Marsden is Here

Several weeks ago now I attended the funeral of an acquaintance who had died unexpectedly. I didn't know B personally at all well, we've basically just overlapped at social events, but I have known him and his partner since before they were a couple, so apparently over 25 years. I well liked and respected him, and coincidentally had bumped into him (not literally) a few weeks earlier while we were both filling up on either side of the same petrol pump. I think that would have been the first time we'd met since pre-Covid.

People tend to say nice things at and around funerals, but even so the consensus seems to be that B was one of the best of people, the type of perpetually kind, supportive and uplifting person most of us can only hope to be.

He was also only not-that-many-years older than me, falling in that space between parents and age-group peers. By this time in life, I've always considered that it would be normal to have lost grandparents and some number of my parent's generation to natural causes* and some of my own or younger to tragedies*.

*[Aside: natural causes can also be tragic, and on that note Fuck Cancer, again. I am currently and off the top of my head two or less degrees of separation from 4? 5? 6? people that I know of who are making the most of whatever time they have left after terminal diagnoses. At least two immediate acquaintances are in the liminal space between diagnosis of less advanced cancers and beginning treatment.]

So I think it is something about that intermediate generation starting to "suffer medical events" that made this hit harder than normal. Due to the nature of my social group I have quite few friends of about that age and whose funerals I fully expect to have to attend before I turn in my own boots, and I now find myself viewing those inevitable losses with a new clarity, alongside those of my own age. I'm hopeful that they all have another 30-40 years left in them ...

I have health insurances of course, which eat up a painful amount of our budget each month despite being not as comprehensive as I would like and never have being claimed on, and my will is in order so that D will be as taken care of as whatever assets I have left will allow.

I am growing to resent more and more either my own inability to reach out to people that I want to spend more time with /have more memories of before either I or they are gone, or this rat-race of a society which doesn't leave me with the time or energy to do so.

~~~
Most of this post has been bouncing around in my head since I heard the news of B's death, I just haven't had the time and spoons to get it down. I'm writing it now partly because I do actually have an evening to myself and the spoons to do something with it, but also because I woke up from a dream this morning where most of the family (five of the six of us plus at least one uncle and some number of niblings) had been on a family trip back to Erewhon (there was a lot more going on in the dream but not relevant) and when we were starting to leave my father started to get very emotional because it would be the last time he visited.

I kind of woke up with the thought +feeling? +emotion? that "there is a last time for everything" going around in my head, and I'm not quite sure what to do with it. It's a statement of the obvious, that there must be as many last times for everything as there are first times for everything in a life, even if often they will be the same time.

( work, finances, health )

A bit over a month ago we adopted a second cat. Ellie (Eleanor) Kat is a pale tabby, about 7 years old according by her teeth according to the vet, bigger and more playful than Gytha and also much firmer about enforcing her boundaries on people with teeth and claws.

Her owner had died and she had been living outside with one-a-day human contact since. D & E fell in love with her from the photo in the FB post, and so did I a little bit so the vote was 2 1/2 to 1/2 in favour. Gytha was very not-impressed with the new addition to the household (Ellie was completely unconcerned about the presence of another cat, beyond self defence) but we have progressed from hissing/growling matches and stand offs to them being somewhere between wary and comfortable in each other's presence as long at the half-metre distance isn't pressed. Gytha has also become much more peopley, but interestingly also more interested in play.

Ellie is also used to a much larger territory (Gytha has always stuck pretty close to property boundaries) leading to several evenings spent herding her home from a block away when we first started letting her out.

I also think the household dynamic has improved with D having a cat she can call "hers" :)

It is the last few hours of 2022. There is no KAOS party this year, and as D has come down with something flu-like we are also not venturing out to either of the drinkies we have been invited to.

I am not feeling positive going into the New Year, even less so than going into this year. Hanging over me or settled in my gut is something like generalised anxiety, but not exactly. I suspect it may be some type of self loathing, born of having given more than I intended or wanted to over this year physically, emotionally, financially with nothing to show for it myself and precious little to show for anyone else.

Let's take a look back in bullet points
( snip )

With E away visiting for this school holidays and D in Wellington for part of school holidays / all of quilting symposium, my expectation was that I would be able to take the energy I normally spend on them and redirect it to a) easier work hours b) downtime c) catching up with people I haven't seen in ages and d) the long list of things wanting to be done around the house.

Narrator: this did not happen.

( mental health dump )

So one of the side effects of being a temporally challenged DM/Player is that I often have stray character backgrounds and worldbuilding ideas running around in my head. This one is currently not letting me get the sleep that Covid recovery is demanding of me, so I'm going to inflict it on all of you.

[Scene: a group of adventurers sharing background stories]
"So I had a comfortable upbringing you know, wealthy and important family, indulged in pretty much anything I wanted while being prepared for my eventual role in the family empire. When I came of age the suitors also started calling, and that's all I expected, a comfortable marriage suiting both family's business interests.

My most persistent suitor was also someone I thought was a real jackass, you know? And there's a history of bad blood between our kin. Then it turned out they had been quietly challenging any other suitor who seemed to be gaining my favour and either maiming and forcing them to leave the city as a condition for their life or outright killing them.

So I challenged the evil [spits] myself, in public with the proof, and when they condescendingly refused my challenge I ran them straight through their hateful little heart.

So that's how my family ended up owning their family the cost of a Raising and I ended up exiled until I pay my family back. Which is proving harder than I thought, because there's a lot of people out here who need that treasure a more than my family."

Unsurprisingly there's a lot that hits my high points as a DM looking at player background here. Firstly there's some very clear reasons why the character is out adventuring and why that goal might be hard to accomplish. Bonus points for a treasure sink which isn't going to destabilise the local economy.

There are connections to other parts of the world: possibly-mixed loyalties to a family trading business, a potential rival or nemesis, a tendency to get involved with the less well off; all of which could be drawn on for story hooks or provide resources the character might turn to but only by advancing that aspect of the story. These aren't presented in a way where they have to feature immediately or regularly. (If I really want that level of connection, I'll mention it before character creation).

And while good at heart [I would expect that their] actions are going to be strongly influenced by growing up with
- a legal system which they were mostly immune to and
- where duelling (fantasy staple anyway) may or may not be formally acceptable but happens (especially given)
- the standard fantasy RPG availability of healing and even death-reversing magic to those wealthy enough exists,
... in a way which may well lead them into conflict with the laws and customs of the cultures they now find themselves in.

Finally this is a character that can function not only in the dungeon but also at some level of society. (In the general case it doesn't have to be /high/ society, but some people skills, please).

( real world introspection )

( A later scene )

One of the mostly-unexamined privileges of the past few decades of my life had been having a place to put stuff. Now I have been slowly coming to terms with no longer having that space. The first step was decluttering Gladson for sale, but much went into storage. For the moment we are again in a large rental, and it has spread out again. Visiting the new build as it has come up and getting a feel for that (lack of) has reinforced that another, more painful cull is necessary on my part.

One part of this has meant sacrificing my gaming library, which I am at this point most of the way through giving away / selling down, keeping only a few high value or high-utility items. I've even parted with the Red Box set which was my first ever RPG purchase, after weeks of saving my high-school allowance. (I have however kept my hands on a copy of the Rules Cyclopedia). In the next few weeks I will be giving away most of my collection of dragon-and-other-fantasy ornaments, keeping only a few pieces which have particular sentimental value.

Other items which I have been hanging onto mostly because of sentimental value are going to have to go. for example my very first laptop/tablet, a major purchase but hasn't been powered up for anything practical in ages will go in the serious prune of all the computer parts and cables etc I have kept around 'just in case'. Some have occasionally come in handy, but most of the rest I can acquire if needed from a quick trip to the Eco-store or Molten Media.

Most of the furniture is also going to have to go. The nice oak table/chairs from Gladson and matching sideboard (currently sans leg :( ), possibly the big ornament cabinet from my parents (and several other items which we had hoped to have space for which are currently living in Mum's garage are going to have to be waived), my grandmother's dresser, several sets of drawers of no particular sentimental value... We have found a way to lift the table my Dad restored to the right height to be D's stand-at crafting table much to both of our reliefs.

And I still need to figure out how to rehome the boxes of Phantom comics. In their day they were mostly a cheap read-and-throw-away publication, but now they are somewhat collectible and I feel they must be due more than that. (D has a similar problem with a large box of more recent Wonder Woman comics but hers are at least nicely bagged and in excellent condition).

Having made the decision it's surprisingly easy to part with most things, just ... feels.

Well, what a year. One might have thought that getting married in January would mean the rest of the year would seem relatively uneventful, but Covid was already on the horizon.

Lockdown itself didn't affect us much, as I was able to work from home and otherwise we don't get out much anyway. Deciding that it was time to sell the house and move on came as a surprise, and the subsequent accommodation-related and money stresses have probably defined or at least outlined my life since. We were supposed to have foundations by this point, instead the consents have only just gone to council.

Work remains stable although I have been struggling more and more to make my targeted hours. We did take on a new programmer (after years of needing one) just after lockdown which has redistributed the load in a good way. I'm now primarily stressed only by not getting whatever my current project is out in a timely fashion and not also by the queue of waiting projects and have managed to find time to spend on future-time-saving improvements to our CMS and experimenting with better/alternate workflows.

Other things which have been chewing up my time included aforementioned property matters and looking after D who has sprained her "on" shoulder twice this year, once at the beginning of lockdown and again a few weeks ago (same shoulder, different muscle). If the inset sewing table I brought her for Xmas prevents a future occurrence it will have paid for itself in saved medical costs. The latter has also meant I have no choice but to shoulder more of the housework.

Time to myself has become more and more rare and is probably partly to blame for my current addiction to the Star Realms game on my phone. I resisted putting any games on this phone for a long time, but I also own the hard-copy version (a prize from Buckets of Dice some years back) and it provides excellent semi-mindless replayability with just enough luck involved that I don't feel bad on the occasions I lose to the AI. The free version is ad-free, but I will at some stage when I don't feel money is so tight drop the $10 to unlock the hard AI and more cards.

Related to this although I am technically on holiday I have been spending 2-5 hours in the office most days working on a project which needs to be done, but can't or won't be afforded by the (non-profit) client and will only continue to be a headache for me (and others) long term if it is not. It's nice and quiet in there with everyone else away and although progress hasn't been as fast as I would like it is still progress and I at least feel that I am achieving something and will eventually have one fewer concern weighing me down. (Also I've been able to quickly jump on the couple of live issues which have come up, so a bit of paid time on top of the annual leave burnt during shutdown.)

Contact with other people has also become more rare and in a lot of ways 2020 has seen further weakening of connections which were already on the way out. I had already been sacrificing attended SAGA for work for a couple of years and I now probably wouldn't recognise anyone on the committee. Gaming with friends has been rare and intermittent, I am enjoying being in the ongoing game Z started late this year.

Lockdown stopped KAOS parties and sheer exhaustion has stopped me/us attending many of the smaller KAOS-adjacent or friends events which I/we have been invited to or for as long as I would have liked. We always planned to start having small groups of friends over for dinner/board games at Gladson but actually organised it maybe twice, and our current flat has been decreed too small to entertain. We did make it to he New Years party which was relatively small and quiet and although I didn't interact much I did enjoy myself.

I still as frequently find myself thinking "I should reach out to [names here] and find out what is really going on in their life" on Facebook or via email/text to catch up, and either not having the energy or not knowing what to open with and not doing it :(

~~~

Society wise

- lockdown(s) affected the country in ways which we probably won't fully understand for decades. I am more grateful than ever to be living where I am in the world, and that we had a government prepared to move fast and "risk the economy", rather than the plentiful counter-examples elsewhere in the western world.

- We had an election which returned that government in the unprecedented position to govern alone under MMP, and we are still waiting to see what they do with that. Significant structural changes to both the education and health systems are happening, it remains to be seen if the latter will be what is needed or any more than shuffling some chairs to the upper deck.
I can understand why they are moving slower on many issues than many people would like, both for long term political reasons and because it takes time to line up major structural change properly. Social welfare benefits should absolutely have been increased by more already though, there better be some damn good announcements coming.

- The same election contained referendums on assisted dying, which brought in a not perfect but also not "poor law is worse than no law" legal support for the option despite outright scaremongering and falsehoods from opposition groups, and narrowly rejected much better law for the legalisation and control of cannabis. Perhaps the next left-wing government will act on this since our current PM has a tendency to say "not on my watch" in response to even middling public opinion against significant law change (see also capital gains tax). (I maintain this is a long term strategy so she can step down and let her successor bring them back to the table).

I generally feel that as a snapshot these events indicate that we are becoming a more progressive society on several fronts, and there is hope on others. Not however on the housing market front :( Any money the government puts into the economy seems to end up there somehow, either landlords putting up rents to match benefit increases or investors taking advantage of ever lower interest rates to buy up even more properties.

~~~

Going forward: basically I feel that I am surviving, little more. One more day, one more closer to house. Everything is an effort, often including spending time with my wife :( There is still time for something disasterous to come out of the White House or the stacked administration which it is leaving behind.

Still standing, but staggering.

I have been fortunate in life. Got through school on intelligence, flip side never properly learned to study. Worked hard for things - causes really - I cared about, but through the support and generosity of my parents I never had to work hard just to make ends meet ... and now I find I am too broken to do so. I've never had to deal with choosing to leave home and family behind to make my own way in the world, or with being left behind. Mostly content - complacent even - with being been carried along by events, I've never really had to make any hard decisions, they've always been more-or-less made for me by (generally fortunate) circumstance.

So an easy life, but it has left me ill prepared me for my present situation. Sometime in the next 18 months I am going to have to make, or at least commit to and step forward on choices which in consequence are going to negatively affect or even drastically change some other peoples lives, people I care about, in order to properly support others.

I have never faced a clashing of commitments and wants on this scale before. It ... for lack of a better word ... scares me. And I have been hiding from it. Waiting on this bit of information or that, doing a bit of research and leaving the tab group open until the time is right to act. But that time could now be as early as the end of next month.

This is only one of the things which has been taking a toll on my mental health, but I suspect it is one of the bigger ones (hard to tell since I still shy away from examining it to closely) and it has been doing so unseen. It was only yesterday that it seeped through to me that the great amount of the past four weekends I have spent in bed has not been just about trying to feel rested enough to make it through the next week, or hiding from the world because I just couldn't cope with any more input right now, but also about avoiding facing up to my own discomfort and the cause of that discomfort.

After all, pushing my (perceived?) negative feelings away and paying them no mind is something I have done so much for so long that it is reflexive now. And there are so many more obvious and immediate concerns in just making it through the day or week without breaking down.

~~~

I am having phone appointments with a counsellor referred to by my GP, we get five hours on the public health dollar an I've had two so far. The first was basically a backgrounder. The second I talked about things which are currently bothering me a bit more. The aim, mine anyway, is to have an idea what sort of ongoing counselling to seek out at the end of the process.

I'm supposed to be looking for the little things which make me feel good. There are few.

- The feeling of having solved a problem or written good code, rarer these days than it used to be and usually tempered by previous experiences of finding out something is terribly wrong with it 6 months later.
- Time spent with D which doesn't feel like part of the chores. Usually at present that is listening to her current audiobook with her.
- Time spent with the cat when she is just being companionable rather than demanding.
- a small amount of reading for pleasure I have managed recently, (mostly in conjunction with trying to cut down my screen time before bed).

I don't really have any hobbies any more - the one game I am in happens erratically and I do not have the time to be working on one of my own. I usually manage to set aside a few hours for playing Path of Exile at the weekends. The rest of the time I am either

- at work (which is a great struggle at present),
- trying to keep up with the world mostly as it pertains to work and my immediate life,
- attending to household chores (practically all of which fall to me since D injured her "on" shoulder before lockdown and it still hasn't come right so she can't lift or even reach without pain, but at least we found out this week what the actual problem is) although that workload is really no different to before D moved in
- attempting to be a good husband and make sure my wife is as comfortable as I can make her and has what she needs to feel productive and cared for
- attempting to rest (I have not been waking feeling rested). Or being forced to retreat from the world into bed.

I've been trying to find the time and energy to write a journal post for three of the four weeks I mentioned earlier.

~~~

#fuckcancer We are between the anniversary of my father's diagnosis and his death a few short weeks later. It's not weighing on my mind but it is ... present. Another good acquaintance whom I have known for many years (and who is younger than I) is currently in the end stages of a breast cancer which spread to her brain; she leaves behind a young son :( And the young niece of another dear friend also died of cancer earlier this year, with all the attendant grief :(

pushed myself past my limits
physically, mentally, emotionally
broken

Depressed over not being able to help fix the world's problems when I cant even get my own house (literal and metaphorical) sorted cleaned and in order. I am managing /something/ almost every day but just don't seem to be getting to the big tasks which are staring me in the face every day.

~~~
Thursday was a public holiday and I exhausted myself physically doing overdue cleaning - the shower, the toilet, the fridge - even without doing a complete job of any of them. I find myself exhausted myself today just from trimming a green-bin full of branches off the hedge.

(I was glad to see that at least one of the pansies I transplanted from the middle of the back wasteland to a garden bed appears to have survived and is putting up new growth. In my experience they are tough little plants.)

I have exhausted myself mentally at work. It looks like the pay rise I asked for isn't coming so I feel I have little choice but to to work more/better hours. But right now the extra time I am pushing myself to do is going on preparations for the final stage (going live) of a project I am no longer billing for because it went so far over estimate. It is one I am very emotionally involved in doing properly (and could cost the company a very valuable client if the final stage gets cocked up).

I have further exhausted myself mentally and emotionally dealing with the things which require these types of energy at home.

~~~
I am still receiving the alarms and updates of both what has most recently been looted from the Hall and the owner's continued inactivity to even meet their commitments to make the site safe after the fire. All I can say to questions about when we might go back - whether from members of our team or from our contact still there - is "not until it is safe". It is not going to be safe in the foreseeable future.

I had reason to go back to the photos from our first few visits looking for references for some of the stolen fittings, it's heartbreaking seeing even how beautiful the interior - and overgrowth free the exterior - it was then before 8ish years of dirt, damp and deliberate damage and neglect against our best attempts.

An overhaul of the website is one of the many things which need doing that I just haven't managed to get to. I will keep that history there as long as possible.

Meanwhile grief and anger pains rise in my chest with no outlet. While the Hall may be the obvious current source it's not like I'm unused to this state, it seems to have been part of me for most of my life. Keeping pain within so I don't lash out with it and hurt anyone else.

At our ceremony D. talked about how "nothing seems to rattle [me]"; it's just that I am very practiced at putting aside being pain as not being a productive thing right now and this skill is equally applicable to many other things which might get in the way of viewing a situation ... if not clearly at least practically.

But I also know that sometimes to deal with a pain or frustration and move on you have to take it off the shelf, feel it and accept it for what it is. Many, even most are trivial and easily discarded in retrospect. Some, not so much.

~~~
This story moved me greatly this morning,

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/09-02-2020/a-magic-like-no-other/

Sometimes death comes for the old, and sometimes for the young. And sadly, like life, it rarely makes much sense when it does come.

Not because of any recent deaths; actually I think I am quite lucky to have reached my age without losing too many of my peers. (But Alex, Kirsty, Kaye+Martyn, Geoff immediately come to mind ...) but because I am constantly failing to keep in touch beyond the occasional FB connection even with people I dearly want to. We don't get to sit down - over a meal or board game perhaps - and have conversations about each others lives - not that I ever feel there is much to say about my own which (at least at the moment) doesn't devolve into self pity but I still want to know what is going on with you, the good and the bad.

~~~
D. just opened the door and passed in a plate of hot quiche full of goodness, and I am so grateful to have her in my life even with all the complications and responsibilities that entails.

On Friday the 15th of March NZ had it's own mass-shooting(s). I was at an event nearby which was ended early (although we didn't known why at the time) and then returned to my workplace also only a couple of blocks from the worst event.

To start with there was only shock and sadness. Not shocked or surprised that something like this happened, like many others I considered a mass shooting in NZ only a matter of time, or at the direction in the violence was aimed. Just what you would expect from the immediacy of the event.

Once I had time to process things I also began to feel how lucky I am - not to have not been involved but almost the opposite

- the shooter was a blond, white male. I am also a blond white male, but I am at no risk of suffering any sort of "reprisal" because I happen to share one of these physical characteristics with him
- I did not need to spend the next days and nights worrying that there might have been another gunman still loose out there for whom I was a target. I do not need to worry that another radicalised individual might be out there planning a repeat or variation in which I will be a target, or even that just by walking down the street I might become a target of opportunity for someone equally full of hate and just a little less stable.
- my personal risk of being a victim of gun violence or indeed any sort of violence feels no more immediate than it did last week.

There was no anger at that time. There is still no anger towards the event. I believe that exhaustion from other areas of my life simply left me no energy to be angry. But then articles like this one:

At least five years of solid government engagement across a National-led and then a Labour-led government. We begged and pleaded, we demanded. We knocked on every door we could, we spoke at every forum we were invited to.

At a major security conference in February 2018, Aliya challenged the sector: if you can spend so much on surveilling our community, why can you not spend on preventative programmes?

and this one:

Planned and executed with complete impunity and without any hesitation, the massacre took place because the perpetrator, like so many others before him, felt a confidence that in our societies is afforded only to white men.

He felt this confidence, and was vindicated for it. As media, politicians, and everyday discourse focused on the threat of radicalisation supposedly harbored by Muslim communities – a suggestion that would now surely be farcical if its consequences weren’t so tragic – as the SIS and the GCSB were busy scouring the facebook accounts of Māori activists and Muslim youth, this man blithely and unashamedly made his violent intentions plain and clear, and visible for all to see.

I’ll never forget the many meetings and roundtables I attended, alongside other Muslim advocates and leaders, where we argued and pleaded, pointlessly it seems, with different government agencies to turn their attention from our communities and mosques to the real threats in this country. I’ll never forget the empty reassurances, let alone the smirking faces as someone dismissively joked, in reference to the far right and white supremacists in New Zealand: ‘it’s hard to take these guys seriously.’

... stirred the coals of a different anger. About our unquestionably white-centered "security" services, who would rather browbeat environmentalists and create phantoms of Māori or Islamic violence to chase than look into genuine threats to our citizens.

I wrote then (on Facebork)

"Up until now I haven't had it in me to feel angry about this situation. Now I am angry. At the so-called security services of this country and other agencies whose job it was to recognise and act on the concerns of these communities and who absolutely failed in that duty. In doing so they have failed not only the Moslem citizens of New Zealand but *all* of us and they should be held to account commensurately.

They won't be of course. They never are :( "

~~~
There have also been a lot of (white) people crying "this isn't us, this is not our New Zealand." I'm glad to say that there has come a great pushback against that in opinion pieces from white writers I respect as well as from less-white ones sharing their experiences.

Toby Morris summed it up in cartoon format here.

But if you have any doubt about the depth of racism and other isms in New Zealand society you only need to pause and imagine what the ... I'm going to use outcry as a moderate term for it ... would be if one of the "major" political parties were to elect or appoint as leader someone who was something other than a practicing or passes-for-lapsed Christian, or anyone clearly of other than Pākehā or Māori descent. The dogwhistles and allusions of loyalty to "somewhere else" which would permeate an election under those conditions.

Or to quote from the first article linked above:

I would ask you to picture this: what if the shooting had been a Muslim perpetrator, and it was 50 non-Muslim New Zealanders who had been shot? Would our community be receiving the same level of support that we have today?

Imagine what the media commentary would have been like. We would not have been able to leave our homes, the level of retaliatory attacks on our community would have been swift and immediate, and the police would have struggled to provide any meaningful protection.

Yet I can walk without fear.

~~~
On a final note there are of course people saying that the shooter should receive a death penalty, whether delivered formally or informally. I say that is too good for him, a martyrs end. He deserves to grow old in a place from which he can influence or harm no-one, watching New Zealand come together into a more integrated and caring nation despite of or even because of what he has done.

I believe that we do currently have the political leadership to act on the current mood and momentum for change but whether we actually mange to accomplish that better nation is left as an exercise for the reader.