friday, june 1, 2001
class effect

i am taking today off from school, again. i say again because i have frequently stayed out of classes this quarter, a lot more than i should have been at any rate. the good news is that these absences, so far, have not hurt my grades and none of the instructors have on the syllabus "miss so many classes and your grade drops one full grade point". i had instructors like that last quarter, and have had a number of them like that in the past. it always seemed to me that as long as the absences were fairly legitimate, the profs tended to ignore that particular warning. as long as the student is showing some seriousness in study, their papers show some understanding of the topic, and their tests don't drop to subzero scores, instructors seem willing to work with their students. interestingly enough, my creative writing prof, who has had the worst attrition in his class (and not because he is a bad instructor, he isn't) has had to make it clear that those who aren't even trying will find their grades reflecting that particular lack of interest. unfortunately it was mostly those of us who are trying that got to hear the "lecture" he gave on his own frustration with student performance. however, even though we have only 2 weeks left (thank god!), this and one more absence are necessary. today my son has his pre-op, then i have to go and get money to send out a few things in the mail and pay rent, then i have the game tonight.

i am ill prepared for this game at this point. i won't cancel for fear of the players scattering to the 4 winds again, but i am finding myself distinctly unmotivated. not because i am uninterested, but because i am so busy that most everything is suffering when compared to classes and family matters. my monday night online game hasn't met for 2 weeks and i haven't been able to do much with it, too many papers due. i have stuff for the friday game but i need to revamp some of it and have not really been able to do so. worse, i have had only one major idea related to this revamping. it seems all my brain cells are too occupied with getting through the end of the quarter to be concerned with any kind of creativity.

which not only doesn't bode well for the games, but also puts my writing in a tight spot as well. i do mean to take a serious crack at my writing. yet most of that energy is being poured into papers for school which have little in the way of creativity. my writing class is perhaps my one saving grace in that it is a creative writing class and i am actually able to use it to the advantage of the stuff i have started. through that class i explore characters and plot lines related to characters in two different "novels" and am working through a chapter of a third. the odd thing is everyone else has more confidence in my writing ability and possibility of being published than i do. well, maybe that isn't odd. another friend and i have come to the conclusion that it is those with the most talent that have the least amount of confidence in that talent. not to say that i have talent because i am not sure i do. and right now i don't have much of anything since everything that would fuel even the thimbleful of talent that i do have is going to the end of quarter madness and last minute assignments. my one blessing is that there is indeed still two games and that they will eventually inspire the imagination for future writing (how people manage without something as concrete as these games, i have no idea).

the one thing i am attempting to find some time for is my website. i am slowly working through it and transitioning to the new layout and structure. yes, that's why i have a sidebar nav that is almost completely barren of working links on whysper...the new layout isn't set up enough to have the links working in the new navigation. but, as you can see, the new structure of the site will definitely be friendlier when it comes to the side navigations. and each major section and the 404 page will have a complete site map on it to make it easier to get around in general without having to put every single link to every single section of the site on ever single page. i may love to game and i may love to write, but my website is my one piece of sanity in my current state of madness.