for about 45 minutes, only to have the file end up corrupted when I stopped. I seem to be establishing a trend, here…

I’ve been away from reliable Internet for the last several days for the holiday season. In that time, I was given an iPad. Thanks, Mom. On the long ride home, I acquainted myself with the keyboard by hammering out an unusually long post in the preinstalled Note app. Aside from it’s length, it was more somber and honest than I’d normally publish in a non-fictional piece. I don’t mean to imply I’d ever be intentionally dishonest when discussing myself; only that I wouldn’t normally go into so many details.

Unfortunately, once I was back around wifi and could set to work on the tablet in earnest, I promptly deleted the entire post while attempting to transpose it into WordPress. It was completely my fault, but was perhaps not the worst thing that could have happened. I wrote things that needed to be written, but acknowledged openly that I was addressing myself without giving consideration to the reader. It might have been an interesting read, and having it online would have certainly provided me with a concrete personal reminder for however long this site exists, but it might have also come across as self flagellation or even self aggrandizement, which were things I did not intend.

Either way: it’s gone now. So it goes. I can at least try to summarize it’s message for the curious.

In the nearly three years since I purchased this domaine, I have made almost no use of it. I intended to provide myself with an emotional and intellectual outlet while promoting myself in the pursuit of a career. My specific choice of career has changed several times in those years, and may change again. Suffice it to say I have never yet held a position I’d refer to as “my career.”

I have also developed a serious addiction not to any chemical, but to self hatred. While I believe humility is a virtue worth practicing, I also believe, or have come to believe that virtues behave much like essential chemicals: any of them can become toxic in high enough doses. Whether the reverse is true for vices is something I’ll leave the reader to decide.

Ultimately, I have forced myself to embrace the prebuilt ease of blogging software as part of a goal to escape the fatalistic stagnation I’ve become dependent upon. Future content will be designed to showcase my talents as a writer, host and thinker, as well as my interests in entertainment and social awareness in this world of multimedia. I am of course aware that there isn’t anything inherently special about having and voicing opinions in the age of the micro blogger. My methods are limited, but I do have means of promoting myself as aggressively as I am comfortable with so, while public exposure to this blog cast will be specifically limited at first, I am content to preserve the honesty of not being constantly aware that I have something to sell.

I’ll be happy for anyone who finds something of use here. I’ll even be willing and eager to discuss my content. What I write and say here is not, however, created for anyone’s explicit benefit but my own. If that sounds unwelcoming and conceited, recall that I have always been first in line to denounce whatever achievements I may have been accused of reaching, and am engaging in a kind of public self-rehabilitation. If it makes me sound any less crass, I’ll points out that I have no criteria by which to gauge success, assuming I happen across it in the first place.

All that said, I don’t intend for this to be a dark, introspective journal. My thanks to anyone who chose to read this statement of purpose to it’s conclusion. If nothing else, you’ll be better equipped to adjudicate anything else of mine you review than, I expect, most other people.

That’s all I have to say tonight. Hopefully I’ll provide better entertainment in the morning.