While having the most fun playing Dragon Age: Inquisition, I remembered that, oh yeah, I like video games. So I’m working my way through Metacritic’s list of RPGs (sorted by Metascore; I know the methodology might not be sound but I don’t really care). Top of the list was Mass Effect 2, but I’m the kind of person who reads BSC books in order, so obvs I had to start with the first one.

I chronicled my experience primarily through Facebook status updates. Here they are for your entertainment:

So far, not as obsessed with Mass Effect as I am with DA:I, but I’m definitely into it enough after the first hour and a half to keep going.

 

…

Mass Effect update: definitely more into it now. Going full paragon.

 

…

Mass Effect update: vehicular combat, not my fave, but I’m getting better at it. I’m also getting better at using cover, but Tali and Kaidan are doing the heavy lifting in combat. Finishing quests is almost as satisfying here as in Dragon Age. The terrain is very crazy. I keep expecting to crash, but the only trouble I’ve had is driving off the edge of the Feros skyway. I’m very over the Mako. I have to remind myself that games are supposed to involve challenge… I find myself getting frustrated if I die in a spot more than twice. Also, even though I don’t like the Mako, I’m getting the hang of zooming in, which does make my cannon fire much more effective.

 

…

It’s an all girl party for me. Shep, Liara, and Tali. Haven’t settled on a romance yet. Stringing them both along at present. But leaning toward Kaidan for no reason in particular. I just met him first and liked him right away. But Liara is so pretty and smart…

 

…

Pretty sure I ruined things with Kaidan and accidentally committed myself to Liara. Oops. …But they’re both so broken. I want to love them both! Mass Effect, why won’t you let me choose polyamory?

 

…

I was like, “Maybe I’ll replay this to be really completist” because I’m not going to finish all the collections. And then I thought “NO BECAUSE THEN I WILL HAVE TO DRIVE AND FIGHT IN THE MAKO MORE.”

 

I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. It’s an autoimmune disease in which my body attacks my thyroid. The thyroid controls basically, you know, every bodily function. So if it’s under attack and starts to function poorly, your (or, rather, my) whole body becomes a sad mess. This affects both physical and mental stuff. The treatment I use is a combination of two synthetic hormones that supplement the hormones my body either isn’t making or isn’t properly converting into other hormones.

For more than a year, I’ve felt like this condition was getting worse. And the lab tests showed a decline, but were still kind of okay-normal, but suboptimal, and I was just too scared to bring it up with my doctor.

Then in January I got feeling bad enough, and the test results were finally suboptimal enough, that I went to my doctor and checked in about getting an increase in the dosage of these hormones, which after some hand-wringing about how they could actually be hurting me, she eventually agreed to. About a week before that appointment, I started taking a selenium supplement, which has been shown in medical studies to help Hashimoto’s patients.

In early January, I was having a lot of really bad days. I was too sleepy to accomplish much in the first week. I had an eight-day headache. My joints were constantly aching. Sometimes my muscles ached, too. I felt stupid and slow. Exercise sounded like something that would be difficult to get through both because I wouldn’t really be able to breathe afterwards and because it would just aggravate my joints more. Getting up in the morning was very difficult. Many days, I was not confident in my ability to meet my basic adult obligations.

About a week after starting the selenium supplement, I began to feel kind of like a person again. I hadn’t really, not for the first three weeks of this year. I felt like maybe I was capable of dealing with life.

It takes about 4 weeks to notice much of a change from a dosage increase in thyroid meds, and 6-8 weeks for it to show up on a serum test. But today is two weeks since my dose increased, and I can feel a difference in my body and my attitude. Yesterday I went swimming for the first time in more than a month. I got up, took my medicine, braided my hair, kissed my husband goodbye, wished him a happy morning of playing Dragon Age: Inquisition, and was on my way. I swam for I don’t know how long, but I swam until my legs started to say, “Please, no more, thanks.”

This morning, I went for a walk. It was a one-mile walk. A couple of weeks ago, I would do this same walk, and at the end of it, I would need to just sit for ten minutes to catch my breath. This morning, I came in, sat for a minute or two, and started making breakfast. I hard-boiled some eggs. For the past couple of weeks, all I’ve been able to do was mix up an instant breakfast powder with milk.

My mind isn’t as sharp as I’d like yet, but I feel optimistic that it will be in the next month or two. I still get sleepy mid-afternoon, but I get a few hours of good thinking-time in at work before that happens. I can’t convey just what a difference it is to feel like things are getting better, like it’s possible for them to keep getting better.

I need to remember this feeling. I need to remember, next time I start to feel low, that I can take control, I can talk to my doctor, and I can make it better. I have that power. I need to internal-locus-of-control this thing, and I can. I can. That’s the hardest, and most important, part to remember.

“You have horseys on your sweater,” my grown husband said to me. (I don’t have a husband who isn’t grown. I just want to emphasize that he was an adult using the world “horsey” when speaking to another adult.)

“No, I don’t.” I glared at him.

“Sorry. You have unicorns on your sweater,” he corrected himself.

“Yes. Horses are for children. Unicorns are for grown-ups,” I told him.

Right now, I’m working full-time, taking a graduate-level library and information science course, and taking improv. I’m on the board of 2 arts organizations. I’ve got family coming to town next week, and friends coming to dinner this weekend. I’ve got a presentation due and an improv performance next Tuesday, a paper due the Tuesday after that, and a final exam due the Tuesday after that. We just released a major project at work this week, but that project still has some loose ends, and we’re launching into the next phase of another big project ASAP.

And of course, there’s laundry to be done, dishes to load and unload, Halloween decorations to put away, Thanksgiving decorations to get out or make and then put away, mail to sort, bills to pay…

Earlier this week, I thought, “Am I going to get all of this done?”

Then I thought, “Obviously I will, because what is the other choice?”

But knowing it would all get done didn’t make it any less overwhelming.

Yesterday, in a startling moment of clarity, I knew what I needed to do.

I needed to recruit my likewise-too-busy, overwhelmed friends to a book group where we very slowly read Kim Werker’s Mighty Ugly together.

So I made a list of seven friends whom I thought might benefit from facing their creative demons right now and wrote them a loving missive inviting them to join me in January in this new adventure. I asked them to just let me know before Christmas so I could set up a Doodle poll for our first meeting. I said if they had to miss some meetings, that was totally fine. I was pretty sure they’d all say, “Oh, well, I’m so busy…” or “Let me see what the new year is going to look like…”

Within an hour, six of the seven had replied positively. (The last one hasn’t replied yet.)

And now we have a blog and a pinboard and a hashtag.

This is a thing that’s happening. I hope you’ll follow along, and perhaps start your own group or work through the book at your own pace. Maybe by January 2016, we’ll all be making a lot more and letting our creative demons stop us a lot less.

Okay, show of hands … who has read Shakespeare OUTSIDE of school required reading? Do you watch the plays? How about movies? Do you love him? Think he’s overrated?

I first read Shakespeare in 8th grade. We were assigned A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and that was a smart move on the part of whomever made that decision. Thirteen-year-old me was ripe for a play about fairies and lovers. It was one of those interlinear versions with the original text on the left and a “translation” on the right. I loved it, though I frequently found myself thinking the “translation” was dumb.

In 9th grade, I was assigned Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. Again, genius job, people who decide 9th graders should read R&J. Because developmentally speaking, they are supremely relatable characters when you’re that age. JC wasn’t so great - I’ve never been big on the histories, and it just didn’t grab me. I think that while the language is what makes Shakespeare remarkable, it’s the stories that have to be the gateway for somebody new to Shakespeare. If you can get them with the stories, then they’ll get over the challenges of the language, and maybe even find the beauty. My senior year, we read Othello, another one that didn’t grab me, again because I couldn’t relate.

In college, I chose to take a Shakespeare class to fulfill my English requirement. I hated the class because it was mostly the professor reading aloud to us, and he had a gravelly, expressionless voice. I think the most important thing to know about Shakespeare’s plays is that they weren’t designed as great literature. They were intended to serve as popular entertainment. This is why I think the very best way to experience Shakespeare is to see it performed - either live or in a movie. I am lucky enough to have the means and opportunity to see Shakespeare regularly performed at Playmakers Repertory Company.

If you can’t get to a theater, movies are the next best thing. Here are my top 5 Shakespeare adaptations:

1. Hamlet, directed by Kenneth Branagh
2. Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Joss Whedon
3. Love's Labour's Lost, directed by Kenneth Branagh (not artistically brilliant, but a very fun time)
4. Titus, directed by Julie Taymor
5. The Merchant of Venice, directed by Michael Radford

And three honorable mentions:

1. A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Michael Hoffman
2. Twelfth Night, directed by Trevor Nunn

Plus there’s a great recorded stage performance of Twelfth Night directed by Nicholas Hytner.

If you think you don’t like Shakespeare, try the Whedon Much Ado. It’s probably the most accessible Shakespeare adaptation on film. It grew out of Shakespeare readings that Joss Whedon used to have in his backyard. Inspired by him, I hosted two of these myself, gathering friends, assigning roles, and just reading aloud. It’s so much better that way than trying to imagine it all in your head. Not everybody there was a Shakespeare expert, but you don’t need to be. Try hosting your own reading and see how it goes.

tl;dr: I haven’t done much extracurricular Shakespeare reading, but I do love him; watch Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing.

Edited to add: One more thing! I forgot to mention that if you can neither get to a theatre nor find a film adaptation, you should totally check out Manga Shakespeare. Having the plays illustrated in a cool manga style with the original text is the next best thing to actually getting to see actors perform it. Romeo and Juliet on the streets of Tokyo with katana fights? Yes please!

Edited to add, 2: I failed to mention Branagh’s Much Ado, which is what first set me in love with Beatrice. Because Emma Thompson is INCREDIBLE. Consider it to be #1.5 on my list of top 5 adaptations.

June and July were very busy months for me and I learned a lot. I thought I’d share some of it with you. Here goes!

Maker Faire NC. I went to Maker Faire NC on June 7. It was my first Maker Faire ever and it was pretty amazing. I was rather overwhelmed by both the number of people and the amount of stuff to see, but I still managed to explore, try new things, and meet new people. At The Bored Zombie’s booth, I made my first quilt block.

[caption id=“attachment_1454” align=“aligncenter” width=“225”] My First Quilt Block[/caption]

This reminded me that I really enjoy sewing. I also bought the Learn to Solder Skill Badge Kit and learned that essential tremor and soldering aren’t good company for one another. My sister, Mary Elisabeth, made me a set of chain mail earrings with help from the good folks at Split Infinity Jewelry. Fueled by our Maker Faire fervor, she and I promptly went out and bought Aranzi Aronzo’s Cuter Book and supplies for making little felt stuffies, which we then promptly did.

Maker Faire was awesome and reaffirmed my affinity for the Maker Movement. I’ll definitely go back next year, and I hope to check out some local Maker Meetups soon.

Microsoft Office Mix. Have you checked out Microsoft Mix yet? It’s a supercool extension for PowerPoint that lets you make Khan Academy-style instructional videos and share them. I learned how to use this for a project at work. Here’s an example of a Mix I made - to show you how to upload your mix. How meta!

If I were still in the classroom, especially if I were in a 1:1 school, I would definitely use this for lessons students could come back to as often as they needed for reinforcement. I would also use it as an assessment, asking students to make their own Mixes to show me what they learned.

iBooks Author.  Speaking of things I would totally use if I were still in the classroom, I learned to use iBooks Author to create incredible multitouch books. I hate that these are exclusive to the iPad, of course, and I hope to one day figure out how to build such things with HTML, but it can’t be denied that this tool is easy to use but also feature-rich. I highly recommend the Lynda.com iBooks Author Essential Training course, if it’s available to you. There’s also a series of iBooks Author for Teachers courses with Mike Rankin that might suit your needs. And Lynda.com does offer institutional memberships, so you might try to convince your school or system to throw a little Professional Development money their way to help you with technology integration.

Content Strategy. At work, I’m responsible for literally thousands of pages of open educational resources. Each of these pages includes a huge amount of information. Content strategy is going to help me organize it all. I’m just dipping my toe into the waters. If you work in any sort of web publishing situation, you should check it out.

Improv. You may have noticed that I stopped writing follow up posts after week 2 of my improv class. That’s not because I didn’t learn anything, but because everything from that point forward was deeper learning about stuff I’d already mentioned. Especially listening. I swear, improv teaches you to listen so hard. Since then, I’ve performed in my class showcase and in something called The Humor Games, which was beastly. From that experience, I learned that being a really good novice doesn’t mean you’re accomplished at something. Other improv performers who have been doing this a long time have an ease on stage that I just don’t yet. I’m game for anything and I go big, which means my improv is usually fun, but some of these performers just blew me away, and competing against them felt really hard. But now I’m taking Improv 201, refining my skill, and learning even more. But mostly still learning that you should really listen, already.

Crochet and Knitting. So this is half a cop-out. I already knew how to crochet. But I’ve been taking Kim Werker’s Crochet Basics and Beyond on Craftsy anyway, because I wanted to brush up on the finer points of crochet. Already I’ve learned how to make my stitches tidier. I also started Stefanie Japel’s Knit Lab. It’s a great class, but equally delightful to the class itself is the fact that it comes with the Knitter’s Handbook, an amazing in-depth resource with videos, images, and instructions for a variety of knitting techniques.

[caption id=“attachment_1459” align=“aligncenter” width=“225”] Crocheted Circles[/caption]

Thanks for reading all of that! I promise not to wait so long to update you on what I’ve learned next time.

Dear Joss,

Happy birthday! I hope you’re having a wonderful time. I imagine you’re working, which is probably the most fun way you could envision spending a birthday. I might have a cupcake later on your behalf. We’ll see.

I just wanted to take a minute to outline the ways you’ve changed my life. I’ve been a fan of yours for about 28% of the time you’ve spent on this earth, and about 42% of the time I’ve spent on this earth, so I feel like you’ve had a pretty big influence on me. Here are some ways.

1. You gave me something to sing about. Metaphorically, I mean. (Literally, too, every time I sing a song you wrote.) As a college freshman, I was deeply depressed and anxious. My primary response to this depression/anxiety was to vomit. After one particular bout of said vomiting, my then-boyfriend-now-husband gently said to me, "Come watch Buffy. It'll be fun." I did, he was right, and my life has been better ever since. I fondly wished, before that night, that I would just not wake up anymore. After that night, I wanted to live. Watching Buffy deal with all of the trauma of starting college made me feel less alone. Which brings me to the next way you've changed my life...
2. You gave me many of my best friends. Joss, you know about the WB Bronze. You know that 1997-2001 was a beautiful time of deeply meaningful fan interaction there. You know that we all came together and raised money for the Make a Wish foundation. What you might not know is that these people are still my best friends. A little over a year ago, I got together with them and it was like coming home. These people get me in a way almost no other group has. (Librarians get me the same way.) And when I am dealing with life's miseries, they help me through it.
3. You gave me a reason to travel. At 20 years old, I flew across the country to party with a bunch of virtual friends and RL strangers. And it was one of the best things I've ever done. Which is why I did it again at 21, 22, 28, and 31. Would I have ever been to LA if not for your work? Probably not, and that would be a shame, because it's one of the best places to be a tourist ever.
4. You gave me a reason to get really good at working with websites, which led me to my current job. Would I be able to talk about CSS and web design and content management systems if I hadn't worked on jossisahottie.com and other fansites? Probably not.
5. You gave me a purpose when my life was a mess. As a senior in college, I was in a rough place. My grades weren't great. My mom was really sick. I was, for the first time in my life, performing in a play where the other cast members made me feel actually disliked. But your show (Firefly) needed somebody to light a fire under its fans to get them talking about it, and I got to be that person. And it gave me something to focus on for literally years to come.
6. You gave me great storytelling advice. Everything is about emotion and structure. Give even the most apparently insignificant character a reason to be there. Buy yourself chocolate just because you have the idea, before you've even done any writing. Via interviews and DVD commentaries, you consistently help me become a better writer and performer.
7. You give me the feeling that everything you write is a gift just for me. Granted, I'm a narcissist, so I tend to think everything everyone does is done for me. But I'm pretty sure many of your fans feel this way. All of your work speaks so powerfully to the little details of existence, which I think makes it personal for everyone who loves it.

That’s 7 ways. I’m sure there are tons more. And I know I’m one of thousands (millions?) who feels so grateful to have been touched by your work.

So thanks, Joss.

Love,

Me

Remember how I went to improv class last week? I did it again this week! And I learned some new stuff, and had some earlier lessons reinforced.

Here’s what I learned:

Listen better. When you’re up on a stage with somebody, and you don’t have a script, you better listen carefully to what they have to say. Because if you don’t, what you say next might not make any sense or flow logically. And while that’s fun sometimes, it makes a story or scene hard to follow. I would argue that this is valuable even when you do have a script. As an actor, it can be hard to remember that the character you’re playing is saying your lines and hearing other people’s lines for the first time, ever. When actors bring the active listening technique from improv (and therapy) into their performances, I think the performances are much more effective and organic.

Be ready to let your ideas go. You might have a plan for where the scene is going, but you’re going to relinquish control of the scene regularly. So you need to know that your plan might never be executed, and be ready to work with somebody else’s plan. Again, this is valuable in daily life, too. I call myself a Type A- personality, which means I’m slightly less neurotic than somebody who’s Type A. I’m still a extensive planner. But I’m not actually in control of the universe, and my plans don’t always come to fruition, and I need to be okay with that.

Everybody hears Darth Vader differently. I’m not going to explain that one. Take from it what you will.

What did you learn this week?

 

Last night was my first improv class at DSI Comedy Theater, where I took sketch comedy writing from January to April. I’ve done improv in the past, as a “theatre person” (we pretend we’re British, so we spell it -re), but never for its own sake - it was either to build rapport with a cast, or in my least favorite situations, to try and discover things about characters that weren’t in the script. (Lots of actors find great value in this. I’m not one of them.)

Thanks to my theatre experience and a lot of time spent pretending I was on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, I didn’t come in as a total n00b; on top of that, I’ve listened to the audiobook of Tina Fey’s Bossypants at least 3 times, so I had a grasp of some basic improv vocabulary, chiefly the idea of YES AND.

But I had (and still have) so much more to learn, so my hope is that weekly I’ll do a little debrief here. These will be personal revelations more than improv tips. If you want to learn improv, you need to, you know, do it. Without further ado, here’s some stuff I learned in Improv 101, Week 1.

I can be a good listener, if I decide to be. I talk about myself, pretty much non-stop. It’s a known flaw of mine, it runs in my family, ohmygodI’mdoingitrightnow. When I watch other people do improv exercises (or anything in life at all, really), I tend to think, “What would I do there?” Knowing this about myself, I decided that when I got up for an exercise, I needed to listen to my partner carefully, rather than always having my mind racing on to the thing I was going to say next. I was pretty sure I was going to fail at this. But mostly, it worked. I only sort of skipped ahead to my next thought once really.

Relationships are funny. I didn’t really try this one in one of my own exercises, but stories are always funnier when they are about a relationship between two people with a shared history. So this is the thing I’m going to work on next time, I think - figuring out, in the first few beats, a relationship to my partner. And then being fluid with it, so if it evolves over the course of the scene into a totally different relationship, that’s totally cool.

Specific = funny. I already covered this in sketch comedy, but it’s true here, too. And it’s harder on your feet, when you don’t have time for revision, to get specific. So my hope is that I’ll learn to start specific, which will save me some time in my writing process in the future.

My life is a rich tapestry of pop-culture references. In one scene, I drew on both a B-plot from an episode of Sex and the City and a quest in South Park: The Stick of Truth that is itself a reference to Game of Thrones. I consume a lot of media, in many forms: TV shows, books, comic books, video games - and I really think that whole “If you want to be a writer, read a lot” thing comes up in improv, too. I felt like I was able to get specific quickly, to draw on stories I’d seen in other realms, without outright plagiarizing. Will Hines says you’ll learn a lot from improv because other people will mention stuff you don’t know. I look forward to my classmates letting some of their interests come through in their scenes, so I can find even more stories and facts to go check out.

And that’s just week one! Last thing: Our homework is to find a “Yes And” moment in life sometime this week and share it on the class forum, but I’m doing a little experiment - I’m going to look for a “Yes And” moment every day. And then I’m going to share it on Tumblr.

I’m two sessions away from finishing Sketch 201 with DSI Comedy Theater. Since January, I’ve spent most Saturday afternoons sitting around a table with other sketch students, talking about what makes comedy work and figuring out how we can make ours better. Why am I doing this? One, because Tina Fey is my hero. Two, because I’ve always liked writing funny stuff. Three, because I felt like it.

But more important than why I’m doing it is what I’ve learned. I’m not done yet, so I’m sure I’ll learn more, but here are some of the things I’ve taken away, that aren’t necessarily about the mechanics of sketch writing.

I can sit down and write if I must. I’ve always been that idiot who thinks academic writing can absolutely be forced, but creative writing can only happen when the muse strikes. All of the writing books will tell you that you just need to put your butt in a chair and write, but like many people, I always thought, Maybe that works for you, but not for me. Nope. Turns out it works for me, too. But what I’m writing at that first pass might not be great, and that’s okay, because…

Sometimes the first draft is really the outline, and that’s okay. In addition to taking this class, I’m working full-time, taking a graduate level Digital Humanities course, and just finished performing in an operetta. That means writing time must be squeezed out, and there was one day when I had about 45 minutes to get my sketch done. This meant I didn’t have time for careful planning and brainstorming. It meant the writing was the brainstorming. I weekly send my instructor a note that says, “This is a very rough draft, I’m so sorry, I’m still working out my ideas.” But of course, that’s what drafts are for. In a research paper, you might be able to create a detailed outline before you sit down to write, but you’ve done a lot of the intellectual work already. In creative writing, the writing is the intellectual work.

The best comedy comes from pain. The funniest things I’ve written have consistently been when I’ve taken on something that depresses me. A sketch about how desperate librarians are to prove their relevance - how hard they are working to demonstrate their natural awesome - while at the same time not losing track of how much they really love the work? Hilarious. A commercial parody recruiting teachers to work in North Carolina, taking every change the legislature has made to gut the career and making it sound like an enticement instead? Priceless. Sometimes I actually feel worse after writing these - but they’re still funny.

I’d rather write satire than anything else. I’m very content to view fluff, but I want my comedy to mean something. I’d rather be South Park than Family Guy. (Which is not to say Family Guy is never satirical, but I think if you run the numbers you’ll find South Park is satirical more often.)

Specific = funny. A librarian pulling her pants down to show people her hip tattoo? Funny. A librarian pulling her pants down to show people her hip tattoo of Ranganathan’s laws of library science? Funnier.