Adam Oster's Blog, page 13

Does Life Ever Slow Down?

Lately, I’ve been finding myself thinking about retirement, which is something I feel like I’m way too young to be considering at all, outside of, you know, how I should probably start saving up some money for it, I guess. But, the truth of the matter is, with how busy things have been as of late, I’ve been looking to see what sorts of things I can exile from my life. And my job seems like a good one, if I could, you know, find some way to collect retirement benefits.

It’s not like I don’t have any retirement savings built up, but I guess the real question is, can my family afford me living off of $2.76 a month for the rest of my life?

My wife tells me no, but I think she might be off on her math.

But for serious, as someone who finds his days absolutely filled to the brim with all of the activities, and has a ton of other fun things he’d like to be doing that he simply doesn’t have time for, like, I don’t know, fishing, I can’t help but think about the days when I’m not spending 40 hours a week hustling for the dollar.

I have a lot of retired friends, and they often like to tell me how they either feel bored or too busy altogether still, and I can’t help thinking that once I get retired, my life would be able to slow down in just the perfect way, where I would have more time to read, fish, write, and, I don’t know, like, take naps or something.

So, this is just my note to you that I’ve started my retirement planning. Not the financial piece of it, obviously, but just planning out what my days will look like when retirement finally comes.

Maybe next week?

To Define a Voice

As a writer who has been looking for opportunities to market himself better, I often come upon the need to define myself as an author. For a while, I liked to use the label of ‘Adventure Novelist’ because although my books were not exactly made for one single demographic, they all typically would fall under the heading of adventure stories. This changed a bit when I started working on a few new stories that are in different levels of pre-publication, as I now have a bunch of books and plays and stories of different types which definitely do not fall under that heading.

There’s also the issue that although most of my published books are relatively kid-friendly (Daddy of the Dead being the one outlier there), there’s also the Defenders Saga which is not really intended to be young adult fare. And that’s not including books like my most recently finished book which is both not kid-fare and not kid-friendly. And not an adventure story.

For years I’ve struggled with this idea of falling into a niche genre. So many authors are defined by the types of stories they tell. This concept of a voice. And while I’m certain that someone reading one of my books would be able to tell rather quickly that its an Oster-book simply by my writing style, I don’t typically have just one type of story I want to tell. And although I think I could tell stories like the ones I’ve been telling for a very long time, as they can be a ton of fun to write, I typically try to go where the muses (and the money) tells me to go.

So, I’ve also considered the idea of writing under several different pen names. To give each of these different styles of writing a separation, especially when it comes to my kid-friendly fare and the adult stuff. But, considering how difficult it is to build a name for oneself in the publishing world already, this seems counter-intuitive.

Which puts me at the crossroads I’m in now: The Unfocused Creative label that I’ve been using on this site for the past little bit. It’s not that I’m not focused. In fact, when I start telling a story, I tend to become hyper-focused on that story and it becomes all I can think about. Just ask my wife about how many times she’s had to hear me work through a story problem while using her as a sounding board, while really just wanting to hear myself speak it out loud. But, I’m not focused in a type of story. I don’t want to be nailed down to a genre or an audience. I just want to write stories.

Which is probably why I’m such a hard guy to market.

But, if you want to read tales that come from a place of pure inspiration and excitement for a story that needs to be told, then I’m your guy.

In fact, the book that I’m currently trying to figure out how to market to the world appropriately, it’s one I’ve been working on for longer than I’ve been writing books. It started as a far different idea, involving a young drunk guy, which would have been filmed and felt a little more punk rock, and morphed into this folksy tale about an old man who just wants to be left alone, written as a book. It’s a story I’ve wanted to tell for forever, but couldn’t figure out how to piece all the pieces I needed it to have together to make it work in the way it needed to work, until a few years ago.

And when I finally figured it out, I plowed through the writing and then simply became terrified of ever reading it again for fears of it not being anything like what I wanted it to be.

And when I finally returned to it, I realized how much more it could be than it already was, rewrote the whole dang thing, and now have this book that I truly feel marks a drastic change in my skill as an author. And makes me that much more excited for the next stories I have to tell.

And I guess that’s really all I’ve got for marketing for you right now. That whether or not my stories fall within one specific bucket, they’re all stories I’m absolutely passionate about.

And I hope that comes through in the reading of them.

Our Corporate Overlords

As someone who spent his formative years during the 90s, I still find myself feeling a bit of the urge to stick it to ‘The Man’. To avoid the big dogs and find the underdogs that no one really seems to appreciate nearly as much as they should.

Of course, when I was doing this in the 90s, this was things like comic books and the internet. Those things that are now, honestly, pretty common place today are the things that I found as my own special little secrets that no one else seemed to really care about. My babies that I would hold dearly as others walked past disinterested.

And now they are all owned by Disney.

For serious, those weird quirky things that I used to love, they all feel like they have corporate ownership. Even Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a musical which thrived on being the outcast, has a film version now which was distributed by New Line Cinema (owned by Warner Bros.).

In fact, the only things that I still have which feel like they are truly still on the outskirts of what people are willing to pay money for nowadays are independent authors, possibly because there are just so dang many of them and it’s hard to find the good ones amidst the giant pile of meh.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that these things that I thought were their own little thing, hidden from the world of the mega-corps, were actually still a part of those same exact corporations. Kevin Smith’s Clerks, which was a love-letter to counter culture, was distributed by Miramax, which was not only run by ‘good’ old Harvey Weinstein, but also was owned by The Walt Disney Corporation. DC Comics has been part of the Warner family since 1989. Nirvana signed on with DGC (part of Universal) in 1991. The reality is that although I may have felt like I was part of some cool club that very few people knew about, the mega-corps knew about this need for the young folks to feel like they had their inside information, and already had their hands in my pockets.

Now, sure, this doesn’t mean that the folks at DC or Kevin Smith or Nirvana weren’t doing something truly special, but by the time that I was actually giving my money over to them, those same mega-corporations involved in giving us the latest Disney Channel movie, or Reba McIntyre album, or Scooby Doo cartoon were getting the money either way.

Of course, that tends to be somewhat true about my favorite independent authors today, as many of them only get money after Amazon takes their cut.

And I don’t know what to do about that.

It feels like no matter what we do to support the arts, there’s still some huge corporation profiting off of it, meaning the artist themselves get far less of the money than they should.

And that’s mighty disappointing. Especially considering they’re already getting far less than they should to begin with.

Support your artists. However you can. And whether or not they are truly a part of the counter-culture. Art is what makes the world worth living.

100 Posts!

Hey, you know what this is? This is my 100th post since the return of the blog. Since July 16th, 2021, you’ve come out here 100 times to read about whatever random thing I may have decided to grace your eyes with over your lunch break. And that’s pretty awesome.

I mean, it’s also pretty awesome that I’ve made it so far in such a short period, not to toot my own horn or anything, but here we are, 100 posts in, and things don’t appear to be slowing down.

In fact, I’ve got a few new ideas for things to do with this space that I’m hoping to be able to start enacting as soon as this crazy holiday season wraps up.

I feel like I should mark this special occasion somehow, but I don’t really have any good ideas. In fact, I almost completely missed this milestone, having a post that’s now been rescheduled to next Tuesday in this place until the very last second.

So, instead, I figure I’ll give you a little holiday treat. Something you may have seen before if you’ve been paying extra special close attention, but, well, since it’s been removed from the blog during the last purge of creative battles with myself, I figure it could go back here again.

It’s a little flash fiction story I wrote a while back about the troubles of being an author when it’s so darn easy to distract yourself today. Enjoy…

He sits behind his keyboard, staring at the screen.

“I’ve got nothing,” he says to himself as he decides to glance over at his Facebook feed.  He claims it’s for inspiration, but even he knows that it’s just to avoid the empty slate in front of him.

Three minutes later, he switches back to the white page of blankness, his mind again nagging at him to come up with something brilliant to put to the page.

His phone buzzes, causing him to jump to attention as he fishes it out of his pocket.  He presses the button on the side, to be alerted to a text message stating that his cell phone bill is due.

He briefly considers paying it before he remembers that pay day isn’t until tomorrow, and his balance is woefully low for such superfluous items.  No one calls him anyways.

He taps his fingers across the keyboard, just lightly enough to make the sound of typing, but not enough to actually press any of the buttons and make something appear on the screen.  At least he sounds productive.

DING!

Facebook!  Someone must have comment–nope, just letting him know it’s someone’s birthday today.

It’s always someone’s birthday.

“Maybe I should become one of those people who wish everyone a happy birthday when Facebook reminds me to do so.  But then I’d just be one of those sheep following what Facebook tells me and–” he realizes that he’s going through the same line of thinking he goes through every time he gets one of those notifications.

He returns to his open document window.

“I did have the interesting idea about a guy who could shoot paint out of his hands,” the writer thought.  “Not that I had any idea of what that would actually do, or, you know, anything other than that he shot paint out of his hands.”

“There once was a boy who could shoot paint out of his hands,” he typed.

He stared at the words on the screen.

“Am I writing a limerick?” he mused before deleting the words.

Again his moved his fingers across the keyboard to make a the noise of productivity, without causing any letters to appear.  It was how he thought.  Not that it often came up with anything useful.

“I am Painticus!” he typed, a smile crossing his face before he again deleted the words.

“I hate first sentences,” he growled inwardly.

“It was a dark and stormy night,” he typed, knowing it was an utterly stupid phrase to type.

He left it there.

“Why can’t it be a dark and stormy night?”

“And that’s when our hero arrived.  He wasn’t an ordinary hero.  He was PAINTMAN!”

Now the writer laughed out loud at his own ridiculousness.  And then he stopped.  His brain kicked into gear, and his fingers started flying across the keyboard.

“I was only fourteen the first time it happened, but I’ll never forget the look on my mom’s face when she came into my room that morning and found me laying in bed completely covered in red paint.  I don’t know who was more scared.”

“Not bad,” the writer thought to himself.  He sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.  “Not bad at all.”

He leaned forward again and his fingers disappeared into a flurry of activity.  He’d found his muse, and everything else had melted away.

Video Game Review: Hollow Knight

As someone who spent countless hours getting lost and absolutely frustrated before dying and losing every sense of place in the original Metroid video game for the NES, I’ve typically taken a rather hesitant stance toward games of that ilk, typically referred to as Metroid-vania. While I can appreciate games that don’t hold a linear path, I also like to have a bit more of a clue of what I’m supposed to do next, a mission, anything that lets me know that I’m going the right way.

And in the vein of games which don’t give you much for information, and much less in the way of actual mission paths, comes Hollow Knight, a Metroid-style game set in the world of bugs.

But, while I would get completely lost and confused in the original Metroid, absolutely lacking any form of reason for feeling like I was moving in any way forward, Hollow Knight does a much better job of giving those little milestones on a much more regular basis so you can feel like you’ve done something.

It might help, slightly, that there is a map.

While this game can be absolutely punishing at times, giving you boss fights which, while fun, sometimes seem as though you could never complete them, there’s so much charm and mystery surrounding everything that you can’t help but want to find out the next piece of the puzzle, working to figure out why you’ve made it to this new area and what new powerup you may unlock there.

There were a few times in which I most definitely considered giving up out of pure frustration, and once or twice where I checked a walkthrough to see what I was missing to be able to move forward, but on the whole, I felt a lot more like I was making progress as I explored the tunnels of Hallownest.

It wasn’t quite as much fun as, say, Guacamelee, but it’s most definitely worth a try.

So much so, that I’m still considering getting back into the game to try to unlock some of the other endings.

Maybe.

We’ll see.

Look, it’s fun, but, you know, getting lost sucks.

A Tale of Two Vaccinations

After years and years of knowing how I should really get a flu shot, I finally got my first one ever! And I did it on the same day I got my third COVID shot.

And holy crap was that a mistake.

Don’t get me wrong, being vaccinated is not a mistake. After living out the reality of a global pandemic, it should be more apparent than ever how important it is for us to protect ourselves from these terrible viruses so we don’t pass them on to others and cause massive outbreaks which cause things to shut down entirely. And there’s the whole not wanting other people to die thing, I suppose. Or even wanting to keep yourself from dying.

Look, what I’m trying to say is that there are plentiful reasons to get yourself vaccinated against anything we have the shot for. I’m no anti-vaxxer. I’m 100% pro-vax. Not even pro-choice-vax if I’m really being honest here. The only reason I haven’t gotten the flu vaccine before is my regularly mentioned fear of needles, and laziness.

So, when I found out that I could schedule COVID booster online and they would throw in a flu shot with zero extra effort, I decided to do my civic duty and get vaccinated to protect the nation.

And honestly, I’m getting so good at needles (even though they still terrify me) that I really barely noticed them at all. And I went home, finished my work day, hung out with the family, feeling tired from a long weekend, but no other ill effects.

And then, as soon as I put down my book to try to put myself to sleep, I became overwhelmed with the most violent chills I have ever felt in my life. My body convulsed in reaction to how absolutely frozen it felt while I tried to contain it so as to not wake up my wife. For the next hour I sat in bed trying to wrap my blankets as tightly around me as possible while I continued with my spasms, wanting to get into a hot shower or bath, but knowing that outside of my tight cocoon was only additional cold.

Finally, I got up the willpower to drag myself out of bed and into the shower, turning it on a level of magma-esque heat that my skin recognized as far too hot, but still didn’t completely stop the shivering. For a period of time that will be forever unknown, except, perhaps, by my water and electricity providers, I sat in that water, knowing that while this felt better than the previous option, the heat in the water would run out at some point, and I needed a new strategy.

Again, I worked up the willpower to exit the heat of the shower, get dried and dressed, before running to the couch in my office, where I created a new cocoon of multiple layers, lied down, and turned on the space heater which I’m sure was probably too close to me to not be considered a fire hazard, but was almost enough to bring me some peace from the involuntary shaking, while I then drifted in and out of sleep until the early morning.

But about 5am, covered in sweat while also still suffering from the occasional spasm, I finally left my office to head back to the bedroom, where I would get nearly an hour and a half of uninterrupted sleep before the morning began and everyone needed to be sent through the morning routine to get off to their places for the day.

And for the rest of the day, I still was cold and sweaty, while I did the bare minimum to get through the requirements of the day, just feeling all around like I was in a battle with the flu itself, and wishing that I could sleep. But, since I had too much to do at work, and I work from home, I really didn’t feel like I had that as an option.

It was a rough 24 hours of reaction to one or both of the shots I received that day. But, it’s still a heckuva lot better than if I were to get the bad version of either one of those diseases. And even better knowing that throughout all of this unwellness, I wasn’t contagious, because I wasn’t sick, my body was just learning to be stronger.

That being said, I wish I had gotten these shots before it got so cold outside.

The Capstone

I’m getting really close to finishing school, ya’ll. Like, if I can push through a couple extra classes than I usually do, I could actually be done with school by the end of June 2022. And while another 7 months of school sounds exhausting, there’s a part of me who sees that finish line and just wants to sprint to cross it.

Like I have the time for that…

But, right now, I’m working on my capstone project, a little website I have to build which works basically as a full retail system for a movie rental business (so, you know, the type of thing that’s really forward thinking, considering the future of that business model). I’ve been typing away in the corners of my hours trying to get this site developed and, well, it’s coming across quite well. And the coding of the site has been a lot of fun, actually, even if I’ve historically avoided making websites throughout most of my life, which having the necessary skillset for approximately thirty years now.

Over the past five years, I’ve really dedicated myself to learning how to code for computers, teaching myself a number of languages and constantly working to learn more as I can and as time allows, and coding seems to have that almost perfect collision of the creative and math. There aren’t a lot of situations in which that can be considered true. But when coding something, you really have to plot out the user experience right away from the start, determining the story the user will go through as they make their way through your program, while also having numerous math puzzles to solve in order to actually craft the program. It’s kinda perfect for me.

Sure, it’s not nearly as fun as writing an action sequence set in an exotic location, but it hits a lot of those same sweet spots while also allowing me to use the more technical side of my brain.

I guess this is a longwinded way of saying that although I haven’t had much time for creative writing for the past few weeks as I’ve been deep in the world of my capstone, I’ve still felt as though those creative processes in my brain have had plenty of opportunity to work, and I’m pretty darn happy with that…even if I’m super excited about being done with school in general.

The end…I guess. I don’t really know that I had a point. Forgive me, I haven’t been sleeping much lately. School sucks.

Let’s Talk About Aaron Rodgers

I know I’m a little late to the party here to talk about this Wisconsin favorite who has been a disappointment over the past few weeks, but, well, I write these things well before they get published, and I just wasn’t able to get my thoughts on here cleaned up fast enough.

For those of you who don’t know, Aaron Rodgers is the current star quarterback for the Green Bay Packers. At the start of the season, he told everyone he was immunized, obviously referring to the league’s requirement for being vaccinated against COVID-19, only for him to catch COVID, tell everyone that no, he wasn’t actually vaccinated, and that he didn’t lie when he said he was vaccinated originally. You can read a portion of his response to being found out here, as well as watch the interview where he responds to it.

The long and short of it is that although Rodgers does claim to have done something in order to boost his protection from COVID, it wasn’t something that even the league believed to be enough. And yes, perhaps he does truly have an allergy to an ingredient in two of the three vaccines, and sure, there might be reasons to be concerned about the J&J vaccine, but the bottom line is that he flat out said he was immunized when he wasn’t. And his explanation for how it was okay was because he claims that if anyone had pressed further, he would have gone on a long rant which basically amounts to saying he’s not an anti-vaxxer, but that he’s cool with people who are.

The bottom line here is that he’s twisting words. Maybe in some version of all of this someone can see that this isn’t a flat out lie, because he performed some form of homeopathic medicine on himself which he refers to as being immunized, but he definitely spoke with the intention of misleading everyone. The NFL rejected his ploy for an alternative to the vaccine, but he was still able to play because he said he was immunized. He withheld information that he knew was problematic, because he didn’t want to get found out. He knowingly acted in a way that would mislead people from the truth, because he knew that if they knew the truth, he wouldn’t get what he wants.

I’ve said on here before that I can understand why some people may choose to not get vaccinated. While I think everyone should get vaccinated as soon as they can, I’ll allow that there are a number of different reasons why someone might struggle with it. But, that means you need to follow the other rules that we have in place for keeping the community safe. If you’re out there breathing and sweating on other athletes who are trusting that you are telling them what they think you are telling them, risking their health and wellness because of your fears, you’re just being a self-serving jackass.

Sure, maybe Joe Rogan somehow knows more than any of our leading medical scientists and following his advice will save the world, but the people you interact with, who want to know your status with regards to this pandemic, deserve to know that horse dewormer is your choice of ‘immunization’, as opposed to causing them to believe you’ve taken the approved steps for keeping the community safe.

We see this type of doublespeak often in politics, and its one of the things that has led us to become such a divided nation on the topic of COVID in general. Donald Trump dumped a ton of money into helping getting these vaccines developed, but then spent way too much time trying to present ivermectin as a far better solution, causing our nation to not trust the very vaccinations that he was pouring our money into.

But here’s me reiterating my most important point here: As of right now, things like ivermectin don’t have any published science that supports it as an effective weapon against COVID. We do have published science that supports the vaccine. But, more importantly, if you don’t believe the published science behind the vaccines, you can’t just pick and choose what you do trust and go out into the world as though you have a bubble of protection. You are risking the lives of people around you who are trusting that you are following the rules we have developed through scientific research of this highly infectious disease. In other words, you are being terribly irresponsible with the lives and health of other people. And that’s not okay.

And you, Aaron Rodgers, fall into that boat. I guess I’m not sure if I should expect better from someone who ruined his chances with Olivia Munn.

Give Thanks!

As today marks the day of America’s giving of thanks, for, well, for the people who originally lived here helping keep us alive while we stole the country out from under them, I guess, I figured I should take a moment of reflection for all the things I’m thankful for.

And while there are plenty of things I could wax poetically about, with regards to how grateful I am, I figured I’d whittle it down to one small thing here, since it’s a national holiday and all that.

I’m thankful for you.

My readers.

After taking over half a decade off from writing, you folks came back like I had never left. Sure, we might not be as noisy of a bunch as we were the last time we hung out together, but you’re here, and I’m so happy you are.

One of the things I missed most while being away from the blog is having that simple knowledge that anyone was reading the stuff I was writing. And now, here you are, reading the stuff I’m writing. And it helps keep me sane. It helps me move forward, knowing that there are actually people who, for reasons I’ll never fully understand, want to invade this space to see whatever thing I’ve got to ramble about today.

And I appreciate it to a level I cannot ever fully express.

So, thank you.

And have an awesome day filled with turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. Even if your country isn’t celebrating a day that pretends religious zealots hung out peacefully with the people they were invading.

The End of the World has been Updated!

A while back, one of my favorite authors released a book called The Little Book of the End of the World. It was part of a series of books put out by a publisher as part of their series of “Little Books” which were about all sorts of things, from The Little Book of Welsh Culture to The Little Book of Pintfulness (which appears to be about beer. Actually, in looking through this series, it appears that most of these were about locations in the British Isles, which might make it apparent why Ken Mooney’s book about the end of the world didn’t feel like it got nearly enough attention when it came up.

Lucky for us, he has the rights to his words back, and now they’re out in the much better title of Apocalypse… Whenever.

I loved this book when it first came out, and really want you to give it a chance.

In fact, here’s my review of the book from back when I first read it. Although, I’ve got the new version of it loaded up on my Kindle already for a fresh read on all the new stuff he’s added.

Original Review:

The end of the world is something humans have philosophized about since long before we even invented philosophy. That being said, this book which aims at looking at how humans have viewed the Endtimes has more than enough content available.

Luckily for us, Mooney is able to use his great skill to condense all of this overwhelming content down into book form. Starting from as early in man’s history as he is able to take us, Mooney leads us on a journey through the history of Apocalypse, teaching us about how each culture has put its own spin on a tale which quickly begins to become rather similar from group to group. Mooney does an amazing job of giving credit and respect to each of these cultures, while also showing that there might be cause for further review, due to these basic concepts that seem integral to each.

As the story continues, we begin to see how the more recent views of the End of the World are when things really seem to be a bit more awkward, prophetic visions of specific end dates which come and go without issue. Mass suicides that occur based on needing to die at the exact moment an alien spaceship flies overhead. These are modern concepts, which might seem tame to four horsemen riding across the sky…but even that image is considered to be metaphorical by most.

I’m impressed by how Mooney takes all these differing ideas and never really seems to make fun of any of them, although keeping a tongue placed within his cheek as he comments on each.

There’s a lot to be learned within this tome, and Mooney’s writing style makes the learning a fun experience as well. Definitely recommend to any who have interest in the subject.