Weekly Update 87

I made it! I made it, *whew*

I knew I could make it. Ok, I am twenty-fours late. I really wanted to get one out this week because I am tired of missing updates. In my defense, tornado weather really altered my Sunday and Monday. I don’t know if it was a real tornado, or strong wind, but my school was a little broken. The gymnasium roof was torn free, the fence was broken, some of the benches and permanent things screwed into the ground were bent. We have to put proper school off until Wednesday.

I have spent my surprise free time watching anime. If you know how the world of anime works you know how easy it is to get behind. I was behind on Jujitsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer, but now I finished JJK and I am one season away from being caught up on Demon Slayer! I love these shows and if you like anime you will love those shows. Including my new favorite one.

I saw clips of Dandadan on Tik Tok and loved the opening, so I decided to try it out. I have only seen the first two episodes so far but Dandadan is my favorite anime of the season. Its presentation is on another level and the main conceit of it is so cool, it reminds me of older anime I watched when I was younger. I recommend you watch Dandadan and be as blown away as I was.

My agent was busy reading other people’s queries to get to mine. No agent yet, but still, I am here. This grind has been going on for a few years now, and I am a little upset at how comfortable I am with it. Now, I am back to the grind. See you all next week (on time)!

Weekly Update 86

You ever notice how high that number is getting? I’ve been on this track for awhile now… crazy how time flies.

In that time, I have not gotten an agent. That is what this website is for, in case this is your first time here. I am Seth Oberlender, a writer on a quest to become an author. I just realized I am a Pokémon that needs an agent to evolve! Crazy. Well, I still don’t have an agent. Still, I persist.

Life has been busy, and it is about to get busier. Halloween is this Thursday, and my school is in session the day after it. For those who have been away from public school for too long: that is a horrible situation. This week is, on paper, about to be very busy and hard. My teacher friends are all preparing for the worst. My father is very wise, and he always used to remind me I was in charge of how my day went. It was all perception. I will take his words to heart and go in today with the right attitude. I hope it sticks!

Halo is Halo, I have taken a small break from Halo 2 to watch Modern Family and Dimension 20’s Magic and Misfits season two. This week I am prepared to take steps on improving habits; cleaning, sleeping, reading, etc. I guess we will see next week how it all went! See you then. And happy Halloween!

Weekly Update 85

A dark, long cave. That was the metaphor I used when I first started querying agents. I mentioned how I needed to be patient as I traversed a long dark period of no response. I imagined myself in a small boat slowly being propelled by the current. Similar to the end of Beau is Afraid. I love that movie.

I still have no agent. And yet, I continue down this cave. Because I know it is not really a cave, but a tunnel.

Halo Reach was the last game in the Halo franchise by video game developer Bungie. Bungie is best known for Halo, Myth, Marathon, and their latest hit Destiny. I have been a fan of Bungie since I started playing video games, and I started with Reach, their last Halo.

It is very interesting that I started there. Reach is, to its core, a goodbye letter. It takes place before the events of the first game Halo: Combat Evolved and has several returning characters and references that set up where they are when the franchise starts. The tone of the campaign is dower with scene after scene of Humanity losing against the Covenant and the deaths of Noble Team; an elite squad of Spartans tasked with saving the planet Reach… they do not succeed.

When I was a kid, I knew I wanted to play Halo. I grew up seeing the famous image of Master Chief at GameStop and I loved him. I created a superhero based solely off his armor. It wasn’t until I got my first Xbox that I had the opportunity to play one, and the most recent one was Reach. It was rated “M for Mature” due to blood and violence. At the time there was no way my dad would have let me get an “M” rated game. I had to plead and beg. I told him the blood was alien blood, so it was more fantastical and not real than other “M” rated games. After weeks he let me get it, and I think my mom is the one who bought it for me. I remember playing the game at her house and I was hooked.

I was so new to video games I had no idea what a “save” was, so I played the first three missions on repeat, slightly annoyed I had to play the campaign in one setting. My Xbox Live friends explained I could save my progress and load whenever I wanted.

These memories hit me like a truck recently, and I can’t say why. This weekend I decided to boot up the Master Chief Collection and replay Reach. I did it all in one sitting, on easy mode. No skulls. It was… humbling. I never got the story as a kid. How could I when I only experienced the first two hours? Years later it finally made sense. The weight of it all made sense.

Bungie decided to move on after Halo 3 and started to plan their next intellectual property: Destiny. They knew Halo would stay a Microsoft product and made Reach a goodbye letter. Halo was handed to 343 Industries, and time shows how they have nearly destroyed the franchise. The best thing 343 did was remaster the first two Halos and sell them along with Halo 3 and Reach in one bundle called the Master Chief Collection. Halo is not what it used to be. But Reach is just as the same as when I was ten years old and didn’t know what “saving” was.

I am going to play through all of the Halos again (though I admit I never finished 2 or 3). I don’t have the words to describe how I feel, so I will simply say I am having a fun time.

Ok, time to get back to it. I will see you all next week.

Weekly Update 84

Bet you didn’t think I’d be here, huh? You probably thought I would forget to update you, huh? Well guess what?? I didn’t!

…and I don’t have an agent. That would be crazy energy to bring to my reveal post. I’m not sure yet exactly how I will update you when it happens. It is fun to think of, but also very sad.

Deadlock. Deadlock and not much else. I have been focused on school and Deadlock. I don’t have much else to say about Deadlock (except that you should play it) so here I am letting you know that I have spent my week working, watching Modern Family, and playing Deadlock. I still query, I persist.

I will see you all next week, and as always, with better news (I hope).

Weekly Update 83

Hold the door! Hold the door! Sorry I’m late! I missed my train last week and couldn’t update you all. But this time I made it! Look at me go. This is where I, Seth Oberlender, update you on my quest to becoming the greatest author in the world! If not that, then an author in the world.

So far, I have not gotten an offer of representation which means I am without representation. Still, I persist and scour the Earth for an agent.

I have not been writing as much as I should. I blame myself, and Valve. Valve is a gaming company known for games like Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, and DOTA 2. Oh, and they are responsible for the largest online gaming store front; Steam (get it? Valve released Steam?). They just “released” a new game called Deadlock and it is so, so fun.

It is a MOBA (multiplayer online battler arena) like DOTA or League of Legends, but this one is a third person shooter instead of a top down point and click traditional MOBA. I can’t stop playing it, and it isn’t even out yet.

The game is in “early development” but Valve still lets people playtest it, and it could be anyone. They started by releasing random invites to playtest the game on Steam and the cool part is if you have it, you can invite your friends to play. I asked someone online to invite me and now I am in the cool club that gets to play the game. To out the situation best I will steal from a comment I saw on Reddit: Deadlock is a sketch on a canvas that will turn into a painting. And that sketch its really good. Good enough to be a full game. It has voice acting, balancing, and a surprising number of characters. I am so glad I get to play it, and I can’t wait for the game to release completely some time in the next… future.

Ok, time to get back to Deadlock. See you next week!

Weekly Update 82

And then another week arrived. Hopeful, energetic, it waited patiently for you to open the door. Welcome back (or welcome for the first time to) Seth Oberlender’s weekly update. This is the part of the internet where I, Seth Oberlender, keep you updated on my journey to authorship by way of agent representation.

So far, I have not gotten an offer of representation. One day that message will change, but that day is not today. Still, I write, and still, it is hard and rewarding in a way that doesn’t feel that rewarding. I kid; writing is rewarding. When all the rejections compound it tends to alter how I view my current writing prowess. Still, I continue.

Ghost of Tsushima was on sale on Steam! I have had Ghost on my wish lists for holidays for years now and I am so glad I had the chance to finally get it. I heard great things about it and I am glad to say it has lived up to the hype. I actually have a lot to say about it, so I won’t. Not here anyway. I thought of a fun writing project around the game so we’ll see if I follow through with it… in case I don’t, I will leave my take here: it’s a great game, and I believe it will go down as one of my all-time favorites.

And then the update was over. I hope one day I can start one of these with great news, I hope that day is closer. I know, it must be closer, that’s how time works. I mean I hope I am “over the hump.” I hope that I have already survived the longest stretch of not getting representation. I hope I am in the back half of waiting. Only time will tell. See you next week, I hope you treat this one well.

Weekly Update 81

Welcome back, I hope you had a wonderful week! This is Seth Oberlender’s update blog on his journey to becoming an author. I am Seth Oberlender. Hello.

I have continued to submit queries to agents but have not been offered representation. Sad, yet I persist.

The past week has been standard, but exciting for the upcoming weeks I will spend at camp. My school sends their students to a youth camp once a year and I am lucky enough to go twice this year. I love the camp we go to for one simple reason: I don’t have to do anything.

As a youth I hated camping. I actually don’t mind the classic tent and campfire camping, I am talking about summer programs, specifically church camps (the kind I was sent to). I couldn’t explain why I didn’t for years. I always said I just didn’t like being there with strangers. I had fun moments and met cool people, but I never had a consistently good time. Until now.

At the camp I go to with my kids, I am not a camper. I am not even a councilor! I am simply there to observe and help… and it is SO MUCH FUN. No one is making do things, I don’t have to stay in a group, and I have so much free time in nature. I do help with activities like fishing, archery, hiking, etc. However, none of it is like it used to be because I am an adult. I also get to ride in and drive a golf cart. Literally the best time ever.

This update is coming to you the day before I leave, and I will be leaving again next week. So don’t get too jealous of me reading Walden in the safety of my air-conditioned cabin. See you next week!

Weekly Update 80

Well, howdy there… partner. Sorry for the weird energy. I didn’t update you on Monday last week because I was hanging out with my friends! Yes, I do have friends.

Agent? Nope. It sucks. It doesn’t help that I just watched a retrospective on Sarah J. Mass’s career, and I can’t help but be envious of her popularity and success. Despite my hang-ups, I persist.

In life, I have been working. Newcastle doesn’t have school on Fridays except for the first Friday of each month. Last Friday was this year’s first Friday and it is hard to work those days. We got through it though. Now I am stuck with a normal two-day weekend that I am slowly dwindling away. Woo.

Today I spent some time playing the remaster of Command and Conquer. If you do not know what Command and Conquer is, well let me enlighten you: I’m not sure myself. I have been a “gamer” for years and the biggest lesson I have learned is that there is always a game from before you started that you would be lucky to play. Command and Conquer is one of those games. The remaster was on sale about a year ago, so I snagged it but didn’t touch it until today. It was very cool to see the old FMV (full motion video) cutscenes and the older graphics jumping to the new modern look. As for the game? It was cool. Command and Conquer is the “grandfather” of top-down, base-command-tactical-combat. It makes me think of mobile games today, and more famous games like StarCraft (a game I have played and like) and Warcraft (a game I have not). It feels smooth and fun even years later, and for some reason: fair. If you spend all your resources to attack an enemy base and all your units die, then your base is open to be attacked. It kind of makes me think of Minecraft: there is no “base” the game recognizes as a “base,” just a bunch of systems that you can put anywhere which means your “base” can literally be anything. In Command and Conquer your base can be any shape as well, and if you make a decision like I detailed above, there are reasonable consequences. It is extremely cool to realize how broad the systems feel in a game. I wish I got to experience the original games, but I was not born when the first one released in 1995… so I’m fine with playing the new game.

Ok, time to get back to begging agents for their attention. See you all next week, Commanders (that’s a Command and Conquer reference).

Weekly Update 79

Welcome back! I put off writing this update too long, so it is going to be short and sweet.

Nope. No agents. That would be wild if I revealed I got a response in an update as short as this one.

Life is life and life is fine. Work is progressing slowly, and I am just now realizing the exact cycle my life is turning into: ten months of work, two months of rest. I have been writing more and watching more movies.

The thing I am writing is cool, but there is no way I could let you know about it. It is far too young, far too fragile to be revealed. Despite that, my ideas for it are simply too cool for me not to want to reveal. What a special hell for me.

Ok, time to get back to work and writing. See you all next week!

Weekly Update 78

Number’s getting pretty high there.

Hey! Welcome back. My name is Seth Oberlender and I am a writer trying to break out of my cocoon and become an author. The metaphor is pretty thin because I need help to do that, unlike the caterpillar… anyway.

I am currently searching for an agent and so far, have come up empty handed. I started this blog in an attempt to show prospective agents my skills as a writer, my consistency, and my steps toward finishing my book. I finished the book a long time ago. If you are an agent reading this, the book is titled The Void Full of Starlight, and it has received rave reviews from some very biased people. If you would like to read it, please let me know.

A blog consisting only of a desperate plea is short and unbecoming, so here is the part where I tell you about my personal life. Aside from writing I have been trying my hardest at my day job: fifth grade English teacher. The year just started and so far, it is going well. I feel like I have learned so many things from my first year but have forgotten so much practical knowledge. Regardless, “Mr. O” is back and better than ever.

We started the year talking about Henry David Thoreau. I love Thoreau, so I was very excited to read his biography (even if it was stripped and condensed for elementary schoolers). It felt good to use knowledge gained from college, I don’t use that information nearly enough. Outside of school I have been trying new things and returning to some old pastimes. I am several hours into GTA 5’s story mode and I have started to take running a bit more seriously. These are simply the “new interest” my brain has jumped too. I am also into Magic the Gathering, Lorcana, Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, anime, movies, sitcoms, and books. I used to get overwhelmed and suffer from decision paralysis, but recently I have decided to not let my shifting interest get to me. I was playing VR games nonstop only a week ago and I don’t feel guilty for stopping. I was committed to playing Animal Crossing every day at the beginning of the month, but I have no interest in returning to it any time soon. I have a lot of things I think are cool, and that is ok.

Sorry for getting weird at the end, it is extremely easy to start talking like I am talking to myself. One day, people will look back at these blogs and try to find hints of my stories or who I was. But right now, it’s just me and my keyboard.

See you next week.

Weekly Update 77

Hey there! This is Seth Oberlender’s weekly update blog.

So far, I have not gotten an agent.

Despite that I am still writing. My day job has started though, so writing is forced to the back seat. I refuse to stop writing, so I will set aside time after school if I can.

School is… school. The second year is going better than the first, but it only just started. The kids are still quiet but getting more comfortable. I feel confident when it comes to teaching though, and I start teaching English today. We will see how that goes.

Surprisingly I am getting back into the Grand Theft Auto franchise. I recently found my old Achievement Hunter Heist card game and that lead to watching their old heist videos in GTA 5. I have decided to replay GTA 5 to pass free time.

I have an odd relationship with GTA. I didn’t play a “rated M for mature” games for years but no kid was immune to the first GTA 5 trailer. I loved Saints Row titles and other open world games and everything I loved about them seemed to be perfected with GTA 5: large world, plethora of things to do, places to discover, and interesting characters. Because of GTA 5 I am one of the millions waiting patiently for GTA 6.

Ok, time to get back to writing, teaching, and stealing cars for money. See you all next week!

Weekly Update 76

And like that we are back. If you have not read my past updates: welcome! If you are a returning reader: welcome! All are welcome here.

This is the part of the internet where I keep those who are interested updated on my quest to become a traditionally published author. This means I need an agent. Unfortunately, I have not found an agent. Still I query, still I persevere.

If you want to know more about me, this is the half of the update where I mention what is happening in my personal life. Tomorrow is the start of my second-year teaching. I am excited and nervous, but nowhere near as nervous as my first year. I can’t wait to meet my kids and get to know them.

Despite my excitement, I am a little dower concerning this new milestone. I have been looking for an agent for a long time now. Longer than I expected, longer than I hoped. At this point it has been a little more than a year since I wrote my book. That is very upsetting and downright debilitating, if I can be honest with you. I am still chugging forward, but the weight is getting heavier and heavier.

I plan on writing more once school starts. I don’t want to see this part of me die or be shoved aside. One day I will look back at this period and be proud in myself for not giving up. Until then, I must continue “not giving up.”

See you next week, Mr. O is back in business.

Weekly Update 75

Welcome back to Seth Oberlender’s corner of the internet. This is where I, Seth Oberlender, keep those interested updated on my journey to becoming an author.

I have yet to hear back from an agent, but not from lack of trying. I am still submitting queries and not giving up. Despite how hard it gets.

In my personal life, I have been playing more VR games. Years ago, I bought a Valve Index and loved it, but I moved a lot and with every move it became a hassle to set it up. Since I am more permanently settled than before I decided to set it up and it has been a blast. I hope that VR becomes more available in the future because the experience is amazing, but also very limited. There aren’t enough VR titles yet which makes the experience limited to only a few… experiences.

School starts this week. Technically I don’t get students until next week, but I am a teacher again starting today. I am ready, but I am still upset at losing summer.

Ok, time to get back. See you all next week!

Weekly Update 74

HELLO! Sorry, I hope that didn’t scare you away. I was just excited to see you again. I had to miss the last two weeks because I have been focused on moving. Yes it is finally done and I am loving it.

First: no. No agents. I got another rejection so that was nice.

My new house is great! It is perfectly “Me” sized and Winry loves it. When we first moved, I loved the novelty of her walking into other rooms. At my old apartment she was locked to the ground floor because she wasn’t shown how to climb stairs. I decided to not show her at the time because she was a puppy and chewed everything. Seeing her pop into a room I am in is just so cute! The rest of the house is wonderful: it is bigger, cheaper, and closer to school. I am excited to wake up here and I feel accomplished when I complete a chore.

Aside from unpacking and setting up, I have been playing video games and attending meetings for school. The Steam Summer Sale has come and gone by now, but I was able to snag Hitman: World of Assassination for a fraction of the cost. Now, some of you might be aware of the nasty tactics IO Interactive took when marketing the sale. It is also a little hard to describe… and super interesting to me.

Hitman is a game genre that has been around since 2000. As a “gamer” from the early 2010s I first played Hitman: Absolution in 2012. Like most of the games in the series players control a contract killer named 47. The game play revolves around infiltrating secure compounds and assassinating a target. This formula has altered slightly every game. For example: Absolution boasted manufactured accidents to kill targets. The games also had linear levels that were gone the second the player moved onto the next level. Fun but slightly aged. This all changed in 2016.

In 2016 IO released Hitman. Hitman (2016) is a reimagining of the entire franchise. It looks sleeker, more modern, and with a new game design impetus (I feel the need to specify I am not a games journalist). I used to play Hitman (2016) a lot when I was in high school and it was so much fun! Now, all levels had multiple avenues to kill the target(s) and really motivated players to replay them. Any location has twenty to thirty challenges that give the player experience points if they pull off the challenge and extract safely. This means a player can play the Paris level many, many times and still get rewarded to trying new things. With enough experience points the players increase their “location mastery” which awards new places to start the level, new places to hide tools, and more tools that can be used in other levels. So, I loved Hitman (2016). What about Hitman: World of Assassination?

That’s the thing! IO released two sequels to Hitman (2016): Hitman 2 and Hitman 3: World of Assassination. With every new installment, IO added more story missions and locations… but they never got rid of the old ones! I paid for “Hitman 3,” but I also got the full content for Hitman (2016) and Hitman 2, a game I totally missed. I got three games for the reduced price of one! I have been replaying missions from Hitman (2016) and I am having a blast. If you like games like early Assassin’s Creed games or even modern rogue likes like Hades then I recommend Hitman: World of Assassination.

Now, what about those nasty marketing tactics? Well, on the Steam Summer Sale page, Hitman: The World of Assassination was listed as 90% off. This was partially true. IO decided to dissect the game into chunks (a move that many game developers have done and that I don’t have the time or experience to talk about here) and only one of those chunks was 90% off for the sale. That one chunk was effectively 20% of the base game. This was also elevated by the fact many people were upset that the Steam Summer Sale didn’t have a lot of good sales like years past. A lot of people paid for 20% of a game expecting 100% of it. Personally I think the problem lies in how modern video game developers and publishers market and butcher their own games in order to milk them dry for profit… but you didn’t come here for that.

Well now I want to play more Hitman. So, see you next week! Please stay safe and enjoy your summer!

Weekly Update 73

Well, hello again! It has been one whole week, and what a week it was.

Not in the sense of my writing career. Still no agents. Still looking…

My family vacation took place in Branson Missouri. We got an AirBnB near Table Rock Lake and we all had a blast. We swam in the pool, we took a go cart tour of a near by resort, we went to the Titanic Museum and a small zoo, and we went shopping. The best part was being with my family, but on Friday I had to say goodbye. My family went back home while I went to Kansas City to see an old friend!

This second smaller vacation was also very fun! We played games, went to the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, watched movies, and got crepes. I decided to drive myself and stay in Missouri because this friend and I had tickets to see Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties in St. Louis. That was so, so cool! That makes three concerts I have been too and I am so excited to go to more. The band was amazing and if you don’t know who they are I recommend looking them up and The Wonder Years, the lead singer and founder’s first band.

This is the last update I am writing in my current apartment. A solid year of living here, writing here, and changing here. What can I say about it? I expected to write more. I expected to get an agent here and finish an entire second book… instead I became a teacher, made new friends, got a dog, and started several more projects. I am thankful I found this place when I did, but I don’t know how fondly I will look back on it. I am more excited to see what I will do in my new quadplex.

Ok. See you next week after I move and get things settled. I hope you have had a year of growth, and I hope you can stick with me as I become an author. Who knows how much longer I have to wait.

Weekly Update 72

Hey there! If you are reading this, I am on vacation. Well, I guess I am on vacation even if you are not reading this. The difference this time is I am not writing this for the week it is designed to be covering but instead as a preemptive measure. So, what do we talk about?

Well, let’s talk about me.

I am a writer. I sometimes forget the purpose of this little project; to introduce myself to prospective agents that stumble upon my website from my query letter. I need to remind myself sometimes that I must be more professional here in case one agent does read this, but I have no way of knowing if they do. So, let’s assume that the person reading this is an agent.

Hello! I hope that introduction wasn’t too strong, I am just very glad you are here. Please make yourself comfortable while I tell you a bit about myself.

I am a writer. I write for multiple reasons, but I think the most important and most prevalent one is inspiration. I am constantly inspired by the world around me. It is very common for me to be in a mundane environment enjoying a simple or provincial activity to be suddenly submerged in deep thought. Thoughts about robots and aliens, thoughts about wizards and dragons. It doesn’t matter what starts these thoughts, only that I am left with a burning desire to explore this new idea. I let them germinate in my brain for hours, sometimes years, before daring to put them on page.

I am an incubator. When I was in second grade my teacher told us we would be hatching live chicks in the classroom. She explained we would need a special device to make sure the chicks would hatch, a device known as an incubator. This large white cabinet showed up in the room one day, bigger than any of us second graders with a thick clear lid that protected a mesh floor. We got eggs and weeks later gross, wet birds were in the classroom. That’s me. I’m the big white machine, and my ideas are wet sickly-looking chicks, eyes wide and scanning. Several of my ideas still need more time to “cook,” but a few are ready to be hatched. So far one has been able to grow from its sliminess. It has thin little legs and a scrawny body, but it can walk, it can chirp. Now, all it needs is someone to help it fly.

As corny as the metaphor got, I am still proud of this chick. We have been waiting for awhile now for someone to help it fly. Maybe that person will arrive soon.

I am working on hatching other chicks, though the work has become more tedious since the first one hatched. I am also playing Destiny 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3 more and more as the summer progresses. I am almost halfway through Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and I am loving it!

That is all. Please excuse any cringe present in this update, you are very brave to have read this far. See you all next week!

Weekly Update 71

What a journey we have been on. Sure, the journey has been a little boring compared to other journeys, but this one is mine.

Still no agents despite my efforts. I have nothing more to say on that.

I was able to see The Fellowship of the Ring in a movie theater with my dad and my sister’s girlfriend! It was magical. I explained to my sister’s girlfriend that as I get older Lord of the Rings means more and more to me. As a kid it was boring and scary… but now I almost cried multiple times finally seeing the story on the big screen.

For those curious it was the extended edition, a form that I prefer but I do not recommend to first time viewers. Don’t you worry fellow nerds: I warned my sister’s girlfriend (who hadn’t seen any of the films before) that starting with the extended editions is a bad idea but we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see it in theaters. I am very thankful we went!

Ok, I’m going to go. Time to query more agents! See you next week.

Weekly Update 70

And like that a new week comes. Hey! I am Seth Oberlender. I am a writer on his journey to becoming an author.

This weekly update used to be a place for me to update people on my progress writing my first book: The Void Full of Starlight. This was the case until I finished the book and started to query agents. I have been querying agents for more than a year now. The journey has been more than long. It has been humbling, it has been disheartening. Yet still I persist.

I am still querying to this day, and I have plans to make the likely hood of being traditionally published higher. I will let you know about that plan once it has taken more shape. For now, keep your eyes and ears peeled for news here.

Destiny 2’s latest expansion comes out TOMORROW! This means next update will be full of my opinions on the end of this grand story. As I write this update I am six hours and forty minutes into a ten hour video on the entire ten year story by a wonderful youtuber and Destiny fan “My Name is Byf.” I am overflowing with reverence and nostalgia at the idea of this story I have been experiencing coming to an end. Memories from most of the story (I never really played the raids and missed several seasonal story lines) are coming back to me in waves. I spent ten years of my life on this game, and it is shocking to realize that makes almost half my life impacted by Destiny. I have been a guardian since the beginning, and I am so excited to be there for the climax.

Sadly, I must wait one more day. And you must wait one more week to hear from me. See you next week, and if you happen to be a fellow guardian of the last safe city on Earth: Eyes up, guardian.

P.S. My father wanted a shout out, so this is it! Love you buddy.

Weekly Update 69

Nice.

Anyway, hello again! Been awhile, like, a whole week. And today marks the beginning of my summer vacation (if you don’t count the weekends)! So far so good. I am excited to take a break and come back to teaching with new energy and some experience. I am not only a teacher on his first summer vacation; I am also a writer trying to become a published author.

So far I have yet to receive an offer of representation. Still going, still going… like Forest Gump. That’s me. Still running.

Summer has been good to me so far and I have spent that time playing Destiny. I am going to try and take a break this week because of the upcoming DLC. The next update will be right before The Final Shape releases, how exciting! I plan on enjoying Alan Wake, Persona 5, ROOT, and DOTA 2 this summer as well.

I am also reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. I mentioned this to you a long time ago and I am pleased to say I have come back to it after a long break. It is such a fun story, and I am only fifty-five pages in. The characters are extremely well written, and the world building is well thought out. So far, I recommend it if you like science fiction and aliens.

I am going to try writing more this week than ever before. Stay tuned for how that will work…

Ok! Time to get back to work (and by that I mean not work), see you next week!

Weekly Update 68

…so, you might have noticed that the number of these updates is getting larger. Yes, obvious observation. Some might have also noticed that the number is getting close to a certain number that some people might find “funny.” I will in no way be encouraging these people. Be warned.

This week I have not received a positive response to a query. That sucks, but I can move on. A wise character once said, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…” a shame the voice actor is a little problematic now.

In my personal life, work is… working. I have one more week which means by next update I will be a free man! Well, a man on summer vacation. I am trudging to this finish line, weighed by the stress of to-do lists and negative coworkers. I can do it, but it sure won’t be easy.

I have also been playing more Destiny which has been fun and oddly refreshing despite the grinding I have been doing. For those who don’t know, in video game terms “grinding” means doing something repeatedly, usually to get some item or reward. Destiny is all grinding. That gets tiring quickly but right now it doesn’t feel that bad.

Now, if you have been reading the past few updates, I have been hinting at a few new writing projects. I have decided to shift my newest idea and pursue it more during the summer. If I in any way enticed you in the other updates please be assured something is coming soon.

Ok! Time to get back to life. See you all next week! Summer, here I come…