Brian D. Buckley

A photo I took two years ago. Creepy, no?

Last night I made some decisions that will help me retake control of my life. Due to the illness and other factors, I’ve felt for over a year now that I’ve been living under a cloud. I’m going to do two things today that I hope will shine some light back in.

Can’t post any details yet. Probably next week.

Thank you for reading. At the risk of getting all sappy, it really is a comfort to have somewhere I can write about this stuff.

The last three days I’ve been very sick. Feels good to be on the mend. The old cliche is true: you don’t appreciate your health till you lose it. I appreciate it now.

Lately I’ve been practicing mindfulness again. Not with the intensity I was working at Zen before (and maybe that was a mistake anyway), but quietly, without an immediate goal. Just watching myself and the rest of the universe. Thoughts, feelings, sensations, and the murky creatures with legs in several categories. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of believing that your thoughts about the world are the world. Thoughts are tricky like that.

The truth is, I get sick a lot.

Big storm this morning. When I woke up, I could hear it rumbling overhead, pounding the earth with rain and lightning. I like storms, actually. “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” – that’s fun every once in a while.

It’s getting quieter now. The storm’s moving on.

I’m going in to work early today to make up for the two days I missed. That feels good too. Work in the early morning feels special, somehow. Secret. Protected by the pre-dawn dark.

Yeesh. I’m getting poetic. I’d better stop before we go full-on stream-of-consciousness.

Have a good day, and I’ll do the same.

Welcome back, hypothetical reader. Did you miss me? I missed you. Abstractly but sincerely, I missed you!

I’m home sick today, so I’ll keep this brief, but here’s a quick rundown of the last two weeks:

• FourthCon happened on Saturday. Details and photos coming soon, hopefully tomorrow. Now that the planning is over, I can finally take a breath and relax for a bit.
• I got to see Trube-san again, which should really happen more often. We talked shop and discussed my new Top Sekrit Projekt.
• Betsy and I started season 6 of Deep Space Nine, which means Dukat’s got the station and Sisko’s gearing up to kick some ass.

And what’s new with you?

Things have been a little bit busy and I am going a little bit crazy, so I’ll be taking a brief blogging vacation. I know it won’t be easy for you, compulsively clicking Refresh for a fortnight solid, but make the best of it. Although I can’t confirm, I hear there are things to do…outside? 🙂

Yes, this is a thing. Apparently.

I drew that as a kid. The date at the bottom says November 3, 1999, so I would have been fourteen. I liked Zelda, if you couldn’t tell.

It was a reproduction (freehand, not traced!) of this:

This was part of a phase I went through where I re-drew a lot of official Nintendo art, mostly Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64. I liked the art, but what I really loved were the games.

I think most kids, at one time or another, find worlds so captivating – so fantastical, but so real – that all they can do is revel in the magic and try to pay homage as best they can. They dress up, they write fan fiction, they draw pictures, they play make-believe. They’ve opened the portal, and all they want now is more.

I still love those games, and their magic has only dimmed a little. But the art, the homage, is different now. As an adult, I honor the works I love not by copying them, but by trying to make something else that makes me feel the same way. Sometimes I still do it with visual art, though more often now it’s with writing. But the intent is the same. Rather than enshrining someone else’s magic, I want to create my own spells.

Have you noticed a similar change in yourself as you get older?