Something I've been kicking around throughout the weekend. That and actually working out the logistics of what it takes to complete the final design. I was right though, I'm not going to like the process, but at least this time I'm not going to wrack my brains trying to choose the appropriate colour scheme.

Speaking of kicking around, Germany obliterated England 4-1 in the World Cup last night. Not that I would actually talk about football on this blog, but it's something that warrants mentioning. It was the icing on an otherwise pleasant weekend. There is a guilty pleasure in dancing over dejected fans. I know it's not ethical, but when you go against the norm, you take every single victory in stride.

Now that I'm free from that great burden, I can now start working on the things I really wanted to do. Even though I do use melancholy as a source for inspiration, the fact that I couldn't do anything at all over the last 11 months testified to just how bad the situation got, but now that's over, I can get back to using my usually dark mood swings as sources of creativity. So far since last Tuesday I find myself in the middle of a few projects.

1. Building a new computer that I want rather than something I need like I have been since forever.
2. Working on some short stories to fine tune the dystopian world I'm creating for NaNoWriMo this year end.
3. Redesigning and revamping this blog from scratch.

Now as much as I would like to do everything at once since I'm at a post-freedom buzz, I know that's simply not possible. Seeing that I still do have a day (or night depending on my shift) job to do, there are only certain times of the day or week that I'm actually free to do anything at all. So rather than making a rookie mistake, you know as well as I do, I'm going to have to do one thing at a time.

Given my capabilities with computers, building a new one isn't hard at all. I've been doing it for more than a decade so it's pretty much a cake walk for me. I'm excited that this time I'm doing this for myself with the things I want rather than for someone else I'll have to stare and envy. The issue here is that I'll be trying to do this without having to reinstall Windows all over again. Basically a hard drive swap into a fresh new system. I've been doing my research and while some people say I probably do have to do a fresh clean install, others say taken the right measures, I can get away without installing. All I know now is that I'm prepared for both, but I'm not really looking forward to having to reinstall the 145 programs that grace my current system. Tedium is always a mood killer.

Writing the short stories while not my forte at all to do creative fiction, isn't going to be that hard either. It's just going to be slow and complicated. I see myself probably doing a few hundred words every couple of days, maybe more if I have the inspiration for it. It's just not going to be a priority and nor am I pushing myself for it. The main purpose is to put down what's on my mind and fine tune the kinks later for when I write NaNoWriMo (which is going to be the actual push). I'm not expecting to write a published best seller either, so there is no reason why I shouldn't be able to do this.

Finally, it comes down to this blog, my blog and it is the hardest and most complicated project out of the three. I've talked about it before and I know it has to be done. I last revamped this blog over 4 years ago. Given how much WordPress, myself and you my readers have changed over those years, what I'm facing is a complete overhaul of the user interface coupled with a new design, colour scheme, graphics, everything. Given my limited knowledge of coding and web design, I know I'm going to have problems right off the board. Given than this isn't something that can be done whenever I feel like it too isn't exactly a point for making it easy. It's going to be a long haul and I know it's going to stress me out and I'm going to start lashing out at the world and harming myself. Such is the price of lonely ambitions but I know it'll somehow work out in the end. This current blog theme after all was a result of that unstable madness and I am pretty damn proud of it.

So there, three big projects to work on. As I'm typing this, I sit here thinking what the hell I'm getting myself into, but then again, the better roads in my life somehow come from taking a step out of my comfort zone and doing the things I feel woefully inadequate to tackle. Sometimes you never know what may come out of the things you work so hard on and even after these years, the end results of some of my efforts still surprised me. Still, I can't help wondering that I may need a bigger plate to put all of this in, or maybe put less on my plate for now.

Hmm.

Nah.

It's been almost a year of holding my breath and at the end of it, the rest of my future was decided on a single Tuesday morning. Now, the weight that has been on my back for the last 11 months has been lifted. I survived. I can finally breathe again. I am still alive.

Alive to do the things I want to do. Alive to do the things I should do. Alive to stay the course I know I have to take. Alive to keep the promises I had to make.

For the most part, there was a price to pay for that victory, both monetarily and emotionally, but like all the hellish trials in my life, surviving them results in me changing my entire perspective of life. Do I consider myself the luckiest person in the world? Yes. Do I think that I still have God's Grace? Well it's hard to dispute that now even for an agnostic like myself. Do I have someone in my life that represents the absolute definition of miracles? Most definitely.

Yet life goes on. I can waffle on about how I've been feeling for the past few days, drunk on the triumph of the moment and excess energy that has kept me going in the darkness, but the truth is, the world still turns and life still goes on, and rest assured this time I know, I'll be with it every step of the way.

For now at least, there will always be this song to get me by and a blog to start working on again.

I've always been fascinated with stories set in dystopian worlds. If I could sum up the two great dystopian literature that I've taken to heart all these years, it would be Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty Four" and Huxley's "Brave New World". Both of which I could debate into the wee hours of the night summing up how they both parallel the world we live in today (and considering they were written in the 1930's and 40's, it's pretty amazing). These days I've taken to actually writing stories rather than just reading about them. It's not a particularly easy thing when compared to other people who have been writing stories since they were barely into their teens, I've only started all too recently. Then again, we all have to start somewhere.

I've sort of started working on this year's NaNoWriMo again. While last year's virgin effort was a success, I still found myself in great difficulty pressing forward simply because I never really answered the pressing question of how the world in my novel is really like. While I can come up with a million and one imaginary dialogues for my favourite science fiction and fantasy universes, those worlds already exist as it is. Creating a cohesive universe from scratch is not exactly an easy task for an amateur hobbyist, but I believe to make my next novel attempt work, I've got to at least try something new.

So it comes down to the genre I've picked and the world I'm trying to create. Biopunk, a little known genre where the use of biotechnology is culturally prevalent and socially accepted as machine parts and cybernetic brains are as common place in a Cyberpunk universe. It is in effect the antithesis to the Cyberpunk genre and as far as genre's like this go, the world that it's set in presents itself with a dystopian future. There in lies the monumental task ahead of me.

As far as I know and understand, a dystopian world is one where most of the citizens are primarily oppressed. The means of oppression does not matter for they may range from fear and brutality to entertainment and apathy, but as long as the citizens have their lives controlled by a central power, that itself is the basis for a dystopian setting. This in turn affects the science, culture, economy and most importantly politics of the world. The science of the world I'm trying to create I can handle with minimal input. Having a degree in both biotechnology and medical science does give me some advantages in this field. The rest however, primarily the economy of the a dystopian world, I do need a lot of input on.

The main problem I'm finding out however, isn't how the system would work in my story, it's why it has turned out that way to begin with. I've always envisioned cyberpunk worlds to be easier to swallow mainly because the plot devices and science behind the story can literally be a deus ex machina and we won't question it much. With genetics, it's harder to to just throw in some technical terms and call it a day. While fiction may work that way, the science doesn't. It's hard to swallow a story when the basis under it doesn't sound all too plausible.

So I'm writing notes on a some old school pen and paper notebook. As it is, I'm still working on creating an economy and a political system that runs on a culture driven by biotechnological progress, and I've yet to refine the culture and science behind it. Still, it's somewhat inspiring to go back to the roots of writing, when all you need was a feverish imagination and something tangible to write on. Not to say I've gone all hippie all a sudden, I'll still have to copy what I've manually written down onto my computer, but at least that is a start and I don't feel myself bogged down by it, neither should I be at this point.

What I really don't mind is having someone to talk to about refining the dystopian world I'm building. I feel the universe and its concepts should be bigger and more complex than what I can grasp right now. Sometimes it is a good idea to just wing it and go with the flow, but sometimes it's a good idea to create a reason why your characters should exist in the first place. It would be a big help to have more human input than just me scoring the web for things. Either way, I'll try and keep things updated on this point.

I really think that this is a good idea to start a novel on. With a little hope as much as effort, I'll see this to the end.