13 years, 8 months, 27 days, 13 hours.
Awakening 15’s cliffhanger finally continues. 16 is not a huge chapter installment; however, adding anything else to it feels like a disservice to the scene’s mood. Barring something truly surprising, I expect chapter 17 to show up only a couple weeks out from today if not sooner.
On one of the webcomics I catch up on most days (EGS), Dan Shive (the author and artist) usually provides some running commentary on each installment. Occasionally, he can’t make many comments without risking spoilers. I find myself in a similar predicament today - there are things I want to share about what I’ve fleshed out and rediscovered as I’ve poured new footings for this universe, but at this particular second, I don’t feel I can do that in depth.
I also considered just providing some “our story so far” notes, but don’t necessarily want a spoiler here for past chapters, either. They might show up in the RSS feed or otherwise, even if I spoiler-tag them with in-browser scripts. I’ll figure something out for a safe recap mechanism, eventually.
Instead, how about some reflection: What’s happened to me in those 13 real-life years since #15 went live?
- Graduated college. Twice.
- Found gainful employment.
- Moved to a new state.
- Made new friends.
- Learned entirely too much about sales and use taxes. And, somehow, still not enough.
- Wrote a lot of code. Excessive amounts in some places, not enough in others, objectively incorrect stuff in a couple spots. Fixed those, eventually…
- Bought the newest used car I’d ever owned.
- Joined a golf league.
- Held an intervention.
- Broke my wrist golfing. (Not at league, though.)
- Bought a house.
- Wondered if I bought the wrong house.
- Tried Twitch streaming. (Even achieved affiliate!) But determined that I tunnel-vision too much to pay attention to the game and chat at the same time, let alone narrate my inner monologue about the gameplay itself. Mad props to those who do it well.
- Went ice fishing with the new friends.
- Played Pokemon Go, Ingress, Pikmin Bloom, the Harry Potter one…
- Reposted lots of memes on Facebook.
- Got a message about one meme in particular.
- Explored the possibility of a date using a pokemon, a lego figurine, and a rubber duck.
- Planted a garden together. Grew a lot of weeds.
- Consolidated the tribes.
- Rented the old house out for a while.
- Bought a forever home.
- Got married.
- Got chosen by a dog. The cats objected, for a while.
- Said goodbye to my last grandparent.
It has been and continues to be a wild ride.
I thank those still here. I’m really not sure where to broadcast that the story is continuing; if you know of anywhere, or anyone who might be interested, feel free to share it out.