In The Garden Living an RPG Life

Playing Dungeons and Dragons or any other role playing game is more about the monsters and traps than it is about the treasure.  Someone might say, “No, it’s about getting all those cool skills and using magic and weapons and stuff.”  Which is only necessary to get past the traps and prepare for the monsters.

So, what does this have to do with that old adage “write what you know?”  We know what our challenges have been.  We know what it took to face and then overcome them. Why not take the simpler path and cast the monsters we know as challenges?  Or is that the other way around?   The writing workshops I’ve been in have focused on asking what the character’s goal is.  The answer is “get the treasure, find the clue, rescue the girl.”  That’s pretty much it. Oh and get back alive.  Then we get asked “What is the character’s personal goal?” Easy, peasy.  Level up. Get the skills, buy the weapons, learn the spells and level up.

So the question I would ask now is, how did I level up? What were the challenges?  What was my favorite monster and what were the coolest traps?  See, I’m coming at it from already done and not what am I trying to do.  So, I am assuming the character has already accomplished their goal and I’m writing–or planning to write–the story from the opposite end, from its success, from the telling of the story by the campfire while the healers work their level 10 magic on us.  Ouch!

I got reconnected, last week, with the alchemist.  Alchemy is how I got started focusing on magic as a system for living. That was before I found Huna.  This is not alchemy as the parent of chemistry, but alchemy as a defining transformation process.  The place they meet is in the need of the chemist to do the inner personal work to remain focused on waiting for the processes to complete.

A while after I’d gone through my own decisions and searches and settlings on something outside of traditional alchemy, I found the Alchemy website.  I knew it was the right place because of its parent site name: Levity.  Why? Because in my ruminations I had decided that levity was the true Philosopher’s Stone. And Huna?  Yup, it’s in there.   In the brand of Huna I follow one of the seven principles is “Love”.  Is there anything more uplifting than love?  “To love is to be happy with” lightens it even more.  Noticing everything that is good in the world, all the successes no matter how ordinary, lifts the world into a softer light.  Complimenting someone, even if it’s just in our own minds, lifts them up. Lifts us up.  Lifts everyone in our vicinity up.   Everyone is successful as something, has spent a lifetime doing something really well.  Breathing comes to mind.  Blinking.  Sitting.  Falling down.  All this is an accomplishment, things we’ve managed to accomplish from the day we were born.  And we haven’t stopped.  Even dead people are good at being dead!  Excellent at not breathing.  Excellent at lying still. Keep profound silences and stellar secrets.

Complimenting is a way of blessing the good in the world even when we forget there is any.

What does this have to do with being a bard?  That’s what I’m figuring out.  What is the story here?  Is there a legend to put the blessings into? Some tale that reminds us what happens when we don’t?

Good questions and ones for me to consider as I work on building this new character.  Meanwhile, I go to bard school.  Savvy Authors is having an online conference and lots of ideas are being added to the jars.  DigiCon definitely adds another element to the alchemist’s fire.

The name of my game is Prosperity.
What is the something good I am trying to accomplish?  Prosperity.

How do I define that?  How am I going to measure it?
One measure is happiness.  Am I happy?  Yes.  I am happier now than I was before I started playing.

How do I equate being happier than before?  I am less worried about money.  What does that mean?  How did I know I was worried about money?  My reaction to feeling anxious about not having enough money has been to spend more.  I get restless. I want to be out and not at home.  I want to be distracted by new things.  I chase after events and things that I think will help me do better so I’m not feeling so anxious.  These are the behaviors that have changed since I started playing Prosperity.

So, the first rule in the game is defining what part of Prosperity I am addressing.
Am I less worried about money? Yes. How do I measure that?

I don’t spend money randomly.  i don’t just go out and buy stuff, go to coffee.  I am more content supplying stuff for myself.  I don’t feel the call of coffee and eating out. I actually feel excited by how little money I am spending.  I kept gaining “points” by making coffee at home, taking lunch to work, buying as little as possible with cash I had on hand, making a point of knowing what I had at home.
I am happy and spending money AND don’t feel tension around it.  I also don’t feel guilt or anxiety when I spend money on something that isn’t absolutely necessary.  Like a book.  I buy books because I learn things from them. They are part of my “dice bag”. Part of the system that answers questions when I’m not sure of the question.  This time around though, the “saving throw” was high.  The content of the books I bought filled my need better.  Were more saturated with material than books I bought out of anxiety.

When I went through the list of available writing workshops none of them felt attractive.  i didn’t feel compelled to pay for a class I signed up for.  I didn’t commit to it until I knew for certain that it would add to my skills.  Help me level up as a Bard.
So, I’ve defined my focus in Prosperity, recognized my improvements.  I still want to define the process better, build the actual game.  Since i work backwards in everything, I make the game from its effects.  Twenty-twenty hindsight.

A major key to playing Prosperity is changing thinking.  There are a lot of way to change thinking and I’ve used a lot of them.  The one that seems to have worked most immediately has been: What if it doesn’t?  What if the the bad thing I’m thinking will happen, doesn’t happen?  What if something else happened instead, something positive? What would be the result of that positive action?  An action that helped me a lot was breaking down tasks into parts so small they could be done without any resistance. And then i had to give myself a reward for accomplishing that task.  The result was reducing my anxiety about getting tasks done that I didn’t want to do.  Figuring out rewards was the hard part.  Turned out that getting the work done WAS the reward. The peace I felt at having it done.  And sometimes the task itself was so pleasant that it gave me good feelings over and above its accomplishment.

So, a couple more rules played by: Change my thinking, and Make small tasks with rewards.

The set up for the game was a workshop with Serge King.  In it we went through the seven principles as they applied to Prosperity and did some exercises to recondition our minds and bodies.  I would define that step as: Defining the character, filling in the character sheet.

For the bigger game of Living An RPG Life I will define the Character Sheet better.  Meanwhile, I am going to let this simmer a bit and get back to it later.

Happy.  Definitely happy.

i’m still refining the game but this is a start.

I will come back tomorrow and read this to see how I need to refine all these statements.

Living an RPG life means what?  What do i put into it?  How do i know when I’ve moved forward?  How do i build an adventuring party?  What is important from the format that works for me in real life?

These questions are not quite articulate but it’s a beginning.  I stumbled on a TED speaker, Jane McGonigal.  The path started with a ukelele player and then Jane, a game designer.  It was the game designer that got my attention.

(There is a time restraint for what I’m doing and since I work better under pressure from outside, when it’s timely, I am sketching this out.)

This.

What is “this”? I started the shape of the blog as reflecting how I wanted to live, to live my life as a role playing game, but at the time I didn’t really know what that might be.  My conative type?  Quick start.  I jump with both feet into a concept, rock with it for a bit, then put it down.  Whatever the new thing is looks abandoned but then something falls into place and the whole thing comes together.

Gameful is that something.  It’s the call to change the world by playing a game.  Or to make a game that can be played and by playing make the world a better place.  This is the goal of a shaman.  This is what I learned from one of my mentors, Serge Kahili King.
The current challenge is to create a game that changes something that can be measured.
I just got another piece.  Story: the role of story in making deliberate and beneficial change.  This is an idea that I’ve been thinking about for a few months.  How can I make that function more explicit?

Role playing games are, for a lot of us, just a way to make a story come to life.  So, why not take the elements of story seriously? Meaning what?
Well, the point of a story is that the ‘hero’ is called to a task, to reach a goal. Along the way she faces obstacles until either she succeeds or fails.  So, what are we called to every day?  What is our goal for the day, for the week, for the year?  Do we even recognize that we are these goals?  we do it unconsciously.  What if we worked better at making them?  Knew what we were doing and, instead of working at it, played at it?

That is my game.  Setting a goal, meeting the obstacles and achieving the result.  The challenge or adventure of the game is the obstacle part.  Where are they?  What kind of obstacle really gets in the way?

There.

Finally.

Now I know what the game space is.  I don’t yet know what the play rules are, if they are still within the shape of D&D?  But i don’t need to use that structure exactly. What if I just use achieving the goal, or meeting the obstacle successfully as the achievement and get points for it?

The next part of game development is making up a character sheet and a system of rewards…
OH! That’s what it is! That’s what Martha adds to the piece.  Martha and Serge are the mentors of the piece for now.  Need to add the writing.  And that’s Pat.  So three mentors, three guides.

So, what is my current game!  (That feels nice to say)

My current game is to change the way I think about prosperity.  that’s waht I’ve been working on since the workshop. That’s Serge’s part.  He is the person who called me into play.  He fits the role of the Call.  I still need to sort all this out, all the details of how things map onto the RPG format.  Not even for the game but for my life.

So, here is more about how the game works, how I lived it into being.
I needed help and I found myself falling back on Martha.  She’s available all the time  and through the blog I found Finding Your North Star.

And since I had not canceled my subscription, I bought the book on Audible, listened to it, found the tools I needed.

Which can define the random roll (”roll a d20″). Like watching TV and getting information that i need without knowing I needed it or that it would be there.
Coffee.  TV.  Work.  Internet searches.  Friends.  Each of these lets me discover something. This is the content of my dice bag.
There is a TV show I catch from time to time.  I have regular routine of coming in and sitting down and turning on the TV.  That is the roll.  I don’t use a TV guide.  Don’t remember what’s on when or where.  Not sure if I want to watch something I’ve seen already or not.  Not even sure i want to go to bed and sleep, yet.

I could define this as a Saving Throw: a routine event that gives me tools or answers a question I don’t even know to ask.
This is me defining my life as a Role Playing Game.  Next, I need to define a game that qualifies for acceptance by Gameful.  Shifting my attention to the task of defining my actions in game terms made this happen.  Made the RPG aspect of my life come together.
So, how do I put this into game terms for Gameful?

That’s the next post.

Yeah.  Beginning to add blog practice to being a writer.  Meanwhile, I’m spending a lot of wordly time on 750words.com.  It’s been a good thing.  Buster has set up a space where we can practice being artists.  He has put Julia Cameron’s artist’s pages into an online setting with all kinds of cool bells and whistles and very tasty carrots.  I’m currently working towards my 100 days carrot.  Got the 100,000 word carrot easily.  We get badges!  Who needs badges?  I do!

Still looking for a new theme for the blog.  New beginning deserves a new theme, don’t you think?  Was just looking at Jillian Tamaki’s sketchblog.  It’s all white.  Only her own images on the site.  So uncluttered, very clean.  Can I stand to have something so naked?

Will look at writer’s blogs, too.  Started drawing more and writing a lot more so there needs to be a way to balance it all.  Thinking also of making recordings of some of my writing just because i like to hear things being read.

And about that RPG thing.  Alchemist Bard.  That’s what it’s all about.  Writing as a means of transformation. Telling stories, histories, songs so that something changes profoundly.  Keeping in tune with the earth so that the song is familiar in ways that only being connected to the earth makes sensible.

That is the name of the comic book text book.  It is also what I think I’ll be doing this year for NaNoWriMo.  I seem to have let go of everything that keeps me from being happy with a coloring tool in my hand.  Spent a while today coloring in a friend’s coloring book. Working out the shading for the princess’ dress.  Getting the shadows on the faces right.  Choosing the right colors.  Checking out what the mark-making effects of crayons are when I use the drawing signature of DaVinci and Gorey.

What does this have to do with novel writing?  Well, the main characters keep drawing journals as part of their work practice.  A lot of my character creation has been through illustrations in old children’s story books.  I’m just realizing how much keeping a journal figures in my novels.

In the first novel, the journal full of visual ideas, sparks the consequences, literally.  In the second novel, it’s both journals (the ones belonging to the same person as in the first) and children’s books.  In the third, hmmm.  I don’t remember having journals but now that I think of it, why not?  The fields of music and knitting both have journal keeping as their practice, if not exactly as we think of them.  In the fourth book, its those journals again plus another person whose work requires them.

Whew!   I thought the retrospective didn’t occur till after one was dead, and then not for a long time!

I don’t know if I will be making pictures while I’m writing. I will wait and see what happens.   The one thing I’ve learned from my own renewed attraction to drawing is to not push it.  Most of the re-acquaintance came from my conversations with Gretchen about her own relationship with drawing.  I got to feel lonely for drawing.  Mind you, I haven’t let it go completely.  My journals are organized around making some kind of pictorial mark.  I make a rectangle on the top right corner of each new page and put a nice border around it.  Only after I write the date next to the frame do I start my entry for the day.  There are still blank frames on some pages.  I’m not committed to filling them up.  I just acknowledge that there is a place for drawing in my writing life.

Between my Catrina figure and my desire to build a fabric design practice, I’m realizing the perhaps I have really only thought of drawing as a tool and not something to do just for the heck of it.  I am not, even though I might like to be, someone who loves drawing.  Just as I am not a musician.  Or an electronic technician.  I may not even be a writer, for all that I write.  I am a person who can do all of these things toward some other end.  Or because of some other inspiration.  I don’t know how to talk about it any better than that.  I am expecting things to come together though, as I age a little more.

Something about how the spirit moves or can be perceived to move through all my interests and endeavors, seems to bring me peace.   There are people for whom all those activities are roads to spirit.  For many practitioners, art, electronics, music and the like are their path to something much larger than themselves.  This something gives them comfort when their Adventures take them deep into dungeons where they need to find their way past familiar and unfamiliar monsters.  I think, for me, writing is the Way.  The other activities seem to be just a way to see into the Mystery through eyes that are only partially focused through music, electronics, drawing and the like.

Fine.  Now I’ve gone and got deep.  Not to worry.  It’s Day of the Dead eve and these are perfectly good thoughts to have tonight.  The souls of those who know more about these things are about to be let loose to visit in our dreams and desires.  Might as well get things properly lined up.  Who knows what gifts of insight my Mae might bring me, what experiences of the other side I might receive from Ricky or Darryl.  And mom and dad and all the others behind them might have stories I can use to clarify my purpose.  Sam, dear Sam, might even bring me closer to the forge and show me how the center of the earth creates, what the Earth Dragon dreams about.  I can use that in my story tomorrow night.

Night all.

Blessings on us all.

Spoonflower Marketplace is open to the public!

Believe it or not those two things are quite connected.  The business in the world I’ve created to write about is all things fiber related.  Think Silk Road.  And, the fiber business is also my real life RPG goal.

Quick review: I like the order that playing  Dungeons and Dragons imposes on keeping track of lots of different personal (in the form of the characters) material.  The only place I can think that would have such useful tools as a skills sheet would be a school counselor’s office.  Unfortunately, the school counselor’s office wouldn’t have a place on that sheet for magic spells or equipment.

Funny.  I’ve never made that connection before.  The connection between school and RPGs.  OK, I have, but not in the way of what kinds of information I might actually get from school.  From a counselor or good teacher.  For me, the structure of the RPG fills in blanks I didn’t really recognize till now.  Mostly, I think, because I have a friend with some of the same blanks that I feel.  Like how to have so many ideas and not get overwhelmed by them.

I think this is what life coaches are supposed to be good for.  Me, I’d rather make up my own character sheet and do a personal inventory of all the skills I have to see if I have enough to level up. I also need to find other Adventurers who want to take this –what would you call it?  No one has aksed us (me) to slay a dragon or search for something or rescue someone.  Ooo.  That’s what I need to figure out?  Not what the task is, but who is asking it to be done!  Cool.

Meanwhile, I have my project completed for the next Spoonflower contest.  It’s a doll panel.  Nice combination of what they are asking for and what I like.  It helps that I also want to give it as a gift.  Or, that the actual image has sparked a few more ideas.   I don’t know what goes into the Etsy shop, now.  Have to take the Spoonflower market into account for fabric.  Final products?  I still have a few of those ideas to develop.

And this last novel will give me ideas and help focus my plans.  It’s about the business of the world and how it collapses.  We also get to hear more about goblins and dragons.  Drawing, too.  It’s all in there.  Isn’t that what Nano is about?  Getting it all in and editing later?

Oooo! Less than 30 days till NaNoWriMo begins and I can start writing for real.  I’ve got lots of notes and ideas for the last of the five novels in this set.  The first one is The Tailor’s Tale, the one that started it all.  I’ve already told some of the story behind the story, though, so I’ll spare us the retelling.

I had a revelation this morning.  Not just another idea, but the kind of revelation that I feel with my whole body, a feeling of living the idea rather than just having it wriggling about inside my skull.

I was thinking about some of the ideas I had for Spoonflower fabric and Etsy.  With Spoonflower working on a marketplace, I need to rethink what I want to use Etsy for.  This is where the RPG meets Real Life.  I’ve been talking about role playing a little mystically, invoking the world of magic that is usually associated with gaming while trying to keep it on this side of fantasy.  There’s more to my idea of what a role-playing game can be, though.

It’s no coincidence that the world I built is made from the fabric trade. It’s a medium I have a lot of lust for.  I can practically hear and feel the rustle of embroidered silks and velvets when watching The Tudors for example.  The weight of the swirling cape in the opening credits is very nearly fabric-pron.  You wouldn’t know this about me if we met however.  All I talk about is the magic-leaning stuff.  I am, on a day to day basis, an advocate of empowerment, a fool for personal transformation, a getting-to-good type geek.  In another life, I used to tell myself (too keep myself sane), I would probably be a shaman.  Now, though, with the chasm of retirement looming before me, I’m thinking that I should consider myself a shaman with a fabric shop!

The RPG part?  Well, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ no business, to misquote another nurse/nanny type.  For me the format of the role-playing game is perfect for organizing what I know and what I need to find out, while keeping the whole process on the higher side of fun.  NPC’s are in place as the creators of Ravelry, Etsy and Spoonflower, for example.  My Adventuring party?  So far there is only one other person, I think.  We’re friends and kind of on the same path.  Whether we are on the same Adventure…?  I don’t know yet.  Only the encounters and the traveling through the landscape will tell.

The first part of my journey will be finishing the novel. Part of finishing the novel, I discovered, is finding out more about money and economics.  The other part, a continuing part, is taking the magic part seriously.  I have always taken it seriously as a study. I’ve just not practiced it in any formal way, with any kind of focus.  Now it’s time to turn information into knowledge and knowledge into skill.

Talking to Gretchen about all of this, we came to the conclusion that this is one way to change a life, to become someone different.  With that in mind, and since documentation is also part of the RPG, I’ll be keeping track of my process.  One reason is that it’s fun.  Another, more important reason, is that some of what I am planning to do is inspired by questions from many non-RPG places.  Some of the questions are those Gretchen and I have asked each other and together of systems we’ve both investigated.

My plan is to show how I move from the system, through the questions, and into some kind of tool to be used in my Game.  The name of my game?  I guess it’s Retirement.  Retirement, the Game.   Ok… Maybe that’s just the working title.  I have an idea that there is another title waiting to be revealed, but that’s another post.

Meanwhile, consider this the first of the pre-NaNoWriMo posts.

Yeah… I actually have made progress.  Not what I was expecting either, when this idea came to me.  And it keeps unfolding.

There is this boundary area between the real world and the imagined world that is not easliy accessed or understood.  I figured out today, that’s where the Adventures are.  Getting through there is what a Guide is needed for.   And why would anyone even consider going into that place, whatever it is?  Ahh.  That’s just it.  We usually choose to avoid going there.  It’s the place where our ideas of who we are and what we’re doing get stretched out of recognition.  We usually just barely cross the boundary when we’re dreaming.  And you know how quickly you want to get out of that state, don’t you.

But.  What if you took a different approach?  What if, instead of taking it all so grown-up seriously, you decided to play?

That’s the idea.  That’s what makes me happy.  Playing in the Boundary and taking friends there with me.  Wonder if there is room for all of us to play there?

So the Garden in the title is a place I am learning to use as a developmental tool.  Learned it from King’s Urban Shaman.  Of course it’s an imaginary place, but so is everything in our minds till we let them out.  Or take them seriously.

I haven’t taken the Garden seriously, till now.   It’s been there, and I’ve paid it a few visits.  But, I’ve never really let the process fill up my body.

The first Image of my Garden is of a dark space.  The only spot of light it the bit of landscape where I contact my big guide.  I managed to find a bit of water in a little wall fountain.  And there is a way under the garden that I can access.

I’ve started paying visits to ask for help of my Guide.  I didn’t think anything would come of it, as usual.  I was wrong.  Something in my has evidently shifted.  I’m learning what to expect from the encounter.  What it feels like in my body.  What the images look like.  What the “stories” are and how they come.  What the “answers” are to the questions I ask.

So, today, I start with the Garden report.

Foggy.  With a patch of green.

A definite improvement over the complete darkness.