I don’t like to leave things unfinished, no loose ends. But now I have this frayed blanket of partially read books, half-watched shows, unfinished video games, barely messed with apps, and board games still in shrink wrap. At one point these things were rare and hard won. As a child I created an impromptu garage sale to fund the purchase of the BattleTech board game, shutting the sale down the moment I could afford to buy. And then I played BattleTech for ages. Now everything is so easy to obtain, effortlessly plucked from the ether. But I feel like it takes a greater force of will to slow down and appreciate a single thing, knowing there are thousands more awaiting my attention. It is like touring the Louvre in a formula one race car.

I’ve decided I need to shift my perception of all this media, or at least to try. I’m trying to see it as another planetary ecosystem, something vast and ever present. In the same way that I do not need to play with every breed of dog on the planet, I do not need to play every game. If I see one I like, I will pet it and enjoy that moment. I’m really happy just knowing that all those things are out there and that sometimes my path will intersect with some of them.

When I was a kid, I was bothered by Watterson’s seeming inability to stay on model with Hobbes. Sometimes he drew the tiger like Hobbes was just a stuffed animal. But now I know better. The stuffed animal was a metaphor for how adults just can’t deal with seeing the tigers all around them.

The STAPLE pre-party was neat. I had forgotten how many comic books there were at Austin Books & Comics. It felt like an ark for comic books, a backup vault in case civilization fell. I didn’t really know anyone there besides Chris, but my “Team Linus” shirt served as social currency. I also got to meet Goatboy, the artist who did the interior art for The Stork. I had only worked with him online.

Then I went to Reed’s housewarming party where I talked to cute girls about Doctor Who. Cory brought New Age and fruit, pretty much sealing the deal on the fun party situation.

If Luke Crane shows up to run the Mouse Guard RPG at PAX East, I got dibs on Saxon.

I had never heard his roommate, Laura Lee Imhoff, play before and was curious how she sounded.  Fantastic, as it turns out. The bar above Katz’s Deli went from empty to full in the space of 15 minutes as people came in to hear this gorgeous voice akin to Annie DiFranco at the height of her power. Isaac and his fiancée Darla showed up, as did Shaggy. After the gig there was some milling about on the patio before it was decided that Isaac, Darla, Reed and I go down to the deli for a sandwich.

They thought they were introducing me to a long-standing Austin fixture, but halfway through the meal (I had a tasty pot roast sandwich), I realized that Katz’s was the very first place I had eaten in Austin, even before moving here. When Dave and I came out for Butt-Numb-A-Thon, that’s where we had eaten breakfast. Isaac and I had a great conversation about the works of Alan Moore and shared our horrified reactions to Frank Miller’s All Star Batman and Robin.

Isaac and Darla called it a night. Just as they left Shaggy and his friend walked up and invited us along to a Rock Band party. So off we went. Shaggy wasn’t sure exactly how to get into the apartment complex where the party was happening. No problem. We just ran into a girl he happened to know and she gave the entry code and coordinates.

This was a really slick pad with two beers on tap out on the balcony. Two of the people at the party were bartenders and there were about 50 bottles of liquor on the kitchen counter. But never mind the drinks and the hot girls. I need to tell you about the Rock Band setup. Big flatscreen, okay, I’ve seen those. Wireless mic, nice. Full size and weight replica guitar, wow. Someone actually bought the stage kit with colored lights and smoke machine? Hold on. What’s that in the corner? Is that the Ion drum set? No. Better. It was a complete Roland drum kit modded to play Rock Band. It had its own 19″ LCD display for the game. Amazing. Reed and I jumped in for a couple of songs. But then we headed back out.

We hung out at Molotov for a while and watched all the twenty-somethings do their thing before leaving to check out the new Ginger Man and people our own age. The new Ginger Man is actually an improvement over the original. They kept the warm vibe, the reading room, the hundreds of taps, etc. But the patio is better, there’s a kind of lounge now and the overall flow is nicer. We had a few drinks there and then headed back to our cars.

Good times.

The language is always going to be an issue. As I learned from The Invisibles, we’ve only been taught half the letters of the true alphabet. This entire experience is created in language and there are things I have no words for.

What I’ve learned from conversations and responses to my inquiry “Why are you doing this?” is that, to various extents, we are all making this up as we go along. We have constructed customized realities, an elaborate latticework of experiences, ideas, and feelings. Parts of these realities are attached to fixtures seemingly independent, though we have also created those fixtures (but have forgotten, forsaken, distanced ourselves from them).

We seek out consensus to reinforce and reaffirm. Each module of the reality, or each “fact”, varies in the amount of consensus needed and this also varies from person to person. Many modules have so much consensus that they give the appearance of being factory installed. This is the realm of macro-level concepts like physics and social mores. Heavy consensus modules require little effort from the individual. So many people believe in the thoughtform that only a tiny processing cycle per person is required to maintain it. These thoughtforms appear inflexible and unassailable.

In isolation, away from consensus, rogue realities flourish. This isolation is also rooted in some inaccessibility of language: the newborn, the person in a foreign country, the person stranded on an island, the child born deaf, blind and mute. What would your reality look like if stripped of consensus? If you could invent new words because it didn’t occur to you that it “just wasn’t done”? There seem to be so many wonderful things in the realm of low-consensus thoughtforms. Cats share wisdom, pots boil when you look away, stars grant wishes, and real love only needs one person to believe in it.

I kept hearing people say variations of “This is what feels right to me.” They had invented purpose for their life and given themselves tools to measure it. But it isn’t usually described that way. There are always these pre-existing tools. There are outside influences. There is a need to distance oneself from from these other factors in order to validate the whole arrangement. We need something that is Not Us. But I think these pre-existing circumstances are invented as well. It is a conspiracy of dissociated terrorist architects. Ask all the ants how the anthill got there and each will point at the other ants. It’s a paradox.

I also kept getting “Make your own meaning.” I think I’m afraid to. I think it might be lonely. And it lead to a thought that I’m still trying to get a handle on: If we’re inventing reality on our own terms and part of that involves creating forces in opposition to us (challenges, measurements, shadows, counterbalance), then the things that are “false” about us (“You’re not smart enough”, “You’re not a good musician”, “You will never find true love”) are actually true. If we think we need them to be.

My music collection has been digital for years, save for a few collectibles and albums by friends. I’ve gotten my DVD collection down to about 17 boxes. Out of print films that you can’t get on Netflix. So I’m no longer buying movies of the common variety.

I don’t have very many video games either. When I finish a game or get bored with it, I sell it. I just signed up for GameFly, so I will never buy another video game unless it falls into the small, evergreen category where Rock Band resides.

Movies and games are both heading into an all-digital delivery system. There are many reasons for this, but a big one for the publishers is that the secondhand market will die. You can’t resell your digital copy of The Dark Knight to someone on Amazon. GameStop will eventually become a store for classic used games from the 2000s. One day it will seem ridiculous that digital information was bonded to physical platters and cartridges.

I’ve thinned down my book collection to two small book shelves. As I finish books, I’ll sell them to Half Price Books or give them away. Again, I’m only going to be purchasing hard to find items or books which make practical sense to own. I converted a majority of my Amazon book wish list over to a reading list for my brand new account at the Austin Public Library system. Holy shit, is this a slick operation! The online catalog system is robust. I can have books held and delivered to my local branch. I only stumped the system once or twice whilst searching for graphic novels. Their collection of every series I care about is comprehensive. They even had a copy of the out of print Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, which is basically steampunk porn. All for free. Why didn’t I do this sooner? Also, if there is a Kindle version of a book available, I’ll buy that over the dead tree version. The Kindle iPhone app is actually pretty great and I’ve been enjoying 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea on it.

The board game collection remains pretty large. I’ll probably thin it down over the course of a few years, getting rid of the so-so games, keeping only the ones I truly love.

I’ve also been untethering my online life. I’ve moved more and more documents up into the cloud so I can access them from anywhere. I stopped using desktop clients for mail, scheduling, spreadsheets, and twittering. It’s all web-based now. I can do all of my communication from anywhere. It feels good to shut my computer down when I’m done working instead of having to check in on it for new messages.

My iPhone is proving more and more invaluable. Today I set up a wireless storage app so I can keep my writing and important documents backed up on a password protected micro web server. It’s like having a magic extradimensional 16GB pocket I can reach into at any time.

When I can afford it, I’ll probably replace my computer with a laptop. I like the idea of being able to grab a backpack and take off, bringing my entire world with me.

I feel lighter.