Catching Up

 
That stupid last post gave me the desire to blog again, and I realize quite a lot has happened since I last wrote.

Perhaps biggest news, I graduated college. Only took me 13 years after I started to get a Bachelor's degree. While my designing has grown and improved, my writing, journaling and blogging have suffered. Blogging is kind of old news now, at least blogspot is. I blame Facebook, my brother in law, and my friend Jacob in Hawaii. This is because 1) Facebook has taken over what my blogging used to be, me either posting things that interested me, or news about me. 2) My brother in law's fault because I wrote to him all through his mission, and so my news and journalistic/what's happening to Austin got used up there, and 3) same goes for Jacob, anything interesting or noteworthy I feel I have to say gets said to him. Isn't he the lucky one?

So what do I have left? A desire to express, to communicate, and just to get thoughts and feelings out. I've been suffering off and on with depression for a very long time, more acutely lately, but at the moment none. I feel great. It's weird, to have periods like days, weeks, or hours or minutes where all I want to do is curl up and die, or contemplate and attempt various ways of different magnitudes of success and pain to do just that. It goes between I'm worthless and don't deserve to live to I must have done something wrong or there's something inherently wrong with/about me, and my wife and son would be better off either without me or with anyone else.

But I didn't post this to talk about my depression, just what's been going on the past year or so since I blogged more regularly.

I currently work at a company in Salt Lake City, right across from the airport, where we design products for various other (almost exclusively) outdoor companies. Often my job is extremely exciting and interesting and a creatives dream come true, but seemingly just as often it is constricting and degenerates into slapping camouflage and a company logo on whatever product I'm working on, be it a flask, barstool, towel, notebook, or you name it we probably do it. There are many pros and cons of working there, often it feels like more cons than pros, but if nothing else, it is providing me with massive experience and growth, which is a gift in and of itself.

My son Morgan is almost 5 now, I couldn't be happier with him or love him more, except I know from experience I will love him more tomorrow, just how it goes. He's still behind developmentally, but constantly growing and improving, I just hope more than practically anything he'll continue in that direction. We got news today at his IEP that he'll be in Special Ed, which made me cry. Even though I knew he would, he's quite behind, I just hope he'll continue to grow and improve, and not regress when surrounded by kids that are more behind than he is. It's odd that getting bad news, even when it's inevitable/not a surprise at all, can still stab the heart like it does. It's never easy to hear that someone you love so much and think of as pretty much the most awesome person in the world is deficient in some way. But, he's always my Moby, and I wouldn't change him, but that doesn't mean I don't hope he grows and improves. He is getting so much better at using the potty, which is one of the biggest reliefs (heh) I've experienced as a parent.

In November I designed another 30 book covers (closer to 40 covers) for NaNoWriMo's 30 Covers in 30 Days challenge, I even got to design a cover for NaNoWriMo's project itself, which was a huge honor and one of the highlights of 2013. I'm planning to make this an annual thing as long as I can find 30 people who want me to design a cover for them, although I'm thinking this year doing it in either October or November, so I can participate in NaNoWriMo the way Baty intended, and write a novel in November.

I miss writing and feel at least a portion of my depression is linked to not having the creative outlet of writing. Even tho my very job is nothing but creative outlets as far as designing and visual creativity goes, writing is something that is a part of me whether I want it to be or not (and I do), and I need to feed that portion of my soul or it threatens to poison the whole tree of me or something. I'm not making much sense, but I'm just trying to get everything out while I have the desire and have made the time to write.

What else? I've been reading about the same, which is almost nothing at all, but I have been listening to a lot, apparently there are a lot of probably less than legal copies of audiobooks on youtube, I've listened to American Gods for the third time and the Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn for the second time, as well as books by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, that are as illuminating as they are inspiring. I've become something of a Hitchens if not disciple, admirer, listening to a great number of his debates and speeches and interviews also on youtube, and saddened that he died so recently and I never had an opportunity to meet him, tho what I'd say heaven knows.

Speaking of meeting celebrities, last summer we went to the Salt Lake Comic Con (we being Tracie, me, and my mommy). It was a lot of fun if insanely crowded. The only famous person we met was Nicholas Brendan who played Xander on Buffy. We opted not to go this year, as there are only about 4 people we'd like to meet (James Marsters, Adam Baldwin, Nathan Fillion, and Billy Dee Williams) and I don't think there's a human being alive that I want to wait in an hour plus line in order to say "Hi, I like you when you act in that one or two roles. Bye."

When I'm not feeling depressed or fulfilling family or work obligations, I'm either going to the bathroom, sleeping, or playing the Star Wars MMO The Old Republic. It is so fun it's crazy, but then I love Star Wars. Tracie asked me what I want for my birthday, I said cake, intimacy (sex) and Star Wars, which I realized could also be the title of my autobiography, if you add mediocre poetry.

Another impetus for wanting to start writing again was this wonderful short video I can't recommend enough, I've already shared it with several of you who won't be reading this, here it is again/for the first time, inspiring words from Jorge Luis Borges:

Best minute and 39 seconds you'll spend today.