Ursula Vernon's Blog, page 22

Okay, let’s give this Patreon thing a try…

All right! So as some of you recall, we spent a lot of time talking about Patreon recently, and I really appreciate the various insights from people on the topic. And while I had originally been a little iffy, some of you made some really good points, and we never get anywhere if we don’t try.

I’m willing to give it a try. We have super small donation tiers–$1 or $2, recurring monthly–so…let’s try it.

Buy Ursula Coffee (or Antacids) Fund

Now, the plug may get pulled on this at some point, if I start feeling like I’m not giving people good value for money–I love that so many of you want to kick me down a few bucks, but certain parts of my psyche are fragile in weird ways. And I absolutely, positively PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t want anybody to feel that because they can’t kick in a buck a month, they are somehow less of a fan. You’re not, I love you, I’ve been there, it’s totally cool.

But hey, let’s see how this thing works!

Blind Blue Fox

Finally, I finish this piece! It’d been laying around for over a month. (It’s amazing what not having a book to work on gets you…)

I have the vague feeling this character should be important, but I’m not quite sure how…

Prints available, as always.

Twine, Stuff, Games, Stories, Nothing Much

I’ve successfully ported approximately a quarter of the StoryNexus version of Cryptic Stitching over to Twine. The occasional card gets pruned, the occasional card gets added (there will be words about all those hamsterhide towels!) but mostly it’s holding pretty similar. Achievements are now much fewer, since I don’t need those markers to keep track of variables. (God, hidden variables, best thing ever!)

Thank you, by the way, to everybody who’s said such nice things playing Cryptic Stitching! It’s so cool to have people like a game I’ve made–I mean, art, sure, writing, sure, but this is a whole new field for me and I went way overboard rather than starting small and establishing my skills and all the stuff you’re probably supposed to do. It means a lot to me that so many of you are enjoying it! (Also, in answer to an e-mail–yes, you can totally do fan-fic or fan art if you want, I’m not allowed to read the fic, but I’m delighted to see the art. Consider it a blanket permission, this is not at all a world I’m bothered by having people playing in!)

And I was thrilled to realize today that I do not actually have any art that I’m under deadline for! (There’s plenty of stuff I still need to DO, but at least I’m done with that book and can’t yet start the next one!) It was so liberating I sat down and finished a short story that’s been kicking around for a few weeks. This will undoubtedly end once I finish editing the Hamster Princess book (hopefully tomorrow) and send it in.

Finishing a short story–it’s going to get submitted somewhere, and then if they don’t bite, it’ll go into that anthology I keep threatening to do–I started trying to add up my various stories, just as my own particular metric…

12 short stories (Most which y’all have seen already, and not counting various little vignettes, like the one about Peter Pan and “Night is the longest running show in the universe” and so forth….)

3 adult novels (counting Black Dogs as two, and the one Beauty & the Beast thing out with my agent now)

2 novellas (Nine Goblins, and Boar & Apples, which is out for editing right now, and will form the backbone of said anthology.)

13 kid’s…ah…if I go by wordcount, they’d be considered “novelettes.” Actually, I kinda like that term. Lets them stand by themselves. A dozen novelettes sold, then, two forthcoming, one lurking and unsold. Give it time. (My agent swears we will someday be vindicated on the Battlesheep.)

2 kid’s novels (the witch book, which will be titled Castle Hangnail and the bread wizard one, which is currently in a weird limbo, but will hopefully come out of it in the next couple years.)

Digger, which I’m just leaving as its own thing, because hell. Digger.

That’s…not terrible, actually, in terms of completion. I’d like there to be more novels.

Then I go rummaging through my hard drive and there’s a bunch of things that have been lurking there for awhile, unfinished but which get pulled out and words piled on occasionally. Of those, there’s

1 short story

2 kid’s novelettes (the second Hamster Princess book, in progress, and the poor stalled sequel to Nurk)

6 adult novels

4 kid’s novels

5 novellas (including the next Goblin story)

not including:

2 novels which appeared permanently stalled out, although one never knows…

a couple of odds and ends that could turn into anything

Which seems like a lot of stuff unfinished, I realize–ten novels! Lord! That’s a huge number!–but I find it rather comforting, actually. If I get a mad urge to finish a book, I have stuff where I am finishing, not writing from scratch. And I can be pretty sure that most of those will get finished some day–I do finish things, fairly regularly, and that works primarily because I have nearly finished things lying around. (Next time I get an urge to work on the ninja accountant story, for example, it’ll probably be to finish it.)

So that’s nice.

I could totally be working on my big computer, but it is a cold gray day, so I am under the electric blanket with my laptop. It is lovely. I have tea. I believe will go port more Twine cards. And drink tea.

Sky Blue and Grass Green

In case anybody isn’t on Twitter, a very very short story in Tweets.

Sky Blue and Grass Green

So Let’s Talk About Patreon…

In the last few weeks, I’ve been getting occasional comments and e-mails suggesting I set up a Patreon account, which is a sort of patronage model where a “patron” sets up a monthly donation to a “creator” because they like what they’re doing and want them to continue.

And I have mixed feelings about this, and want to talk about it and get y’all’s thoughts, so here goes…

Point The First: It’s awesome that people want to throw money at me! I am terribly grateful and flattered! Please don’t think I object to that, because woo, hoo, no way, people want to give me money, not a complaint! Trust me!

And I understand that there’s a kind of thing here–a commenter said it very well, actually–which, to paraphrase, is “I’ve bought your books, I’ve bought as much art as I want/can fit on the walls, how do I keep giving you money to keep doing awesome stuff when you’re out of stuff to buy?”

And this, too, I totally understand–one failing of that whole “1000 true fans” thing that went around for awhile was the fact that a lot of creators don’t have $100 worth of new stuff available per year. (There were a lot of other failings, if you ask me, most significantly that it defined “true fan” as “person with disposable income” and I think that’s kinda bullshit. I have fans who cheer wildly for my successes who are scraping by working two jobs, and I resent relegating them to “less-true fan” status even in theory. But anyway.)

So yeah, I can see that if somebody wants to support the Ursula Vernon Experience, there’s limited venues. I mean, I put out two kid’s books and maybe one self-pub a year. That’s…err… well, at current royalty rates, I get $5 a year if somebody buys all three. You can back the Digger Kickstarter (and OMG, so many of you backed the Kickstarter! Still wowed!) but how often do I do a Kickstarter? I don’t even paint that many originals any more, because I’m so busy with illustrations for Dragonbreath, and if you’re out of wall space, it doesn’t matter anyway.

But then we get to…

Point the Second: Owing people things scares me.

People suggested Kickstartering Cryptic Stitching (both the StoryNexus version and the future Twine) and my knee jerked so hard in the other direction I about dislocated my hip.

Because, thing is, if I take money for a specific thing, I have to do that specific thing. And I have to do it well enough and fast enough that people don’t feel ripped off–or that I don’t feel like I’m ripping them off. And if it’s different, in the end, then what they thought they were getting, what if they hate it? What if I am that Awful Person Who Took People’s Money And Made A Crappy Product With It?

This is why I’ve tried to get away from commissions, because the stress about killed me.

Now, I think it’s awesome that people are trying to find ways to make sure that I have the money to Make Cool Stuff and they want to contribute to Getting Cool Stuff Made! I am thrilled that you think I make Cool Stuff! That is awesome!

But there is a voice in my head–no, not in my head, a voice that lives under my breastbone and whispers to me like Sweetgrass Voice, saying What if you can’t deliver? Everyone fails eventually–that’s not poison, that’s life. When you fail on your own time, it doesn’t matter. When you fail with other people’s money, that matters.

If CrypticStitching2.0 never gets made, say, (and lord, I hope it will!) people will be disappointed and I’ll be bummed, but nobody paid me for it, so it’s just a cool thing that I wanted to make that didn’t work out, not a thing that people have a right to expect. Particularly not a thing they have a right to expect on a specific timeline.

At the moment, I owe the following to various sources, either because they’ve paid me or by verbal contract:

1 book cover

2 sketchbook illustrations

1 commission when I get around to it (they’re being very nice about that)

5 Digger podcasts (one is in the bag already, but needs remastering)

7 convention appearances in the next year, 5 of which have attendant art shows and 2 of which require me to write speeches.

1 book fair appearance, with corresponding talk

3 children’s books written

4 children’s books illustrated, at approx. 150 per, so 600 illustrations. (Over the next three years. Only 300 of them are this year!)

4 children’s book covers

Couple of RPG illos for that one cool thing

2 single panel comics

This is kind of a lot. And by that I mean, I just clutched my chest and had to breathe into a paper bag for a few minutes, because holy crap. (And I wanted to get a self-pub anthology out this year, too! Yikes! What was I thinking?)

The children’s books don’t weigh on me as much, because that’s my job and it’s less of a weight and more of a getting-up-and-going-to-work thing. But otherwise, that’s all stuff I have to get done. Some of it fairly soon.

I don’t think I can add anything else to the pile without going barking mad. CrypticStitching is awesome because I don’t owe it to anyone, it’s just a thing I do for love and because I want it to exist, but the moment it becomes something I have to do, the whole dynamic shifts.

Which brings me to…

Point the Third: What are you paying for, anyway?

If someone wanted to throw money at me with Patreon, in support of…err…”Ursula does vaguely entertaining blog stuff AND a couple podcasts AND writes books AND draws pictures now and again AND spends a lot of time obsessing over mulch,” I have no inherent objection to that. But I start to fret a little over the notion of whether people are getting their money’s worth.

I mean, say you’re giving me $5 a month to make the world a slightly odder place. And one month I’m on fire. I put out something like CrypticStitching, which is $25 bucks of entertainment value!

Does that mean we’re cool for the next five months? If I have a bad month and all the blog posts are just “Can’t hack life, busy, talk later” are you getting your $5 worth? If I post a painting, is that worth it? If I get into a fight about SFWA and you’re tired of reading about my outrage that I’m tired of feeling, do you pull your funding?

What’s a patron entitled to? I know somebody who’s doing an icon set a month, which is cool, but we all know it ain’t gonna happen here. I might get two months done and then I’d want to run screaming into the night. If you’re a big fan of KUEC and we have to stop some day because our internal organs have been reduced to pencil shavings, will you be sad and want your money back?

Would it be a better deal if you got my self-pub stuff free if you were a patron? (I could maybe manage that…)

Point the Third Point Five: There’s one element of Patreon I find weird–the way they talk about connecting to creators via their specific forums or mailing list or whatever. It makes it sound almost like the patron gets a backstage pass. And there I start to feel really weird, because believe me, there is no backstage to this outfit.

There’s not even a front stage.

Actually, I think I’m crouched behind a cardboard box with a sock puppet.

So if people buy into this notion that somehow being a patron gets them extra-special access to yours truly…um…there’s nothing extra-special TO access. You’ve got the maximum level of access right here, via blog comments and e-mail. (And feel free to comment! I will even comment back if you have a question I can answer! I hope everybody knows that–I had multiple people saying “Wow, I can comment and you answer!” about the CrypticStitching stuff, and I want everybody to know that’s not unusual–I really do talk on the blog! And on Twitter!)

I am not more me in other places than I am here. There is no hamster behind the curtain.

I don’t want anybody to get the impression that the secret to getting my attention is money. I mean, don’t get me wrong, if you wave a thousand dollars at me, you will have my attention, but it will not be a better Ursula or a more clever one. It will probably be a slightly paranoid one going “Why is this person waving a thousand dollars at me!? Is this an FBI sting?”

Point the Last: All this makes me sound like I’m horribly opposed to the Patreon model, or the patronage model in general, and the thing is, I’m really not. I actually think it’s a really awesome idea to have an easy and convenient way to support people who you want to keep creating stuff. And, in all modesty, this sort of thing actually works really well for people like me, who dabble in a dozen different things and give half of them away for free on-line.

I think those of us on the internet who are kind of…mm…you know, Makers of Random Cool Stuff…are great use-cases for patronage systems. I may not want to buy any particular thing from an artist, but I may be delighted at what they do and want them to keep doing it and want to kick a couple bucks toward them to keep them able to do it. And that’s fantastic!

I’m just not entirely sure that it’s a good idea for me, and I want to make sure everybody knows what we’re looking at in terms of what you get for the money…

So hey, let’s talk! What do you guys think–both of Patreon in general for supporting creators or in specific?

Twinification Continues!

I’m slowly porting everything over–I’ve got all the newcomer quests in, Frogquest and all the various grind* quests from Moon-Stuffing Camp.

It takes awhile.

For one thing, the cards grow enormously upon import–one “card” in StoryNexus becomes at least two in Twine (which makes sense–cause, then effect!) but most of them become three or four (and in one epic case, twelve!)

The current arrangement is that when you’re in Moon-Stuffing Camp, you’ll get access to whatever quest lines are currently “live”–the Frog questline, for example, or talking to the Sorrowful Oryx or whatnot–and then you’ll also have a random grind quest available. There’s ten possibilities, one of which could come up at any given time. If you want to grind, you can, but you can also just ignore it in favor of something else, which will mean (hopefully!) less tedium than the StoryNexus version–you don’t have to keep playing the same cards just to get them out of your hand and hope something more fun will come up.

There will also be a randomized merchant who will appear regularly but not every single time you visit. (Presumably Wool-tribe will be very similar, although I haven’t started that section yet–working on Moon-Stuffing and Streamside at the moment.)

Kevin has very kindly built me a skill check function, which is awesome and saves on typing. Skills are probably going to build more slowly in this version (which is good, because they built comparatively fast in SN–a couple turns in Withyjack and you could max out Keen, for example) but since you will probably have unlimited turns, it should all work out. (There will be a lot of re-balancing in playtesting, I expect…)

Despite the fact that it’s slow-going–on a good day, I can port maybe five or six cards, which, given there’s 450+ in StoryNexus, means it’ll be awhile!–there’s a lot of cool stuff I’m able to do now. If I want someone’s dialog to change based on your species, I can just DO it, not have to tediously set up six different nearly identical click-throughs. And with stuff like Frogquest, when you wander through camp, you actually get the Frog watching you and lurking and you see little wet footprints outside your yurt and things, even if you can’t do anything about it until a little later. (Which I think is awesome, although the players may just go mad.)

I’m looking forward to actually getting to the storyline quests, rather than the grind stuff, although it’s important to get those worked out, because that’s where a lot of the important mechanics are, and if I break one of those, it’s not nearly so crucial as if I break a major storyline.

(I am NOT looking forward to porting the Steppes section, although I’ve got some idea on how to do it–that’s gonna require some revamping, and I expect it will take weeks to recreate properly. Oh well…)

*Used in the sense that you can do them repeatedly to build skills/make money, and they don’t change significantly or advance the storyline.

Of Books and Binding!

Got an inquiry as to the nature of the binding on the Digger Omnibus edition, from someone wanting to buy it, but concerned about bindings on a book large enough to beat someone to death with.

This is a good question. Binding is very important. I turned to Jeff of Sofawolf for the info, and here’s what I’ve got.

The softcovers are called “PUR” perfect binding, which has to do with the chemical composition of the adhesive. It lays flatter than vinyl acetate and is very durable for standard usage. As with anything, it’s not immortal, but it’ll hold up as well as any other professionally produced, non-mass-market softcover, with all the usual caveats about not soaking it in water and taking a hammer to the spine and so forth. But it should hold up pretty darn well.

The hardcovers are smyth-sewn, which means the pages are collected in bunches and actually stitched together — then backed with fabric and adhesive before being bound into the hard covers. This is very durable and considered “library-quality” by some (I get the impression that there are debates over the nature of library bindings, and it is not a settled matter, so we won’t get into that–I caught a vague whiff of flame wars past in the air, as one sometimes does.) Anyway, this is uber-durable, give-to-your-heirs stuff–which is why it’s more expensive.

Either should last a goodly long time, but the hardcover of course is going to last longer, same as any other book.

I hope that helps!

You can order either version of the omnibus through Sofawolf Press.

More Twine Thoughts…

So I’ve successfully–at least, I hope–at least, nothing looks broken–ported the prologue of Cryptic Stitching over to the Twine engine. (We’re a long way from playtesting, but rest assured, there will be a call for testers when we get there!)

(Incidentally, if you are stuck or want to ask for hints or share what you’ve learned playing Cryptic Stitching 1.0, head on over to LJ and this entry, which I’ve got set up for that purpose.)

I’m using the SugarCube version of Twine, which allows for saving the game (a function one could not do without!) and apparently won’t clutter up the browser cache in some obscure but apparently significant fashion.*

The differences between the two engines are interesting. StoryNexus is really cool and has a great interface, but has some significant limitations. Twine ultimately looks much more flexible but you have to do a lot more in the guts.

I’m not sorry I started in StoryNexus–the system made me think about what I was doing a lot, and the ultimate Twine result will be heavily influenced by those choices. Switching does allow me to rectify some rather clunky workarounds I developed, based on the fact that I started without any kind of plan. (The travel system in Cryptic Stitching is pretty much held together with chewing gum and paperclips. It will work MUCH BETTER in Twine.)

Some other useful things, at least so far–randomized flavor text and (I think) the ability to have merchants show up in camp at random, without having to visit them. (And the ability to sell ALL of an item, instead of doing it painfully one click at a time, which was clumsy as all hell in StoryNexus and wasted turns and turns and turns.)

Also, no spoilers in the “This card unlocked with:” mouseover, which I found maddening and there was no way to turn off. Also, there are no hidden variables in StoryNexus–everything must be visible to the player in some fashion–so I was making visible variables do some VERY questionable duties. (For example, your yurt, over on the StoryNexus sidebar? That value controls at least three different questlines, possibly more. And if you level your pet lungfish, your inventory says you have two of them. Necessity is a mutha.)

But there’s a couple of things I’ll miss very much–the inventory system was nice, and the ability to use objects on the fly. For example, at the moment, it’s looking like you’re going to have to return to your yurt in order to heal yourself, which is less convenient (but does have the advantage of making death more likely! And cool things happen when you die! Everyone should try it at least once!**)***

One thing this is doing it making me re-analyze how I laid the game out. Because of the way StoryNexus worked, with various “areas” that controlled what cards you got, I’m still thinking in terms of areas in the game. Each of these areas is getting a “hub” card–Wool-Tribe, Moon-Stuffing Camp, Withyjack Forest, the Steppes, etc. The hub always allows certain options, coinciding to the pinned cards at the bottom of the screen in StoryNexus. Various quests lead one away from the hub, then back to it (or to another hub.)

One truly great advantage of StoryNexus was the ability to make events seem to take time. If you’re chasing the Sinister Frog around, it doesn’t happen all in one long run–you chase him, then you do some other stuff, then that damn Frog is staring at you again, and there’s a real sense of elapsed time. You are–at least, I hope!–looking forward to getting another Frog card to figure out what happens next.

It’s an effect you don’t get nearly so much if you just keep clicking choices at the bottom of the screen, ya know?

I think one of the big challenges of Twine will be creating that feeling. If you follow every story line in a linear fashion, there’s a lot less anticipation. (The downside being frustration, because goddamnit it, I want to chase the Frog and somebody’s trying to get me to use every part of the bloody reindeer again.)

Here’s my thought–I’m bouncing this off you guys, since I know there are many coders and designers reading, so feel free to chime in.

One of the useful functions is <> which lets you pull in the contents of another–I keep thinking of them as “cards” because of StoryNexus, so let’s go with that, even though they are more properly called “passages”–into the current card you’re reading. So our hub card for Moon-Stuffing has

<>

<>

And those are all other cards off to the side which can be full of ugly variables and if/else statements. The first one prints a text string which provides a little local color, and the second one controls the random merchant function, which I am still tinkering with.

Taking the Sinister Frog example, I’m wondering if I could get the emotional impact I want by having

<> planted in the hub card.

and then have “frogquest” be randomized , so that, say, two out of three times there was a call to “frogquest,” you get nothing, and the third time, the next stage of the Sinister Frog pops up. (Essentially you’d need to wander through the hub and then it might or might not appear.)

If you follow it, well and good, if not, the next time you show up, there’s a 1-in-3 chance it’ll be there. (Or 1-in-4 or 1-in-10 or whatever. That’s a balance issue, and will come out in playtesting, I expect.)

(My random event design is a little clunky, but not, I think, particularly onerous–assign a random number to a variable every time the card is called, and if the random number is X, the linked quest line comes up. Once the quest line is completely finished, calling the card does nothing–well, prints a space, actually–and should be largely invisible to the player.)

My only fear is that if I do this too much, I risk winding up with WALL OF OPTIONS on the hub card, as ten different quests all fight for space. The randomization may help keep that down, but then again, it may not. I suppose I could even randomize which <> options come up–assign them all a number value and roll a random number and pull up whichever number comes up, but now we’re getting into walls of variables…

I dunno, anybody got any thoughts?

 

* I understand nothing.

**In the game. Obviously.

***The code problem is thus–I can make an inventory button on the sidebar which displays your inventory when clicked easily enough, and then returns you to the game using a function <>. This function returns you to the last page you were on without retrigging the functions on that page. (Otherwise, you could just sit on a page where you got paid and just visit your inventory over and over again to retrigger the function that increases your money.) However, if I want anything that happens on that inventory page to stick–using healing herbs, say–I have to use the function <> which does re-trigger the functions on whatever page you were on, which could potentially be a game-destroying bug.

So I think I’m making an executive decision that the only way to get healed is to go back to your yurt, unless one of you clever devils can think of a workaround. *grin*

Cryptic…Twining?

So a big thanks to everybody who sent me links to Twine as an engine. I’m checking into that now for Cryptic Stitching, because…well…I couldn’t bear the thought of everybody in Cryptic Stitching vanishing into the aether. There’s so much I love about the world, and I want other people to love it, too. (Or hate it. But at least get a chance to meet it!)

Twine looks very promising. (Kevin got into the open-source code and started doing arcane things to the computer and making appreciative noises, anyway.) I think I could probably get it to do something reasonably akin to what I wanted Cryptic Stitching to do.  (Certainly I can import a lot of the text…) There’s the inevitable issues of figuring out how to translate things, and Twine would require a certain linearity, so it’s less open world (although I suspect that people have worked out clever ways to make it feel pretty open.)

(And there is no limited number of turns. You could presumably burn through the game in an hour or two if you wanted, if you’re that sort of person.)

The nice thing about this is that since it’d be locally hosted, it generates HTML and it’s open source, I don’t have to worry about the developer stopping support. (Heck, it’s Python. Kevin can troubleshoot, if things get rough.)  (My thanks to people who speculated about Kickstarter, but I A) do not want to go to that well too often B) get really iffy about taking money for stuff that I don’t already know is possible and C) was really not keen on taking money for something that hinges on somebody else’s intellectual property/engine/thingy.)

So, I guess my next trick is to try to figure out how to port this sucker…

Cryptic Stitching

Well, as some of you may recall, way back last year I was fooling around with making a game on the StoryNexus engine, put out by Failbetter Games.

They announced a few months ago that they’re not going to be developing for it any longer, because they’re very busy and there’s no money in it. And I am entirely sympathetic to this, and understand their reasoning. But–the downside–I probably won’t be pursuing this game any longer because once the maker stops supporting it, stuff gets tricky.

But y’know, I put a crapload of work into the world and I love it very much and I would like people to be able to see it.

Act One is playable. It is occasionally buggy–they broke some of the art options–and there are quests that don’t wrap up and the Act ends on, not so much a cliff-hanger but with a whole lot of stuff unresolved. And parts of it are dull and grindy and parts of it are probably not at all intuitive and I did not do the best job of design. The art is 99% stock because, as I said, they kinda borked some of the art options, and though I did a few new pieces, I couldn’t begin to illustrate all 400+ cards, and even if I had, they wouldn’t work right now.

So I am not recommending this as a great gameplay experience, because it’s not all that great.

But it is a first effort, and y’know, despite all those caveats, I’m kinda proud of what I managed to accomplish in terms of worldbuilding. I love these guys very much, I love Quippet and Crazy Wool and the Tangerine Rabbit and the Silver Rat and all the rest.

I’d like to someday follow their story. It might be as a book or it might be as a comic or I might just set up a “Random World Website With Stories And Art And Poetry Written By Stuffed Sheep,” or I might even find another way to do a game like this.

But if you want to play it, here it is. (Please note: If you find bugs, I can’t do much about them anymore, and sometimes art shows up labelled as “Placeholder Image” which, again, that’s a new one and kinda them. So tech support is not gonna be great for this However, if you get actually STUCK–as in it’s broken, not as in “I don’t know what to do next!” then use the support e-mail and I will try to get you unstuck!)

(If you hate games that require some grinding, you will not enjoy this. It’s okay, they’re not for everybody, no reflection on you! It’s cool!)

It can be reached here: Cryptic Stitching

It requires a Failbetter Games account. If you would like to give them money for more turns, that’s between them and you–I do get a small cut, but not much, and honestly, I’d prefer you just played it and had fun. At standard browser rates, it’ll take a few days or weeks.

And you can hopefully spend a little time in the world and maybe see a little of what I was trying to do, even if events have conspired against it.