Try Part Two

I don’t have a ton this week but I forgot to write last week so I’m gonna try a thing. It has been a heck of a couple weeks, though. For one thing, it’s the start of a new semester and my return to full time work, which has been very tiring, even though it’s exciting and a good thing overall. Then there’s just the wider world, with what seems like a relentless tide of wars, mass shootings, disease and assorted varieties of doom. So much so, that today they set the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight, the most negative assessment ever given of our current state of affairs.

It’s enough to make one feel very bleak, and very powerless. But I’m reminded of the idea of the importance of making an effort. And then today, I had a student come by my office who was literally shaking trying to ask me a pretty run of the mill question – obviously they were having a lot of anxiety. That, I can help with. I can try to be calming and reassuring and give that one person some help in what probably felt like a tough spot in their day.

I can’t do anything about the war in Ukraine. I can’t un-wreck the planet. I can’t stop the demolition of the public health care system where I live. I can try to contribute to solutions to those problems by supporting organizations that are working on them. Obviously there are limits to that because I am, for some reason, not independently wealthy.

I can also try to make my immediate world a little better by doing things like supporting my students, trying to be kind to people when I can, and trying to be patient when challenges arise. I believe that art makes the world better, so I’m going to try very hard to carve out some time and energy to work on some of my long-neglected WIPs. It’s been a challenge but I know I’ll feel better when I’m able to do a bit.

I think that’s really all most of us can do: try to do a few good things that are directly within our own power. It probably doesn’t feel like a lot, but I think it can add up to a lot. So I tell myself on days like today, anyway. That’s what I’ve got for you this week. Thanks for reading.

p.s. I feel like I maybe should have something to say about all the Open Game License folderol, but I honestly don’t understand all the issues connected to it to have an informed point of view on it. So, aside from generalized concern about the ability of people who write and create in the RPG field to continue to make a living, I’ve really got nothing.

Try

The new semester is about to start, and in our first meeting of the term, one of my colleagues was talking about a project to help students with resiliency; basically, helping them learn to hang in there when things get challenging. Another colleague was sceptical that we would be able to help very many in the couple years they’re at the college.

Another friend is having some trouble enjoying Star Wars, because (in part) the way the plot has been laid out, we know that many of the successes that we see on screen are only temporary. The Empire keeps coming back. To me, these two things are connected.

They’re also connected to the King Arthur stories (wait come back), which can be similarly bleak, if you think about it. I mean we know how it ends. Arthur dies. Camelot falls. His knights scatter. We’re left to bemoan what has been lost. Even most of his knights (except Galahad, who is no fun) generally fall short of the ideals Camelot is supposed to be founded on. So does Arthur. Does it all mean anything?

As I’ve argued before, I think it absolutely does. First of all, because it is a noble endeavour to try to live up to something great, even if you don’t quite do it. It’s admirable to try to hit a really hard target, even if you don’t. Trying to be good, trying to be a better person, or to do good in the world, has value. Just about no-one is perfect and never makes a mistake. But if we’re trying to be better than our missteps, that’s still worth something.

It absolutely matters, in the Star Wars stories, that things were better for a while. Heck I’m deeply suspicious, these days, of anything that tells me that the bad guys were vanquished forever and everything was fine thereafter. Because that’s not usually how it works. There always does seem to be that next problem. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter that we fixed the last one, and that we shouldn’t be proud of that. It does, and we should. We made it better. Star Wars, very generally, is about trying to make things better.

It absolutely matters, to me, if we help a few of our students, even if it isn’t most of them. Heck, I think it’s worth doing this project even if we only help one. Because then we helped one. We made it better. All we can do is try our best with the resources we’ve got, and hope that maybe we make it quite a lot better instead of a little better. But even a little better isn’t nothing.

So yes, I still enjoy it when they blow up the Death Star, even though I know the Empire is going to build another one. I still like it when Spidey foils the Kingpin’s evil plot(s), even though there will undoubtedly be another villain along in a minute. And I still love Sir Gawain, King Arthur, and the rest of that hot mess of a knightly court. Because they tried, man. And things were better, even if only for a while.

One of my favourite parts of Andor was the character of Nemik, the idealistic Rebel with his manifesto. The extract from that in the final episode never fails to move me, and the last line of it – “Remember this: Try.” – is a motto I am going to try to adopt as I recover from my surgery and try to get back to a place where I can write. And I think it’s an idea we need in the world. Even if our efforts only make things a little better for a little while. That’s still not nothing.

Thanks for reading.

2022

Apologies for no blog entry last week; due to various holiday related factors, I wasn’t able to write it on the Tuesday and didn’t feel like I had anything significantly fascinating to do it on another day. A week later, and I’m not exactly drowning in ideas this time either. Looking back, for a while I did a sort of year-end retrospective post around now, and obviously the internet is awash in them right now.

I guess I’ve felt less like doing one recently because a) there’s only so many ways to try to spin ‘wow it was a tough year, but by god we carry on’ and b) I don’t have any particular insight or perspective on the world at large that would make it overly compelling. That’s if we consider the world at large, so maybe I shouldn’t for the purposes of this.

In my own selfish little universe, 2022 revolved around two things: I got my book published, and I got my heart fixed. Both of those were undeniably good things, both were significant challenges in different ways, and both leave me with something to think about for 2023.

I was very excited to have a publisher for Easter Pinkerton and the Case of the Heretic Blood, and it never gets old having the physical object that contains the story you made up in your hands. It’s been fun, also, hearing from people who have picked it up and enjoyed what they read. It’s hard to think of a better compliment you could give me than spending some of your time with my imaginary people.

At the same time, though, I haven’t done a great deal with my imaginary people in the past year. I’m still finding it very difficult to write. Basically what I’ve learned about myself is that I really need chunks of time when I can put the rest of the world aside and just think about a place that doesn’t exist. That’s been hard with so many things from the real world so insistently impinging all the time, and I hope that my writing productivity will improve with a few less urgent worries in my mind. One of the good things about accepting that I will always be a hobby writer is that whatever level of production I get to is fine in the big picture, but I do miss the feeling of when the words are flowing and fun things are being created. I hope to get back there at least a bit more in the year ahead.

Getting the surgery I needed on my heart was obviously very good for me. It also involved a lot of stress from the effort to make it happen, and the recovery from it is a lesson in patience. I feel mostly back to myself now, although getting back to my previous level of physical fitness is going to take a while. There’s no reason why I can’t, but I can’t just flip the switch and be back running a half marathon any more than I can press a button and have the next writing project done. No quick fixes.

One of the things I really noticed about my interaction with the healthcare system is how overstretched everyone is and the problems that come from that. This is the result of many years of healthcare not being properly funded. I do not believe it is the inevitable state of a public healthcare system, but rather is the result of choices made by politicians. Right now, I absolutely believe there is a deliberate strategy to pave the way to for-profit healthcare in Ontario by starving the public system of funds.

So there’s challenges like that ahead in 2023, which can make me feel a bit grim when I think about it. On the other hand, much like the freshly-created word document, the year ahead is a space unfilled. So I’m going to do what I can to put some good stuff in there when I can.

Thanks for reading.