The last couple of days - An update

Greetings from the other side.

Yesterday was the final work-day for me this week. At least going on my regular 60% schedule. I also have some extra work on Saturday. Which is good, because every little bit helps, really. :) I have gotten a lot of work done this week however, so it should be ok even if I don't work today or tomorrow.

I visited a naprapath ('naprapat' in Swedish. I translated it via Google. Though it seems about the same as a chiropractor.) today about my knee. I figured that since I have already seen a doctor about it and it hasn't gotten well yet I might as well try other options as well. I really don't have anything to loose. Hopefully the treatment he gave me will help, though I have been ordered a few days rest for the knee to allow the swelling to go down so I won't really know until after a few days. He also gave me some light exercises to help strengthen the muscles around my knee. Wish me luck!

I was thinking of not working Saturday to allow my knee to heal up better, but my father-in-law has promised to help me out, and it isn't as physically demanding as my regular job can be, so I should be fine as long as I take it easy and remember to rest when I can. I am lucky, and thankful, that he is able to come help me out though.

This evening my girlfriend and I are going, together with her parents, to go practicing with a temporary choir, that has been put together for one performance in church on All Saint's Day (Alla helgons dag), also known as All Hallow's Day according to Wikipedia. Luckily for my knee we will be sitting down the entire time, or most of the time at least. :)

Yesterday I spent some time practicing my map-making again. I am quite enjoying it. :) I have not had the time to do so today yet, but I might do it again this evening. It feels good to be back working on it again, as I have been feeling it is something I need to do for my continued world-building exercises.

Time for me to go get ready for this evening's choir practice.

See you all on the other side!

A Sunday out of the ordinary

Greetings from the other side.

So far this has been a day of new meetings and experiences. I had the honor of being "kyrkvärd" today at the morning service at church. I have tried translating "kyrkvärd" into english, but found two different terms - "churchwarden" and "sidesman". I have not been able to ascertain which one would be the most appropriate term to use however, so I will leave it at that. Being my first time doing this, I was happy to have my girlfriend's dad with me who has a lot of experience with that kind of work.

After we were done at the church, we went off to buy some salmon and met a relative to my girlfriend's family there. He was probably one of the happiest, and most cheerful people I have ever met. It's the kind of happiness that just beams off of him, and infects everyone around him. It was also the first time I have ever walked into a store and gotten a hug from someone working there. :) lol I guess I am part of the family now.

Yesterday's fog has lifted from the land, but the cloud-cover still remains. From what I am told the sun will come back again tomorrow, which will be welcome.

I seem to have gotten my energy back now, which is welcome after a long week of feeling heavy in both body and mind. Not sure what was up with that. It was like I hadn't been sleeping even though I tried to sleep more than normally to counter it. Hopefully my new-found energy will stay with me going forward. :)

I was able to do a bit more world-building yesterday evening, which felt nice having not been able to do any work on it in the past week. :) I was unable to do any more work on maps however, but I am sure I will get to doing that soon as well.

See you all on the other side!

Less than 100%

Greetings from the other side.

Not sure what is up with me today. My head is feeling heavy and clouded, my body feels heavy as well, and it feels like I haven't slept in days. I don't have a fever however, nor do I feel like I am coming down with one. I have been feeling like this all day today.

Hopefully I will feel better tomorrow. I have a lot of stuff to do at work this week, so hopefully I can stay healthy and get my head back in order again soon. I am trying not to get stressed about it though. I know that stressing won't help in the slightest, and it would probably only succeed in making things worse, which would probably make me stress even more, etc etc.

I'm even having a hard time being creative and writing stuff or working on maps today. Which is a shame because I love doing that stuff. It gives me a "vent" of sorts, to focus on doing something I love doing. It's a good way to relax for me, doing things like writing about creative stuff such as the world-building, making maps for the world-building, playing tabletop roleplaying games, reading about historical stuff, etc etc. I have already written a post about how doing things you love is good for you so I won't go into any more details about it here.

I have a hard time focusing my thoughts right now, so I will end this post here.

See you all on the other side!

Creativivity & Everyday Life

Greetings from the other side.

Another work week is under way, starting out with a 9 hr work day. The weather was nice though, and the day went by fairly quickly. Feeling tired still despite having had a very calm weekend. Hopefully I am not coming down with something. Need to stay healthy now that I have just started my new job.

The new blog is working out well so far. Only three blog posts on it as of yet, but there will be plenty more. :) Not really had much issue keeping up with two blogs either. I know I am not able to update every day, but I am trying to update about every 3 days or so at least. Keyword there might be "trying" on occasion, but for the most part I will try to keep that up for both blogs.

I have been working more on the map-making for the world-building project. I have some of the major land-masses outlined, but still need to fill in the details. I am still learning, and I don't really want to fill in the details until I have learned the program better. It is a process, but I am learning a bit every time it feels like. I have also tried working on the writing, and I have been brimming with ideas. :) It's just been a matter of actually getting it all down on paper.

Football (soccer for my north-american blog-readers) season is underway, but sadly I have not been able to watch any games yet as I don't yet have the required TV channels to do so. Will need to get it soon, but honestly with the expenses we've had in the first month of my stay here I would not have been able to justify it. Things should calm down soon though on that front, so it is definitelly up there on the list of things to get. Another thing is a finnish phone so it is not so expensive for my gf to call my swedish phone. A big problem for her has also been that whenever she sends me a text message, her phone seems to send me 3-5 copies of the same text message. An example: Day before yesterday she sent me a short message to let me know she was on her way back home. I got that message 7 times, including one the following day. We'll need to talk to her service provider about that, and if it is not on their side then we'll need to see what can be done about the phone.

On a more positive note, life is moving along quite well over here. :) I am enjoying myself, work is going well, and I am surrounded by wonderful people. I am trying to get around to learning a bit of finnish, but after an 8 or 9 hr work day of hard work, I'm not always in the mood to do some studying when I get back home again. Hopefully I will pick things up as I go along and learn a bit at a time.

See you all on the other side!

Campaign reflections & A short story

Greetings from the other side.

Feeling a bit tired today, but hopefully I can get some creative stuff done this evening. Would like to continue writing on my world-building, as the idea of one day running a tabletop RPG campaign in it is growing on me quite a lot. Will of course need to find players for it, etc, but that'll be a problem for further down the line. :) And yes, I know I said in a previous post that the world was a separate project that I was making to see what I could create if I gave myself no deadlines and complete creative freedom, not tied down by a specific tabletop rpg system or any specific campaign ideas. I have found however, that as I am building this world, a lot of ideas for campaigns are starting to take form based on the information I write down about this world. So in a sense, it is not the campaign that gives birth to the world, but the world itself that gives birth to the campaign, if that makes sense. I still have a lot of work left to do though, before I feel comfortable with using the world for a campaign, but it is coming along nicely. The fact that I have now started making maps for it is also a huge boost to me. It is 'only' world maps of individual continents or lands at the moment, but they really help me put everything into perspective a bit more.

The creative process is really calming to me. It almost becomes meditative at times, as I loose myself in the process of writing and coming up with ideas. Sometimes, I don't even have a pre-planned idea of what I want to write, it just comes to me as I sit there in front of the screen with a blank document in front of me. It is kinda like when I write this blog. I don't always have an idea what I want to write about. I just start and the words just start flowing. A good example, tying back to the tabletop RPGs, I had a character (well, I still technically have the character, it is just that the campaign is on ice for a bit) who was an elven ranger in a 4e D&D game. I initially wrote up about a page or two of backstory for the character, which were mostly bullet points to be honest, but then one day I decided I was going to expand on it to give my DM  (Dungeon Master) a bit more to work with. So I sat down with a blank document in Word, and had the two pages I had already written on the side, and started writing. After a fairly short while I had about 11 or 12 pages written, plus reference lists of people the character had met in their backstory, a list of locations, etc. It was about at this point that the DM begged me not to write any more stuff. So I stopped, even though I could have fleshed it out more and written a lot more information as well, and ended up with far more pages than I already had, but I decided to be kind to our DM. ;)

See you all on the other side!

Reflections on time

Greetings from the other side.

The weekend has just flown by, it feels like. Can hardly believe Monday is almost here again. In general it feels like time has passed really quickly since I got here. I mean, it has already been 3 weeks since I moved here, I started my new job last week, and yet it feels like I've only been here a few days. Kinda strange how the perception of time can be so seemingly different depending on what is happening in your life, how you are feeling, etc. Yet at the same time I know that, logically, whether I feel like time has moved quickly or slowly, the same amount of actual time has still passed. It is a fascinating thing when you think about it. Like a lot of things in this world are, when you actually stop to think about them. Even things that may seem as mundane as time can be a fascinating thing when you actually think about it. We have watches, or keep track of time in other ways, for example on our mobile phones, etc. We schedule our days according to what time it is. We eat lunch and dinner at certain times, there is a certain time we start working or go home from work, etc etc. Whether a work day feels long or short can vary depending on a lot of factors, like how much we enjoy what we do, how much stuff we feel we need to get done in a day, etc. Yet, regardless of how long the workday felt, the same amount of time has passed regardless. Time is a fascinating thing, I think. It plays such a big part in our lives, yet we have all become so accustomed to it that we don't really think about it most of the time.

In tabletop roleplaying, especially world-building, time is an interesting factor to play with as well. Depending on whether you want to go really detailed on the world-building, or not, of course. If you don't mind it however, thinking about things like what does the world's calender look like? How do they measure time? Is a year the same length as it is for us here on Earth? What, if any, significance does time have in a culture? Does the view on time differ between different cultures and/or races? I love thinking about things like that, though I understand if it isn't for everyone. :) You can also think about whether you want to ever have time as a factor in a roleplaying game. There's things you can do, like timed challenges or pussles for the players to deal with, or perhaps introduce festivals or other things and events that happen at specific times of the year. An event doesn't necessarily need to be a festival or other "man-made" occasion, it can also be a natural phenomenon that happens in the world every year at a certain point in time. It can help give more flavour to the world. A good rule is to introduce it if you like it and it makes sense in the world you are creating.

I have also gotten back into map-making again. Still trying to learn the program, but I am making slow progress. Just need to keep ignoring my own inner wish to just ignore the training and get it done. :) lol Better to learn step by step in the long run. I have made basic maps, just detailing the landmasses, of two of the continents I have been working on. Still need more practise before I can add mountains, forests, etc. Though I can always practise that on other maps and then come back to these.

See you all on the other side!

Creative sparks, and everyday life

Greetings from the other side.

The first week in my new job has finally begun, and so far, so good. Lots to get used to, and learn, but so far I am coping well. :) To be honest, it has been a somewhat calm week, as I am getting to grips with things around the workplace. A couple of surprises, but nothing I haven't been able to handle.

We've finally gotten some sunshine today. The sun decided to show itself in mid-afternoon, clearing the rainclouds that had been covering the sky up until then. Let's see how long it lasts. If the past couple of weeks are anything to go by, I should fully expect the rain to come back tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest. We shall see.

Internet is behaving... most of the time. Still getting the occasional dip in connection speed where it is much slower than normal. We might have to talk to the service providers again.

My creative spark is still there, and I have been doing quite a lot of writing and thinking. Especially when it comes to the world-building. It is so nice to be back in the creative groove again. Though it can be a bit annoying at times when good and/or interesting ideas decide to enter my mind just when I am about to go to bed. All I can do then is jot down some quick notes on a notepad and hope it will help me remember the idea until the next evening after I get home from work. Unfortunatelly the writing has meant that the map-making has had to take a backseat. Again. Not much to do about it though. I will come back to it as soon as I get around to it.

That will round out a somewhat short post today.

See you all on the other side!

A short one

Greetings from the other side.

Another day, another adventure. Today I have learned more about my job, which was quite fun. Tomorrow I begin the adventure in earnest as I journey forth into my first official day on my new job. I am looking forward to that. :) Hopefully all will go well for me. It does feel a bit nervous starting a new job like this, and it feels like there is a lot to take in and many new things to learn, but at the same time I am exited about it as well and looking forward to it! Wish me luck!

It is another day of rain over here, but looking at the bright side at least it isn't windy and there is no thunder! Hopefully the sun will find its way back soon so we can get some sunshine again. I am staying hopefull.

Besides being at work today in an 'official' capacity, I have spent most of the day working on world-building again. I know. I know. But it is SO nice to be back in the writing groove again. Elaborating on lands, religion, races, and all other sorts of things feels really rewarding to me. :) I have not been able to work any on the map-making today however. I might get to that this evening. We shall see.

Looking forward to the Premier League season being underway again as well. :) Hopefully it will be a good year. Might come back to that particular subject in a future post.

This will have to be a short blog-post, as I need to go help with dinner.

See you all on the other side!

Building worlds & making maps

Greetings from the other side.

Yesterday was an interesting day. Not because something particularily interesting happend, but because it was one of those days where it felt like we did a lot of things, yet nothing at all at the same time. We went into the city to do some errands and some shopping, and we had a gluten-free pizza for dinner, and that was about it really. Yet it still feels like the whole day went by in a flash and we did a ton of stuff. Weird.

Last evening was apparently also "rain and thunder evening", where mother nature decided to put on another impromptu show for us. The rain has keept going so far today, but at least there hasn't been any thunder.

Because of the rain, I have instead stayed inside and worked on a bit of world-building. Feels nice to be back into the groove a bit with the writing. I have also tried my hand at learning how to use my map-making program. I have, in the past, used AutoREALM for this purpose, but that was a 'while' ago now (read: over a year... at least), so I am currently trying to learn to use Campaign Cartographer instead. I find that I have two 'enemies' in this:

* I know I need to do practise maps first, before I start working on actual maps, but for some reason there is something inside me that just want to make the maps immediately. This impatient side of me is kind of annoying at times.

* It takes too long between times that I sit down with the program, so I end up making much slower progress than I really should need to.

One of the benefits of using AutoREALM is that it has a GREAT measuring tool built in, that allowed you to measure distances in various ways. You could measure it in feet, meters, miles, kilometers, etc, but also in things like 'days travelled on foot', 'days travelled on foot in difficult terrain', 'days by sailed galley', etc, and even in astronomical units and parsecs, should one wish to do that. I have, as of yet, not found any similar function in Campaign Cartographer, though I suspect there isn't one.

Don't get me wrong, I still really like AutoREALM. It is just that I wanted to try and learn how to use Campaign Cartographer as well, as I have heard a lot of good stuff about it.

The writing goes well. I am well on my way to writing up another land and its peoples. :) I actually got the inspiration for this land when I was practising my map-making skills earlier today, so sometimes inspiration can come to you from unexpected places. Currently working on an island / archipelago nation, inhabited by two species who have learned to co-exist after a troubled past (at least, that is how the story goes at the moment). Not the most novel of ideas I know, but I am hoping to expand on it and go into more detail as I go along. It is the seed from which the tree grows as I keep writing their story, if you will. I am excited to see what it ends up being like. Knowing me though, I will probably make changes to things as I go along, so what I just posted could still be subject to change.

Well, that's about it for now. Time to get back to the creative writing again. :)

See you all on the other side!

Windy days, lessons learned, knee & internet issues, and a bit more world-building thoughts.

Greetings from the other side.

Hello from a very wind-swept island somewhere in Finland. We went to run some errands today, and the windspeed indicator indicated winds of 21 meters / second. I can believe that. It's been blowing quite vigorously yesterday and today. A shame as I had been hoping to get some more work done outdoors. Ah well, as I pointed out in my last post there's no point in stressing over things when you have plenty of time to do it in and there's no need to rush it anyway. :)

My right knee started acting up again today, having been well for a couple of days. I doubt it is an injury as there is no pain. It just feels swollen and starts feeling a bit stiff after a while of use. It got better once, so hopefully it will get better soon again. Best I can do is try and rest it, and my gf, who is a zone therapist, will probably try and help as well with some treatment. It worked wonders a couple of days ago, so hopefully it will do the same now.

I also learned an important lesson while driving today. Just because the entry-way into a roundabout is wide enough for two or more lanes, doesn't mean that the roundabout itself has more than one lane. In fact, from what I am told, there are no roundabouts, in this area at least, that has more than one lane. Silly me from Sweden who thought that when the entryway is that wide it must mean that it is just like home that the roundabout usually has two lanes. Nope. Not the case. Something to keep in mind if you are thinking of coming here from Sweden and do some driving around. I managed to get into the roundabout anyway, eventually. Appologies to any finnish drivers who might have been wondering what that crazy swede was up to! :)

New internet is still causing issues. Best advice we got at the store when we talked to them about it was to try and connect a cable between the router and the laptop. It hasn't worked wonders really. Yesterday evening the internet was on and off. The slowest speed I tested vs Bredbandskollen.se was about 0,25Mb/s down and 0,24Mb/s down. On a 100Mb/s connection. Fastest I think was in the region of about 20Mb/s both ways. Connection speed is a bit iffy it seems. Hopefully it will get better. I can't deny I'd like to get a broadband cable into the house, but doing that is kind of expensive and something that will need to be postponed for later. It will happen at some point though.

Did some more writing on the world-building yesterday. Not much, but a little at least. I would love to get working on making maps, mainly as a visual aid for myself. I find that it can be really helpful to see the things you have envisioned in writing come to life on a map. Sadly, I am not very good at drawing maps, but I suppose practise makes perfect. I do have a program or two to help me with it, I just need to find the time to actually sit down and figure the programs out and actually draw the maps. So far, most days have been booked with something, and when a day hasn't been booked I have found something else that needs to be done. :) lol I do need to get started on it though, so I will try to work on it this week. At least the 'learning how the programs work' bit.

On top of the fairly gigantic world I am already working on, ideas for a second world has already started poping into my head. The first one is, I guess, more fantasy oriented, with the second one being more steampunk-ish in nature. I need to write down my ideas for it and see where that takes me. One thing I DO know, however, is that I won't make the second world nearly as large as the first one is turning out to be. I alreay have enough material and ideas for about 3 or 4 continents in that world, and probably plenty more to come. If I would hazard a guess, the steampunk "world" will probably be limited, at least initially, to just one or two continents or areas. I might expand that further later on, but until I am done with the fantasy world I think that will do.

See you all on the other side!