2022 Report Card

  It has been a while since we published in this but methinks I will restart it, covid disrupted the best laid plans

Tom

1. Finish Army of Fire (Alpha) B+ -Got to 109000 out of likely 117000, and this in spite of some major writers block

2. Research and Start Eternally East (Outline complete)-B+ -Major change of direction (for the better) outline finies and around 40 pages of a draft that will never be done

3. Complete the script and production plan for Sins of Silicon Valley-A- -Production Plan is pretty light but the script is done despite major blocks and I do have a plan I hope to improve on

4. Get to 250lbs and stay that way until the end of the year.-D -Gained weight but did exercise 2-3 times a week

5. Sketch 2-3 minor projects-D -Started out well but got psychological block midway though due to very stupid assignment, finished part of one project

Overall: B- Not the best year, not the worst

Julia

1. Keep food journal -D -Started but meh

2. Research and get outline done for own story-F

3. Do Crow position in Yoga-B -Worked on and in progress

4. Do Wheelbarrow position in Yoga- B

5. Practice piano- C -Did while had access to ine

Over Grade: C+ -May not have accomplished specific goals but has accomplished a lot in terms of professional growth and took care of myself and stress levels much better than before

Couple

1. Go to Europe -A+ -Trip to Paris w Wayne and Helen and their daughter was fabulous and memorable

2. Go to New Orleans- A -We FINALLY got to see the jazz festival, great food and great memories

3. Get involved in the local Fet/K community. -B -Progress was made but we both tabled it for a while and will pick up next year

4. Keep working on Fruitloop  -B -Still going strong not as strong as it could have been

5. Discover Interesting passionate literature -B- -Julia gets and a+ I get a C+ here

6. Investigate rp-F - We did not do this together at all

Overall: Tom rates: B+ Julia rates: B+ So B+ We had challenges but overcame them

Other noteworthy items:

Did a major move including Uhaul, finding a place via airbnb across a thousand miles and brought an aminal in a great town we both love

Julia got a FANTASTIC job at UMass

Created a chapbook of epic poems and weird stories

Explored some of Massachusets and went to Salem on a great trip

Julia got to go to an epic Anne Rice Vampire ball

Tom got Pericuolo Narr out of Orlando (Roleplaying game)

Attended a family reunion in Utah w the Ricks clan and we made an epic and hilarious music video w my niece 

Goals Are My Religion

 Check out Emmit Other's poem!

https://poetizer.com/poem/360448835

When I left the LDS Celestial Pyramid Scheme

October 26, 2007 at 8am

(a date I celebrate every year)

I thought I had left Religion behind

I was and am still very Spiritual

But that path as an animist

Is complex and sundry

But in hindsight

I did retain a religion

Even if it isnt spiritual

But there are rituals

And self covenants

Every year I make goals

But unlike most

By and large I kept them

Year by Year

Though 2020 was rough

I didnt even set them in 2021

And I got out of the habit

But in 2022 

I found that ole time religion

And 2023 will be even better.

https://tinyurl.com/3c6mxeyr

Seven Lives For Living

 Check out Emmit Other's poem!

https://poetizer.com/poem/1928285193

Thirty was when my life started

Thirty was the age

Like Logan's Run 

That the Satanic Verses

That is/was LDS policy

Moved a man from the Singles Congregation

To the General Population

If you dont marry in LDS theology

You dont go to the highest level

Of the Celestial Pyramid Scheme

And while five years before I got out

I realized then and there

Defining my life

By who I married (if anyone)

Or how I worked

In one meaningless technical writing contract

After another

Was a recipe for regret and failure

So while I still dated 

And still worked

I came up with something more than a bucket list

And less than a lifetime commitment

Seven lives I could live

With all the time I had left

The first was roleplaying games

I made and sold seven supplements

Peaking in the Fate of Inglemia

The things I have done amd seen

I was and am a player of games

And my Pinnacle

Was gaining the respect of my peers 

The Second Life was Writing

Seven Novels would I write

Seven now almost done

Nine thousand words away

The final novel in Inglemia itself

A lifetime worth for certain sure

Emmit is a side bet

A lifetime ironically greater

Than Rhombus himself

And here I sought to prove my worth

Also by the respect of my peers

Until SFWA proved it had no worth in my eyes

By hiring two sociopaths to judge my work

Unjustly

And no one one is my peer but me

As it should be

As it should be

In this life I retire like Stephen King

(Not that I am that good mind)

But rather my retirement

Is 'retirement'

But I still write five to 12 more books

At my own pace

Just because I can

The third life is movies and producing

I have done three worthy ones

Next year after a ten year hiatus

After healing from my Ex

I am doing the documentary 

The Sins of Silicon Valley

And will then do three more

Maybe seven plays as well

Who knows what Tom Drake will do

The fourth live is Project Management

A feather in my cap at the start

By completing my masters in the same

After being drummed out

Of (for me) a nigh impossible masters 

In Molecular Biology

Three projects have I done

Worthy of a Master Accomplishment

Mentoring, Biographers  (donish) and Inspiring

I do not know if four more await

Of this life

I am most unsure

For I will know a great work

When I see it

I am two thirds of the way there

Maybe more happen

Maybe they dont

The fifth life is my spiritual path

Seven roles in time

My path is my own

My path is my own

Five of Seven roles fulfilled

Two to go in time

Two to go in time

The Sixth is Servant Leadership

I am just getting started

A quest for each shard

We will see what we will see

The seventh is undefined

And may never be lived

For a man should always aspire to more

One that they can do before their last breat

Never settling always moving

We will see what we will see

We will see what we will see

2022 Goals

 It has been a while since we published in this but methinks I will restart it, covid disrupted the best laid plans

Tom

1. Finish Army of Fire (Alpha)

2. Research and Start Eternally East (Outline complete)

3. Complete the script and production plan for Sins of Silicon Valley

4. Get to 250lbs and stay that way until the end of the year.

5. Sketch 2-3 minor projects

Julia

1. Keep food journal

2. Research and get outline done for own story

3. Do Crow position in Yoga

4. Do Wheelbarrow position in Yoga

5. Practice piano

Couple

1. Go to Europe 

2. Go to New Orleans

3. Get involved in the local Fet/K community.

4. Keep working on Fruitloop 

5. Discover Interesting passionate literature

6. Investigate rp

2020

Our Goals
1. Go to Finland
2. Go to Hawaii
3. Take 5 Dance Classes at the local place.

Julia Goals
1. Take care of herself
2. Get a job
3. Get her digital certificate
4. To keep the cat healthy

Tom Goals
Physical: To start and maintain heavy exercise program
Mental: Do some kind of art project this year
Spiritual: To listen to people who I disagree with but who don't lie to me more
Emotional: To enjoy the Now more
Social: To get a new group of friends in an area I havent so far

Life goals will be set Introspection Day

Our Year

It has been a good and terrible year.

Both Julia and I ended up losing out jobs.  This has led to an unfortunate situation where we may be temporarily separated while I look for a temporary contract to pay the bills in Sunnyvale while Julia finishes her internship but let's focus on the positives for this year and it is quite a year of positives.

*Julia might no longer be at St Thomas, but she is NO LONGER under the thumb of Larry Treadmill the IV and Jessica who were emotionally abusive filth.
*Julia was accepted into the Digital Museum Certificate program for John Hopkins university and will be interning for a few months at the absolutely fantastic Wolfsonian Museum
*I have a new direction career wise and a specific plan on how to get there that will forever break the cycle of bullshit I have been dealing with in the job sector I have been in.
*We had a fantastic trip to New York City and got to do a lot there.
*We are ending the year with a lovely trip to Sunnyvale where so far we have ben able to visit China Town, a fantastic Corset Store and the Monteray Aquarium.
*I made some absolutely epic podcast episodes.
*We had lovely weekend trips to Atlanta and Del Ray beach where we met new friends.
*We took a fantastic week long trip to New Orleans where Julia was able to go to ALA and we also went to the amazingly appropriate WWII museum
*We finally got to do a lot of the museums in Miami we had been hoping to go to including the Wolfsonian.
*We love each other even more than before and have completed all of our goals as a couple.
*We have both made new friends both individually (my LARP and Julia through work) but as a couple.

Negatives this year include
The loss of Sebastian, the best dog in the world
The rapid decline and near death of my Grandmother Lockey Lawson
Anything and everything involving politics or, god forbid international politics.

2019 looks to be a year filled with hope and fantastic opportunity.  A year to apply lessons learned and 'the best way to go is up'.  There will be challenges, but 2018 helped us both get tools and perspectives to help us meet those challenges.

A Year of Finding Out Who I am

TLDR For those who are mainly here to find out how I did

1. Complete Book of Heliotropic which means Fruitloop (10K written) and 12 stories for this project.
-F as written.
-C- for the revised goal of completing the 5th novel since I wrote a total of 20K words for the year and wrote 10K for the sequel to Forever West.

2. Be fit.
-C+ - I have learned and implemented a weight lifting regime I can do anywhere and exercized lightweight walking twice a week nearly every week.  I have eaten a bit better and taken my meds very consistently.  I can do a lot better.

3. Spend 100 hours learning to draw.

-C- 30+ hours of drawing.  I got the tools for the job and used them, more at the beginning of the year and made a slow but steady improvement.  There is a lot to do here, but I did work toward the goal and have no intent of giving it up.

Broadly speaking, this year was a solid C based purely on the simplified goals.  Because I was trying to pare things down, I didn't have bonus goals to make up the grade, but while I am keeping the letter grade for sheer consistency, I am changing the entire method I implement these goals; and that's a good thing.

Personally, present self considers this year a B+ nevertheless for a lot of reasons.

The most significant thing that happened this year was a major family fight in which I was in the wrong exposing previous family wrongs.  I learned a lot of valueable lessons from that fight including
*Who is on my side
*People simply do not need to hear truths that they do not want to hear
*There is a lot of value to be had from relationships that are something that is not friendship, aquaintance or that I can put any emotional trust in.
*You can get past a fight without needing to make an apology or receive one.  To quote a wise brother, "just move on."

The result of this fight was, among other things, no longer feeling obliged to not attack the LDS church.  This caused me to make 8 episodes to which you can find the link here.  (https://tinyurl.com/yb6xvex3) That link uses two sites that might not stand the test of time, pastebin and tinyurl but it seemed a good way to aggregate the data.

There were permanent consequences for this, not just lessons learned.  I was called a threat to children by my brother in law and threatened with a lawsuit.  As a result of it, I can't go to family reunions and there is a standing agreement with my eldest sister for mutual nonconsent.  I was in the wrong about airing my grievances to my sisters (especially in HOW I did it) but the escalation violated not only the basic standards of human decency but also the basic standards of Christianity and the LDS church.  I learned a lot about humanity and also learned a lot about myself.

I've learned that there really is no point with trying to reconcile political impossibilities with those who refuse to see reality for what it is.  The sooner we accept this, the sooner we can try and find solutions, difficult to nigh impossible as they might be, the sooner we can work towards the solutions that will actually work but that do not require depending on people who will never ever accept responsibility or the truth for anything.

I learned that kindness is impossible when clouded by anger and it is the meat by which we lead decent lives.  In one of my novels, my 'author avatar character' is actually divided into 3 (the 6th novel in case you cared) Mr. Right, Mr. Kind and Mr Necessary, and in writing it I realized the flaws of having one without the other, but long had (At that time) written off being "Mr Right" with all the real and untrue hubris that implied, while never truly wanting to be Mr Necessary and feeling that while I had been Mr. Kind, that this was simply no longer possible.

I now know that not only can I be all three of these 'people' but it is absolutely vital for me to be who I am.  Mixing all three into one person requires that I am kind but honest.  It means that while I am honest and confront evil without hesitancy, it also means that I am under no obligation to be kind to those who would take my attempts at kindness and throw it in my face.  Telling people truths they do not want to hear isnt bearing witness and it isn't kindness, it is just asking for trouble, and smart people-ie people like Mr Necessary, don't give up informatoin that they dont need to because knowledge is power.  Kindness is generosity, so anyone who WANTS advice, who wants my opinion or my council is welcome to it.  Mankind is and should be my business.  The 'its a wonderful life' and 'christmas carol' standard does apply and I've applied it to myself to the best of my ability in one form or another for as long as I have lived.

What does this mean for 2019?  I have about half or a third, depending on the luck of health and longevity, of a third of my life left.  By being kind and active, I can have great happiness, and by applying the lessons learned this year I will never again emotionally invest in a human being who isnt worthy of my time without at the same time becoming an isolated bitter tower.  Mankind should and will be my business and I intend to go about the world, to bear witness to the evil in it and work to make it a better place, but to be as close to the old self I was, Mr. Kind, the now done present self of seeing the truth for what it is, Mr Right, but the doer of deeds who uses knowledge in the most efficient means possible to get things done.  It is time I became Mr Necessary, but the Mr Necessary at the end of Heir of Sunfire who has the wise council of Mr Right and Mr Kind to know WHEN and HOW those actions should take place.

In short, for the first time since I changed the name of this blog to "Shards of a Broken Soul" to "Shards of a United Soul" I can say that those shards, now united, are also now healed and working together.

It is going to be a good year no matter what hand fate deals.