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I think I am starting to settle into this Rome thing.

It has taken several days to really feel at peace and at home here, but halfway through the journey I think the Lady Talis and I are starting to get it. I am starting to sink in and develop an understanding of place and people if not language. That part may come over time, but not in the next few weeks, I gather. What I find to be most telling is that we have not met people–other couples or otherwise–and settled in with them. This may not be a thing that comes as naturally to us anymore as I had previously hoped. However, we’ve learned the places to go, how to get around, how we enjoy spending our time, and how much money all of this takes to accomplish.

The money issue is a big one, because we did this on the relative cheap and I continue to effort to pay down debt. Still struggling through that one.

If you’ve written any kind of fantasy or watched or read, you know that quite a bit of it takes place in a relative version of the middle ages. We get these sweeping epics of swords and sorcery where people ride horses and or dragons and battle through cities snatched from history books. I had the fortune to walk through one of those cities today. Orvieto, Italy is an active medieval city. Everything is modern inside of the husks of these old buildings at the top of a hill, but the hill and everything on it looks to be in the condition it was as a castle keep.

Looking at the city offered me a quick understanding of everything writers get wrong, and I’ll need to go back there–spend more time writing there to get fantasy right. The main thing I think we sleep on as writers is the technology, and when they were still using swords, they had some amazing tricks we don’t even realize were happening. For example, the ballast system.

I need to dig deeper into the 800-1200 era and really explore what went down worldwide. This is the research fuel for the fire that will be a major fantasy series.

I’m calling this a rebound blog, because I am fully (mostly) awake in the morning observing a gray Roman sky and thinking: This is going to be a good day. That starts with writing, as you should well know by now–well by yesterday at the most. The idea of me having a good day without some small measure of the word is sad indeed. I do crave the things that I crave, and those are the things that present me with joy in life. So, I’m going to spend the remainder of my time dedicating little sections of this ten to those things.

On Games
As I patiently await the arrival of College Football 25 (packaged with Madden, because they gotta know sales will slump badly). I have been re-exploring Starfield. There is a great deal of joy left in that game for me. I am finally starting to tackle outposts. It took me several xp runs (killing randoms and doing missions) in order to get the basic skills, and I needed to build one massive ass freighter to haul supplies, but I am finally embracing my inner minecrafter through this game. It is slow going. Progress is… well, I don’t know what I want or truly what I am doing, but I am starting to figure it out. So, I’m having fun, learning, and getting sucked back in… for now. CFB is coming.

On Writing
The Justice Engine is not finished. I allowed myself to really swirl around the drain of execution on this one. I am trying to get back into the courtroom headspace, but not so much that it becomes a standard courtroom drama. This is supposed to be a human story centered around AI and real emotions and the relationships that develop when we dabble in stuff I still think we aren’t properly prepared to dabble into. I have another project and a handful of revisions to attend to before beginning the next school cycle, but I intend to carve out more and more time to finish this piece of work. Honestly, it is finding all the right personalities to make it happen that has been the tough part. So I’m doing what I always do–I’m piecing it together conversation by conversation looking for something that ultimately fits into the shape of a narrative.

And no, I do not know how it ends.

On Love
The most important part of me comes last, because I keep most of it off stage where it belongs. I will say that Rome is the city of love, and if not for the plans this Talislegger has spent quite some time developing, accelerando would indeed be on the table. But there is a time and a place and a path for all things. I intend life to include all things.

It is a well worn and honest truth that if I don’t attend to the blog in the morning, I hesitate until the very last possible moment of execution. This is true, it seems, of all things outside of love and video games. It can therefore be asserted that these two things come natural or at the very least, easy. I have again waited to the last chime of the bell to see this blog to its fruition. I have, in that, failed to conjure anything resembling a clear cut direction or thought. I do have ten minutes to fill nevertheless, so here I remain.

I find myself thinking about something Stephen King said about writing. He posited that one must pursue writing daily. It doesn’t matter if the page is filled with scribbles of the worst kind. That determinism; that habit or even tradition will lead writers to produce. Practice makes perfect, in simpler terms. I Have issues with that–not with the statement but with the execution of the directive. I have failed again and again to come to the words for longer than the perfunctory ten minutes I share here with you (dear reader). It does lead to the presumption that writing is not valued. The truth is a far simpler lady: Writing does not provide the lovely pulse of dopamine these other endeavors (love, games) bring to the forefront. It does provide a well deserved hit, but the earning of that moment takes time.

Alas, I do not write solely for dopamine. Games are the only mistress of that regard. Like love itself (by which I mean the love of the Lady Talis and, two a different extent the responsibility to the six we call our own). I write because it is who I am. It is a calling no lesser than that of the cloth in my eyes. Yet I find myself far far far less reverent. It is a calling I miss when not in practice, which begs the question of why I am not so reverent. Why do I not give the proper hours?

It will be a wonderful day when I uncover that answer.

Some Thoughts:

1. Some philosophers may have a scientific ally in their position that consciousness is an illusion.

That morning Tracy Adkins didn’t want to get out of bed. This sort of thing happened maybe three days out of the week. It never happened on Mondays, though he knew the deluge of cases and questions about cases hitting his inbox by 8AM would be enough to make him want to quit outright. It was Tuesdays, after he’d survived Mondays. It was Fridays, because he wanted that extra day of just not having to deal with so many humans. It was Thursdays, because sometimes a four day weekend was just called for. Of course he never did call out, no matter how much he wanted to. He still heard the whispers of DEI hire, and other nonsense that followed him from his John Jay undergrad all the way through his Dayton Law Degree and into the Pinal County courts. Nobody understood why he chose to do law here, so they assumed he’d been brought here to fill a niche. They couldn’t imagine that he wanted to be in Arizona, and he never explained why he did. He never made an effort to explain anything about himself, or work to develop friendships amongst his colleagues. He was just there to work, which is why Mondays weren’t so terrible. At least that was until he heard about the murder.

He knew he’d be assigned the moment it hit the news. He might not be a DEI hire, but optics were optics. A black kid–an actual African-American by the sound of it–was charged with murdering a pretty young white girl. This was Dateline NBC stuff; a career maker for the AG or whomever the lead prosecutor wound up being. It was also a case that needed a black face on the side of justice–just to hold up appearances.

Tracy Adkins sighed deeply into his pillow. Then he struggled creakily to his feet and headed for the shower.

Over the past few weeks I have had the opportunity to come to terms with the things I like and dislike–doing so far from home and in a way that allows for detached analysis. Here is what I learned.

Heat: I am okay with that. I’ve been in 90+ degree weather while surrounded by a beautiful city with tons of stuff to do and that makes the heat less of an issue. It is not the same in AZ, and I put the focus on the heat there when I relly should not be doing that. It isn’t the heat’s fault. Which brings me to my next dislike.

Arizona: Sucks. That is all there is to that. Sure, I enjoy the allure of Friday night football if only because I get to watch my kids play. It was the same with Saturday Morning sports. It was always about watching the kids play. There isn’t much else to the place unless you want to drive miles and miles and miles to see some interesting terrain. Everything is too spread out to walk to, and the neighborhoods are not inviting in the least. I was born a city boy. Raised that way. A place like AZ is just a crappy suburb writ large.

Tennessee: If you’re going to be in a place where you cannot walk anywhere worth a damn, then be in a place where you feel like the space around you is worth walking through and you can get your mind fixed on the fact that you’re in the woods. TN does that for me. I like that. I like that I can step through the gates of our l’il farm and be there and feel good and not want to leave for days.

I’m leaving NYC out of this. I’m leaving other things out of this that I haven’t had appropriate consideration about. I know that place and lifestyle have been huge lately in my small world. I know that walking around is super important to me in terms of people watching (which I am finally getting to do and it is teaching me a lot about style, and people, and trends, and habits, etc.). I know that I want it to be a part of my daily existence. I also want beach access, for what it’s worth, because the sound of the ocean is needed, and the attitude of the beach I’ve come to love. These are the things, for now. More to come in the future.

The boy didn’t make the top 100 2027 players to watch. That’s good. That keeps him lean and hungry. He’ll get his flowers if he turns up the intensity and decides he wants to do the work off the field as well as on. It is a stepping stone to get on a list like that, and the real hurdle will be to compete in a camp next summer and look like a guy who deserves an offer. These are the steps I am concerned with. I want to see him get better and get fully engaged in the game. He’ll be getting plenty of chances now that he’s playing at two levels. He will get to play some JV as well as playing rotationally at the Varsity level. He needs it. He only played 5 games last year, and though he put up great numbers on both sides of the rock, he needs more snaps. He needs to see more offenses (and defenses) to truly get to a place where he is going to be that dog he wants to be.

Beyond that I am watching number 7 closely. He’s back home working out every day in preparation for camp this July. He isn’t going to be a day 1 starter. He blew that chance by not going to spring practice and instead doing the smart thing and enjoying a senior year. Now he has to work to show he deserves to be on the travel roster, and from there to be in the db rotation, and from there to start. It is, again, a lot of steps. But we take those steps. We love the journey.

The destination is where you find yourself when you decide to stop.

Odd how this turns into a travel blog every time I am abroad. It feels like a suitable outlet for the experiences I have while abroad, which means that maybe it isn’t quite so odd. Yesterday the Lady Talis and I spent the day in Napoli. I discovered during this jaunt that Naples is actually called Napoli in the language of Italy, which means it is actually Napoli. Rome is also Roma and Florence is Firenze. Dang near fifty years and at least ten of those in social studies or history classes and only now is my American butt aware of these things.

We walked nearly 15 miles in humid 80+ degree weather over the course of a day. We spent most of our time in allies and side streets picking our way through the city in search of Pizza and other cool stuff. We wandered into castles and down to the shore where we encountered huge cruise ships. We saw the mall, which is domed and covered in glass ten stories high. We learned of the ease of transport to the many islands nearby, which is why we will be back very very soon.

Napoli hits different than Roma. For one, the walk along the spaccanapoli, a road that appears to bisect the city, also transcends the depths of wealth and poverty. In the span of fifteen minutes on foot I stepped over a half dozen dead rats backing in the midday sun, on to a university area brimming with colorfully dressed and more colorfully spoken students, out into piazzas loaded with high end stores. To be fair, this small cross section of the city we explored barely scrapes the surface of all it has to offer. From the castle on the hill we were able to see the glass skyscrapers of a downtown business section we’d otherwise completely avoided. There are many parts of this beautiful city like that. Yet what we saw was enough to realize how old and beautiful and often diverse Italy can be.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’ve been giving real thought to the things I want to do each and every day. I want to spend time constructively with the Lady Talis–planning things and talking out important stuff. I want to do this less than I want to spend time just lounging lovingly with the Lady. Still, a day holds time for both. I want to play some manner of video game. Soon that will be College Football. I seem to be loosing interest in other games in preparation for the time required for this one. I want to write. I always want to write. These are the things. I suppose contact of some variety with my grown children, but I love that they have their own lives, so this is less of a daily thing at this point.
2. Next step: working that all into a daily life that also makes room for the things I must but do not wish to do, like exercise and work.

Naples.

You hear the word or see it and think a dozen different things, and I cannot argue that any one of them is wrong. I think STRESS. There are stories of pickpockets galore and there are tales to be told of getting lost and stuck and so many terrifying things. I am thinking only of the stress of getting there and getting around at this point, because this trip has been a great deal of stress. I suppose it is my fault for not being prepared and not having a real understanding of where I was going or how I expected to navigate a foreign city without a plan. I figured I had a cellphone and the rest would work itself out—only I do not get reliable service and I am reliant on Wi-Fi thus far. That being said, I am settling in to this new reality.

My partner, the good lady Talis, says the first part of a journey is detox. You are shedding the day to day of your normal life (when she said that I immediately thought of re-tox as we head back home eventually). I think she is right, and I really do feel my body, mind, and soul attempting a detoxification where I shed the skin of yesterday and reconnect with the core of who I am in search of who I intend to be.

This is happening on a cellular level. I am actually sweating out the bad and uploading the possible. I expect to get back to floor exercises later in the week, as I attempt to reconstruct myself bit by bit.

But this was supposed to be about a day trip. What I can say is that this day trip is a new beginning. I am attempting to shed the stress while I embrace the possible.

Rome has its ups and downs. One significant down is that I have yet to get to the writing. I have a side project and the main novel that needs to get knocked out before the edits for the other novel come back and demand my attention. I haven’t been doing so good with the keeping up. I attribute some of it to travel and the rest to culture. There is not a space here where I can set up and write for an hour or more. Heck, I haven’t even found a reliable place for coffee or gelato. Still the hunt continues. There is so much beauty just walking down the block that we have yet to discover or explore. It is a good thing we have so much time, because we can do such things at our own pace, and that pace appears to be late afternoon and beyond, given the heat and humidity.

Some Thoughts:

1. The new Starfield update introduced player-made items and missions, which seems like a wonderful plan. They set the groundwork by introducing a short adventure they made themselves, and several items. Then they offered a second adventure, but locked it behind a paywall. Same with most of the items. There are even ‘cheats’ which are allowed but are pay to play. Quickly it became minecraft with the access being based on how many tokens you were willing to pay.
2. Feels good to get away from the election-rich bipolar chaos of an American news cycle. Makes me feel grounded, which is exactly what the new back home seeks to prevent.