Questlove

As winter comes to a close I’m prepping for a busy April. We’ve got multiple trips out of town planned. The Columbus Crew season is in full swing. The weather is nice enough that I can start working in the garage again! I’ve got a library hold placed on Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act that should be ready soon and I’ve been working my way through my first read of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.

After more than 5 years of playing off and on, my best friend and I finally finished Final Fantasy XII! I’ve been playing FFXII off and on since its release in 2006. So when we committed to play the game together I was hopeful we would actually complete it. I had no idea it would take this long. We only played on Fridays for a few hours and only in person.

I’m in a bit of a holding pattern here. My freshly rekindled Magic hyperfixation is simmering along. Other than spending money and watching YouTube, I haven’t done much with it. My new plan is to put together a commander deck for Friday Night Magic, go once, and then re-evaluate my priorities. Gaming As expected, I’m finished Destiny 2’s Season of the Haunted seal! Trying to figure out how much time I’m willing to put into Solstice.

So much stuff going on, but in the middle of it all I have, at least temporarily, found my next hyperfixation. It’s Magic the Gathering… I’m pretty ambivalent about this, but I seriously have no control over it. Even though large portions of me want to ignore it, I can’t help myself. I’ve played Magic off and on since Mirage, which was released in 1996. I really like the gameplay. I really like the fun of opening packs and seeing new cards.

So first the power failed, then our government failed, and then my health failed. I haven’t written here in a while. I went from an American existential crisis directly into a pretty hefty covid infection. I made it 2 and a half years without getting sick, but, unfortunately, the streak is broken. I’m not going to write anything more direct about the Supreme Court here. I’m not going to write further about my time with covid either.

I joined many members of my city in losing my power last week. We’re very lucky. We have enough money that the loss of groceries didn’t really affect us. We were able to go elsewhere to eat, and then to the movies to get cool. I know a lot of others are and were not so lucky. I hope that the powers that be can take this failure and work to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.