Thoughts on the future.

My life has had an interesting few twists and turns here and there. In high school, I was doing mostly sciences. In uni, I did music. Now, I'm doing outdoor rec. Just a little different.

But part of that's been because I just like so many different things. And part of it's also because that's what worked for me at the time, and what I needed then.

Because, in a way, I know what it is I want to be doing for the rest of my life. The problem is, it's a bit difficult to get paid for; and even if that was a possibility, I don't think I'd want to be. I'd think that that might well ruin it for me, in some ways. But, of course, money is something it becomes a bit hard to get by without in this day and age. Especially if one day you want to have a partner and raise a family, which I do.
So, until I can figure something else out, this is what I do.

But I'd love to be able to write my music more often. And write for screen media - TV, film, games. Or musicals! That would be fun. And playing my own music. And just writing other stuff as well. Stories, books, plays, musicals, talks, so many things I have in my head that I could write that it's ridiculous. I have an encyclopaedia of encyclopaedias in my head :P And acting more - plays, musicals, maybe TV or film sometime, doing some voice acting for games. And volunteering for different things - OzHarvest is one thing I've wanted to get involved with for a while. Having worked in a kitchen, you can imagine I'm not a fan of wastage. Maybe even some stuff with Voice of the Martyrs at some point. Heck, I'd love to just get more involved with my own church - being able to get actively involved in leading and organising the Youth Group, organising the computer, doing admin, helping lead worship maybe, perhaps preaching sometime if I ever get up to there. Get a degree in Theology or something similar beforehand, might be an idea. (Not that I think the latter is required for the former - I have preached twice before. Just helps.) I'd love to study more in other areas too - Psychology, Language, History to name a few. I'd love to really learn and study Quenya in-depth. I'd love to see the world. All of it. I'd love to be able to run more often. (Speaking of which, *shameless self-promotion* doing a 100km run that I need to get some sponsors for. If you want to find out more, look here: http://www.wildendurance.org.au/event.php If you would like to sponsor me - which would be seven levels of amazing - look here: http://events.wildendurance.org.au/Bjraymond )I'd really love to be able to put time and effort into the relationships I have with people that I really treasure. I'd love to be able to make this brain do all I know it can do.

But yeah. At the moment, a lot of that is just dreaming, unfortunately.
I now have a folder on my desktop entitled "Projects". Essentially for everything I would put time into if I had time to put into it. That folder isn't ever going to be empty, I can tell you that right now.

By the way, just thought I should mention. Don't think I'm just saying this all because I don't like my job. I love it, it's fantastic. The only problem with it is, the best bit of it is the worst bit - you go away on camps and have heaps of fun, but you're away from everything so much. It sucks up your time like you wouldn't believe. Combine that with TAFE - plus other stuff I'm involved with - and it gets ridiculous. But I do love it. :)

So yeah, I wish I could do everything up there. But most of that either costs money, or doesn't give you much money. And if it does, I probably don't want it to.
There's the quandary of me for you.

The Effect Of Mass.

There aren’t a lot of games I play any more these days. Part of that's because I don't have a lot of time on my hands; part of that's because I don't have a lot of cash on my hands; part of that's because I've come up to some spots in games I want to finish first that I'm finding difficult to get past.

But there's one series I've basically always enjoyed, and I'm now playing through again. And that's the Mass Effect series.

For those that aren't at all familiar with it (:P), it's a spage-age action RPG. But it's also very heavily story-oriented; and that, I suppose, is what I like so much about it. It presents you with difficult choices; choices that have a real implication on your game, and in the latter games as well. Choices that will have a real implication on your characters, and whether they will all survive or not.

It's not just a point-and-shoot game that you fudge through. If you want, you could probably make it like that. Set it on the easiest settings, skip through the dialog and cutscenes, click any conversation choices that will cut it short. But that won't give you the best Mass Effect experience. If you want something like that, go play Halo. This game isn't for you.

This game will make you choose between destroying the last creature of an entire race that used to mercilessly destroy you, or accept their claim that they did not know what they were doing. This game will make you choose whether or not you shoot your teammate who's endangering your mission, or put effort into sticking him back on track. This game will make you choose between one of your squad members, and another one. And the one you didn't choose gets killed.
And that's just in the first game.

In the third game you're making the really tough decisions almost straight away. Like whether to cure the sickness of a whole race and guarantee their allegiance, or only pretend to and gain the allegiance of another's that originally caused the sickness. Both races are ridiculously invaluable.

This game makes you really think. About the choices that you make, and the impact that they have. And if you don't think, then you learn pretty quickly. And you shape your character. You can make them into an all-guns-blazing, no-nonsense hard-as-nails war hero. You can make them into someone with awesome tech skills and sabotage everything, or having these super abilities that can throw people around the room. You can make them into someone who cares, and will always try and get everyone out alive and well.
You can equip them with every single upgrade, weapon and armour available, or decide to spend your resources elsewhere. You can spend all your time looking for every little hidden item, every single achievement, or just play through the game as you go.

Often, as you can imagine, the characters people end up making will largely reflect on the people playing them.

Of course, there are downsides to the game. I'm playing through the first game at the moment, and I'm remembering how annoying I found all that driving around. (I'm also loving unlimited ammo while I have it ;D ) In the second one, I'll be finding that mining mini-game annoying. Just the kind of stuff that you can spend half an hour on and have absolutely nothing happen in terms of story or action. More the former for me, but even the latter would have been nice at that point. Just not a fan of the grinding.

But, by and large, there's a good reason that I'm re-playing it through. I mean, I'm doing it just because I heard that it plays differently in the third game if you stay with the same girl throughout the series. Originally, I went with the human one in ME1 and then the different human in ME2, because the first one isn't even there. I didn't even realise that you could stick with her. This time, I'm planning to go through ME1 without anyone, then stick with the second girl.
But I'm playing through all three again - just to get material that I won't begin to see until the third game. That should tell you enough about the game, really. Or maybe me. Potato, Potahto.

Either way, this series remains my favourite story game ever. And I haven't even mentioned technical aspects like graphics, music, SFX, or anything like that. (They're all amazing.)
But I suppose I just wanted to write something in memory of a trilogy of games that I'm really going to remember, and that I really enjoyed. And I know that a lot of other people really did as well.

:)

Broken.

The other night at church, we had an Encounter Night. The idea is that it gives you lots of different opportunities to encounter God. Prayer, offering, creative connection, etc. There were a couple of moments that really made a bit of a mark with me on that night, that I wanted to share.

One I very much didn't expect. One of the other guys at church - that I know quite well - said this to me while I was standing next to him: "When a candle lights another candle, it doesn't lose any of its light." It should be noted that we were standing just in front of a full plate of them then, hence the comment. But it was one that hit me, I think - because one of the things I think I'd always thought that when I gave to others, it was coming away from myself. I suppose recalling somewhat that phrase from Lord of the Rings - "I give hope to men; I keep none for myself." But that's not necessarily the case. And that was heartening to know.

The other one was when I went over to the drawing section. I'd had an idea for here straight away - a sort of gradient going through the colour Bible (as I remember it: green for the original creation, black for the fall/our sin, red for Jesus' blood, white for the purity Jesus gives us, yellow for heaven). Well, that was all well and good. But when I got to red, I wanted it to be really deeply in the paper. So I was pressing really hard on the pencil. And it tore through the paper. And then I thought - actually, that works. So I proceeded to do a diagonal tear pretty much across the whole paper in the middle of the tear.
It showed to me that Jesus didn't just cover over sin. He didn't just plonk it somewhere else. He broke himself, putting up a barrier between us and sin. That doesn't mean that we will never sin - but it does mean that when he cleanses us, sin will never cover us again.

I thought that that was pretty cool :)

Some things.

Some things are hard.
Some things are broken.
Some things are sad.
Some things are lost.
Some things hurt.

But.

Some things are amazing.
Some things are special.
Some things are beautiful.
Some things are indescribable.
Some things are joyous.

Some things are people.
Some things aren't.
But some are.

Today is a good day.


Sorry that I haven't put up much lately. I'm working on another post from a great night that I had at church recently, and I've almost finished a particular project that I'm hoping to post about soon as well. But I just needed to post that for now.

:)

Rediscovery.

As some who know me and my piano playing a bit may be aware of, I have a few music books. I have one for just my songs; then one for mainly songs by dcTalk; then one of covers, then one overflow, then a second overflow; then one for church music; then I had one for songs of mine and covers for gigs. That last one, I lost a little while back. At least half a year ago, maybe a full year. And I had some really good songs in there - some which I only had that copy of, which was really annoying. And I looked for that folder everywhere; at home, at uni - I asked other people if they had seen it, I had no idea.

I assumed that I would probably never see it again. But today, it was right there in a pile of books on top of the piano. I'd definitely looked there before, and I have no idea why I didn't see it. But, needless to say, I was very happy. I was rediscovering all these songs that I had half-forgotten - and the memories came flooding back, so much better than before for the time and miles that had passed since then.

One particular song - that I'm listening to right now - may just become my new favourite song for a little while. Which is fairly impressive, but I think it's well earned. I'll keep this one to myself for the moment, though. Keeps it a little bit special :)