Creative mischief afoot

I'm unsure of whether it's because I'm approaching the end of the Giant Bead Project or the temporary being off my brainmeds (combination of broke until this morning + can't be arsed to get down to CVS) or just being more distractable in general lately or procrastinating from stuff that I really Should Be Doing (there's a list) but lately my brain's been in creative overdrive to the point of it feeling like that bit in Kindergarten Cop when Ah-nuhld loses it in a class of five year olds and just howls "SHAAAAAAAAAAAAHHT AAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWP!!" at them. That's the problem with having sixty bazillion ideas, three creative projects in the fire, four books out from the library (well, no I don't but I could), a messy house and a full time nine to fiver. Well, in my case, eight to four thirty-er. But still, gods. Explain to me why humans require sleep again.

Still plugging away at the Giant Bead Thing, at 92% now. Had to take a couple of days off due to Reasons and aforementioned need for sleep. Also it seems my various attempts to free up my schedules are backfiring, as I seem to have gained a couple more social engagements just as I got rid of a few as a stress managing measure. Le sigh. I suppose I can't avoid people, just need to schedule stuff as best I can. Still at least these sorts of things are exciting.

Last Wednesday (I thought I'd posted about this, but apparently not) as part of the ongoing Wednesday One Shots people around Squire are doing this summer (basically a different person with a different group of volunteer players runs a single session tabletop game of whatever description), cell23 ran a session of 13th Age, which to my surprise I ended up enjoying immensely. Actually I think all present did - four of the original six are on board for a recurring game and we meet for character creation tomorrow. I had been trying to pull completely out of gaming this summer due to aforementioned overscheduled and stressed and due to one game imploding and successfully bowing out of the second had managed to clear my docket, and then this one came along and oops. It helps that I don't have to go further than my own kitchen for it, and I had been bugging cell23 to run something again, if only for the ongoing excuse to keep the kitchen clean. Sooo there's that.

I've been listening to a LOT of podcasts lately to keep myself sane at work. On people's recommendations, I've been checking out ones like Aisha Tyler's "Girl on Guy," "Paul and Storm Talk About Stuff for What Is Actually 20 to 30 Minutes," "Stuff you Should Know," "Radiolab" and "Hardcore History," which are all enjoyable listens. I have quite a crapton of NPR stuff as well. I don't know when I because That Person That Gets "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me," but apparently I am now. I also have some local stuff like "Mythspoken" and "Press Start to Continue" going (there will be a locked entry about the latter later) as well as some goth/industrial/EBM ones (why the hell has it taken me this long to discover theungodlyhour? The fact that they have a Livejournal account should tell you how long that one's been around). Oddly enough the ones I seem to return to and enjoying the most are the Nerdgasm Noire Network podcast (featuring five ladies I already followed on twitter discussing "nerd shit") and the various podcasts relevant to my interests put out by ThisWeekInBlackness.com, which have been both informative and funny and... I don't know, really resonant. I think I like both of them the most because they're done by groups of people that clearly care a lot about both their subjects and each other, and because the people "on air" are clearly quite good friends "off-air" as well a fair amount of reasonably good natured bickering and trolling ensues. I guess me being used to my own loud black family, that sort of vibe is one I get and gravitate to, which is probably why I've been enjoying those far more than the podcasts that only have a single host or maybe two.

Somewhat inspired by/related to this, there was yesterday... About a month ago I reached out to claxman and our mutual acquaintance NR with a "Hey! You're black, live in the Valley and nerdy. Lets do something with that." NR invited his friend K to join us and yesterday evening we all managed to clear just enough space in all of our schedules to meet up at Packards to discuss the idea. I think it went well - a bit disorganized, but it was late in the day, we were all fried and this is still in the beginning stages and nebulous so that's okay. We all came away with some ideas for future games, some worldbuilding and stuff that may evolve into a content portal/podcast of our own, which... damn. I've been trying to get something like this off the ground for the better part of a decade with various people; this is the first time that I'm even remotely hopeful something'll come of it. Schedules permitting, of course - all four of us are rather horrifically busy people. Still... excited. More as that develops.

Bringing it back full circle though... probably because of all of the above, not only were the usual suspects from Guardians and Gods bugging me this morning, two characters I hadn't heard from in a while got really froggy with me. Basically way back when I was in the beginning stages of planning a webcomic, but it didn't go anywhere due to some head-butting with the person I was working with and, the fact that I can't draw worth shit. Okay, that isn't exactly true - I actually can, but it is not at all effortless due to not having a natural knack for it and being a bit of a perfectionist to the point that things suffer, so the idea of me producing a comic on a basis more regular than once every, oh, I don't know, month? is kinda laughable. There were other Reasons, but meh. Anyway I shelved the two protagonists and the concept for the most part, though I did partially recycle them for Guardians and Gods... but anyway today they showed up and were like "OH HAI about that webcomic? So that thing you did yesterday? Maybe you'll have a platform for us now. What do you say? Oh and by the way, here's the rest of us." and then they brought out the rest of their family, which hadn't existed previously to 10am this morning, wtf, but they showed up, fully realized and I had to take a few minutes to sketch them down and make a few notes on them to shut them all up. Sheesh. As I lamented on Twitter earlier, why is it that my brain can't come up with single characters? Why does it have to vomit forth entire ensemble casts? I mean, for fuck's sake, Guardians and Gods is getting dangerously GRRM-y to the point where the idea of a wiki to keep all the characters straight was floated at the last Drinktank (which wasn't a half bad idea, but I haven't had the time to deal with that, let alone write the damn story).

And lets not talk about the gazillion nebulous bead-stuff ideas I have banging around - not only poke-coasters, but other stuff that surprise surprise, does not feature copyrighted characters. Like the bracelets I was working on a few years back with ascii art on them. Also see some kink-inspired chokers/collars. Dyeaaaaagh!

So yeah, things have been very busy upstairs in Andeeland. On the flip-side of that things have also been fractious and disjointed, but that's probably just me off my Wellbutrin - four days and I'm noticing what little ability to focus I have has completely gone to shit. Gonna see about getting that filled on Friday cause fuck this noise. That said, the fountain of creative misfiring is actually kind of nice and I intend to enjoy it while it lasts.

Completely unrelated to any of this, having gone through a fair amount of his discography on youtube other than "Thrift Shop" (which I LOVE mind, but I wanted to see the rest of his stuff) I think I've developed a wee bit of a fangirl crush on Macklemore. "And We Danced" and "Can't Hold Us" are seriously giving me all of the life right now.