I’ve been recently thinking about  my political alignment. For years, I’ve considered myself a liberal democrat, one ready to fight for pretty much any cause and vote right off the bat for any democratic candidate, regardless of who. Now, before I go into my ramblings of my introspection, I will state I voted for Obama in the recent US election. I’m not going to go into my reasons, as that would be another ramble, but mainly to just set the stage of this post. It wasn’t until recently that I even thought of myself politically. It’s amazing what time does to a person…

Over the course of this week, I’ve thought a lot about politics in the abstract and where I stand now, given everything that is happening around me, everything that the democrats, republicans, liberals, independents, and conservatives believe and would fight for. And the more I think about it, there’s only so many things I would fight for and a couple of things I could get behind. And each of those elements don’t seem to fit into any of the camps completely. It’s like a giant ven diagram and I’m directly in the middle, fully apathetic and not sure what to believe in. It’s a foreign feeling to in some regards and in ways it’s almost a return to the person I was years ago: One that wanted to do his thing and never agreed with any candidate on either side. One who voted with his heart, spirit, and mind in unison, regardless of the outcome. A man that stood behind that choice. In some regards, I’m still that man. I still stand by whatever choice I make, regardless of the outcome. But recently, I’ve almost felt passionless on the whole political process and asking “Why the hell should I bother?”

At times like this, I’m reminded about my days in my colleges’ Student Government. I wasn’t a representative, I was simply their as a student. To this day, I have no idea how the hell I got into the whole thing, maybe I was bored one day and wanted to see what the whole fuss was about. During my time there, I constantly got into passionate discussion, stating what I believed in and what I thought was wrong with the whole state of rules. But afterwards, outside of the council, I would talk to those same people as if nothing had happened, discussing movies, literature, and the usual pop culture ramblings I’m prone to spew. One of my friends to this day found the whole thing hilarious, as she was on the opposite side of my liberal front. She was so amazed that not but 5 minutes of something short of fisticuffs I would be talking to her about anything, and treating her as if nothing happened. It was my attitude then that I would not take it personally, because it was just “politics,” a separate thing from my true self. To me then, politics never defined me and it simply something that existed only in that sphere.

So with that, where do I stand now? Well, I’m still of the same belief to not let politics define me, but if I have to call myself some political stance, I’m going to say I’m a liberal independent. I don’t even know if that’s a real political camp or not, but it just seems to sum up what I am. It’s a strange transition for me, but it is something that I am now. I think with this, I can possibly work back to my belief in passion and maybe find my equilibrium in this whole thing. It’s strange in the end that I look to my previous self for growth and not my current self. I guess in the end, it’s something everyone does. Well , until next time, may you look towards your previous self and see what lessons that person has to teach you.

This might be the earliest post I have made, but I’m trying to get back into the habit of writing more and my mornings are one of the few times I have the ability to concentrate on this. Today’s post may be a bit more of a rant than my other posts, but to be honest I woke up in an angry mood today and I need some sort of outlet before I greet the day. This morning I finally figured out what character trait I hate and loathe over ever other trait: arrogance.

Arrogance is defined as “having or showing feelings of unwarranted importance out of overbearing pride” (link). It is something I have grown to detest in humanity. It just always felt pointless. I say this with the notion that in the end of it all no man or woman is better than the next. Sure, you may be smarter than the person next to you or richer, but you are no better than any other soul on this blue marble we call home. It’s just something I can’t stand in people.

Arrogance is one of those few things that will almost break any sort of ties with me. If you ever wanted me to not come to your aid or simply socialize with you when I have no other choice, be as arrogant as you can. I can assure you, I will keep my distance from you. I would rather hang out with a humble fool than an arrogant smart-ass any day of the week. And the more I analyze, the more I realize that my core friends, regardless of location, are not arrogant. Some may be dicks, some may be clueless at times, but in the end, they are not arrogant. I never thought of it until this morning and I’m very grateful for that fact. I don’t know if it is just the luck of the draw or just simply the way things are, but I am grateful and thankful that the friends I choose to hang out with never reveal arrogance. This is not to say I do not have arrogant friends, but as previously stated, I keep my distance from them. Its that whenever I hear some one acting in that manner, I just get angry. I get furious, almost red-eye angry. I just feel that humanity should have evolved out of this by now. But, it is a human trait and I acknowledge that. It’s just one of those traits I’ve learned to despise.

And with that end my little rant post. I’m sorry it is not longer, but I’ve said all I can on the issue. Tomorrow, if I have time, I will try to write a review on The Watchman movie. If it is anything like the comic, it should be a great film. That is all for now and please remember, if you’re going to be arrogant, please do so when I’m not around. Thank you.

Writing in general is a daunting task in it’s own right. Keeping track of characters, the universe that is created, and the plot can be a task even a seasoned writer may find crazy. For the most part, I can handle this element very easily with no trouble, even to the point where my characters react to things differently. But what if you threw real people as your characters, each bringing their notion of the story and what to do?  This is the world my new cyberpunk story exists.

For about the past month or so, I’ve wanted to write some sort of Cyberpunk story, struggling with concepts of style, pacing, and voice. I kept telling myself I would go back to the original short blurb I wrote and try expanding it, but something just kept stopping. It wasn’t a lack of ideas. To be honest, the ideas kept flowing from everywhere. It became so crazy that for a while, I started to live, sleep, and think cyberpunk and began to look at my life through those goggles. It was a crazy time and thought that whole moment, I just kept letting the ideas flow and worried less about the actual story.

During this time, I also started to have an inch to play some sort of role playing game. During my time in Laredo, I participated in a weekly D20 Modern campaign ran by one of my friends. I’ve gone into detail on this in a previous post, so I won’t go into detail on that here, but what I will elaborate on is the fact that ever since those campaigns, I’ve wanted to run my own, but I never had a story to tell nor the people with the time to participate. So I felt it would never happen and put it on the back burner.  It wasn’t until last December that the idea would pop back into my mind and I really wanted to run a campaign.

At this time, I tried to figure out what I wanted to run. I know I was fed up with fantasy as a genre and felt it was over saturated.  So I started to think and it hit me: run a cyberpunk campaign. I then floated the idea to numerous people, mainly new players and they were intrigued with a sci-fi campaign. They were on board and it was up to me to make the story. So I looked over my original story concepts for prior ideas for cyberpunk stories (On a side note, I still need to link my cyberpunk folder on my Evernote account just to illustrate how present this genre is on my mind). I eventually started to realise the story I wanted to tell and realised that the game would be the perfect medium. As of right now, I’m done with all the major plot points, all the main players, and the over-arching story. If this was my story alone, it would be complete, but such is not the case with role playing games.

As stated, my main players are ready. The only problem is I don’t control my main players nor their outcome. Its actually slightly discomforting as a writer to see a character not go the way you would like, though after a while, you gain a feel for the player and how to write them in a way that gives them a choice and to see where they go with that. I fully recommend for any writer to try GMing just for fun. When the session is complete, I will publish all of my notes, documents and story concepts online publicly and summarize the plot. Until then, you’ll have to wait like my players.  Until then, I hope this has sparked your interest in GMing and I hope it gives you an insight into this whole thing.