Luck, depression, inspiration, planning

I am an incredibly lucky person (not that I believe in luck) really. I just rode home from my well paid job along a beautiful industrial canal (all the people riding the opposite way looking at me strangely because of the stupid grin I always have plastered over my face when riding along the canal). Of course, hard work got me some of the way to where I am, but I don’t work harder than many others in much worse circumstances than I. Something to consider certainly, but that is not why I am writing today. I am writing because I am feeling good for the first time in a week. All the things that were piling up at work suddenly got done, seemingly without having expended any effort on my part (despite me trying for weeks to get it all done). Most importantly, I feel like writing for the first time in a week. I haven’t mentioned on this blog before, but I actually write something every day. For at least 30 minutes a day I write, some of that material ends up on this blog. In the year to date, I missed only a single week of writing  in February when I was on holiday, not a single other day was missed. Now however, I have a massive hole for the last few days because I have been unable to write a single coherent sentence. Oh sure, there have been many days before where my output is better measured in characters than words, but never have I felt so blocked. 

What solved my problem? I have no idea. I am not even risking writing anything useful in the blog today (hence this banal entry) but it is enough for me. I resist writing anything Nocte related (curses! I still need to change that name) but I shall attempt to share a few things that I have been thinking about lately. 

I do not read many roleplaying forums anymore, I found they are just not worth the effort of sorting through the flame wars and useless edition warring in order to get to the good stuff (of which I admit there is plenty), but not even I have missed the controversy of the past few weeks regarding the allegedly sexist D&D consultants. I do not wish to weigh into the debate in particular, but one thing did strike me. Although I consider myself non-sexist and take action to regress the sometimes mysoginistic problems in my industry I could not boycott or even decry the employment of such people (even if they were found to be “guilty”). I listen to Wagner, I still watch Mad Max, I enjoyed Ender’s Game. For me, Art surpasses the disgressions of their creators and so D&D transcends its creators, consultants and even bloggers. 

The second thing I wish to share is a brilliant post on how to be creative over at Goblin Punch.

Lastly, I wanted to outline what should be coming up on this blog over the next few weeks. These are topics I have a few paragraphs or a bunch of ideas for, that I will be writing about in no particular order:

• Small (and Medium) Gods – More information on various gods and religions of the city
• A timeline outlining a basic history of the nobles and guilds of Nocte
• Trade goods
• The seafaring orcs
•  The Great Goblin empire
•  The Guild of Engineers 
•  The various merchant guilds

Hopefully there is something in that it that piques your interest. Unfortunately you will have to wait until next week for the next entry.