Heavy Season has arrived in full force.
It was a 13-hour shift today.
I am beyond tired. I don’t have any gumption for writing. Calling it an early night. Sort of.
Stay safe out there, readers. Get some rest.
-JB Swift
Category: Postman
11/3 Forced Half-Day and the kids’ brushing out of hair (plus, a Weather Photo!)
Today was my regular non-scheduled day, but as I had a doctor’s appointment for my son around noon, management could only work me for a half-day.
Cue the childish behavior of pulling a face and saying neener-neener at the adults.
I managed to get some time set aside to work on the plot for the upcoming session, but I’ll have to take my tablet and notebook with me to work tomorrow and get to work on the list I’ve jotted down. I’m hoping to get a Side-Arc session (I’d really prefer two but I keep having to be responsible and go to work) set up, as well as finalizing a new Archetype for the newest player. Those are fairly simple to write up, but they can be tedious.
Han went in for her Kung Fu test today and passed! Her ability to kick my ass continues to develop and I couldn’t be prouder. Ben went to the test and has determined that he wants to study Kung Fu next year, but for now he’s going to copy my training in the carport.
No pictures of Han’s test for the site, as she said she didn’t want them posted because she didn’t like her hair today. I can respect that.
But that didn’t stop the two from brushing out their old man’s hair into a cloud of poof.
Han did go over my options for the weather photo today, though, so here’s the one she liked the most.
All in all, it’s been a full day, and it’s not over until I prep my meals for tomorrow. Time to wreak havoc upon the kitchen!
Stay safe out there, readers.
-JB Swift
10/28 Friday’s Storms
Being from Louisiana, I’m used to having sporadic storms show up throughout the day. Once we get into Fall, though, I tend to not look forward to the rain.
Han picked this one out from the collection I took today, but there were several that worried me, mostly because I forgot my raincoat in my locker. But I was lucky and dodged the rain, thus reinforcing Han’s belief that I am an American Tall Tale.
It’s going to be an early night for me. We need to be up at 5AM, and getting two kids up and dressed at that time will be a challenge.
Stay safe out there, readers! Take pity on the sleepy kids in the morning!
-JB Swift
10/22 Odd Overeager Postal Customer
Look man, I get it. You need to know if your utility bill is in. You’ll get it when I get to your mailbox, just don’t attack me when I try to put the letters in.
Stay safe out there, readers! Let your mailman deliver!
-JB Swift
10/22 Mailman Weather Day and Side-Arc Session!
As I was leaving the house for work, my daughter asked if the sky would ‘be good mailman weather’, which tells me she pays more attention to what I say than I have realized and that I’ve found the possible source of her sarcastic Parthian shots (she doesn’t realize she does them, just destroys a conversation as she leaves a room).
“The weather should be perfect for work today,” I said. She brightened.
“Get a good picture for today!” she called as I rolled the lunchbox out the door.
Well, I’m a word of my word, so I kept an eye on the sky for a good photo. She approved of two, but chose one for today’s post.
It turned out to be a great day for the weather, but not so for the postal vehicle. The truck broke down and I was left out on the route for nearly an hour before I could resume delivery.
Meaning I was paid for nearly an hour at postal rates to write Star Wars fan-fiction! *cackle*
Tonight we have a Side-Arc session! I’m going to be working ‘overtime’ to get the rest of my sessions finished before my End-of-Year date, so there will most likely be technical problems that disrupt every damn game night.
It wouldn’t a Swift’s Campaign otherwise.
Stay safe out there, readers!
-JB Swift
10/19 Back to the Route and Tablet Headaches
In what appears to be an ongoing theme, my Murphionic Field struck again.
I returned to the mail route today after several days of being at home and minding my family. I had fully expected to be back in the routine of gallumphing down the walking path until the lunch break, where I would sit in the back of the Promaster, side door open to let in sunlight and air, and whittle away at my stories like a proper nerd.
Only to discover that I never put the tablet on the charger.
sigh…
But the phone has Microsoft Word as an app, and my subscription is up to date so I can ‘type’ while looking to the world like any other millennial who is obsessed with their phone.
But at least I’m making progress! Via the phone, I can get somewhere near 350 words in a half-hour lunch. So long as I accept that I will eventually be in front of a computer and able to fix all of the autocorrects.
Stay safe out there, readers!
-JB Swift
10/15 Main Arc Session Night and Old Man Casey
I am both exhausted and excited. It’s Saturday, so it’s Game Night!
It’s also the third Game Night in a row, and I’m realizing exactly why I am so strict about my Session Schedule holding to a bi-weekly schedule.
I’m tired and getting grumpy. I don’t like that aspect of myself showing itself in my sessions, and I worry that my players would see this as resentment or disinterest. If the past year has been any indication, I’ve wanted one thing to come across: I love being a writer and RPG storyteller. Not only is it fun, but it’s also a personal enjoyment and challenge.
(There’s a voice I’m looking forward to trying out. After hearing other Narrators try their Bith voices, which always sound like Kermit the Frog if he had espresso, I wrote a Bith into the session so I could try it out myself. It’s not great, but damn is it entertaining. Pity the players who have to indulge me.)
That said, I’m looking at the calendar and having to make a hard decision. We’re officially in USPS’ “Heavy Season”, so the mail is picking up and the parcel count is hitting offensive levels. I’m going to be extremely busy during the ‘winter months’.
For those readers who are not familiar with the Southern United States, our winter months are still warm and humid, with occasional patches of “Why is it this cold?! It’s only 50 degrees out here! Damn humidity!”
I don’t want to push myself to the point of burnout, so in the interest of keeping the campaigns going, I’m ending my Main Arc Sessions for the year on November 12th, and my Side-Arc availability on November 19th. I’ll start back up January 7th 2023 for both.
That gives me two Main Arc Session nights left for the year after tonight. I wrote this adventure to be full of interesting details and notes for the players to investigate, and the last session showed me that they’re going about the adventure with intellect and patience. Other players in the main group, those who haven’t been able to join the sessions due to their own exhaustion (two of them have infants, so their exhaustion is absolutely valid) chime in with questions over the recordings and mapping out their decisions from ‘behind the scenes’. I’ve also been complimented by how faithful I’ve been to NPCing those characters.
I am enjoying this group far too much to let simple exhaustion from me drive them away from the table.
This is also to say that though I will be closing down my Sessions in mid-November, I will still be (trying) to make daily posts and adding on to the pages for the campaign throughout the Heavy Season. It’s a bit like therapy for me to sit down and add to a universe instead of stewing on the antics of management.
Don’t worry, I won’t take the remainder of the year off from writing altogether. I might have my month off in April next year, but I won’t know until next March and see what Tax Season looks like.
I’m off to handle up on house chores and finalizing details for tonight. I’ve asked Old Man Casey what he’s thought of my challenges so far:
He’s unimpressed and wishes luck to my players. I think.
Stay safe out there, readers!
-JB Swift
10/13 Thursday’s Weather Worries and Readying for the Extra-Long Weekend
“Dad! Dad! Look up! It’s perfect for your writing!” -Han.
I will admit that the morning was damn pretty, but I’m also wondering if I’ll be walking in the rain today. With new boots, too!
Sigh…
But hey, my time off was also just approved! Maybe I’ll be lucky and dodge a storm, too!
Morgan Freeman Narrator Voice: “But his luck was already spent with getting his supervisors to approve the time off, so Louisiana weather decided to balance the scales.”
Rain was starting while I was loading parcels. Gonna be a fun day.
Stay safe out there, readers!
-JB Swift
10/12 New Players, New Ideas, Old-School Union Practices
If there’s anything that catches my attention on the Internet, it’s reading posts by people who are looking to join a campaign.
Also animal videos. They’re adorable and I won’t budge on this exposing of my sensitive side.
I was scrolling through Reddit when I came across an example of the former. A player was looking for a group to join! I let him know about this place and explained my rules/expectations. He, in turn, told me what he wanted to try out.
I won’t spoil the details, but when he’s introduced to the campaign, I’ll write up a Biography Page for him. For now, I’m wandering the route with my Campaign’s Notebook and plotting out new concepts to add in the timeline.
While I’m enjoying my nerdiness, I’m also enjoying the looks on the faces of management as I remind them about the multitude of contracts and manuals that they should be following when giving me orders concerning the mail. It’s a sort of perverse pleasure to explain to someone who technically outranks me that they need to pay attention to a set of forms that they do everything in their power to avoid.
I’m a nerd. I’m also a bureaucrat. I like going through books for references and having paperwork in proper order. It also annoys management because they can’t issue discipline just because I’m following rules that they find annoying. This is why I support unions.
Stay safe out there, readers! I’m off to make a supervisor sign off on six pages of paperwork. *Mad cackling ensues.*
-JB Swift
10/10 Federal Day Off and Catching Up (Plus Old Man Casey!)
To my players and readers, you’ll be happy to know that for the first time in over a month, I’ve had a full-nights’ sleep.
To Votosh Khall (played by Ben): I’ve rested, now stop worrying about me and let me go about my terrible habits of pushing myself too hard.
That said, it’s Columbus Day here in the United States. If you’ve studied enough history, or if you know enough history from the Native American tribes in the Indies and Eastern United States, you’d refer to today as Indigenous People’s Day.
Brady and I used to love debates about this holiday, namely because we did know a lot of the history surrounding this holiday and Christopher Columbus.
Trust me: it’s Indigenous People’s Day. I’d rather have a day to honor the People than that greedy goof.
On a purely practical matter, however, it’s a Federal Holiday in the United States. As a Federal Person, I’m allowed a day off! And management can’t say a damn thing about it. Granted, that means Tuesday will be horrendous as the mail actually does stop for the day, but as it’s also a half-day for me tomorrow (thanks to a prodigious amount of paperwork), I can avoid that headache after 1:30PM tomorrow!
Now, what do I do on such a day? Apparently, it’s sleep for nearly 11 hours straight. Even the kids respected this. That’s should tell me something, but I’m electing to ignore it.
What I will be doing is catching up on the vast number of chores the house needs, including the writing here at my desk. Mardek’s Side-Arc needs finishing, and I’ll be plunking away at it before I get to anything else in my “Writing List”, including the plot for the upcoming Main Arc Session this Saturday.
This is to mean: if I don’t, I’ll be winging it on Saturday and you should pray for my players. Me telling a story that I haven’t thought out fully beforehand is… well, dangerous for those involved.
Sidenote: the “Post Updates” project was accidentally done first, as I logged on to see that the last week of posts had formatting issues and stayed in the “Drafts” section. But they were easily fixed in way less than an hour and published in order. Apparently, there’s a problem between uploading pictures from my phones’ camera roll to my blog posts and writing out the posts themselves on the tablet. That’s just my luck with technology.
This list will be added on to throughout the day as I find other sections that need writing out, but that’s only a small part of what needs doing today. The yard needs cleaning up, the floors need sweeping (daily, really, as this house is a house of shedding, be it dogs, cats, or the hamster), and the Old 4Runner needs maintenance.
Lots to do, and I’m too damn cheap to pay somebody else to do any of it. So, off to work (housework) I go!
As a consolation prize to everyone who wanted to read through my hyping myself up for my house-spouse duties, I’ve snagged a couple photos of Old Man Casey.
He’s still playful, but when you’re an 11-year-old dog, the playing is a bit low-key.
To think that I’ve tried to take this dog camping. He’d rather a couch and Netflix.
Stay safe out there, readers. Happy Indigenous People’s Day.
-JB Swift
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