I hate to lose.

I’ve never punched walls, doors, or other humans. I’ve not stormed off a playing field in anger or cursed to the sky, fists waving while rain pelted down on me. But the thought of someone else getting the better of me makes my blood boil.

Mine is a quiet anger, one that sits in my head and festers — playing back the details over and over again. With each playthrough, thinking of the words I should have said or the actions I could have taken.

It’s taken years of education and coaching to understand it doesn’t…

I’ll be the first to admit; I miss fawning over Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen in HBO’s smash hit series Game of Thrones. And while the TV show was groundbreaking in many ways, it is far from a perfect adaptation of George R. R. Martins’s five-book — and counting — saga.

To understand Martin’s vision for the story reading the source work is vital. Unlike TV, which leaves little to the imagination, reading builds the worlds in our heads. Putting our minds into action, creating the visuals as the words leap from the pages.

It takes a special breed of…

PUB CRAWL

Pub Crawl is a cross-publication collaboration. More about it here.

“Your work hasn’t been up to par, and we are putting you on a performance improvement plan.” said my manager very smugly.

My first thought was this has to be a joke. I’m one of the hardest workers on this team. I engage with my customers, provide quality service, and am utterly dependable under pressure.

He went on to explain he felt I neglected my long-term projects. Pushing the deliverables back or not completing them at all. I defended myself by saying that we are so busy working the day-to-day…

As a kid, my dad was always piling my brother and me in the car and taking us out to explore the woods. We called them “surprise walks” because we never knew where he would take us.

We’d hike for a few hours and end up at a spooky old house, a dark cave, or a run-down barn that we would explore. It was my first introduction to the outdoors, and I loved it.

I picked up mountain biking in my late teens and spent the next several years exploring the outdoors differently. …

Am I having a heart attack? Minor pain in the chest, shortness of breath, tingling in my arm. Googling symptoms of a heart attack, I have some signs of a cardiac event.

Then it all goes away. It lasted less than 10 seconds. I’m sure I’ll be fine. Panic attack or stress, maybe? Nothing to worry about; let’s get back to work.

This goes on for days. Lasting a few seconds, sometimes a minute, then nothing for several hours. One night I woke up and panicked that I couldn’t feel my arm. I jumped up, realized I had been lying…

Humor

I want to apologize to all the drones out there, you non-player characters — NPCs — of the world.

Apologize for what?

After the last week, it is pretty apparent that I alone control the fate of humanity. I have started to accept my newfound powers. But am still pondering a way to test the full extent of what I can do.

How do I know this, you say?

For one, look at this attitude I’m projecting. Clearly, it’s smug with a bit of benevolence thrown in; I did apologize after all.

But how, how do I know that I…

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

My first memory of Star Wars wasn’t of those iconic words on the big screen, nor was it the title crawl telling us the story to date. It wasn’t even seeing a lightsaber for the first time.

It was from a comic book, Star Wars Marvel Special Collector Edition #1, specifically.

I still have the comic; it’s not in the greatest condition, as you can see. That’s because 5-year-old me drug it around everywhere for months after getting it.