So; there's a good chance that I may devote some of that time that I used to spend on Facebook into better blogging. Maybe.
I also finished reading two books over the holiday, which I had on my Kindle app on my phone, therefore they were in my pocket everywhere I went. I also read on the Kindle Cloud reader on my laptop a fair amount; but what I really need to do one of these days is get myself a real Kindle device. I'll probably use it less than the Cloud reader and my phone, but for stuff like I just had, when I'm traveling, and want battery life that's measured in weeks rather than hours, I'd certainly prefer it. Plus, I'll want it for my future backpacking trips.
The books I finished; one of which I also started over the break, include book 6 of the Galaxy's Edge series: Prisoners of Darkness, which I loved (as usual) and book 1 of the Dumarest Saga by E. C. Tubb: The Winds of Gath, which I liked, but often struggled with—I'd been slowly trudging through it for weeks if not even months by this point. I'm also in danger of finishing soon The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer. While it's the original, of course, I honestly liked Robert E. Howard's take on the tale, Skull-Face, better, which has made it hard to finish. I also need to finish my re-read of The Gods of Mars and then I'll be on the market again for something new to read on my Kindle. Not that I don't have loads of choices in my collection, but I have no idea what of the bunch I'll actually read.
Meanwhile, actual books languish untouched on my shelves—despite the fact that I've got a lot of choices there too that I haven't read. I even picked up four more over the holiday, including finishing up my collection (so far) of the Dresden Files series. I'd re-read that too, but I'm not in any particular hurry.
Speaking of which, I continue to be drawn to the romance of the big "thru-hike" of a long trail like the Pacific Crest Trail or the Continental Divide Trail (I have considerably less interest in the Appalachian Trail, but if I yo-yoed it and managed to avoid the majority of the crowds, maybe I'd enjoy that one too.) This is kind of funny because at the same time, in my actual hiking trips, what I've decided is that I want to find a place that I can get to without too much hiking and then set up a basecamp and enjoy. I've created itineraries that felt like death-marches in the past, and I haven't enjoyed them. Of course, if I weighed about 40-50 lbs less and had stronger thighs, particularly hamstrings, from climbing lots of stairs, I'd enjoy the actual hiking more—what I mostly tend to enjoy is 1) being outside in beautiful places, 2) solitude, 3) being away from my regular life. While that probably does require some walking, it mostly requires sitting, thinking, and enjoying the views. It'd be better done without the big pack. So it's curious that I romanticize the long hikes so much, and wish that I had had an opportunity to do them while I was younger and more spry. I might yet make an attempt on one some day. We'll see. I wish I could talk my wife into doing it with me, but she doesn't romanticize camping at all. Or walking. Or the outdoors generally, or the American West specifically. And traveling ultralight would just stress her out anyway. And she has kind of a bum knee. I doubt she could do it, even if she had any interest in it, which she doesn't. Sigh.
Meanwhile, there's a good chance I won't get to take a major Western hiking trip this year. My vacation is looking to be in danger of being heavily pre-booked, if our 2-week trip to Hawaii actually happens. I might attempt to make a go of a desert trip later in the year, taking advantage of existing holidays, but that means I'd have to bail on my family for either Thanksgiving or Christmas, which may be... an unpopular choice at home, needless to say. Anyway, we'll see how it all shakes out. It's still way too early in the year to know anything one way or another, we're just tossing around ideas.
So... what else to do with whatever free time is freed up by walking away from social media (honestly, this isn't as much free time as it sounds. I spent very little time making Facebook posts.)? I've got to kind of finalize the CULT OF UNDEATH project still, I've got one more module from The Serpent's Skull to deconstruct so I can reassemble them into the ISLES OF TERROR project, and then maybe I'll do some more with some other adventure path or collection of modules. I've thought about using the Darkmoon Vale series of modules, which isn't an adventure path per se, but which resembles a small one in many ways. I've also dug up some old Dungeon issues and am reading the three big adventure paths from that magazine. I actually played one of them all the way through—The Age of Worms—but The Shackled City as the first of its kind intrigues me, and The Savage Tide is actually thematically more up my alley. All three, I suspect, are way too D&Dish for my taste, though, and are steeped in D&Diana. While this isn't a problem for their target audience—they are, after all, D&D adventure modules—I'm way too iconoclast by nature to just go along with what everyone else is doing, and I prefer a more "pure" combination of sword & sorcery and mythology rather than the often esoteric melange of sword & sorcery, high fantasy elements, folklore, and D&D specific stuff. Ironically, for someone who claims to be an iconoclast, this often means that something even more vanilla than D&D appeals to me better. Of the commercial settings that really appeal to me the most, I'd have to say that the original Warhammer World does it the best. That said, I've got a bunch of Warhammer novels that I've been sitting on literally for years without reading. Sigh.
So...
After this rambly post about very little in particular, what are some of my goals for the New Year? That seems, perhaps, an appropriate way to wrap all of this up.
- Read a chapter of the Book of Mormon, and a chapter of the Bible every day.
- Read my patriarchal blessing every day
- Read twenty actual paper books this year cover to cover. If I pick an omnibus, tough luck. It still only counts as one.
- Work up (from ten minutes, where I'll start) to doing half an hour of stairs at least five days a week
I'd like to think that I'd do more; push-ups, and writing—but let's start modestly and get those habits going well first and then see about adding more.
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