Housewife Space Captain Part 4: The Long Night of the Soul

(You are reading this story in progress. To start at the beginning, please click here. To view the Table of Contents, click here. This story is being written live, daily, and with some audience participation in October 2013)

10/11/2013-

  It’s 4:30 in the morning. I’m supposed to wake up in a half an hour to get the day started, and I haven’t even been to bed yet.

  I don’t know what happened. I started playing the game as a single-player, and there were so many more levels and so many more tasks to do.  The great part was that I never had to repeat my orders or discipline my crew; they did everything I asked because they were programmed to.

  The bad thing was that I stayed up all night playing a stupid video game.

  I can’t even say I’m mad at myself, or regret the time. I was in my flow. I was in a perfect zone. The night flew by, and I was exhilarated. I felt proud of myself, confident.

  Frustrated sometimes, sure, but I felt powerful. Like I was making things happen, not just accommodating schedules and “fitting things in” for everyone but myself. I was owning it.

  Or pwning it, as the kids say.  Do they still say that? They used to say that.

  Anyway, even though I had to wade through take-out containers to get across the living room, I decided to write in here instead of cleaning up like I should have done last night.  I just want a few minutes to relish this feeling.

  Powerful, effective, a real leader. A get-r-dun-er.

  I conquered whole solar systems. I ran negotiations with three separate races of aliens. Some of them didn’t even speak English and I had to use a weird program to tell me how to contort my body to communicate with them!

  And the Theommis. . . They worshiped me. They kept telling me that I was exactly what they had been looking for.

  I even—and I can’t believe I’m writing this—I even went online this morning to tell the game makers how to improve the handling of their Space Zeppelins. It’s so obvious after playing with them that the gravimetric thrusters need to converge to a ring, not a point, because the field will center at the point anyway, and you need to leave  yourself enough leeway to get the damn thing through the wormhole. So instead of threading a piece of yarn through a sewing needle it’s more like parking a car.

  And they need to do something about the overhead displays; they are so disorienting. When I turned off the display, my motion sickness nearly vanished. Plus, you don’t bank in space, so if I stayed off the planets by negotiating treaties, I didn’t have to deal with the atmospheres as much.

  I don’t know if they’ll respond to my emails. I feel like that time when I was in middle school, and I wrote to Mars Candy asking them how much rat hair was in their products. It’s a silly thing, but important. I was so excited when they wrote me back.

  I hope they write me back.

  Anyway, I need to get the coffee brewing. I’ll just wake George and Isabella early, and have them help me. I’ll cough a little and say I stayed up coughing all night. Hopefully none of them will walk near the game system and feel how hot it is.

  I wonder if I should play the game again, and see if I can win it even faster this time. I don’t believe that no one has ever finished it; it’s a fun game, but it’s not rocket science.

OK, maybe I should just stay away from the game. Here I am, not having slept all night, and I’m contemplating spending part of my morning playing the game instead of trying to catch a nap if Juliette lets me.

  I should take a nap, or clean, or do something constructive. I can’t wish my life away on a stupid video game, right?

  I can’t believe I’m having such a hard time letting it go. They must design these things to hook down into your soul.


Click here for the next entry.

Part Three of Housewife Turned Space Captain: the Game

(You are reading this story in progress. to start at the beginning, please click here. To go to the Table of contents, click here. This story is being written live, daily, and with some audience participation in October 2013).

10/10/13-

   All this stink over a little video game, I don’t get it.

   Kyle and Julio were playing their newest video game, “Theommis Wars.” I thought it was “The Amish Wars” at first, and then, when they cajoled me into playing the game with them, I saw the actual name. I asked them who or what the Theommis were, but they didn’t know.

  Anyway, they needed a fourth player. One of their online friends had dropped off the game or something, and they wanted me to fill in. So I was like, “Ok, I’ll play.” I mean, I like video games ok. They make me nervous and my hands sweat, and yes, sometimes I get a little sensitive if people are giving me too much of a hard time, but these are kids, right? Nothing to worry about.

  Anyway, in Theommis wars, you’re flying a space ship. Only it’s a lot like a hot-air balloon or what do you call it? A blimp? There’s another word for it, like the rock band. 

  A Zeppelin.

  So you fly a Zeppelin, and it’s weird, because you don’t think you’re going to move fast, but you do, and the damn thing swoops and banks in this crazy way. I actually had to pause the game for a bit and take a motion-sickness pill, because I was going to throw up. It’s all this crazy motion.

  So I play the game, and there are all of these challenges you have to go through, like obtaining the gravity drive, stealing into a space fortress in the middle of the night, laying siege to a pre-space-flight civilization, etc. It’s neat. Weird, but neat.  And half of the civilizations you meet are these kind of steam-punk aliens that you feel really bad for because you’re—you know—subjugating them. All with this one little ship.

  Well, you get more ships later on, when you become Fleet Admiral, but the first 15 levels are all with one little ship.

  I got really into the game, and as I kept winning, I got less scared. At first, the kids were making fun of me, talking smack, doing what kids do, but after a while, they shut up and just did what I told them. Apparently the guy who dropped out was the Captain. And, well, I’m a Mom, so I’m pretty good at giving orders and organizing things.

  To make a long story short, we won.

  The boys freaked out. They jumped up and down and broke some glasses (which I made them clean up), but they wouldn’t stop whooping and hollering that no one had ever beaten the game. They both hugged me and high-fived me all night, and when George came home, they told him all about it. Even he was impressed.

It was fun, although it was a little embarrassing. I mean, it’s just a video game.

  I’m actually kind of glad it happened, because if it hadn’t, I might not have ever written in hear again.

  I missed writing this morning. I was just so busy with getting the kids ready

  Why am I lying?

  I wasn’t busy.  Or, I wasn’t any busier than usual. Really, I just didn’t want to open up the journal. I didn’t want to read what I wrote last night, to even remember it. That’s why I started this on a new page. So I wouldn’t have to look at last night’s entry.  And here I am, bringing it up, when I was happy just to let it live in the past.

  Maybe I’ll go downstairs and sneak in another game. I’m sure they have a single-player version.

Click here to read the next entry

Butt In Chair

The greatest writing success tip I've ever received came from nanowrimo: Butt in Chair (BIC or AIC, depending on your customary vocabulary).

"Butt in Chair" is actually what I've been doing all this time with no posting. I actually have been posting, just not at this particular blog. I've been busy writing content for four other websites/blogs, plus contributing to at least two writing projects in this time, and several unrelated-to-writing projects.

Well, nothing in my life is ever unrelated to writing, but you know what I mean.

What is "Butt in Chair"? It's writing.  Although I long for the days when I can have half an ergonomic keyboard strapped to each wrist, thus allowing me type in any body position, for now, the only way for me to type is to put my butt in a chair and pound the keys.

Why is "Butt in Chair" so important? Because writing has to be a priority. And it can only be a priority if you commit time to it daily (or nearly daily, but on some schedule, depending on temperament). Some people strive for an hour of writing a day. Some people set goals for a certain number of chapters or scenes per week. I personally am a fan of 300 words per day (although I often write 4-5 times that, and, during Nano, have hit several 10k+ days). Goals are important, but dedicating time to your craft is even more important. Time is money, after all, and even the Bible says, "For where your treasure is, there will be your heart also" (Luke 12:34).

Why am I quoting the Bible at you (as an Agnostic, it is really an odd habit)? Because it's a saying you've probably heard before, and because it's true. If you break down your finances to look at where  you spend your money, you'll see what I mean.

For example, my finances say we spend the most money on where we live, and second, on food. Since food is very important to this food addict, that makes a Hell of a lot of sense. In other families, it may be entertainment, or vacations, or cable.

But you can also look at your priorities (note, I don't say values, I say priorities) by looking at where you spend  your time. Most of us spend most of our time at our 9-5's. That makes sense. We all have to eat, right? (If you don't like this, my blog about Bucking the American Dream might be for you).

Second on that list is usually time with our loved ones: family, friends, spouse.

Third on that list is usually our favorite hobby.

I leave off here "decompression time". Most of us spend several hours a day watching TV. We don't really care too much what we are watching, we're really just recovering from the demands of those around us. I throw that in with our work-day, because if we weren't holding down soul-sucking jobs, we wouldn't need to decompress as diligently as we currently do.

So what is the third-largest chunk of your time? Is it reading books? Is it writing? Is it doing household chores? Chores may not seem like a "hobby" of sorts, but it shows cleanliness as being a high priority in your life. Otherwise, you'd just let things get messy.

For a lot of us, our priorities are not our values. In other words, we're deeply frustrated (or completely unaware--it depends on the person) that we spend so much time on things we "have to" do, and so little time on things we "want to" do or "should be doing".

This is the classic battle of priority vs. value. If we value giving alms to the poor, but our priority is to live comfortably in the same way our parents did, then we have a struggle (unless you make a lot of money and can do both).  If we value family time but our highest priority is a clean house, we have a struggle.

More to the point of this blog: if our value is writing, but our priority is anything else, we have a struggle.

Values are nearly impossible to change purposefully: what is important to you is important to you. But priorities are merely an administrative pain in the behind to change. The point is,  you can change them. And you do so by structuring  your day.

You dedicate a certain amount of time and/or effort, and you push aside anything that tries to get in the way. Thus: Butt in chair.

If you put your butt in the chair to write, you will, eventually, write. There are plenty of tools to help you, like the Nano perennial favorite: Write or Die.

Scrivener, too, offers a full-screen version to reduce distractions.

No, these people don't pay me to put in these testimonials: they are based on experience and word-of-mouth. I know they work because I use them (Scrivener), or I know a million people who swear by them (Write or die).

The point is, if you put your butt in chair, you will write. And if you write, you will get better at writing. And when you get better at writing, you make all of us happy.

Make me happy: Put your butt in your chair.

Do you have any tools or practices to make yourself write? Comment and share them with us!