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The Guiding Principles and New Rules
document is now in effect.
Ambition, self-improvement, DREAMS
Posts
Steam Me
I'm expecting payment for some freelance work I did in the next week. I'm going to use that money to buy a bicycle with the intention of riding it to work.
It's a reasonably easy 10.5km ride each way and if it's raining or I'm not feeling it, I can just get on a bus.
I'm planning on working up to the full ride by bussing an ever decreasing amount of the trip.
I'm excited!
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
i still don't know if i will do it because i think it includes courses on photography and ... performance art, neither of which i want to touch
also i dont know if i can even handle full-time school with my brain
but there's almost no chance i could ever go with my other goal, entomology, since i would have to go through a lot of physics and chemistry and math all of which have broken me in the past
but today i got the gears moving to get a new psych and got the blood tests i've been putting off for months and im hoping i can start actually taking better care of myself as far as brain/diabetes go and that's probably the most important goal i can focus on right now, really. no point sinking 100% of my life into school and work if i'm going to destroy my body and go blind and die of ____ failure
Planes will be a game of running to catch your plane. Players will control a group of people attempting to "push their way through a congested airport", and you'll use your own family to passive-aggressively block other passengers.
Fuck me, I need to really get on making my own boardgame already.
But I need about 5K in the bank to make that move happen and my girlfriend wants me to propose and if I DO propose it's going to be both flashy and classy because that's who I am, and her friends are trying to pressure her to get a car which is just another bill that will slow everything down, so I'm in the awkward position of not wanting to put my dreams on hold but maybe needing to. Bah!
If I'm going all the way here in dream land, I'd LOVE to work in a Montessori school and they do exist locally but I think I'll focus on becoming a regular public school teacher first.
This is basically where I am in regards to teaching. I thought I wanted to be a teacher, thinking back to the awesome teachers I had in elementary at private schools. But, to test the waters, before I went and got a masters in education or whatever, I decided to teach English abroad which is how I ended up with my current job of teaching English at the JHS level in Japan, which I am in my second year of.
And it is all teaching to the test, all discipline, all making sure they memorize things just long enough for the test and then who cares if they forget it later and never use it again, because they have to pass those entrance exams for high school or their future is fucked, and it has just totally destroyed any interest I had in being a teacher. I know those good teaching positions exist, I know that there are teachers out there that still make a huge, meaningful impact in the lives of young people like my teachers did for me (honestly I can point so much of the person I am today directly to my sixth grade teacher). I just have no idea if I would be able to get those positions and I know that I personally can't handle being in a teaching position where I feel like I am doing more harm than good and just shuffling kids through a broken system.
Sorry, I hope this doesn't come off as pooping on your dream. That's not my intent, just kind of venting and thinking. I am sure you can get into the type of teaching position that you want to be in, so don't give up on your dream, pursue it as hard as you can.
Let's just say burnt out.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
and i got to watch all the teachers i became friends with in school and kept up with lose their jobs and end up having to find new jobs or move to all corners of the globe and get shit on constantly and man i cant deal with that
my school district was and still is in such a hilarious amount of debt, straight up incompetence
write you stupid fuck Nogs
PARKER, YOU'RE FIRED! <-- My comic book podcast! Satan look here!
Super short term (1 week)
- yell at Canada Immigration for giving me a visa extension with the wrong name and passport number, and get it fixed
- get over this damned cold
- get the scratch dialogue we recorded for A Wrinkle In Crime into the game
Short term (rest of the year)
- move my family to Australia (this will take up most of my time)
- get A Wrinkle In Crime to a point where we can think about Kickstarter for funding to finish it
- get better at drums
Medium term (next 5 years)
- raise an awesome son
- finish A Wrinkle In Crime and get it up for sale (hopefully in the first year or two)
- learn to be a bit handier around the house so we can get our new place fixed up the way we want it
- get awesome at drums and find a band to play with
- probably have a second kid
I have a ton of long term goals like writing a book, learning to draw, etc, except that I know if I want to be able to do those in 10 years I need to start NOW, but then all of my short to medium term goals get in the way, not to mention my day job. I wish I could learn to not require sleep so I had more time and energy.
Go for it. My girlfriend is a first year teaching 3rd grade. 3rd grade is the worst with regard to testing by far. I am looking for a music teacher position. We both love it and wouldn't do anything else but it's a bitch. Especially when the state legislature where you live (NC here) is essentially doing everything in it's power to convince teachers to quit or leave the state. I'm in the highest paying county but it's still very low pay. What state are you in?
Last I checked we have the WASL and we are required to take it in the 4th, 7th and 11th grades I think and at one point you had to pass them to graduate. This was after I graduated and considering I did poorly in school thank god I didn't have to deal with that shit. I remember that during those grades half the time was spent on preparation for the test until we took them in the spring.
Teaching looks like a rewarding job, I just wish politicians didn't hate teachers so damn much.
EDIT: No one's posts here have discouraged me, and I'll probably still go through it and become a teacher regardless of whatever obstacles there are to actually doing the job properly.
The weasel is gone now, although I don't know much about what we replaced it with.
Fuck the weasel though, god damn.
Steam
The last few projects though I've had enough time to start exploring the outside tools and the more advanced stuff that goes on with modern 3d work. Our company's not rich so I don't get any of the fancy toys, but I've been using Blender, SketchUp, Gimp etc to make better stuff outside of OS, playing with a few tricks I don't think I've seen anyone else in OS/SL doing, and getting to know the tools well enough that I'm not spending an entire day trying to make one thing anymore. I don't have any specific goals in mind, and I'm not the kind of guy who has a lot of energy after work to come home and work on some other serious project, but I've got this vague want to keep getting better at this stuff until I can do something personally useful with it. I even bought the Substance art tools off of Steam when they were on sale the other day, even though I have no current purpose for it.
I think there's a part of me that always kind of wished I could art, but I never had the hands for it, or something. But working in software? That's something I think I can do.
I had this done when I was in high school! It does, in fact, suck. You never stop feeling the tension in the chain. Totally worth it though (a missing tooth or two beats a tooth growing sideways and burrowing through the nerves of other teeth)!
My current ambition is to become successful enough of a game developer to pay my own bills and get to make cool games with cool people. Been working on a game with three other people in Unity for a little bit now!
I now brush my teeth twice a day in addition to flossing & using mouthwash before bed.
I am working out 4 days a week trying to get to a better place.
I am hopeful I can be a better me.
I'm really terrible at sticking to my resolutions.
never give up on entomology
even if getting a degree in the sciences isn't the path for you, if you love bugs keep on pursuing them on your own time
entomology is one of those things where you can become hugely knowledgable without a formal degree, especially if you're interested in the fauna of your local area
I met the Division 2 Men's team for the first time last night and it was awesome; all really good guys who work hard. And only one older more experienced player (who has obviously played at a high level in the past) who was trying to coach over me and was pretty condescending to me about the drills I chose. I told him that while I respect his experience, it was perfectly within his rights to go home if he didn't like how I did things; he did not go home and fell in line.
So it's pretty exciting and really intimidating but it's a good group of blokes so I'm pretty stoked to invest my time in learning how to coach them.
Some say coaching men is easier than coaching women - I reckon that's only true if you're a male coach.
I got pretty pissed off and basically snapped "my drill, my rules, if you don't like it, go home"
it was a disagreement on how to feed a ball for a drill, and my intent behind the drill was to watch these boys hustle and to gauge their footwork
and this old guy was all "but you would never have a ball like that during a game"
and in my head I was all "first off - yeah you would, if someone passed into the fucking net and it snapped out; second off - that's not what this drill is about, which is about forward and backward movement; third off - NYAAAAAAAAAAAARGH SHUT UP" and somehow my mouth settled on something far more concise
So I could be totally wrong here, but it seems like it's not really necessary to go to college for any scientific field if all you want is to be knowledgeable. Like between the internet's resources and forums to ask questions, magazines, and the fact that I'm pretty sure you don't have to be a college student to buy college textbooks, you could probably educate yourself pretty thoroughly.
Again, I don't really know what I'm talking about.
Steam
that's kinda what i thought was a more intelligent choice
it's definitely something i intend to keep around as a hobby and passion, i'm fine with not becoming a doctor about it and spend my entire life chasing it
I get this exact comment from more experienced derby girls when we share practices with other teams.
Like yes I'm creating a very un-game-like situation
but it's designed specifically to isolate and focus on a particular skill, and later on in the practice, we will utilize that skill in a distinctly more game-like situation.
Like lookit this drill
Real derby doesn't look like that! But that is sure as shit an effective fucking edging drill.
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
Yeah it was my first session with them; I'm an explainer so actually refusing to explain in that situation felt weird but was probably the right thing to do. Respect is definitely a different thing all of a sudden and I feel like I have to earn it with the guys much more so than I ever did with the girls.
Once I know they're not gonna give me lip I'm happy to be more explain-y.
Not at all trying to discourage you with that post. Just a fair warning. Washington has considerably better pay than NC. And I can't imagine the legislation being more slated against teachers than the stuff that has been and is being passed in NC. It is awful and I probably wouldn't think twice about moving somewhere else.
Unfortunately I didn't do enough test rides to re-adjust my seat after putting my bike away in storage and I have some bruises in very tender places.
Self-improvement is so painful.
Edit: I also forgot my shoes and my bike shoes are not comfortable for all day office wearing.
"Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
Now I want to throw up.
Oh I didn't mean that you personally were discouraging, but that someone had commented about their negative experiences and hoped that they didn't change my mind.
and I need to write so many more scripts and make more contacts but goddammit I am going to move to LA
and I'm meeting a personal trainer tonight and trying to eat less and better
and I'm in the third level class of Chicago-style improv and I'm working really hard to be a better improviser and team player
so
that's what I got going on
oh also I've been cooking at home at least twice a week and I am getting pretty good at it
But if you find the right school, and get efficient at teaching the core concepts, you can get that out of the way and teach awesome things. Like right now my kids are playing that Fantasy Geopolitics game online now and they are going crazy about it. Like making trades during lunch and rushing to me to use the computer to do research.
I've taught 4th grade math using Battleship to teach grids, used climbing walls with magnetic letters to review reading and spelling, and built kites from scraps for SCIENCE.
It's all about efficiency.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
congrats (future tense) on moving to LA! i originally moved out here to do film/TV but ended up in games instead, but there's lots of opportunity here so I'm sure you'll do awesome.
there's a good number of us forumers in the greater LA/OC area so don't be shy once you get out here!
Yay LA!
So this thing right here?
It just happened.
Steam Me