How I parse depression and getting out

I've been having some really interesting meetings lately over a number of different projects. They've been in a number if different areas to do with education, educational technology and peripheral applications of technology in education. It has, to say the least, been exactly what I needed.

Over the last few months I've been struggling with depression. For me this tends to manifest as apathy for everything, procrastination in study and work and a sort of low level constant irritability.  To sum it up I become a grouchy git who just doesn't feel effective. This leads me to not try my hand at anything or get things done which makes me feel even more ineffective and so on. You can see how this goes.

Over the last few days I've been asked to: give my opinion on things I care about, produce a workshop for a conference on a project I'm involved in developing, observe a highly exciting data analytics for education project and just generally had a lot of external validation on the professional and academic front.

For the first time in a while I don't feel like a fraud. I don't feel like a stupid kid holding up the puppet of my adult self. I feel like I'm a little closer to being that which I strive to be professionally. I also realise that I'm not stuck. Something I was feeling for a while, like spinning my wheels, no forward momentum.

It's been said that you have to work through your uninspired periods, that if you only  work when inspired nothing gets done. When I'm depressed I need a little inspiration to pull myself into working. Today I got that excited buzz of inspiration which along with recent validation makes me want to get working again. To build the habit of working again and push myself out of this doldrum I found myself in for the last 5 months.

Today I'm a step closer to realising the me I feel I should be in a professional sense.

On Procrastinating

I've procrastinated something awful this academic year. Terrible terrible carry on altogether. There's an awful lot floating about the internet with regards to procrastination things like this or this, among the more humorous offerings. It's often touted as an anxiety thing and I can believe it.

You see for me procrastination is something of a vicious cycle. It goes like this: Stu has some sort of thing to do, Stu feels he may fail to do this, Stu finds more immediate things to be "busy" with, Stu has less time to do the thing, Stu freaks out about lack of time to do the thing. Rinse and repeat. It's painful. I've done this for a long time.

Today, rather than beating myself up about it like I usually do, I thought I'd take a step forward for once. Here's the step, you're reading it. I've been meaning, no I guess waiting for permission from some unknown source, to write a new post for ages. This is me giving myself permission to do this, by doing it.

So I'm also going to audit my current projects, something I've avoided for some time for fear of freaking out. I feel it's a first step towards getting the stuff I need do, done.

1. 3000 word ish thesis proposal for my Ed. Doc. substantive topic.

2. 5000 word ish chapter draft on internet uses in gifted education. Luckily I have 1000 done.

3. Teacher and student hand books for an App Dev course for Secondary Schools.

4. Leadership and work observations for a leadership and organisational effectiveness assignment.

5. Research on evidence based practice paper.

So for next Friday I have the following goals:

Must

1. First draft of proposal.

2. 1 full project written up for the handbooks.

3. 3-5 papers for book chapter read and critiqued.

Should

1. 2000 more words for the chapter.

2. 3-5 papers for evidence based practice paper read and critiqued.

3. Observation booked.

Could

1. 3-5 papers read and critiqued for leadership assignment.

2. 1000 words for leadership paper.

3. Second project for handbooks written up.

I'll check back in a week and see how I did.

Pat

I've had a bit of a go slow with posts this week. It's down to a couple of factors, one of which is the passing of a friend of mine. I'd like to talk a little bit about him here, he was a gentleman and I think it's worth saying a few words about him.

I met Pat through his brother, Danny who is my martial arts instructor and a good friend himself. Pat was pretty unlike Danny, who is a gregarious and extremely outgoing kind of man even now as he approaches 60. Pat was a quiet, thoughtful kind of person, someone who would usually say hello have a quiet few words with you and a quiet laugh and then spend some time thinking over what had just passed. Give him the chance to talk about one of his favoured subjects however and the man would suddenly burst into animated discussion and debate on the topic.

The friendship between any two people will never be quite like any other, I'm sure Pat was many different things to many different people, I'm sure there are people who had similar conversations with him as I did, and I am sure there are sides of the man that I simply never saw. To me this is what friendship is, something constructed from the points of view of those involved. The friendship I held with Pat centered on discussions of history, documentaries and those reality television/documentaries you often find on the Discovery or History channels, Ice Road Truckers and the likes. You see Pat was a sponge for knowledge, he consumed it voraciously, through the media of video, film, television and book. He always had something interesting to talk about, even if I just happened to bump into him in the street.

One of his favoured topics as far as I could tell was history, especially the history of martial arts and military history to an extent. His interest in history went beyond the well known names of Bruce Lee or Masaaki Hatsumi, he was interested in the minutiae, from the likes of Mas Oyama and his background and Korean ethnicity to details concerning certain battles that he found interesting, I'll be honest I fail to remember a lot of them now. He was animated and engaging when talking about these topics and he was capable of spotting connections between events and incidents that usually only get talked about at a research level.

Beyond these conversations our friendship was one that often took place as we waited for this or that, as we picked up someone when he was driving to or from classes and demonstrations, as we waited in his and Danny's living room for Danny to get his gear together to go. It was a friendship that happened mostly in the between times of life. This does not mean I will miss it or him any less.

Farewell Pat.

First Time Game

Last night a very good friend of mine decided to run a Dungeon World game, I believe this is the first time he has ever run a game with our group and he had only run a couple of games previously, a World of Darkness game with some college friends and I think some PDQ stuff at some point. We had spent a while talking about him running a game of some description and yesterday afternoon he was batting the idea around, I think in the end he just decided to bite the bullet so to speak.

What ensued was pretty fun, I ended up being Rurgosh The Cleric, a dwarf and member of the cult of Cyrnbul a god who's cult is bent on using the structures of civilisation to their own ends and who gain favor by discovering secrets. We also have Kenta The Fighter, a warrior of fierce personal honor who has taken it upon himself to watch over Rurgosh until his debt to him is repaid, Kenta is distinguished my the massive, sharp and bloody sword the hangs by his side. Finally there is Qotho The Druid, a member of the roving tribes of the vast desert, he is searching for something in the Ancient City and does not trust Rurgosh but for some reason which is unknown at this time is travelling with both he and Kenta.

Our party were sat about a campfire in a library towards the centre of the Ancient Ruined city, reclaimed by the sands of the desert some 250 years ago. Our brooding silence was broken by a sound in the darkness, Rurgosh, unnerved by the broken remains of civilisation surrounding them jumped to his feet and armed himself, stepping forward to the edge of the campfire's light, Kenta stood and peered into the darkness, listening for some other sign of movement while Qotho sat implacable and still by the fire. A cat jumped out of the darkness and wound his way about Rurgosh's legs. Being frightened and fearing an imminent attack Rurgosh punted the cat into the darkness, only to hear a much louder thud as something man sized hit a wall in the direction of his kick.

This quick exchange eventually devolved into a messy fight between some shape-changing denizens of the city who claimed to be of Qotho's people. This left 4 men dead, smashed and gutted by Rurgosh and Kenta and their leader running screaming into the dark, terrified and bloody. Our GM, my friend, a man who has done his fair share of good-natured trolling in games for all of the regular GMs sat and looked about at us, unsure, shell-shocked and apologising. We wrapped the game up there for the night and told him we'd like to play again, it was great fun, we had built some very atmospheric stuff into our world, out friend had chanced his arm at GM'ing a group who between them have upwards of 25 years of GM experience at this point, if some of our other members had been there this would have jumped to 40 years between us. He took on what I can only imagine was a fairly daunting task and managed it pretty well.

I barely saw the panic in his eyes.

Campaign: London Calling

Last night was Dresden Files RP night, we use the Dresden Files FATE game for this published by Evil Hat Productions, I very much recommend it. This is the first FATE or FUDGE game we have played as a group, it uses those nifty little fudge dice with the pluses and minuses that I had often seen in gaming stores over the years but never knew what they were for. We've did a faltering Dresden Files Dublin game a few months back but to be honest the GM wasn't up to snuff. As in I was pretty bad at GM'ing this particular system. It's not the system's fault though, it just didn't seem like my GM style gelled well with the system itself and especially the prep end of the system centering on the player's aspects. I will probably give it a whirl in the future but to be honest I am very much enjoying just playing this game at the moment.

DFRP uses a very cool and well thought out process for developing both the world you will be playing in, usually a CIty, and character creation. It took us about 2 1/2 sessions to pull all of this together, about 8 hours in total, but it was great fun. The City for our game is London, a London a little different from the real thing but very cool. We have an active police unit involved in supernatural affairs who unlike the Black Cat or S.I. units in the the Jim Butcher books have a direct connection with the White Council of Wizards. We have the fairy courts struggling for a power with each other, including the waning Autumn and Spring court, a combined court of transition. The White Council themselves are a bit on the prideful side and don't supply London with much by way of Wardens, after all it's in their back yard, who would stir up trouble there? London itself has a very haunted feel mixed with that of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere series, there's a sort of London Below. We've hit most of the clichés, but that's the fun in playing these games, the clichés are grounded points we all can connect to, they then get twisted up in play in interesting and new ways.

Our cast of characters is a nice mixed bunch, we have the Autumn Knight, Danny, freshly minted and previously mostly unaware of the supernatural side of London; a White Council reluctant librarian, Eames, he wanted nothing more to join the army but his family's business keeps him locked down; a Minor Talent, Liesel,  she suffers from Cassandra's Tears but is also a walking font of knowledge; a Shinto Priest Whitechapel Police Officer, Megumi, a Champion who can leverage her faith into action; a Pure Mortal, Leon, he's a Whitechapel officer who has a habit of finding the Autumn Knight in awkward circumstances; and a Punk White Council Wizard, Drury, a throwback to 1970s London. It's a nice colorful cast of characters who have plenty of scope for growth and development but also have great character traits for the GM to work with and creating interesting scenarios out of.

So what has happened to our little troupe so far? Well we've had Danny at no less than two major crime scenes, the first after being semi-tricked by a Sidhe friend of his into finding the body seconds before Whitechapel arrived in the form of Leon and Megumi, the second was at what could only look like a terrorist attack after a Warlock summoned a whole heap of specters into a crowded market. Drury has dragged Eames and Liesel into a fracas with the Jack Frost a Sidhe noble, he now owes Lord Frost 2 favors in return for some information given. Finally the whole group ended up knee deep in specters in a crowded marketplace, leaving the Punk in some considerable distress having thrown himself into the middle of the fray to counter the ritual that had drawn the specters there. We have but one real casualty and some information to work with: our Warlock friend was having his mind worked over magically by some form of Necromancer, also London is becoming more haunted by the hour.

Yay!

Don't make any plans!

Who remembers their first time GM'ing a game? I found it kind of terrifying. It was like laying myself bare, like I was all raw nerve endings and the slightest rub was going to be agony. I planned and planned and planned, I think I sunk about 20 hours into just planning that first game, I went into my first session of my first ever campaign with everything planned out, I mean everything.

This was my downfall. My plans fell apart at first contact with the other people at the table. It was a nightmare. See I had made a pretty fatal error in how I planned my adventure: I thought of it as *MY* adventure. I had not actually planned a roleplaying game, a share myth for myself and my friends to explore, I had planned a book I wanted to read to my players and that they got to make minor choices in, but choices that ultimately wouldn't affect the outcome. This isn't how I think roleplaying games should be played. Maybe you disagree, if you do it's fine, tell me why I'm wrong, I'll learn something.

I think this is probably pretty common for first time GMs. especially teenagers, but I don't have any backing evidence of this so I'll just present my experience as a sort of case study. I felt at the time that I had to provide a great epic story, something that mixed Conan, Druss, Lord of the Rings and at the time various Anime and JRPG cliches I had a love for. I though I had to craft this great baroque thing, this sprawling narrative into which the other player's characters would fit and become the heroes of the story. I had applied all that I knew about writing at the time, not very much then, only a little more now. My story had a beginning, middle and end, themes were lovingly hammered into place and concepts were primed for ramming.

Upon contact with my story the players decided to attach to some throwaway line about a city in the south that seemed interesting. It was just some fluff in the background I had pulled out of thin air, it had nothing to do with the story. So I laid down the railroad tracks and how. I think about it now and see the almost literal battle that was happening between my story and the much more interesting shared mythology that could have developed. I was proud and petulant, so I let the game die. I don't think I intellectualised it very much at the time, I think I just did what was pretty typical of teenage me, I took my ball and went home, without telling anyone. I never ran another session of that game. I was dejected and horrified by what had happened to my poor story.

In the end I ended up running my next game some 5 years later in University, I was covering for a friend who had been slated to run a very cool Ravenloft one-shot based on pirates. I took his game, and seeing as I didn't have a full grasp of his story or the ideas he was trying to present I just used it as a framework around which to allow the other players to play and for me to react to. This felt so much more natural, I had fun, the other players had fun, we shared a story in which the only survivor was the innocent and damaged young pirate who rowed out of the mists to his freedom. My friend's reaction to this? "I was not aiming for that at all, but it sounds cool" Cheers John, that one line set me up to GM again and again, it was pretty formative in the way I game.

So what's the point of all this? Well I guess if by some magic you're a starting GM and you're reading this, I would like to be so bold as to offer you the one piece of advice I would have loved to have heard when I started: Don't plan anything, react and build your myth collaboratively.

Maybe that’s two pieces of advice?

Sweetness

The weekend just past has been one of those so very, very busy weekends with lots of things to do both at home and with work commitments. I've got today off to get some things done at home, to spend a bit of time with the little ones and the likes, I also have one very quick thing to do for work, which I'm getting done while Ella is in school and Oliver is having an afternoon nap. Once I'm done writing here off course. Now I've sat down for this first time in about 72 hours without the intention of immediately going asleep!

All in all though it's not something I feel I can or even want to complain about, it's been a pretty good weekend. Visitors in work, showing off what we do. Family visits, my brother-in-law, one of my best friends and his lovely girlfriend, who is also quickly becoming one of my good friends after only a couple of visits. A small party on Saturday night for said brother-in-law's birthday, all without a hitch, a couple of pints beforehand. Sunday was spent doing a bit of window shopping with my wife, her brother and his girlfriend, she tried on some clothes in preparation for a wedding and hen party later in the year.

The point, I guess, of this ramble is to reflect in a positive way on the nice weekend and indeed all the positive things that go on in my life. Yes, absolutely we have problems and hiccups that we have to deal with, family members in dire straits that we are only equipped to help in the smallest ways at the moment. These problems seem much less dark and deadly when viewed in the light of the positives, the family days, watching my kids grow, my oldest two becoming young women, some family members getting past the harder times into something a bit better, good friends, a job that I enjoy and that provides enough for my family to get by on.

I also have plenty of things to look forward too this year, such as a wedding, a few trips for work, wedding anniversary, birthdays, a good friend coming home from Japan and a bachelor party in Hamburg. It’s going to be a busy kind of year and I’m looking forward to it. I’m feeling pretty good about this year all told, and I’m looking forward to everything to come.

Hmm this has all been a bit saccharine, oh well!