Themeattics

Dwelling

Thomas Keaten

May 5, 2024

He didn’t say anything funny or clever, and, to be on the safe side … whenever possible, he didn’t say anything at all. Speak when you’re spoken to. Do your own time. Get out. Go home. … Rebuild a life.”
Neil Gaiman, American Gods

Hello, my lovely Dwellers.

As you (hopefully) noticed, I’ve done a bit of dwelling myself of late. A month to lay low, as it were, and reassess some things. Catch up on some issues that were being left to the wayside, tackle some longstanding needs, a bit of regrouping, etc. You know, the Needful Things.

Part of that personal catchup-slash-assessment time was, of course, this site. I’ve been at this a while and, as I’ve said in the past, it’s managed to serve its original purpose quite well. So well, in fact, that it certainly isn’t needed for that job anymore, which leaves it in a bit of an odd spot. When something has served its purpose, there’s really only two things to do about it. Adapt that purpose or allow the end.

Now, I’d be a liar if I didn’t say that latter option had a certain attraction to it. I’m on the record God knows how many times about my lack of time to do all the things I want, and what is this but yet another place where that time is captured? Finding small places here and there to steal some back – even if it’s just an hour or so once a week – has a gravity to it that’s hard to deny.

All that said, I won’t bury the lede. I’m not dropping this. Though I’m not exactly swimming in eyes on what I put here, anything is better than nothing when the ultimate goal is to get stories published and live. Which means, of course, that I need to really focus on option number one. I need to turn this – this site, this time, this entry point to my work – into something more than just a few thoughts once a week. Something much more. ThemeAttic needs to become something more altogether. A… brand has a bad connotation to it so I won’t go that route. A banner? Canopy? I don’t know, nothing’s coming to mind. It just needs to be something greater than it is so that people want to stick around and spread the word. To help build the audience and be excited for the real work – the stories.

What does that look like? Well, unfortunately, I’m still not quite sure there. YouTube is far and away the thing that sticks out to me. It’s where the eyes are, for one, and it seems to be the place where so much organic growth is driven. That said, the mere thought of doing anything around that content mill is stomach-churning. I don’t think I have it in me, and I don’t know if I want to be the sort of person that does, in the end. Could I just make videos on these articles and throw them up there? I suppose, but it sounds like a terrible prospect to me. Which is in and of itself an eye-opening thought. Because, when it comes down to it, I don’t think people would want to watch the stream-of-consciousness ramblings of somebody who hasn’t, in the end, really made anything of note. Which begs the question – why the hell would they want to read that, either?

Yikes, what is wrong with you guys?

I kid, but only a little. Thank you for giving me the time of day, but I really need to apologize for the slop so much of this has been. You’re all troopers for sticking it out for so long. I hope you know how appreciated you are.

But now, here I am. There’s a murky, treacherous landscape ahead and I can’t make out my footing. Can’t really make out a destination either. All that’s here is the compelling urge to move forward and figure it out, one step at a time. I hope you’ll bear with me on this journey to discover what ThemeAttic will become, and I hope that, whatever shape it may take, it stays true to the intent and objective. That it serves its purpose and, in the end, serves to make a place of entertainment and thoughtfulness for all you longstanding Dwellers and the new faces that may appear along the way.

It’s good to be writing to you again. Familiar. I hadn’t quite realized how much I missed this time, and hope you can say the same. Thank you again, and buckle up. It may be a bump road but, oh, the places we’ll go.

Optimistic Pessimism

Thomas Keaten

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March 24, 2024

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
– Jesus, Matthew 26:41

Happy Palm Sunday, everyone. Today also just happens to be the 10th birthday of my youngest, which makes me and the missus officially old now that all of our kids have hit their double digits.

I’ve been struck by something of late, and has to do with the impending election. Sort of. Not sure if this is a byproduct of getting older, but I’ve found myself settling into a mindset that I’ve started referring to as optimistic pessimism. A friend of mine told me this is just realism, but that’s boring, so I’m running with this.

What sort of contradictory bull is this, you ask? Well, in essence it’s just accepting things as they are and not hoping they turn out otherwise, with an added hint of being fine with that outcome. Take this election, for instance. Am I pleased we’ve got two people who could very easily die before their term is up and are already showing signs (if not more than signs) of being well in cognitive decline? Hell, no. Is there anything I can do about that? Nope. Is what it is. I’m not going to lean on some hope something comes out of left field and changes the roster or makes America realize pitting a couple of octogenarians against each other is a level of idiocy hard to believe. Have to accept it, and what comes as a result.

While the election is something that really keyed me into this idea, I realized I’ve been adopting it across most aspects of my life. Clients at work are going to be absurd, but there’s nothing to be done there. We endure, do what we must, and move on. Personal matters come in and we do the same.

However. The big However. Acceptance is not the key aspect of this whole thing. Acceptance – and expectation of the stupidity – is the pessimistic end. The optimism is, and has to be, what sets this all apart. What makes it work. The optimism comes from two places. The first being how I approach these things in the day to day. Will things go poorly? Maybe. Someday, certainly, but that doesn’t mean I should live in the dumps in anticipation. We only have so much time, grab the positive wherever you can. That’s the simple part.

The hard part comes from Matthew’s Gospel today. From Christ, really. Because, as the quote so elegantly puts it, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

It’s an easy thing to simply accept the world as it is and move on. One could say it’s basic human nature. We, as people, are inclined to accept and continue on with no real effort to change the flow. Some things seem too big for us to affect and so we don’t bother. We complain, sure, but we don’t go out of our way to do anything about it. Because the flesh is weak.

This part, the hard part, the true part of the optimism, is in overcoming that weakness. In recognizing that, yes, we may be too small to have an impact on these enormous matters, but that doesn’t imply we are meaningless. To crib a phrase, change begins with us, individually. We have an indelible effect on those with whom we are close, so sitting around and just adopting the “whatever, it is what it is” mindset and not actually working to become the things you want to see from the world is setting yourself up for failure.

Remember, the only person you can every truly control is yourself. Pluck the log from your own eye before removing the plank from your brothers, that kind of deal. I, for instance, loathe the state of modern media and its overreliance on existing property / sequels / remakes / overbearing focus on identity. I want stories. Real stories. Real characters. Tales and people and settings that evoke wonder or dread or anger or any of the infinite range of human emotion. Do I expect that stuff to come from modern Hollywood? No, so I accept that and decide to craft my own stories. Will I have the same reach? No, but they can reach someone. Somebody out there might get some enjoyment from them, might have some inspiration or thoughts provoked from what I produce. And that’s enough.

As is so often the case with these posts, I just want to convey one simple thing – the importance of bettering oneself for the betterment of the world around them. I know life’s hard. I know we’re under the gun, plugged into the machine, always moving from place to place and task to task. I know how exhausting it is. But – always but – we can’t let that machine eat us alive. There’s more to life than the grind, more than simply existing. We have to keep striving. Striving to build a better world here, and to be worthy of a better life after we leave here behind.

Find the time, my lovely Dwellers. A small bit here and there to start, maybe, but find it. Find it and cultivate it. Make it work for you. It’ll be worth it in the end. I promise.

Little bit of a postscript addendum here, but sorry for the scatterbrain on this one. I wrote it in several chunks over a very busy day. I keep saying I’m going to pre-plan this stuff some day and get past the stream-of-consciousness, but it is clearly not this day.

Learning to Know

Thomas Keaten

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March 17, 2024

It may be that the DNA of fiction is, like our own DNA, a double helix, a two-stranded beast. One strand is born of what writers have experienced. The other is born of what writers wish to experience, of the impulse to write in order to know.
– Mohsin Hamid

“Write what you know.”

Likely the most common advice given to aspiring authors, those four words have been mulled, argued, and dissected for almost a hundred and thirty years. They’ve bread entire schools of practice, shaped concepts, and fostered disciplines. And, why not? When someone as influential to the medium as Mark Twain says something about what we, as creators, should do, it would be foolish not to lend it at least some credence.

Also, let’s be honest – it just makes sense. We’ve all read or watched something where the creator clearly had no grasp of the ins and outs of the subject. It shows. This can come through in serious matters, like watching Congressional hearings on the tech industry by people who probably can’t figure out how to use a search engine, but we see it all the time in media. Remember that whole “two people hop on the keyboard to hack faster” thing from NCIS? Grade A meme material. That’s all one aspect of this – abject ignorance of a topic utterly sours the result to those who know any better.

As seems to be the case these days, we look to be leaning hard into the literal sense of the phrase. People of certain races and sexes being told – or, well, “strongly advised” – that they can’t write certain points of view. They can’t tell certain stories. Because, well, they can’t possibly know them. They didn’t live them. You have to write what you know, after all, and we can only possibly know what we’ve experienced.

It’s tempting to agree. Something like The Invisible Man being written by a white guy and not Ralph Ellison feels like it would lack the same weight and miss out of the truth of it. The impact of it. The pain in that novel is born of experience, a life story aching to be told. I don’t think anyone could argue anything else.

And yet, we’re in the world of fiction, here. Most of this topic isn’t being centered around intensely, semi-biographical stories. It’s around things like needing a 100% female writing room for She Hulk because it’s a story about women. As though no man has ever written compelling, truthful stories about women. As though they can’t. As though no woman could write a story headed by a man, or no white person could write a story about a black person, or black person about an Asian person, etc., etc.

It’s a garbage line of thought that likes to imagine we’re all different species, so incapable of empathy we couldn’t possibly get into one another’s shoes to understand basic human motivations. And it’s entirely self-defeating. Read (or watch) a story. A good one, but pretty much any of those. Notice how there are characters? A bunch of different ones? How they’re all compelling? Going to shock you here, but it turns out none of those are the actual author. That author had to create characters. Characters of different backgrounds, different motivations, different objectives and beliefs and desires. Most of them, likely, are at least slightly if not completely opposite the author’s.

That’s our job. No, it’s our calling, really. To invent worlds and sculpt the lives of those inside them. To get in the heads of other people and make them relatable to everyone. If we’re not doing that – if we’re just generating a carbon copy of ourselves into some other setting to gain accolades or make ourselves feel better – we’re not creating. We’re fantasizing. Day-dreaming. Building some narcissistic, indulgent Isekai that isn’t worth anyone’s time.

The longer I keep at this article the more annoyed I get, if that wasn’t obvious. So, I’ll cut it short here. Long story short, if someone tells you that you can’t write a story with certain people, promptly inform them where they can stick that opinion. We’re not in the market of suppressing creativity here. Learn what you must to make those characters real. Do right by them, and the reader will do right by you.

As for me, back to research on shell shock. There’s been a lot of death around the protagonist of Residuum, and the severity and suddenness of it all has to be properly conveyed. He has to feel it, so that you, the reader, can feel it in turn. I have to do my job.

Until next time, Dwellers. May the week treat you well.

No Going Back

Thomas Keaten

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March 10, 2024

Scared. Yes. Of course you are, he thought. Only the ones just starting out – the kids – aren’t scared. The years go by and the words on the page don’t get any darker… but the white space sure does get whiter. Scared? You’d be crazier than you are if you weren’t.
Stephen King, The Dark Half

There are certain natures within ourselves that it’s perfectly reasonable – responsible, even – to fight. I’ve made God-knows how many articles about just those things. On the other hand, there are plenty of those same things where it’s acceptable, maybe even wise, to just accept them and lean into them in the least harmful ways possible.

For instance, the fact that, when I sit down to figure out my plans for the near future, I end up with 6 different writing projects, 4 woodworking projects, home reno plans, and any number of fill-in-the-blank more dumb garbage that I pretend I have time to tackle.

Do I know I set myself up for failure this way? Absolutely.

Have I tried to change it? You bet.

Has any of that had any effect. Not even a little. There was a time I’d beat myself up for that (a recent time, in fact) but, you know what? To hell with it. Is what it is at this point. All I can do is manage my expectations of those things and do my best not to let my failures bother me. Especially when I’m actively creating them.

And, honestly? That seems to be going alright. I wasn’t lying when I said I had 6 writing projects. I’ve been bouncing back and forth between the lot of them this month to try and get my bearings and have done an acceptable job at it. One of them – my outline for Catalyst – I “finished” reviewing to a point where I’m comfortable saying I should leave it alone for the next few months while I get the other projects in order. It’s better to butt that outline right up to the actual writing, so why bother spending a bunch of time on the outline now and then shelving the work for months? This sort of thing is something my brain naturally accepts and lets me get away with. That story isn’t crowding up any space anymore. Nailed it.

Next on the list is some basic outlining for a few short stories I have concepts for, and then pedal to the metal on Residuum. Just plucking some stray thoughts from the brain to clear space for the real work. As the title says, no going back. Only progress from now on. We’re getting there.

Speaking of getting there – I have a short story I wrote that’s in need of some readers. It’s not my usual fare and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Well, that’s not true, I like it well enough, but it was a weird one. Definitely feel the need for people to tell me all the ways its garbage. Let me know if you’ve got the time – it’s about 5700 words.

Thanks for sticking around, Dwellers. Until next week.

Stepping Up, Part 2

Thomas Keaten

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February 18, 2024

When he began writing it was often like this – a dry and sterile exercise. No, it was worse than that. Starting off always felt a little obscene to him. Like French kissing a corpse.
Stephen King, The Dark Half

The muse has not been kind of late.

Yes, I know, I don’t believe in the muse to begin with. Obviously. It conveys the point, though. My time at they keys has been pretty much the antithesis of productive, and as much as I want to prod around for some secret as to why, we all know the answer. Distractions.

YouTube. Twitter. Steam. The PS5. Netflix. Hell, just sitting there staring and thinking about things that aren’t what I’m supposed to be working on. The list is pretty much endless, isn’t it? If we want to find something to pull our attention we can. And I am. Oh, I am.

In the end, like all things, this comes down to a matter of discipline. It comes down to wanting it more than wanting to simply pass the time. I know, I know, I’m beating a dead horse here, but it has to be said once again. I have to enforce this in myself and take steps to make it happen. Or it won’t. Simple as.

Another thing I know about myself is that vague generalities like this are pretty useless. I need things concrete. And, it seems, I need a little group accountability to go along with it. As much as I understand the importance of discipline, I’m not so great at actually, you know… being disciplined about it. So, firing things off the top of my head, here’s my plan:

No looking at my phone when the alarm goes off in the morning. I end up laying around scrolling for a while, wasting prime minutes. Mornings are the only time I can guarantee uninterrupted time, so I can’t be interrupting things on my own.
Instead, I’m going to set up a morning prayer routine. I’ve got some daily excerpts from church founders and the like that I can bring into my repertoire. That way I’m allowing myself a little time to shake the sleep from my brain while using it to focus on something worthwhile. Plus, it’s something that has a hard out – a clear end that marks when I need to get to writing.
Write until I need to get the kids up for school. If I play my cards right, this gives me at least 45m. Time that I am not allowed to do anything but have open one of my Scrivener docs. I’m not enforcing word targets or anything, but I have to be thinking about and focusing on my writing. Nothing else.
Help the kids get ready for their day as necessary and then go exercise. Right now, the routine I’m doing is pretty quick so this gives me time afterward that’s open. I should probably use this time to write as well, but it’s better that I just leave that designated as “generally productive time.” So long as I’m doing something on my to-do list, I’m in the clear. The big thing here, though, is no videos or other kinds of distractions. Only productivity.
Then it’s off to work and then back home, where my time is pretty hit-or-miss. I’ll have built out a daily to-do list earlier in the day that I’ll need to finish then before I’m allowed to do anything on my personal leisure list. I say that specifically because if the family wants to do something, I’m not going to be like – sorry dudes, I’ve got this list here to handle.
And, last but not least for the schedule, I need to get to bed at a reasonable time. 5am comes early. As much as I enjoy my time after work, I need to be sure I’m rested up or everything will fall apart from the gate the next morning.

To help me with the schedule and monitoring all of this, I’m doing two things:

I’m going to create a new Beeminder that ONLY follows my minutes spent writing stories. I’ve experimented with a few different tracking setups in the past, but anything other than minutes has had its fair share of problems, mostly around editing. It’ll start at 40m/day to give me a little wiggle room and increase by 5m every other week until I land at roughly 90m a day, which puts me at around 10 hours a week. I can’t decide if that’s a reasonable number or not. I guess we’ll see when we get there.
My daily to-do list is moving from a “here’s all the stuff I’d like to manage to complete if I can” list to an actual, honest-to-God, to DO list. I’m required to do everything on it before I can do any form of personal leisure. No more “oh, just one game of Dota,” or whatever. It’s never just one, and it always leads to wasting the time I needed to get things done. Do the thing first. That’s the new rule.

And, of course, the real cap on this – I’m leaning on the family to make it happen. They’re putting me on the hook. show them the Beeminder entry and review the to-do list with them every day. If they catch me slipping, they have my full permission (and expectation) to rag me for it like no one’s business and demand I stop doing whatever else I’m doing and go get things done. Group shaming is back on the menu, boys.

The next time we speak, there will be progress. Will.

Onward.

Stepping Up, Part 1

Thomas Keaten

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February 4, 2024

Attention is currency these days, and a lot of motherf*****s are bankrupt.
It’sAGundam

Hey there, Dwellers. It’s me. One of those motherf*****s.

In what I can only attribute to either a delicious piece of irony or a divine slap across the face, I was busy multitasking about five different activities with an It’sAGundam video on in the background, barely hearing anything that was being said, until something pulled my ears to pick that one particular line. Flippant, sure, but it got me. So, here I am.

A persistent complaint – admission? confession? – of mine is my lack of discipline to focusing on the things that matter. I’m a sucker for making goals, planning things, drawing up these huge, detailed lists of the hows and the whats, only to piddle my time away on anything but progressing toward those things. Then, of course, I circle back to making new goals, new habit trackers, new plans, new anything that pretends to get me back on track. Rinse, repeat. The cycle continues. Need to get to work cutting a trunk? Yeah, but maybe I’ll watch a YouTube video instead. Editing needs to be handled? Uh huh, but what about a game or two of Dota 2?

I often describe these things – the videos, the games, the general do-nothing times – as thefts of my time, but that’s not true, is it? No one is stealing anything. I’m giving that time up. Lighting it on fire. I’m choosing what I do with the time, and that choice is leading me down paths which lead nowhere. Well, they definitely lead somewhere, but not the place I want to be. None of the places I want to be. With that in mind, why should I allow myself to keep thinking of those times as stolen when I know the truth? The only way to change a habit is through force of will in the opposite direction, after all, so that’s what needs to be done.

Importantly, this change has to be handled one step at a time. No jumping in the deep end and burning myself out, not for something as important as this. So, to that end, I’m not planning to throw out all these multitudes of plans and trackers. No, instead, I’ll be really using them. Whereas before I’ve been marking down any and everything I want to do, then allowing the sheer magnitude of the list to push me away, I’ll be tailoring it down to what I have the time to actually accomplish. The needs, not the wants. Only after those needs are completed am I allowed to do anything off-task. That’s the big one, as I know how inertia-based I am. Once I’m off-task, it’s hard as hell for me to get back on. Best to not allow that slippage in the first place.

Big talk, of course. I do like my big talk. Social pressure is another key to this, however. I’m enlisting the help of some of the people closest to me to keep me honest. Mostly the missus, since she’s actually around, but I think I’ll actually have the kids help out too. They’d probably have a great time making sure I’m getting my “work” done. A little turnabout.

I started this in earnest today, after having the leading quote seared into my brain. I knew – know – that this Sunday would have been a heaping pile of nothing prior to it. I’m tired, it’s been a hell of a week (month, year, etc.) and I wanted to do nothing. Wanted to let another day slide into the abyss, doing some mundane garbage and letting content float around my head while slipping further into being a zombie. Then, I got slapped out of it. I got the drive to really look at where I want to be in life, what I want to do, and once more realized this shit doesn’t just drop in your lap. You have to make it happen. Go out there and get it. And so we will.

That’s good for now. Another thing to mark off the day’s list. Quite a bit more to go and only a few hours before I need to pass out. Good sleep is imperative if I’m planning to keep on keeping on. Which, believe you me, I do.

After all, there are stories to tell.

The Labors of 2024

Thomas Keaten

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January 14, 2024

The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience

With the start of the year (in anyone’s plan) at least a little ways behind us, I suppose now’s as good a time as any to get my goals out in the public.

It’s no secret that last year was something of a bust. I had a lot of grandiose ideas and most of them either got pushed aside for other, more important ones, or just never got off the ground at all. C’est la vie. But, hey, we’re not dead yet, right? The forward march of time stops for no one, and I’m not a guy who’s willing to look at that in a negative light, so we’re back in the saddle. The only reason to look back is to learn from what’s happened, and I’ve already taken that time the past few weeks, so no reason to dwell on any of it here.

And now, a plan in bullets. I love bullets.

Wellness – Everything I’ll get to below (all the creative stuff) is contingent on fostering a better, healthier life for myself and my family. That healthier life consists of:
- Getting back to a 32″ waist – I fell off the health bandwagon pretty hard over the last few months and am striking into the new year approaching ~220. Higher than I’ve been in a little while and MUCH higher than I should be / want to be. Food is a problem, and if I want to work on aspects of my discipline, this is a perfect place to begin. It’s one of my biggest vices and needs to be fought tooth and nail.
- Setting aside an hour a day for prayer – Time management is in a battle with food for my major downfall. The free time I have outside of work is often swallowed up by some asinine waste. Just sitting around being a vegetable. It’s bad. There were a few times during the last year where it seemed like I’d break out of that hump, but here we are. One of the biggest failings of this comes in my lack of prayer of late. Returning to this, devoting the time and attention necessary to make true prayer time, will help to reorient my mind to the important things in life and, more importantly, give God the attention He is due. Sloth and Gluttony. Quite the combo to battle.
- Maintaining the house – I don’t know about you guys, but having a the house be a mess makes it incredibly difficult for me to get into my creative tasks. There’s just something about it that I can’t quite get my finger on, but I’m long past trying to work around that problem. It’s just a part of me, no fixing it. Giving in, however, is another big time sink that needs some fixing. Which, breaking one of my main rules about not setting goals that involve other people here, is where the kids come in. It’s chore time in a big way. I’m looking into the best apps and such to help us keep track of all this and make it work. They might not be, but I know I’m REAL excited for this one.
- Proper family time – If it wasn’t clear in the last post, this sort of thing is not only vital to me, but I’ve already been taking steps to get this on track. It’s going great, and I’m blessed for it. I’m actually only getting the time to write this post now because I’ve been playing some games with Luke today (Spirit Island is an incredible game). Last night we had a family movie night. More of this every week please. Can’t wait.
Creativity – Naturally, the bulk of my year plans lie here. Those personal wellness goals will be things that run on in perpetuity. These, on the other hand, are finite. They have a start. An end. A finished product. Well… most of them, at least.
- ThemeAttic Updates – If one doesn’t have an end or a finished product, I suppose it’s this site. It’s been a fantastic exercise, however, and it has certainly fulfilled its purpose of breaking me out of the concern for other people seeing my writing. Mission accomplished, as they say. But, with that done, it’s time to move on. Or, rather, time to expand. To grow. It’s no longer enough to be what it is. It has to become the next thing I need. A tool to gain a following. I’d never really wanted to go this route. Those of you who know me know that I’d be content just hacking at a story and getting it out on a shelf. It seems that’s not the way of the industry anymore, though. Breaking into print is a monster task and the Indie market is overflowing with hot garbage that taints prospective readers’ view of the whole market. We’re entering the age of the following, where people buy to support a person as much as they buy for the enjoyment of the product. Do I want to make the best stories possible? Of course I do. Do I want people to read them? Also yes. That intersection is where I need to be. How? Well, that’s what I’m mulling over. One thing’s for certain, though. Blogging ain’t the answer. I know what it might be, but I am loathe to go that route. Me and the ol’ YT don’t seem like they’d go well together…
- Residuum Agent Push– While this story has certainly not been the longest thing I’ve worked on, not by a long shot, it needs to be done. This year. My goal is to finish the 2nd revision in the next couple of months, get that revision in the hands of some beta readers, and make another round or two of cleanup before beginning the agent submission hunt. I’ve found major edits to be possibly more challenging than writing new stories, but it’s been a growing experience if nothing else. And I’m progressing. Slowly, but I am. This year, Dwellers. Mark it. Bother me about it.
- Catalyst Half Draft– Speaking of the longest thing I’ve worked on… my good buddy Catalyst. This is the next novel I’ll be writing. I’d waffled on whether that should be the case or not (I’ve got a good twenty or more stories on the backburner) but in the end it really can’t be anything but. This guy’s been the monkey on my shoulder since before I was a teenager. It’s gone through I don’t know how many different concepts and drafts, been thrown out completely and built from the ground up more times than I care to count. What it is now, or what it’s trying to convince me it is, is so vastly different from what it began as they can scarcely be considered the same genre. A few constants remain, however, and they’ve never allowed me to turn away from their story. Not fully. By the end of this year I plan to have the initial manuscript half done.
- Three Shorts – Last year I embarked on a little writing adventure. I’m miserable at keeping things concise (shock, I know) and one of the writer’s Discord servers I’m a part of posted about a shorts publication that was seeking entries. It was pretty short notice, something like a month, and I figured, what the hell? The process of building a short was honestly a lot more fun than I expected and, while the whole thing ended up falling apart due to the publication group running into issues, it has me wanting to go hunt for a few more places to do this with. I’ve got plenty of smaller ideas that would be fun to get onto a page and maybe, just maybe, in print. So, as the bold says, I’m aiming to write and submit three shorts this year as well.
- Project CT – Not to be contained in just Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Fiction novels and short stories, I’m also pursuing yet another game project where I’ll be writing the story and being heavily involved in some major designing. This sort of thing is a big time challenge and I’m very excited to be a part of it. It’s barely a concept as I write this, and I know game design is a gruelingly long process, so I’m not entirely certain what sort of a goal fits in Year 0, but I want it on here just to put the idea in the world. If anything I’d say I expect it storyboarded and to have an internal demo of the primary gameplay loop to work with.
- Woodworking – If there’s one thing I can pinpoint as the longest thing I’ve had on hold, it has to be this. I love working with my hands and I love creative projects, so naturally this sort of thing has been on my list for a long time. I’ve steadily picked up equipment as well, and now I’ve got bunch of wood taking up space in my garage. Everything’s coming up Millhouse. I just need to act. So, act I will. I have four projects planned to complete this year: replacing the outer fence/gate from our driveway, making a pair of headboards for the boys’ beds, making new end tables for the living room, and making a custom leverless fight stick. I gotta tell you, just writing those out has me grinning like a nut. Super excited to get out there and get to work on these.

And there you have it. 2024 from a bird’s eye, highly optimistic perspective. There are some smaller things I didn’t think needed to fit up there, like going to an offline fighting game tournament and starting up a conversation about joining the Deaconate, but that covers the gist of things.

In May of last year I started a new process of goal tracking and ended up with an abysmal completion rate of 67.97% for 2023. That’s a big, fat F. Those are rookie numbers. Time to up those numbers.

So join me, my lovely Dwellers, on a mission of growth in 2024. Together, let’s push forward and bring those around us along. Willingly, if possible, but in our wake if not.

Joy

Thomas Keaten

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January 7, 2024

They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.
Tom Bodett

Hello, Dwellers. Glad to be back, even if that’s only partially true. This past week was a bit of a whirlwind, but certainly one of the best I’ve had in a while. I’d planned to come back all fired up to hit the ground running on my official start of 2024 – to get my nose to the grindstone, bang out a slew of goals, and start the laboring. And, yes, I have done most of that, but that’s not what I’m here to cover. Not today. No, today I’d rather lean into something better. Something more important. The joy – the true, honest joy – of family.

It’s funny, when I went looking for quotes for this post, the vast majority of family-focused ones were negative. Either they were bemoaning the shackles we have to blood or claiming thanks that the “real” families we have are the ones we create with friends along the way. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised – I tend to look for quotes from authors or novels, and what are artists if not people generally damaged and seeking ways to create around those wounds. That’s one of the great tragedies of art, I suppose – the best tends to arise from deep, personal wounds. Tapping into that reservoir to create real, tangible pain. And, really, who is more able to inflict damage like that than those closest to us? Than our families?

I’m blessed to not have suffered that sort of childhood and to continue to maintain a good relationship with my parents. That blessing has carried a lot of weight in my life, and I want little more than to give that gift to my children as well. To let them know that they’re safe with us. That they can come to us with whatever problems they may have, whatever thoughts and needs, and we’ll be there for them. We might deny them, yes, but from places of love and with a fully fleshed out reason and explanation. We want to leave nothing in the dark for them, and so far it’s seemed to be working well. They’re young, yet, but so far so good.

The kids and I always spend a little time every day doing something fun, frivolous, or useful. I want to be there with them in all of those things as part of expanding on the above. We’ll watch a show or read a book or play a game. We’ll pray. We’ll do chores. Involvement is the name of the game.

As a parent, I think you rarely get the big payoffs you dream about. The sappy sort of moments from stories. In the back of your mind, you hope you will every so often, but you go through your days pretty much dismissing them in favor of the routine. They’ll come to you with homework issues, they’ll come to remind you that it’s time to watch Spy X Family, they’ll come to get advice on how to approach a problem with their friends. And we guide. We guide and guide and guide, navigating an increasingly perilous landscape filled with landmines and bear traps, hoping that we can give them a glance at those dangers while shielding them from the damage they can inflict.

Sometimes, though. Sometimes those moments do come through. Sometimes, you’re on vacation, enjoying a show and laughing at one of your ridiculous offspring doing some equally ridiculous dancing, and another will come up, hug you, and thank you for nothing in particular. Sometimes you’ll get to be there and see the look in their eyes when they get their first experience of professional artistic talent, and when they later lean in and tell you that’s what they want to do when they get older. Sometimes you get those moments, those little slices of success, when you understand how worth it all of this has been. How beautiful these bonds are and how fully, painfully, important they must be.

I like to play at being an author, but I can’t begin to speak on the joy those moments bring. Not in a way that would do it justice. Not right now.

Be there for your families, my friends. Be a shoulder for those in need and a staircase for your children. Lift them. Guide them. Create the world you want to leave behind, one day at a time.

Yes, I’ve got goals. Lots of goals. Goals in faith, in health, in art. Each and every one of them must take into account those around me. Those closest to me. Goals for myself alone are destined to fail – and they should. The world isn’t about me. It never was, but it especially isn’t now. Not since I said “I do.” Not since we brought new life into the world all those years ago. I think, perhaps, I lost sight of that a little these past few years. Not anymore.

2024 will be a banner year, Dwellers. A new leaf. A rising tide. Let’s raise all these ships together.

Adieu, 2023

Thomas Keaten

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December 31, 2023

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Well hello there, Dwellers. This here will be another short post for a couple of reasons.

One, my “new year” doesn’t really start until the weekend of the 6th. I’m headed out with the family on a cruise next week and there’s absolutely no chance of even bothering to consider being a productive or healthy human being during that time. I know who Current Me is, and Current Me is going to ring out this year of being a fatty by leaning into it. Might as well do my first weigh in of the year at my absolute worst, no?

Two, I’m finally – FINALLY – getting around to experiencing Peak Cinema. For as big a nerd as I am, it’s almost criminal that I haven’t seen the extended cuts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. So, I’m remedying that. Fellowship and Two Towers tonight, Return tomorrow. Just finished up Fellowship and realized I needed to come bang this thing out before I get back to business. Such an absolute masterpiece. I could gush about these films about as much as I could complain about the sequel Star Wars trilogy, so to stop me from making this whole thing a spiel in favor of actually going to watch the second, I’m not even going to get started.

I hope you all had a fantastic 2023. Mine was good, a lot of peaks and valleys as one would expect, but I’m aiming to make next year a banner year. Both in my faith life, my personal life, and my professional life. 2024 will be a year of measuring. Because, as we all know, what gets measured gets improved.

Crunch Week

Thomas Keaten

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December 24, 2023

It was impossible, of course. But when did that ever stop any dreamer from dreaming.
Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer

I certainly did not almost forget to write this and therefore fail my post-a-week goal. Not I, no. Anyway, as the name implies and is obvious to everyone reading it, we’ve made it. We’re here. It’s the last week of 2023, somehow, and if you’re anything like me, you’ve got an astronomical amount left to do. Too much, certainly, to finish it all, especially with this week being what it is. But, hey, that’s life. We’ve got to accept our shortcomings as much as our successes, no?

Which, I suppose, is what this post will ultimately be about. I was going to write about all the things I need to do to catch up as much as I can, but I think it’s probably better to accept my losses and make this a week of thoughtful, thorough planning instead. I’m out of town for the start of the week anyway, so it’s not like I’m going to get ahead on what’s currently outstanding. So, yes. Planning week it is, and if some things get handled in the meantime, that’s great.

Having taken some time for mental and physical breaks recently, it’s pretty clear how helpful these but, ultimately, how easy they are for me to fall into slumps during. Which, again, we’ve discussed. Also, I don’t like how this site has become something of a personal grievance / self help fest of late. That’s not the intent, so it’s something else to consider. Lots of ball dropping going on around these parts.

Next week, for the last post of the year (Which just so happens to be on the last DAY of the year), I’ll be covering what sorts of things I’ve decided upon during this week, briefly covering what got done last year, and turning an eye toward the future. A future which must lend itself toward building the life I’m trying to create.

One step at a time.

Until then, enjoy Christmas and the start of the Christmas season, my wonderful Dwellers. Start and/or continue some traditions, give thanks to God for all we have, and pray that we can build this world into a better place for everyone.