February already?

I did say I was going to blog every other week in 2026. It’s still hard to do when I don’t have much to talk about and I actively refuse to engage in the nightmare that is social media. Blogging would probably be easier if I had some kind of schedule of topics or something. I just don’t want to make one.

I’ve been feeling mid-life crisis-y lately. Life doesn’t seem to have meaningful forward momentum. Temporal anxiety, maladaptive daydreaming, and identity-adjacent fantasies are flaring. Self-actualization sounds too grown up. I know this is partly because Minnesota winters can be fucking bleak (especially this one), but it’s been difficult to shake even though all my needs as a person are being met.

Bluh. I have no reason to feel all pudding-boned and nervous about tomorrow. Most of this boils down to a worry about my current situation being projected on my future state. I feel aggressively idle and worry that it’s going to be my default state forever.

Now I understand why I drank so much in my 20s and 30s.

I should travel more. Travel or win the lottery and move to a quieter spot in rural Minnesota or the Rockies. Man, I’d love to live somewhere near Glacier National Park or West Central Colorado. Somewhere that looks like Lake Louise but without the flood of tourists would be ideal. If anyone’s got a lead on that kind of real estate, I’m down to chip in on a multi-family home.

So, other than myself, what am I working on?

Gingerbread II is in a half-limbo state after 30K words. That’s typical for me. I’ll get through a character’s early arc or I’ll hit the Act 1/Act 2 turn, and then things sputter. I’ve learned that’s how my brain works. It’s the egg hitting the frying pan. I just need to let it cook for a bit before fussing with it.

While I'm waiting for that, I've jumped back into a shorter work I started three or four years ago. It’s a gothic-y ghost story about the day when an unsolved series of murders took place at a manor home in the 1930s. I don’t really enjoy writing in 1^st person POV, but the narrative voice of this one is “speaking” to me, as it were. Simple, focused, pretty, and blood are basically what I have written on the top of each page. I’d like to have a draft by the end of summer.

What else, what else, what else…

I’m on Level 3 of Pimsleur’s Swedish course. There are only 30 levels, and I’m meant to do one per day. I bet I can take six months to stammer my way through them, though. Later this year, I’m going to buy a grammar book and hire an online tutor to talk to. Once I’m ready to move on, I think Spanish is going to be next. Learning French in college was fun, because there were only about ten of us in the class and we fucked around. A LOT. So much fun.

I fired up my Steam deck and started Final Fantasy 4 for the millionth time. It was the first JRPG I ever played. My brothers and I had to rent it for $2 a weekend from the local mom and pop video store and hope nobody else deleted our save file. I’ve lost so much of my life to this game, Final Fantasy 6, and Chrono Trigger. The only other one that’s scratched the same fantasy itch was Skyrim. Baldur’s Gate 3 is fun, but it’s not the same. I reach for Stardew Valley before BG3.

That’s about it, I think. I need to set aside a few hours to do a write up for Always, in This Nightmare, Hot Demon Bitches Near You, and Bicameral yet. I don’t think it’s right for me to review other people’s books on Goodreads if I can’t look objectively at my own.

Alright. I’m going to make myself and my wife breakfast for lunch.