Out of Sorts
Lately if I seem “out of sorts” it is essentially because life is stressful. There are just a bunch of things going on right now that make me want to run screaming into the night. So instead I tend to resort to “bullet therapy” and spend my evenings blowing things up in Destiny. The problem is… once I log out the problems are still there looming. Work is extremely stressful right now, and we have several projects that my group is working on in various states of completion. The stress there comes from the fact that I know we are quickly running out of time to get anything accomplished before the end of the year. From Thanksgiving through New Years nothing really happens… because not all of the right people are ever in the office to make decisions. So there is this looming dead zone, sprinkled with some actual change freezes around each of the holidays where we literally couldn’t do anything if we wanted to. So we are in that mode of trying to get as much shit done as possible before we run out of time.
On the home front, things just ratcheted up to twelve on the ten point scale. Back in I believe July we talked to a contractor about doing some work on our house, because really we are at that critical junction where the wooden siding is in such bad shape that it might potentially start doing structural damage. Instead we are going with a manufactured wood product, and we chose the contractor because they threw in a few nice to haves on our list, like taking a window out of the bedroom and replacing it with a door that opens out into our back yard. The problem is after inking the deal… the backlog of work kept extending. Originally the guesstimate is that they would get to doing out project in September, but due to weather and other things happening here… that got pushed to NOW. I came home from work Tuesday night to find a dumpster in our drive way where I park my vehicle. We expected to have maybe a week or so lead time before them just showing up. NOPE! They are apparently starting Friday… which I had originally planned on taking off anyways to chill at home, have a break from work, and watch some of the BlizzCon festivities unfold.
Now I will be juggling a contractor and picking out a door… and will be expected to have traditional conversations like a give a fuck about any of it. I mean I do care… but I am not that kind of guy. The problem with sporting a beard like I do.. is people for some reason start expecting me to know anything about home improvement, auto mechanics and sports. I am guessing when I was created I came with a malfunctioning penis because I have zero ancestral knowledge about such things… nor do I really care about them. I can fix your computer, and I can build you something if I have the shop and materials to construct it, but that is about as “handy” as I get. So essentially I am going to try and be avoiding as many conversations as I can with these contractors as they tear shit off of the house and make a horrible noise. To make matters even more enjoyable, since I was off anyways… we are going to deal with the heating and air folks… that LOVE to make constant small chat. Seriously I am the type of person that the happiest moment of my day is when I walk into an empty elevator because I know for the next few minutes I won’t have to fake a conversation with someone. Anyways… my anxiety is through the roof right now… so if I seem a little on edge or out of sorts… or at least not my normally happy person this would be why. My buffer is full and I am failing at adulting all over the place.
Convention Hype
The one saving grace right now… is my Twitter timeline is really amazing. At the moment everyone seems to be buzzing and happy about BlizzCon and meeting all of these people that they have only ever chatted with online. There is just something that is infectious about seeing all of these people who really love something… getting to spend an entire weekend doing nothing but that. This is how I felt about Pax South when I was there… it was just this bubble of happiness and acceptance where everyone seemed to think everything that anyone else was doing… was awesome. In part this is why I really tried to make Pax Prime work this year because it is like riding a high when you are in convention mode. I’ve watched my own wife go through this with the math conference that she helped to start, and there is a little pang of regret deep inside you when you see all these people having fun… and you can’t join in. I have some deep nostalgia about World of Warcraft, but right now I am in a phase where I am far more interested about the other Blizzard games than that. I am amped to see more about Overwatch, and secretly hoping for some sort of a Diablo reveal.
That said I am interested in seeing more about Legion and especially if they release a date. I won’t lie that I am finally starting to feel some hype around a Warcraft movie, and in a strange way I completely blame Force Awakens for all of these. Star Wars was a fandom that was nearly dead to me. I will always be a Star Wars kid, but surrounding it was always a giant twinge of disappointment and regret for what might have been. Now that I am nearly to the point of exploding with excitement about Force Awakens, it is changing the way I feel about other fandoms as well. It is like I am giving myself to be disappointed in one aspect of a thing… but still love the thing as a whole in spite of the bad bits. So while there are things that frustrate me with Warcraft, I can see the good in it as well that still exists. I posted earlier this week that I was jealous of anyone who can play the same game every night and be happy with it, and that is the truth. It doesn’t matter what that game is… they seem to be momentary love affairs for me while looking for the next awesome thing on the horizon. I’ve always been that way with fandoms in general… there is always something else that is awesome and shiny just over the next hill. The amount of focus and devotion to one thing is always impressive, but it just isn’t me. In the meantime I am going to enjoy this contact high from the folks who are super excited about BlizzCon because I need some happy to get through the stress.