Talking to Myself 11/4/22

Who am I and what I'm into right now

This is it, my first non-solo-gaming related post. Feel free to skip if you’re not interested, I won’t take offense.

But maybe there’s some of you readers who are curious about who I am.

So here goes. I teach Special Education to students with Autism (and other neuroatypicalities) in a middle school in the United States. I have a wife and two dogs. I enjoy hiking, reading, watching tv, movies, video games, role playing games and writing.

I’m in my 30s, often worried about the state of the world and the US in particular, and trying to live as best I can.

I’m straight, white and male. I know each of these attributes gives me privilege others don’t have.

I believe that Black Lives Matter.

I believe in Trans rights. Trans men are men. Trans women are women.

I believe in democratic socialism and that billionaires should not exist.

If any of these beliefs upset you, feel free to unsubscribe and never come back.

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What I’m into, right now:

I’m currently reading “The City We Became” by N.K. Jemesin. It rules. I just finished “The Raw Shark Texts” by Steven Hall, which is a mind-bender of a novel about ‘fish’ that live in thoughts and communication that eat our memories. I also just finished the latest monk and robot book, “Prayer for the Crown-shy” by Becky Chambers, which was a lovely novella about a curious robot and a monk, exploring a utopia and having quiet philosophical chats. I also want to shout out the book “1491: New revelations of the Americas before Columbus” by Charles C. Mann which I finished recently and really opened up my eyes to the evidence of truly complex civilizations that existed long before Columbus showed up. Here’s a link to my goodreads that I haphazardly update.

I’m currently watching Andor, the best Star Wars media that’s ever come out. I’m also watching Abbot Elementary and Ghosts, both great sitcoms. I just finished season 3 of Barry and the first season of Welcome To Wrexham. I’m slowly making my way through The Sandman. I also recently finished She-hulk which I thought was one of the better Marvel shows, despite not totally loving the finale.

For movies, you can follow me on letterboxd if that’s a thing you do. Here’s what I’ve watched recently (not counting rewatching movies I’d already seen): Being John Malkovich, Can you Ever Forgive Me, Bros, Scream, Hocus Pocus 2, Titane, Us, Silent Hill, and Bullet Train. The stand-outs are Being John Malkovich, Can you Ever Forgive Me, Bros, Scream and Us. Titane is a wild and insane movie but not sure I can recommend it.

As for role-playing, I’m currently the game master (GM) for a group playing The Sprawl, which is a very fun cyberpunk system that is PBTA (Powered by the Apocalypse). If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry about it, it just means it uses a similar system of mechanics as other PBTA games.

As for life in general? I’m trying to lower my blood pressure through eating less junk and exercise but haven’t been doing a good job of that lately. I’m getting back into mindful meditation and running, which will hopefully be easier once daylight savings changes and there’s more light in the morning. I once ran a half-marathon and I’d like to get back to even a fraction of that running stamina.

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What else will these type of posts be for? Well, these will be my own thoughts about various topics or subjects that may not be related to solo-gaming. They might be an in-depth review and analysis of a movie I just watched. They might be my thoughts on mindfulness meditation which is something I’ve done on and off for years. They might be random recommendations on meditation apps, tv shows, books, authors or other things.

The point is, it could be anything. I could spin this off into it’s own newsletter within the pwm-substack but I’m just not sure how that would work or what it would look like, so I’m keeping it in the main for now, and if you’re not interested, feel free to skip.

If you have thoughts or questions about anything I’ve talked about, drop a comment and we can chat.