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things I've been doing
1) The other day I did a thing! With people! Which is to say, I got together with an old workmate (who has now moved on to a much better job) and some of her friends and we played Call of Cthulhu. And it was fun!
Waaaay back in early 2020 I'd been thinking about trying to find a gaming group, because listening to Rusty Quill had made me want to check out RPGing. And then COVID happened. This was literally the first thing I've done with other people in a year and a half--except taking a friend out for a birthday lunch in September of 2020. I feel a little bit weird/guilty about it, but everyone is vaccinated so we should be reasonably safe. And as shy and introverted and generally antisocial as I am, the isolation has been getting me down. (I still haven't decided if it has helped me to be at work among people 40 hours a week, or if that makes it emotionally harder because it's a kind of mandatory social interaction, not about my enjoyment, so it takes my social energy without giving me anything back. A bit of both, I suppose.)
Anyway, gaming seems to be a kind of social interaction that works for me. There's a thing to do together! It isn't like a party, aka "make agonizing small talk about jobfamilyhouserenovations for as long as you can tolerate it before fleeing." And a certain base level of geekery is guaranteed.
Also there were two lovely friendly cats and I got to pet them lots!
One slight hiccup is that I'm not sure my old workmate had actually mentioned that I'm trans. Meanwhile I had blithely assumed she would, to sort of prep them for meeting me--but I should have reckoned with the fact the cis people, even really well-intentioned ones, often aren't comfortable saying that stuff. Nobody actually misgendered me, but my character got misgendered once by the GM despite my having specifically stated his pronouns at the start. And in retrospect there was a certain awkwardness around it, an avoiding of gendering that I've learned to recognize. So I'll have to do a quick "by the way, I forgot to mention this last time but my pronouns are he/him" thing before the next session.
The actual game was great. I played an Indiana Jones type (a pre-rolled character, since we were playing a quick one-shot to see how we all meshed as people and players), and I got to use high explosives to blow up a monster. Mind you, in doing so I also unleashed a whole bunch of newly-hatched baby monsters onto the grounds of Miskatonic University, but these things happen in Call of Cthulhu.
It turned out that listening to 200+ episodes of Rusty Quill Gaming (plus a bunch of specials) did help a lot in having a basic sense of how to play. Though I had to fight the temptation to do the "Alex thing" of making my character as obnoxious as possible. I can see why he does it now--it's a quick route to get at what the *other* characters are like--but I didn't want to be annoying in my very first session, or come across as someone who would be difficult to play with. And I seem to have managed it, in that I'm invited back for the next time they play.
I even managed not to get too much of my usual social hangover--that thing where, after even a pleasant time with other people, I feel sort of emotionally sunburned later, raw and overexposed and vaguely ashamed at the ways I undoubtedly made a fool of myself. So, quite a good experience.
2) I had been re-reading a bunch of Terry Pratchett, then somehow I veered off into re-reading Charles Stross's Laundry Files books. They're horror/comedy about an extremely secret British government agency that deals with the supernatural. The early books lean heavily into workplace comedy/satire, but always with a background of cosmic horror, while the later books are closer to pure cosmic horror, which our "heroes" are corrupted by even in the act of fighting against it, with occasional quips.
I've now started the latest, Dead Lies Dreaming, which I haven't read before although it came out a couple of years ago. And . . . one of my problems with the Laundry Files series as a whole was a scarcity of queer characters. (There are two gay men, minor characters and a little bit stereotyped, in the first couple of books, who then aren't mentioned for several books before reappearing for one books in a more prominent role, but that's about it.) Well, Dead Lies Dreaming, which is the first of subseries in the same universe but not focused around the Laundry itself, has a whole group of queer characters. And I am so scared for them that I'm currently stalled on continuing the book. Oops.
While I get my courage up, I'm re-reading Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, because apparently that will help?
3) During 2020 I could hardly concentrate on anything. Couldn't read novels, couldn't watch films or even narrative TV series. I've mostly recovered my ability to read (it started coming back after Biden's inauguration, when it felt like the imminent existential threat was lessened and there was hope again--Biden has absolutely not lived up to even my limited hopes for him, but that's another issue) but movies/TV are still a problem. There's a ton of stuff I want to watch--Ted Lasso, Midnight Mass, The Green Knight, the recent seasons of Wynonna Earp and Lucifer--but I just can't.
I'm watching the Bake Off, of course, and for some reason I've started watching old QIs from the point when Sandi Toksvig took over. But that's about it.
I badly want to go and see a movie. But I want to go to a real movie theater, and even having been vaccinated, it feels like a terrible idea to do that at a time when local COVID case rates are almost as high as they've ever been.
Someday. Someday, it will actually be over.
Waaaay back in early 2020 I'd been thinking about trying to find a gaming group, because listening to Rusty Quill had made me want to check out RPGing. And then COVID happened. This was literally the first thing I've done with other people in a year and a half--except taking a friend out for a birthday lunch in September of 2020. I feel a little bit weird/guilty about it, but everyone is vaccinated so we should be reasonably safe. And as shy and introverted and generally antisocial as I am, the isolation has been getting me down. (I still haven't decided if it has helped me to be at work among people 40 hours a week, or if that makes it emotionally harder because it's a kind of mandatory social interaction, not about my enjoyment, so it takes my social energy without giving me anything back. A bit of both, I suppose.)
Anyway, gaming seems to be a kind of social interaction that works for me. There's a thing to do together! It isn't like a party, aka "make agonizing small talk about jobfamilyhouserenovations for as long as you can tolerate it before fleeing." And a certain base level of geekery is guaranteed.
Also there were two lovely friendly cats and I got to pet them lots!
One slight hiccup is that I'm not sure my old workmate had actually mentioned that I'm trans. Meanwhile I had blithely assumed she would, to sort of prep them for meeting me--but I should have reckoned with the fact the cis people, even really well-intentioned ones, often aren't comfortable saying that stuff. Nobody actually misgendered me, but my character got misgendered once by the GM despite my having specifically stated his pronouns at the start. And in retrospect there was a certain awkwardness around it, an avoiding of gendering that I've learned to recognize. So I'll have to do a quick "by the way, I forgot to mention this last time but my pronouns are he/him" thing before the next session.
The actual game was great. I played an Indiana Jones type (a pre-rolled character, since we were playing a quick one-shot to see how we all meshed as people and players), and I got to use high explosives to blow up a monster. Mind you, in doing so I also unleashed a whole bunch of newly-hatched baby monsters onto the grounds of Miskatonic University, but these things happen in Call of Cthulhu.
It turned out that listening to 200+ episodes of Rusty Quill Gaming (plus a bunch of specials) did help a lot in having a basic sense of how to play. Though I had to fight the temptation to do the "Alex thing" of making my character as obnoxious as possible. I can see why he does it now--it's a quick route to get at what the *other* characters are like--but I didn't want to be annoying in my very first session, or come across as someone who would be difficult to play with. And I seem to have managed it, in that I'm invited back for the next time they play.
I even managed not to get too much of my usual social hangover--that thing where, after even a pleasant time with other people, I feel sort of emotionally sunburned later, raw and overexposed and vaguely ashamed at the ways I undoubtedly made a fool of myself. So, quite a good experience.
2) I had been re-reading a bunch of Terry Pratchett, then somehow I veered off into re-reading Charles Stross's Laundry Files books. They're horror/comedy about an extremely secret British government agency that deals with the supernatural. The early books lean heavily into workplace comedy/satire, but always with a background of cosmic horror, while the later books are closer to pure cosmic horror, which our "heroes" are corrupted by even in the act of fighting against it, with occasional quips.
I've now started the latest, Dead Lies Dreaming, which I haven't read before although it came out a couple of years ago. And . . . one of my problems with the Laundry Files series as a whole was a scarcity of queer characters. (There are two gay men, minor characters and a little bit stereotyped, in the first couple of books, who then aren't mentioned for several books before reappearing for one books in a more prominent role, but that's about it.) Well, Dead Lies Dreaming, which is the first of subseries in the same universe but not focused around the Laundry itself, has a whole group of queer characters. And I am so scared for them that I'm currently stalled on continuing the book. Oops.
While I get my courage up, I'm re-reading Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, because apparently that will help?
3) During 2020 I could hardly concentrate on anything. Couldn't read novels, couldn't watch films or even narrative TV series. I've mostly recovered my ability to read (it started coming back after Biden's inauguration, when it felt like the imminent existential threat was lessened and there was hope again--Biden has absolutely not lived up to even my limited hopes for him, but that's another issue) but movies/TV are still a problem. There's a ton of stuff I want to watch--Ted Lasso, Midnight Mass, The Green Knight, the recent seasons of Wynonna Earp and Lucifer--but I just can't.
I'm watching the Bake Off, of course, and for some reason I've started watching old QIs from the point when Sandi Toksvig took over. But that's about it.
I badly want to go and see a movie. But I want to go to a real movie theater, and even having been vaccinated, it feels like a terrible idea to do that at a time when local COVID case rates are almost as high as they've ever been.
Someday. Someday, it will actually be over.
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Good to know! And that sounds like a generally good experience.