You know you’re maybe getting a little too into the game you’re playing when stopping feels like waking up from a dream.
That’s how deep I got into Morrowind just now. I fell into this really intense groove where I was very much locked on to the game world and the little aggravations of playing had built up in the background of my mind so that I was in this low level pissed off mood where I was focusing that pissed off feeling into doing things in the game.
And that’s worth noting because if I could just focus that kind of intensity into something that’s actually productive I might actually get somewhere in life.
As it was, I got so into the game that I forgot that I had planned on devoting my energies to trying to get my video production system going again.
What really pisses me off is that it worked perfectly once. Then the purple shit started showing up and wrecking my vibe.
That’s what convinces me that Corel did this deliberately in order to force me to have to pay for the upgrade to the latest version of their Video Studio.
It’s the only explanation that fits the evidence. It’s way too weirdly specific a problem to be attributable to random error.
Random error would result in videos that produce an error when my system tries to play them, or that garbage you seen when a digital video breaks down, or maybe something as old school as afterimages or tint issues.
Not the same big purple wall every time I try to record something.
And I don’t begrudge Corel their $25, but I wish they had been honest and open about it from the start and just told me my license for the software would run out.
I mean, I paid like $80 for it back in 2020. That’s “keep it forever” money to me.
But they have me by the man-bag because I am old and tired and set in my ways and so I really don’t want to have to learn a whole new and no doubt inferior editor.
Still, I might look up freeware video editors just to see if there is one I might be able to learn to love. Just as a backup plan.
I am irritated that my return to the world of making videos has been temporarily thwarted. I was just starting to get my energy going for this transition and pondering what, exactly, I wanted to make videos about.
I keep circling back to the product being me. People would watch the videos because they find me personable and likable and whom they enjoy hearing from, not because I stick to one kind of subject.
Staying in some predetermined “lane” is not going to work for me in video any more than it does for this blog.
I’m never going to be that kind of content producer. I have to be free to express whatever it is I have to express in the moment of creation.
Given recent events, there’s probably going to be a lot of politics. I have a lot of passionate political thoughts and observations and such that I usually do not bring into this blog because I get all pissed off and strident and messianic when I think about those things and that’s a lot to deal with.
But in video, I can just vent. Get it out of my system. Share it with the world
Consider that your warning, world. I am going to channel my verbal gifts and my oratory skills and my megawatt personality into my videos, and I don’t care if it pisses people off because quite frankly, some of them have it coming.
I attack ideas, not people. No ad hominem for me.
But when it comes to the beliefs I consider to be evil, I am just as cold and merciless as a starving shark.
More after the break.
A little too low
So I figured out why it’s my back that hurts when I go to the kitchen to get food and not, as one would think, my gimpy legs.
The answer was obvious once I started really thinking of it : the problem is the way I have to crouch down in order to use the countertop.
Such is the burden of those of us of above average height. The world is, understandably, not built for us. Ergonomic design has to be based on what will suit the largest number of people, and thus is designed for someone around 5’10”.
Crouching down like that has always been a little bit rough on me, but I guess now that I am 51 my body can’t handle it nearly as well as it used to, ergo, back pain.
Oh well, at least it distracts from the pain in my legs.
Now obviously I can’t get the counter raised or myself lowered. But what might work is if I put some sort of box on top of the counter and did my food prep there.
Not just a cardboard box, of course. That would not be sanitary,
But perhaps a cardboard box with a cutting board atop it, and a dish towel in between.
Such are the little indignities of disability. I have thought about it and even if I was disgustingly rich, there would still be a lot of small humiliations to my condition.
Needing a walker to get around will always be awkward and embarrassing, even if it’s the Rolls Royce of walkers and you arrive at the party in a limo.
And what’s the alternative? Hiring some enormous dude to carry me around?
Sexy, but not any more dignified.
And besides. I’m an enormous dude. I am pretty sure that anyone big enough to carry me would be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Assuming that’s still a thing.
So yeah. When you are disabled, dignity is hard to come by, and therefore what tiny shreds of it you still have become all the more zealously guarded.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow