User blog:Taldin/A Simple Journey Begins With A Single One-Step Plan

(Fantasy Friday: this is the centerpiece of what I had in mind for creating content. Habitica is all about adventuring -- and yet there's precious little actual adventuring taking place in the public eye, outside the quest flavor text and the festival things. Since I'm a writer, why not actually get some real adventuring done?)

Part One
There were monsters out there. Of this he was quite sure. There were tales of heroics and horrific happenings in his history books, and fantastical facts that followed fearsome foes. It was the best of times to live in Habitica, where magic and might made mundane and menial things manageable, and anyone could become a hero.

His name was Taldin, and a long time ago, it was something more unique of a name. He was young adventurer with an old soul, and so he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty doing things, although there were times he could certainly be squeamish about some of those things. But like monsters, work and chores and tasks didn't vanquish themselves!

Hanging in his closet was an old cat burglar costume; it didn't quite fit him anymore. Perhaps one day he'd get back into shape to wear it again, but for the moment, he'd gone back to basics; aught but a training sword and his wits.

Most adventures begin in a bar; his began in a little corner of the City, in a tiny little office that had papers stacked everywhere, cluttered and in disarray from hectic projects not so long passed, and other archives from things done far too long ago. He couldn't bear to be rid of any of it; he never knew if he might need it.

He'd cleared his docket completely; no trace of the ideas and action plans that had previously graced his planner were left.

Adventure called, but work called first.

"How dull." he muttered to himself, looking at himself in the mirror; "...at least, dull for a werewolf, anyway." It was the way he wanted to look for the day; wild on the inside, peaceful on the outside, at least while the day was young. And the night was so far away yet, and there were things to do before the moon rose.

Determined to put work before play, however, he added his first task: "Make a List of Things to Do Before Adventuring." And it all-too-quickly filled with action items that only the City employees cared about; but he afforded himself a chance to dream big by adding a separate list of things to do when he had spare time.

Only thing was? He rarely ever had spare time. When he did, he found other things to do.

Taldin was a workaholic. He knew it. He was the best sort of person to Get Things Done, but he was also the worst sort of person to do it-- because he'd always fill his lists with more things than a normal person could possibly get done.

Today was the first step to getting better -- decluttering his list and starting fresh.

Perhaps this time, he'd make it to the Adventure part.

Hanging on the walls were trophies from what amounted to a previous life; lists of foes vanquished in the company of friends. But his friends were far away, and one of them slept an enchanted sleep that they hadn't woken from in over a month; he didn't want to call on them for aid just yet, because he himself was unsure of the outcome of the road he had set himself upon.

Life is a matter of choices; and this time, this day, this hour, he chose work.

The weekend beckoned, and he looked away. For the moment, anyway.

Part Two
Adventuring required being prepared, of course. And so many of his friends and family who went adventuring went because the responsibilities of home were too much to bear. But Taldin was one of those perfectionists; if you didn't do something right, it wasn't done. And so he recognized in himself that he wasn't about to go anywhere at all unless the long-overdue cleaning that the house needed was done first.

The library wasn't even really his; it was mostly books belonging to his housemate. But the boxes and suitcases belonging to his former roomate could be done - and so could the vaccuuming, and there was the matter of the bathtub needed scrubbing. Badly.

Setting the house to order made him feel better about himself, and he figured he was one step closer to journeying further afield, but this week still found him at home.

Perhaps he was procrastinating on taking that adventure, perhaps not; but he was one of thosse folks who felt it was better to be prepared.

Part Three
There is no better feeling in the world than feeling accomplished -- well, except winning, perhaps. But winning is also an accomplishment, and an accompishment completed is winning.

The biggest hurdle keeping him from wandering the world was that list of Things to Do. Eight out of the nine things were now complete, and the last one required him to get information from someone who was on vacation. One of the remaining things got removed by someone else, and the other thing was a project he didn't have to do with any particular time frame.

That was the danger of 'whenever you get around to it' projects; they never got done.

He spent some time ruminating on the notion of procrastination; it was a lesson that he'd been reminded of while cleaning down his incoming mailbox to something less than an untenable avalanche.

The other half of the problem, the real reason he wasn't ready to adventure? Is because he had no idea where to begin. When one has lived a life of following other people, or going where one was needed most, it was hard to even fathom the idea of going somewhere, on his own, just for fun. And adventure, of course.

It was far easier to pretend; to fall into worlds that others had already created, to walk within the adventures that someone else had created and laid out in a line.

And perhaps that was the key, he surmised.

"Adventure is what you make of it," he said, to nobody in particular. "But you are in control, and you are the hero of your own story. Where you go is entirely up to you. What you fight is entirely your choice; and there is no shame in running away."

Perhaps he'd been hiding from life's adventure for the reason of giving someone else their dreams, and their adventures, but he had only himself to take care of, now.

Part Four
Oftentimes adventure comes to the unwilling; this story was one of those stories. Over the weekend, a terrible curse befell his housemate; she fell ill and the chiurgeons did not know what was wrong with her. They wanted to keep her in the halls of healing, but the place was most unsettling, and so he staged a daring rescue of her out of the place and took her home.

Home didn't seem like home when it came to having someone grieviously ill within it;

It was very easy to keep to the mindless routines, and harder to be creative; still, one of the things he did was set up a small blacksmith's forge in the back of the house. For times when he would return home, he figured.

It was something to do.

The stacks of papers that had piled up over the spring and summer seemed almost manageable; the maps he got in the mail from his friends in the Habitica Exploration and Research Organization looked interesting, though there were quite a few unexplored regions to be discovered within.

That was the other problem -- he was pretty bad at just randomly picking a direction and going.

Part Five
Plans are things that never hold up to their execution, the saying goes.

The week had been filled with delays, aborted excursions, and worse yet, the appointment to see the specialist for his housemate's condition got eaten by a dragon. And so the vigil of sitting by her bedside continued, though sometimes it was couchside, and sometimes outside the bathroom door.

It's not easy to go adventuring when the bggest challenge of your life is in your own house.

He felt self-conscious about everything he could do that they could not; he needed to be there if she needed anything, even as trivial as getting a glass of water from the kitchen became the top priority in his life.

The worst part about it was that the next available 'urgent' appointment wasn't for another couple of weeks.

"I think I'm dying." she said to him.

"Wait until you see what the doctors say." he said back.

The waiting was the hardest part.

So was not telling anyone what was wrong with her - since they didn't know, it didn't make sense to make many people worry needlessly, either.

It had been a very long week, of getting very little done; he wound up finishing the week with more To-Dos than To-Dones.

Part Six
Adventure sounded really good after being trapped in the house with his housemate, practically all week. At least the doctor's appointment was the next week; he even managed to get a little bit of work done that week. More appointments popped up, too-  a reminder that his own life was still something he needed to pay attention to.

But being trapped so meant that adventuring was beyond his reach; it was time to give other people the chance to do the adventuring in his stead.

"I'll be like one of those old sages in the Inn, perhaps." he said. "Asking strangers for help, asking to hear their stories by the fire, that sort of thing."

He smiled ruefully. "All adventurers start small, and feeling like they're not big enough to take on the troubles of their world. It's what builds character, so to speak, or reveals the thing that can cause them to be undone even in their moments of triumph."

"So I think what I'll have as the first challenge?  Is to swap some stories of when we weren't at our best."

"It's finally time to get lost."

Part Seven
He felt like the world had collapsed in on him; it was the fourth week of being the sole caregiver for his beleagured housemate. The diagnosis wasn't good; the hope of a full recovery was slim to none, and the best they could do was restore her to a shadow of her former self -- provided she got into a physical rehab program in a timely fashion. But like the rest of the world had taught him time and again, your own emergency does not always make it someone else's urgency.

Already he'd been out of the office for the better part of a month; his work was beginning to pile up a little worrisomely, and even delegating didn't quite take the place of having one's own work environment to thrive in. And there were many interruptions for various doctor appointments and runs to the pharmacy, all of which meant making it back up to where he could choose a career again.

"It's funny how we go back to our old pursuits." he mused, as he took on the mantle of the Rogue once again.

In other news, the challenge for the losing of oneself had gone largely untouched; to date, only one person had even taken on the idea of writing about an adventure. There was still another week at least...

Part Eight
Inspiration comes in many forms; sometimes it was just a matter of stopping saying, 'I can't' and more just trying to do something, no matter how bad it might be. It was an old philosophy he'd forgotten, time and again, and yet no matter how much his protege' kept trying to remind him of it, it was just words.

Sometimes we do learn from our pasts, still. There were novel ideas he'd never worked on that stepped up and asked to be written; where he was writer's blocked the week before, suddenly he had a path out.

His housemate, however, was still stuck in the personal purgatory of her own making. Missing a doctor appointment because she overslept didn't help.

At least the Challenge was bearing results -- there were more than one entry at this point, and the next challenge was already self-evident.

Part Nine
The week started with his housemate being hospitalized. This put a major cramp in his schedule, already exacerbated by a work deadline looming. But at least she was getting proper and better medical care for the week, but he didn't much care for the commute....

Of course, this meant that inspiration for the novel for November finally showed up in force -- when he didn't have any ability to write it.

The Challenge deadline had come and gone -- there were some very lovely entries - it was his turn again, to write the next section and put up the next challenge. There's a difference between stealing someone's idea and being inspired by it - especially when the next idea is a mashup of all of the contest entries.

It lent itself to an old storywriter's lesson:  How do we define good and evil? Sometimes, the answer is not always clear cut. Sometimes good people do bad things to get results, and sometimes bad people have their moments where they are willing to help instead of harm.

Part Ten
The Storyteller versus the Artful Codger - the beginnings of a new journey down a road of adventure. That was the challenge he put forth - how to spin a tale and whether spinning your wheels was an integral part of it.

He spent a lot of time this week spinning his own wheels.

Mostly, driving to and from the new hospital his housemate had been transferred to -- a place where they were making her work to get better. But they also took away her freedom to move - albeit for her own safety and protection.

When we are young, we have our parents, family, teachers, and siblings to protect us. As adults, we are free to destroy our own lives if we so choose - one has to be careful without those imposed protections, or else we stand to lose everything we have worked for an instant.

Sometimes, some secrets need to be told; some truths sometimes need to be let rest. The balance of the known and unknown is what shapes our waking lives.

Part Eleven
The beginning of National Novel Writer's Month meant he definitely got put in the role of the Storyteller -- and as was his personal tradition, he was in charge of deploying ninjas to help his fellow writers along the path to a completed novel. There was just one problem -- the ninjas were more invisible than normal.

Careful investigation revealed a pesky bug; an additional hurdle for the would be novelists to tackle. But like wanderers lost in a snowstorm, it was a matter of stringing together enough signals to make it work. "Sometimes the trails aren't always clear," he said, and kept the ninjas coming.

The highlight of the week was having his protege come for a visit - there's nothing like having a fellow writer in town to help inspire your own creativity.

Part Twelve
Having his housemate home from the hospital finally (after three weeks) was a joy and a challenge all at once. There were things that needed to be done to the place to make it safer for a disabled person, and still more doctor appointments to speed her road to recovery.

His novel was floundering without a lack of inspiration; at the very least, he was able to toss enough ninjas at people to keep them going. And that was part of the secret to his reason for continuing to do the NaNoWriMo; it wasn't just for him. Like many other things in his life, he did them for other people.

Part Thirteen
Pain. Pain is a lot of things we don't want to deal wth, but sometimes it has a way of following you home to a place that we can't avoid them. In this case, it required a trip to the dentist when a toothache showed up that wouldn't go away. X-rays turned up negative, but it was definitely a chore concentrating on anything when it came down to it. And it was something painful regardless of finding nothing obviously wrong.

A million words cumulative was in sight though -- all he needed to do was get through another week, and he had it.

Part Fourteen
The pain in his fangs had mostly gone; it left him able to write again. He had the sinking feeling he wasn't going to make the lofty goal he'd set for himself this year, especially when he couldn't keep up the pace he needed to get there. By the end of the week, he was over ten thousand words short; that was a lot to write in the scant few days he had left. It was worth a try, though he wasn't very motivated to get there from here -- it had been awhle since he had a lost year, and the bigger achievement was breaking the 50K and the 1 million word marks.

His mind wasn't quite on his writing, though; the time he had left with his partner was fast running out; in another couple of weeks she'd be gone, possibly forever.

And that was a tougher reality to face; going back to being left with his housemate, the one who might never recover from her illness.

Part Fifteen
Sometimes the monsters live in your house. Sometimes you can't go home to escape, to hide under the bed, because the monsters live there too.

Not all quests end the way we want, either; he didn't finish the novel he was working on, or make his 75K goal. He was always an overachiever at heart, and not doing as well as the previous year was a bit of a disappointment. He realized that a big part of the difference was not having a vacation week at the front to boost his initial wordcount; it didn't matter, because he didn't have that in other years either.

Part Sixteen
Birthdays are things that most people look forward to when they're young. At some point in our lives, we shift to regretting birthdays - those times when we don't want to get a year older. And then you wind up in that space where you feel grateful for making it to your next birthday.

Watching someone else go through it isn't easy. The phone calls that tell them that they're lucky to be alive, the attention from relatives that wouldn't have bothered to pick up a phone a few months ago, the clarity that came to his housemate's mother that Something Was Wrong because she missed a Thanksgiving phone call.

Life is shorter than you might think. Doing something with it is something that we all should consider well; because there may come a point in time where you can't do the things you'd like to do,no matter how much time you have to do it.

Part Seventeen
Motivation escaped him this week. Procastination won out, and took out a hefty Wiki editing streak with it. Starting over is tough, but inevitable. But for the first time in a long time, he felt like giving up. Completely. It's been a tough year for our hero, the toughest one in his life since college, and there's not a lot to be happy about -- and being trapped is at the top of the list.

But is it being trapped if you're voluntarily staying in the trap because to not be there is to abandon someone you care about? Helplessness is not limited to the person who is disabled; it's passed on to your caregivers as well. Our protagonist doesn't have a village to help; there's no family, no friends, just him, and it's worn him down to the point where he's having trouble getting up in the morning.

Heroes need a vacation, too.

Part Eighteen
One thing to be thankful for about the Information Age is the ability to shop for things online. But unfortunately, there are certain things you can't buy in any store, Amazon, or e-Bay; a time machine, a quick fix for a serious medical condition, and any other presents seem pale in comparison. No amount of holiday cheer can overcome a wall of frustration, anger, and the feeling of helplessness.

Our hero had an unwilling ringside seat for all of this, and while people tried for a bit to make things better, and succeeded for a single night, the next day brought more of the same. It's tough to be the hero when the person you're trying to help insists that you're the villain.

Part Nineteen
The holidays arrived and he put up the best amount of cheer he could under the circumstances; a few years back someone told him that it wasn't about how much you gave, but rather how well you accepted what you receieved. It was sound advice that worked well this year, and yet people could still tell that something wasn't going well with him.

His housemate had friends she didn't realize he had; someone she thought didn't like her all that much made the long trip down to their house and brought a little Christmas tree and a few unexpected gifts. The power of the season made her a little less Grinchy, at least, but it didn't cure what ailed her.

Our hero was very glad to see the year winding to a close; it was the end of a year filled with pain and sorrow and many other unpleasant and unfun things.

Part Twenty
The first week of the year, all things considered, wasn't horrible. No new monsters showed up to plague him, which was a relief, and he even managed to make it into the office. It was nice to feel like he hadn't been forgotten; more to see that he was missed.

He promised himself a real vacation when all of this ordeal was done -- if that ever happened, that is.

The reality was that the trap was real; no matter where he went and what he did, he would likely be trapped in here with her, and that was unlikely to change. He didn't have any help or hope for anything better, and there were a number of ways it could get worse.

Part Twenty-One
Week two wasn't so horrible either, all things considered. For one, he actually had something to look forward to; a weekend without his housemate. Well, part of a weekend, anyway. A day off, in a lot of senses; pity he had to work for most of it. But that's the nature of life sometimes; you can't always take advantage of the things that come your way, no matter how much you might want to.

It's a different way of looking at things; a lot of people do things because they can't say 'no' well enough -- but perhaps we should look at what we lose by taking advantage of the opportunities in front of us.

So far, though, the weekend was working well for him; he actually treated himself to a movie. (See the new Star Wars,)

Part Twenty-Two
Sometimes he wondered why he did things, other than for the notion that he'd always done them. Old patterns, old traditions, things done because he hadn't tried anything different. "Going through the motions." as he liked to say.

It had been months since the whole unfortunate adventure had begun -- a journey without walking, and a wasteland of a life where he couldn't seem to see an end to it. Hope was words; words were ideas, and ideas often got set by the wayside by reality.

Part Twenty-Three
"Nothing is impossible." he was told to tell himself. "Just highly improbable today."

And another piece of advice he wasn't allowed to ignore: "Remind yourself that you are a good person."