It’s been a while, which is the consequence of real-life stuff and some decisions I’ve made lately.

Last year, I realized--as we all must, sooner or later--that I was getting toward the bottom of the pantry, as it were. I hope and plan to live for some decades yet, but the shelves are emptying, and some resources aren’t going to be replenished again, not this lifetime. I decided then that this year would be all about my health: see doctors, get tests, hire trainers. Make the decision to get as strong and well as possible now, this year—because if I don’t make that decision, then I’ll have made a different decision whether I want to admit it or not. Then use this as my baseline.

And that’s what I’ve been doing. I lost months to the vertigo (still there, alongside the tinnitis, but not a big deal at the moment), but I’ve been seeing a doctor once a month for a while, kicking off whatever has to happen to address some long-term problem I’ve been ignoring or worrying about. This means follow-ups with different, more specialized doctors, and tests, and all the rest. Some end well or with information that is very useful. Others are ongoing: “Come back in a year and we’ll look at this again.”

Once the blockers were cleared out of the way, I started weight training. It’s not my favorite physical activity, but it’s hard work and I love that. I use a trainer because we have to work around the scarring in my hands from the DuPuytren’s (which is one of the Come back in a year things). I wear silicon pads in weightlifting gloves and can do most things. The physical changes are maybe not visible to anyone but me (unless you see me at the gym) but I feel tougher, leaner. This is exhilarating; even more so is the sense that I am somehow replenishing the pantry at a time when I had thought nothing new could be added. I will never be the skinny climber I was, but I’m not in this for that.

But—and anyone here who has ever started working out seriously after a long time away will know this—I’ve been useless for pretty much anything else. After a hard workout, I am practically inert for most of the day. This is starting to change, as my energy levels adjust (and after we tinkered with my Vitamin D).

This is an ongoing quest to get as strong and well as I can be, stockpiling for the winter. It’s also a quest without an end. I will be doing weight training or something equivalent for the rest of my life, working around the problems that I can’t fix.

Oh, and by the way? It’s been interesting and fun. Who knew?

 ***

I’ve thought some in these newsletters about how fiction or game design fits into my life these days. Do I think anyone cares? Will anyone new ever care? Do I think even the people who do care will hear of anything I create, in this stupid internet world? Do I care to do this work? Do I need to? What else gives meaning? This is something that at the moment is boiling into pages and pages of handwritten journal. I’ve realized some stuff that would be almost impossible to encapsulate in a newletter, but the practical takeaways are this:

·      I want to move forward on the collected works project, a series of books that will include most of my fiction, with essays about the provenance or the craft of each of them. This is a four-year project, minimum, and it only works if I am willing to use Kickstarter/Backerkit to fund it, which is a task I am not currently relishing. But I need to have a year’s worth of the books done before I worry about that.

·      I have realized something about writing that means I’ll start fiction again—but it’s such a fundamental reset in practice that I can’t currently face it. If 2026 was about health and wellness, 2027 is about right work, in the Buddhist sense.

·      While I loved writing RiverBank, and even though I am halfway through another Haphazardry game, I’m not going to pursue game design unless someone pays for it ahead of time. I’m not going to design a full-length game, even a solo game, even my clever scaffolded how-to games, on spec.

·      I have a new Patreon/website strategy figured out, but haven’t had time to set it up. Everything on computers always requires I relearn the alphabet. There needs to be a word: dystechia.

 ***

There’s plenty of other stuff going on right now:

·      I’ve gotten involved in the Farbeyond Books online store, which is a fundraiser for the nonprofit Ad Astra Institute for Science Fiction (whose website’s a mess as they change it). Mostly I’m loading books online: there are more than a thousand books in my basement to go up as I get to them.

·      Next summer’s Novel Architects and Ad Astra workshops are a Go! We will be catching up after a year away from the novel workshop—Barbara and I have been thinking a lot.

·      I’ve been playing a lot of D&D, and it’s like being given back a piece of myself. I first played so long ago that AD&D was a brand new thing, and we all were learning the rules together.

·      I’ve loved the social media fast and concomitant scrolling fast. The experiment has me thinking about the differences between killing time, escaping the world, boredom, and tranquility. If I have any great insights I’ll share them.

 ***

Stay kind, be cool, support artists.

Join me over on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/kijjohnson

Or check out my website: https://kijjohnson.com/