For me, this falls into three categories. If people are interested, I’ll be glad to do some more blog posts, but this basically broke down into things I eat, money I spend, and crap I work on. I’m still going to be fidgeting to get the crap I work on organized for some time, and the money I spend is basically under control with this awesome app that I downloaded (Expense Tracker, I think it’s called?), so the easiest one to tackle ended up being things I eat.

Here are the problems with how Nick and I eat: I love to cook, but I never feel like I have time for it (part of the reason I’m getting organized in the first place), we always want to lean towards things that are quick or easy, and we always feel like we eat the same things over and over when we know we are capable of cooking many different things. Our typical week might consist of two nights of Hamburger Helper, a night of baked pasta, two nights of fast food, and one night of, like, anything we can find in the fridge.

That’s not how we should be eating. I am a huge advocate/fan of healthy food, and healthy seems to be so time consuming and you have to buy fresh things and it’s just hard. It shouldn’t be hard. It should be easy.

So I tried to get down to the basis of the problem – organization. Because we don’t know what we’re going to eat until we eat it, our meals depend largely on what dishes are clean or what we have in the fridge. This is backwards. We should be planning our dishes and our shopping around what we want to eat. It’s much easier, less stressful, and more cost effective.

I’m a huge fan of index cards, and I found these tiny 3″ x 2.5″ cards at Staples the other day. They were like this, but plain white. (Though I’m thinking now I need to get some of the colored ones.) I have a bulletin board outside of our kitchen that I wasn’t using, and somehow this idea just clicked.

I flipped over seven of the cards to the plain white side, and wrote a day of the week on each one. Then, I took more of the cards and wrote down what we ate for dinner and what ingredients it called for, down to the specifics. If we were having something that involved stuffing, I even wrote down the butter needed to make the stuffing.

I ended up with a bunch of cards like this, pleasantly surprised by how many meals I could think of off the top of my head that we could easily make that were cost effective, including three non-home-cooked cards: one “Wild Card” for fast food or takeout, one “Scavenger Hunt” (eat whatever you can find, nobody’s cooking), and one “Pizza Night” for us to get a $10 take-and-bake pizza from our favorite joint.

What was extra fun for me about making the cards was that it started to feel like a card game of some kind, something that – just in case you’re new here, I’m a fan of. Sure, it may be a little childish, but by making the selection of what we were going to eat that week “fun,” I think I made it a much more enjoyable process. Plus, since I listed out all of the ingredients and only made one card for each meal, it’s much easier to prevent us from slipping into the monotony of “baked pasta, again?”

Ultimately once I hug the board up and chose what meals we were going to eat, it looked like this:

If you couldn’t tell, the little ziploc next to the pinned cards holds all the rest of them. Since this is my first time trying this, I haven’t quite figured out what the process is going to be to switch the cards over, but I’m thinking after we get through Tuesday I’ll sit down and figure out those days again so I can include them in my weekly shopping, or maybe just shuffle the cards as we go. Last night we had Hamburger Helper, so I went ahead and pinned that card up so we don’t do that anymore this week. That’s it. Fin. No more Hamburger Helper.

So now I can see at a glance what we’re going to eat, I can know that at least at some point this week I’ll be able to have a nice slice of pizza, and make my shopping list much more effectively. As a bonus, I have like ten more recipes in the ziploc that I can use for the next few weeks, which is a nice assurance that I won’t have baked pasta eight times this week. It’s also right next to our kitchen and entryway to the apartment, so we HAVE to see it. No ignoring it.

I’m not sure if this will work for everyone, or how well it will work for me, but I’m feeling pretty confident about it, and the internet wanted to see what I had going, so here we go.

Do any of you out there have your own meal-planning systems? Anything as organized (or more organized?!) as this? Have a favorite quick-fix recipe we can add to the rotation for those nights we just don’t want to spend 3 hours preparing a meal?

Throw ‘em at me.

I’m having a hard time believing I’m sitting here again already, already working on my new content to release at Vault 713 at midnight, already marking dates on my calendar that end in 2012 instead of 2011. I feel like I was only moving into this apartment yesterday, when really it was over a year ago. Has it really, really been a year?

The funny thing about New Years Eve for me is that I never think about it the other 360-something days of the year. I only think about it on New Years Eve, and suddenly all of the memories roll into one. My brain becomes a mush of years spent waking my dad up in the middle of the night to say “Happy New Year, can you upload this code for me so I can put it on the website?” and eating my weight in Junior Mints and the years like last year, where some of the folks from the very website I was maintaining got together in my apartment to do a live-broadcasted New Year’s Eve party.

But one year was different.

One year my mom had heard from a friend that sometimes people went to the Wright Memorial for New Year’s Eve. Some people shot off fireworks all around the beach, and it’s a well known fact that the Wright Memorial was one of the few places you could see both the ocean and the sound at the same time if you tried. She said that some people went up there to see the fireworks all over instead of just one fireworks display. It sounded like a cool idea, and my dad never stayed up for midnight, so it seemed fun.

It was freezing cold. In retrospect, it was probably only in the 40s. That doesn’t seem cold to me after a year in Wisconsin, after a year of snow and ice and letting your car warm up before you get in. At the time, 40 was a death wish. We were bundled up, flashlights in hand as we pulled around to the back entrance of the memorial, where the airport was.

You weren’t really supposed to be there at night, I’m sure, but people did it all the time. People went there to jog and run even if they weren’t going to actually “see” the memorial. So we parked our car amongst the 2 or three others and made our way to the top.

So there we sat. My mom, my dad, myself, in the cold. Before cell phones had the internet on them and before Twitter and before people felt like they always had a place to be. I had a place to be, I’m sure; I vaguely remember wanting to go home and get online, but this was special. It wasn’t to be toyed with. There were maybe a dozen other people there, all spread out. Lovers snuggled together for warmth, maybe another family. There were only a few of us.

It was just darkness and seeing your breath in the glow of the lights that illuminated the memorial to man’s first prolonged flight. It was peaceful.

Midnight came and went without alarm – the fireworks started at random intervals and our watches beeped to tell us it was finally the new year. Some people had brought champagne or beer or wine or cider for themselves and opened it to drink.

We sat in the dark and let the New Year come like New Years have been coming for centuries – quietly and unsuspecting in the middle of the night, just a whisper to tell you what lies ahead.

I’m getting older, now. The years are moving faster. I found myself talking about how to store our Christmas wrapping supplies for next year, because it already seems so close. Quietly and unsuspecting, somehow the world has sped up around me, with no sign of slowing down. This is it. Life is happening.

This past year was amazing. More than I could have asked for. I could only hope the same for the next, and the next, and the dozen after that.

We are all going to accomplish great things. From the small to the large, the noteworthy to the quiet and unsuspecting. I welcome the challenge.

I’ve been listening to a lot of musicals lately. They make me feel like home. In particular, a tiny, unsuspecting Off-Broadway production by the name of The Last Five Years. The finale seems all but too appropriate for how I feel tonight, going into this thing head on and arms open for 2012:

So goodbye until tomorrow, goodbye until the rest of my life,
I have been waiting, I have been waiting for you. 

Maybe you’re not like me, though – maybe you’re like my mom, who got a brand new Kindle Touch for Christmas, and you’re looking for a few things to fill it up with. I am here to help.

I love ebooks, and though I love regular books too, the cool thing about ebooks is that you can just download them instantly and start reading. I’ve actually read way more in this past year than I had the year before, just because I had access to ebooks on Nick’s kindle (and now my tablet.)

So here’s some of my favorites from this year and things I think you should check out if you’ve got a brand new shiny device to fill up with brand new shiny books:

–

Shotgun Gravy – Chuck Wendig, $2.99

I just finished this one a few days ago, and I’ll be honest, my head is still ticking about it. Chuck is one of my favorite writers, and this novella seems to be dipping a toe into the Young Adult (YA) genre that I love so very much…only, you know, with a heavy dose of profanity and vulgar language. It tells the story of a teenage girl who we know very little about, except that she’s done something very bad - and how she gets herself into and out of a mess. Highly recommended if you’d like a taste of “YA for Adults,” as it were – thanks to the “novella” style of the story, it’s also a fast read that will leave you ready for more in just a few hours.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green & David Levithan, $8.99

A little “pricey” for an ebook, but worth every cent – Nick and I read this book earlier this year in it’s actual hardcover form and absolutely loved it. An actual YA novel peppered with nerdy jokes, this book tells the story of two very different teenagers from different sides of the same town, both named Will Grayson. At first you aren’t totally sure how the alternating chapters have anything to do with each other – until the book turns, and suddenly everyone is muddled together with one another. Easily one of my favorite books I read this year.

Vegas Knights – Matt Forbeck, $4.79

Remember earlier when I said I loved Angry Robot Books? The folks at their publishing house were kind enough to send me an ARC of this book before it hit shelves (digital or otherwise) and I absolutely could not put it down. Matt tells us a story of two college-age magic users (sound familiar?) who get themselves in a mess larger than they can handle when they head to Las Vegas to try using magic to cheat in the casinos. If you’re a fan of Harry Potter or other “urban fantasy” type settings, you’ll love this one – and as seems to be the case with Matt’s other books (I also highly recommend Amortals) he throws in a twist before you reach the end that you won’t see coming – but will keep you on the edge of your seat til the end.

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins, $4.69

Another book that I read in paperback (and now own the hardcover of, thanks to Christmas) – this book also falls under the YA header, but is absolutely suitable for readers of all ages. Suzanne’s writing is a little difficult to work past at first, but once you get to the core of the brutal story, you won’t be able to put it down. Our leading lady, Katniss Everdeen, has volunteered to take her sister’s place in a gruesome battle that takes place each year in the nation of Panem. Only two contestants are chosen from each district each year, and only one of the children – yes, children - can survive. This book follows Katniss to the end – and you’ll want to follow right along, too.

The Secret Garden - Francis Hodgson Burnett, $0.00

As a kid, I remember watching this movie. I remember being fascinated by the garden, frightened by the epidemic in the beginning, and just incredibly moved by the entire thing. Since this book is a freebie, I downloaded it to read and – uh, wow, okay, I forgot how dark this story was. The epidemic in the beginning? Terrifying. In fact, I’m actually not all the way through this one, but since it’s a freebie there’s no reason you shouldn’t pick it up, right? Go for it!

Beauty Has Her Way - Anthology, $4.99

Last but not least, if you like stories of kickass female protagonists, you’ll want to pick up this anthology. This is another one that I admittedly haven’t finished yet – I like to read short stories one-or-two at a time – but so far the tales within have been wonderful. If you’re a fan of role playing games and things like it, you’ll be pleased to see some stories from folks like Ed Greenwood, Filamena Hill, Chuck Wendig, and so on tucked between these digital pages. Since many of the folks have more kindle books and novels that they wrote on their own, this could be a great sampler for someone looking to discover new authors that publish in the digital format.

So what about you, folks? Have a favorite book you read this year, digital or not? Are you an e-reader person? Share your story suggestions in the comments, say hello, share your love of reading, and so on. Lets get our read on.

First, perhaps, it was a Reddit article, or maybe it was Wil Wheaton’s tweet, or maybe it was something else. But the internet started whispering and soon a tiny blog became big, huge news – GoDaddy, one of the internet’s largest registrars, supports SOPA – the Stop Online Piracy Act. You know, that giant bill that’s going to “shut down the internet as we know it.”

Like any wildfire, it rapidly spread to calls of destruction – the people of the internet called for a full-out boycott of GoDaddy – hide yo domains, hide yo hosting, cause they transferrin everrybody.

I have been using GoDaddy for years. They host my websites (this blog included,) they are where I go when I want to register domains. Their support staff has always responded quickly and been extremely friendly and helpful. When I created a new account with them, they actually gave me a quick, polite phone call to make sure I understood what to do with my new domains. I love them.

Since the fire started, GoDaddy was quick to take down their blog post where they outlined the parts of the bill that they supported, and “officially” renounced their position on the bill. This actually made me think less of them than their support of it did, and here’s why:

I read that blog post. I read the entire thing, start to finish, and I actually read it aloud so that my boyfriend could hear it also. Do you know what blog post got across to me? Not that GoDaddy is pro-censorship – in fact, they were very adamant about the fact that they were not pro-censorship; but that they were anti-piracy. They just don’t want people pirating things, and they want to take steps to prevent piracy. I can support that.

Years ago, when Napster first started, we didn’t see it as a place to get “free music.” We saw it as a place to swap. In fact, I remember trying to buy more new CDs once I had access to Napster, because I wanted to upload them so that I could get more songs from other CDs. That’s what we did. We shared music. It was file sharing, not file stealing. Not like this.

Enter the new generation – the kids who don’t remember what cassette tapes look like or don’t remember a time without downloading things online. There is no swapping, there’s just downloading. There’s no incentive to go buy an album or a book or drop $400 on Photoshop. You just go get it for free.

Lets pretend for a minute that SOPA passes, and it’s not this totalitarian crazy internet regime that we’re all expecting, but instead it just does only what it’s intended to do – stops piracy. Instead of all your favorite fan websites being taken down, the only thing missing is, say, Pirate Bay.

In this world, people can’t torrent Photoshop, so nobody knows how awesome of a product it is, aside from developers. You’re forced to download a demo version if you want to try it, and you’re forced to pay the $200+ for an actual copy if you want it. Except nobody pays for it, because it’s too pricey, so Adobe ultimately lowers the price to a much more manageable $100. Because they have to sell their product, and there’s less pirated versions around for people to use and tell their friends about, so it has to be cheaper. Even if it doesn’t have to be cheaper, say they sell more copies because it’s not being torrented, and Adobe makes more money. They can pay their employees a nice Christmas bonus. Awesome.

In this world, being a musician pays something. People have to actually go out and buy a CD or drop a few bucks on itunes for music instead of downloading it. Musicians are able to feed their families and do what they love, playing music, instead of working some shitty day job at McDonalds and practicing guitar at weird hours of the night. People begin to appreciate music more, because it’s something you pay for, not something that’s given away for free, so it obviously must have some worth.

In this world, you get to see more of your friends. Why? Because instead of pirating video games, you wait up at the midnight release with your buddies to be the first one in line to play. Instead of stealing ripped movies, you actually go to the movie theatre. Theatres have more customers, too, so instead of charging you an arm and a leg for tickets and requesting a downpayment on your popcorn, they can bring back $1 popcorn and give you cheaper tickets so you can go more often.

In this world, we don’t have to worry about DRM content or whatever the hell that stuff is – because piracy sites are not allowed, so there’s no reason to keep people from ripping a CD to their computer or copying a movie to their phone. It makes it easier to transfer and share data.

Do any of those things sound shitty?

I’m not Pro-SOPA. I’m not in favor of the PROTECT-IP act. But you know what I am? I am Anti-Piracy. Illegal downloading has turned us all into self-righteous pricks, you know? We feel entitled to all this stuff because we’re so used to having it.

Somewhere involved with these big corporations are a bunch of real people being hurt by piracy. Your favorite musician? Just a dude trying to make the rent, and maybe some extra spending money. Your favorite actress? Only gets paid by the movie, and if people aren’t going to movies, she can’t get jobs, and so on. Your favorite writer? Someone who slaved away for years trying to come up with the perfect story, only for you to tell them that it isn’t worth the $4 for the book.

$10 can get you an album, a movie ticket, or a novel. That’s really not a lot of money.

That’s two less combo meals, a few less lottery tickets, one less trip to the store. You’ve always been wanting to quit smoking anyway, why not give your cigarette money to your favorite musician so you can listen to their music to help you through the stress?

I’m tired of all the sensationalism around this bill. Boycotting things, protesting, yelling, none of that is going to stop anything. You know what is? Showing Congress, showing our government that we can manage ourselves. They’re only doing this because they feel like we can’t.

So what am I going to do to show my distaste for SOPA?

I’m going to buy albums on itunes instead of downloading them. See more movies. Buy things directly from the artists if I can help it.

Because if you’re going to protest SOPA while you wait for your torrents to finish – you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

This year, though, every time I’ve heard “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” I’ve been in tears.

Last year was my first ever – and I mean ever,  in the then-almost-23 years I’d been alive – that I spent Christmas away from my parents. I have older (technically half) siblings, but they’ve lived on their own or with their mom for most of my life, so it’s always just been us. Me, my mom, my dad, whatever pets we had running around. For years that meant Sweet Pea the Beagle and Turbo the Jack Russell. Then one Christmas it became just us and Sweet Pea and a tin of Turbo’s ashes from where we’d had her creamated. Then just us and two tins. But it was always us, and we always made the best of whatever we had.

Some years there weren’t a lot of presents. One year my mom got an ipod, and I got squat. At least, I got a few things I know I loved, but I remembered being jealous that she got something “cool” from my dad and I didn’t. Other years we got tons of fun stuff – mom and dad too, not just me – one memorable year I got my very own copy of the United Methodist Hymnal, engraved with my name. Those don’t come cheap.

My parents hated putting up the tree, but they always did it anyway. Sometimes it took us until a few days before Christmas to get it up, but we always got one up. It used to be real, then gradually we moved to using the fake tree. One year the fake tree was two feet tall.

We always went to church on Christmas Eve. Always. My parents worked a lot on weekends, so we didn’t always make it to Sunday services, but we always made it to church for the candlelight service. I loved every bit of the Christmas service – from the time I was a kid, wiggling in my seat and ready to get to the end of the service so I could get my treat bag with stickers and oranges, until my time as an adult and looked forward to lighting the candles and looking around at everyone’s faces as we sang silent night. It didn’t matter how stressful the rest of the day is or how much we had all been fighting or arguing on the way to church, or if we were driving nearly an hour to get to the church “over the bridge” or just walking down the street to the tiny church by the tiny school. It was perfect.

Last year was my first time away from all that.

I had been dreading it at the time; Thanksgiving had been enjoyable for me, but stressful. Everyone’s family does things differently, even if it’s something as simple as a holiday, we all have different traditions. Last year I had none of mine for Thanksgiving, and was determined to make the best of it for Christmas.

Nick doesn’t really like going to church – at least that was the impression I’d gotten from him on several occasions, but I wanted to go, so we went. I’d never been to the church before, but it was like being right back where I belonged; with the candles and the hymns, only this time the snow was falling softly outside as we walked out afterwards to head to his mom’s for dinner. The next morning I called my parents on Skype, and we opened our presents that we’d mailed each other over webcam. It was just like being home. We took turns opening one at a time, laughed at the tags we’d made for each other (“To: The Kid, From: Turbo & Sweet Pea”), pointed out which ones we should open first or last or wait-until-you-open-that-other-one.  I got to watch my cat climb into the wrapping paper and play with the bows that had fallen out of the presents.

This year will be – I hope – just as wonderful. I’m not dreading Christmas anymore, I’m looking forward to it. I can’t wait to call my parents again on Skype and tell them which gifts to open first. For Thanksgiving I baked my mom’s Sweet Potato Biscuits; and for Christmas I’ll be making my Grandmother’s Cheese Braids like I did last year. We’ll be trying a different church this year, but you can bet I’ll be there to light the candles and sing “Silent Night” and watch the children impatiently wait for everything to end so they can hurry home for Santa.

I miss home. I miss the sound of the ocean, I miss going to the Christmas service without having to wear a jacket. I miss arguing with my mom about whether or not we need to put up a Christmas tree. I miss waking my parents up at 6 AM to open presents, even when I was way too old to be doing it. I miss drinking my mom’s spiced tea and waiting for my dad to get his coffee and check his email before we could do anything.

But I love the look of the snow falling outside. I love my boyfriend’s family and their traditions, I love getting to open presents on Christmas Eve with his mom and actually having a reason to want to drink hot cocoa or cider.

Christmas is still Christmas – it doesn’t matter where you are. I get the whole “home is where the heart is” thing now – sure, I’m on the complete other side of the country from my family, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still spend the holidays together.

I guess I’ll be “home for Christmas” after all, and at the end of the day, that’s not so bad.

Last night was the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. You know, that one time of year when it’s excusable to stare at girls in lingerie on prime time television for awhile? That one.

So this is the part where I tell you how much I looooooove Maroon 5. I’ve been trying to catch them live for awhile now (they’re pretty high up on my rapidly dwindling bucket list of performers to see in concert) and Nick has done an amazing job of converting me. Maybe a little too amazing of a job. I might be in love with Adam Levine, their lead singer. He’s great. He’s got this amazing voice and style that, when stripped of all the modern technology beefing up the song, makes him sound like he should be playing at sock hops with his hair slicked back and one of those big old school Buddy Holly microphones. He also basically told Fox News to suck it, which is absolutely amazing.  Not to mention he’s terribly attractive. I mean just look at this guy:

See? SEE?

Ahem. I told you this was going to be a fangirly blog. I promise it’ll be over soon.

So anyway, back to the actual story at hand, Mr. Levine here played with his band at the Victoria’s Secret fashion show last night, where his girlfriend Anna V was walking the runway. Yes, you read that correctly, this guy who got blessed with entirely too much attractiveness is also dating a Victoria’s Secret Angel. You might recognize her from the Never Gonna Leave This Bed videos if you’re already familiar with Maroon 5. Yeah. She’s that girl.

So while he’s playing and she’s being hot and we’re supposed to be focusing on the clothes, no seriously, what they’re wearing not what’s underneath, this happens:

Cute, right? Freaking adorable. He’s doing his thing, she’s doing her thing, and they just go on and hold hands and just kind of say “screw you, world! We’re in love! Try and stop us!” right there on national television.

It’s just so refreshing. I mean after I spent a solid two minutes squee-ing and giggling and hitting play a couple times, it’s just nice to see two people so in love and so willing to share it with people. Even in Maroon 5′s music videos – did you watch “Never Gonna Leave This Bed?” They basically snuggle in bed in a glass box on a truck going down the road where everyone can see them, not caring who sees it.

We just seem to focus so much on negativity in our culture, don’t we? Nobody cared when whats-her-face Kardashian got married, but as soon as she announced she was getting divorced – now that sells papers. We want to hear about scandal and badness and terrible stuff. I guess people want to feel better about their own lives.

But this stuff – something as simple as two careers and two workplaces colliding brings something so adorable and heartfelt and really makes you feel like the world can’t be all bad.

Sure, someone backstage was probably chewing her out a-la Jonathan Groff in Season 2 of Glee where Finn & Rachel’s kiss spoiled the competition for the team (was that a spoiler? oops.) going do you know what you’ve done you’re supposed to be upholding the blah blah blah blah…

But who cares?

Love is beautiful. Enjoy it – whether it’s yours or someone elses, whether it’s a boyfriend or girlfriend or wife or celebrity you can only dream of meeting or a book or a stuffed animal or even yourself – just enjoy it and let it happen.

Drop the drama and walk the runway on national TV. Tell someone they mean the world to you.

What’s the worst that could happen?

Lately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the concept of being in the right place at the right time. I’m the kind of person who always ends up at the front row of concerts, I’ve won several of those “be the first 30 people to…” contests, it’s not so much luck as it is lucky timing. Five seconds this way, a minute that way, everything could have changed.

I’m sitting here now, in a Starbucks, just like every other hipster/businessman/struggling writer does from time to time, typing away on my laptop, trying to look busy. I thought I could come here to get away from the distractions of my office, and it’s sort-of worked. It’s also sort of given me some time to think.

There are things I want to do with my life. I want to travel certain places, meet certain people, do certain things. I want to eventually break out of this half-assed freelancing part-time waitressing mold and have a career. I feel destined for one. I feel destined for something; maybe it’s just a matter of getting off my ass and creating publishable work, or coming up with a concept or idea that will completely break the mold. The next Farmville. Fiasco. Facebook. Yahtzee. It doesn’t matter what it is, just something.

I constantly feel the need to create, like it’s in my blood. I’m either making graphics or drawing or writing or singing or making music or making code. I just make. It’s like a disease, I can’t stop doing it if I tried. I just can’t harness the creativity, the energy. I can’t ever seem to focus it on one project or one idea. I see my friends – at least, you know, internet friends, but people I would consider friends anyway – writers, musicians, artists. They just create. They spin thousands of words in a day, whip up a new idea in an afternoon, record an album. And here I am – jack of all trades, master of none, just feeling the creativity rush through my veins and out my finger tips into whatever I touch. It can be cooking, cleaning, rearranging, baking, drawing, stacking, building.

It doesn’t matter what I create, as long as it’s something.

Sometimes I feel like I need to just sit back and see where the ride takes me. Constantly I’m feeling pressured to make something worthwhile; an album, an adventure path, a novel, a clever website. Because what good are skills and creativity if you can’t put them to use, yeah? Every time I try, though – it doesn’t feel right. I’m fully aware you have to have resumes and references and examples – but nothing I try to create feels right, it doesn’t feel like I’m supposed to make it. Like mentally I want to skip the trial and error process and make a beeline for professionalism. That doesn’t happen in today’s society.

I’m sure that idea is just around the corner. Or hell, maybe it’s not. It takes us years to achieve greatness, sometimes. I’m still young by most standards, I have time.

I just wish I knew what my “idea” is. What my “thing” is going to be. Will I be a musician? A writer? A storyteller? A designer? A developer?

When is something going to click beyond just “being creative” and become a thing? Will it ever?

I like to sit at Starbucks because it feels like it’s where Opportunity Happens. Even if it’s not, even if it’s just me sitting in a coffee shop spending too much money on hot chocolate, blogging away instead of actually working on something that could be “it,” I feel better than sitting in my own apartment.

Who knows, maybe someone will approach me one day.

Maybe after I finish this post. After all, we never know what will happen tomorrow.

I’m not sure if or when anyone will actually hear it, I’m kind of considering saving it for my first trip busking instead of attempting to record, but what’s important is: I wrote a song.

I was listening to an interview with Lisa Hannigan some time ago, and that paired with the Swell Season documentary, both of them sort of hinted at this thing, you know, where you write a song based on a fixed moment in time. Maybe you don’t feel that way anymore and maybe it was only five minutes five years ago, but sometimes those moments are song worthy.

Flashing back a bit, those of you that have been following for awhile will certainly be familiar with my whirlwind move to Wisconsin, and it’s occurred to me over the past few months that I didn’t really take much time for myself in all that – I did, but I didn’t. I had a lot of things bottled up that were – and still are – eating away at me slowly from the inside. Things I didn’t feel comfortable talking about or don’t want to bother anyone with, but that are still there.

I love music and I love playing music, and I have an awful habit of trying to write songs that are good instead of writing songs that mean something. I look at all of my favorite artists – pretty much the entire Irish music scene, really – and all of them, I love them because they make you feel. Because the musicians are clearly feeling something while they’re playing.

So today I started musing with a little chord progression I’d discovered while learning a cover of someone else’s song, and it turned into words. All at once this specific moment from years ago popped into my head, and it became a song.

It was between moves, one apartment to the other, at a time that barely matters now – but I had accidentally scheduled the electricity to be cut off a day early, so we were stuck in compelte darkness trying to move the last of our things. Trying to clean up messes we’d meant to, make sure we didn’t leave anything behind. But it was dark – and there’s only so much you can do; with flashlights or without them, you just can’t get the job done in the dark.

For some reason or another, that memory flooded my head. So I wrote. eAnd I played, and I just let words flow, and there was music.

I’ve been playing a lot lately – mostly by myself, or alone, or when no one’s home – my fingers hurt, my touch screen on my phone doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge my left hand, but I’ve felt better lately than I have in awhile.

It’s amazing what music can do, isn’t it? It can turn a day around, heal wounds that medicine can’t, and connect you to a person you’ve never met.

It’s like it’s human nature to turn words into song – and I love that. I love how honest it is. How natural. It gives you a sense of place, of belonging.

It’s a bit of a lifeline, isn’t it?

So, barring that, a little backstory – I know I’ve blogged about this here and there before, but the short version is that play-by-post roleplaying is a type of roleplaying that happens on a message board or forum wherein each player writes a portion of a story going back and forth. You might say “George walks across the room.” and the next person might say “Annie watches George, confused.” It’s pretty easy.

Except that it’s not.

Like any hobby, people have a tendency to overcomplicate things, you know? Just like the crunch-geeks get all excited about new rulesets for tabletop games, these people…they come up with arbitrary rules a lot of the time. You see rules like “you must clear it with an administrator before your character gets pregnant” or “each post you make must be at least 500 words.” I understand some rules, y’know, but for the most part it’s just like playing Pathfinder with some DM who wants to make house rules left and right about how many times you’re allowed to use your blue dice vs your green dice.

But I digress.

The thing that’s gotten me over the past few days is this whole ratings issue. When people start rating their games, the average person tries to slap a movie rating on it. You know, MPAA style – “This board is PG-13″ or “This board has R-rated content.” It doesn’t make much sense given that it’s writing and not a visual thing and the MPAA isn’t exactly explicitly clear with how they do things in the first place, but it works. It’s something. I even went so far as to write up a set of guidelines to give people a general idea of what PG-13 might entail.

Then there’s this RPG Ratings System that came along. It’s a great idea in theory – lets take a look at all the major things that people are put-off by in a forum-based roleplaying game and let admins break it down in a straightforward manner so that you can be blunt about what is and isn’t allowed. Language, Sexual Content, and Violence are all rated on a scale of 0-3. 0 for not at all, 3 for “pretty much free for all.”

And here’s where my problem with this lies: people don’t want ‘real’ ratings, they want to be told they don’t have restrictions.

I even started a thread recently on a resource board I’m on, and the first question – Do you look for high ratings because you actually intend to post mature content, or do you just not want to feel restricted? Many of the first responders all said the same thing – they might play that in the future, but they don’t know where the character is going to go, so to be safe they just look for high ratings so they know they won’t be restricted in the future should they change their mind.

What’s worse, my second question – do you look for a more detailed explanation of what is allowed as far as each individual board’s content rating, or do you turn around if you see a low rating? Many people don’t even read further if there is a low rating like PG or PG-13 or something with lots of 2′s and 1′s on the RPG Rating system. They just assume they won’t fit in well there.

I’m someone who runs a PG-13 board. We allow a little bit of everything, a little bit of please-tag-your-post-mature-if-you-think-someone-may-get-offended, we have a swear filter on the software by default that people can turn off, so the sailors among us can swear to their hearts content and the rest of the world doesn’t have to see it if they aren’t comfortable with it. I have a very, very detailed list of what is and isn’t allowed on my board that doesn’t stop at the whole sex-violence-swearing thing, but goes into detail about things like alcohol, substance abuse, what underage characters can and cannot do. I spent a lot of time on it so that players can know exactly what they’re getting into.

And now I’m here to find out that some people wouldn’t even bother reading that? Because we’re “only” PG-13?

That’s the other awful thing – in the play-by-post world, everything seems to be ALL AMPED UP ALL THE TIME. If you play on a “PG” board, it’s probably My Little Pony with no deviations from the original plot. If you play on a “PG-13″ board, the worst someone is going to do is bonk you upside the head with a rubber mallet. The online roleplaying community has collectively allowed themselves to throw all the actual ratings to the wind and let “R” and “Mature” be universal labels of “Anything goes! We’re awesome! Check us out because we allow everything!” And that’s crap. Like, really shitty.

I’m pretty proud of my choice of board rating and refuse to back down, but it annoys me that people even bother putting ratings at all on their board if they’re just going to do it so that they’ll get more members, or so that people don’t “feel” restricted. Me, I put PG-13 to give people a general idea and to keep those creepy people (you know the ones) off my board. Then I elaborate to basically make the point of “hey, you can really do a whole lot, just don’t get all smut-a-rific up in here, okay?”

At the same time, it makes me want to come up with new names for the “MPAA Explanations” I came up with. Not that anyone’s going to universally adopt it, but maybe by throwing something else out there for people to mess with it might clear up some of this confusion. At least for me. Maybe by using something completely different I can try to ward off the whole stigma of “PG-13 MEANS RAINBOWS AND CLOUDS.”

I think at the end of the day, the thing that bothers me most is, when we look for a good movie, we look at how good the movie is first, and if it looks interesting, we don’t let the rating deter us from seeing it. Okay, so that might vary slightly for teenagers who have to sneak around Mom and Dad to see a “Rated R Film,” but seriously – how often do you go “Oh, that looks really good but it’s only a PG-13 rating, I don’t think I’ll watch it.” You don’t. Period.

When you pick up a new video game, you don’t go “Oh that looks really good but it’s rated Teen, and I don’t think it will be gory enough.” No. You just buy it anyway, because it probably looks good.

Whereas with roleplaying games, it’s completely acceptable to go “Wow, this site looks like a perfect fit for me, but It’s only a PG-13 rating, so I’m going to skip it.”

Dear Writers Moonlighting As Roleplayers: Newsflash – you’re challenging yourself more by adopting a new rating. Try something new once in awhile. You may find that you’re only as restricted as your imagination lets you be. I’ve written out perfectly violent scenes without so much cracking a “2″ on the RPG Rating scale. It can be done.

Challenge yourself, don’t limit yourself. You might be surprised.

Nick and I discovered the Swell Season sort-of by accident; our exploration of the Irish music scene always seemed to bring up a few of the same names, including the famed Glen Hansard, front man of The Frames and a good friend – at least, as far as we can tell – of Damien Rice. Glen’s music sways from feeling like a traditional Irish ballad to heartfelt half-screaming lyrics to upbeat rock numbers with his band, hitting a series of different genres along the way. He quit school at age 13 to start busking on the streets of Dublin and hasn’t stopped playing since.

So in the backstory department, Glen eventually meets up with the beautiful Markéta Irglová and the musical chemistry was near about instant. The two wrote songs together, formed their duo “The Swell Season” and eventually ended up co-starring in the Fox Searchlight Film, Once, a story of a Czech immigrant girl who falls in love with a busker from Dublin – sound familiar?

The Swell Season documentary followed the two of them… well, post-film. I knew going in that it had been a tough road for the pair, and would be tough to watch - Markéta and Glen had fallen in love, then fallen out of love, and very recently Markéta married someone else. Where there should have been a wonderful love story, it was uncomfortable, painful, heartbreaking…but like any good heartbreaking story or love story, it was beautiful.

The film goes on tour a bit with Glen and Mar as they perform here and there, their lives on the tour. Entirely in black and white, it’s very easy to see that – unlike Once, which felt a bit like a fairy tale, we’re seeing two very real people living out very real lives. We meet Glen’s parents – and see some footage of his father’s last days before he drank himself to death, a gut wrenching realization once he shares this fact – as they remark on his fame, his Oscar award. His mother so proud that it seems to hurt him at times, and while he’s struggling with how to deal with fame, she tells him she wouldn’t have it any other way. Typical parental issues in a very atypical situation for two people to be in.

At some point, the film takes a turn, too – we see  Markéta struggling with with fame as it grows,  a crowd of people gathering after a show and Mar refusing to go out because she can’t stand the people acting like she’s anything special. From that point on, there’s dissonance between them. We don’t see the happy, loving couple that we saw in the beginning – we saw two people that got into something and had to figure out how to get out of it in one piece.

The entire story was beautiful. Difficult to watch, at times, but beautiful. It’s refreshing to see something so honest from people who are supposed to be “famous” – if they achieved nothing else, they showed that people are…well, just people, regardless of fame, regardless of the awards. Glen Hansard is just a guy who plays guitar, and Markéta Irglová is just a girl – born only a few weeks after I was, in the same year – who plays piano. There is nothing special about them except their honesty, which shines through in the film, in their music, and in everything we see of them.

Markéta will be in Chicago in a few weeks on her first ever solo tour. Glen, I’m not sure if or when I’ll get to see him, but should I get to meet either of them, on the street, after a show, in a pub, or wherever – I’m not going to get excited and ask for an autograph or photo, I’m going to thank them. For giving me inspiration to keep making music, for being so humble in their situations, and for being willing to share their story.

Like Markéta said in her Oscar acceptance speech – “fair play to those who dare to dream.” I hope all of theirs come true, because even after achieving fame there’s still something left to be gained.