Tag Archives: state of the empire

So… I bought a house…

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I’ve been living here for five years now.

My lease was coming up for renewal in August, so I was going to ask for another extended lease and ask about an option to buy at the end of that.

The properly manager emailed me as I was getting ready to send that suggestion. “Your lease is up in August and the owner is looking to sell. Are you interested?”

Well, yes and no. But mostly yes.

That was back in late February. We spent some time going back and forth before we got an actual price. It was just good enough (and exceptionally good by most normal measures) that I could manage to make it work with the mortgage guy.

It’s going to be tight, budget-wise, but I’ll also not have to worry about moving.

And not moving was really the biggest driver of this.

Are you excited?

This is a totally unplanned purchase. I had a plan to get enough together to consider a purchase in the future, but, right at this moment, this was something very tough to make work. It’s been more or less pure luck that I can do this at all.

No, I’m not excited about this. I was excited about the other plans I was working toward for this year and next. But in order to make this work, I had to cancel all of those kind of big, kind of time-connected plans (they aren’t things that can just be rescheduled and still have the same meaning or impact).

I am fully and completely appreciative of how positive this situation is, overall. But the choice to do this was driving by practicality… and an absolute dislike of having to move.

But people seem pretty insistent that I should be excited. They’ve argued with me about it. Trying to convince me that I’m totally wrong about how I feel.

Please, don’t ever do that to anyone in any situation.

Believe people when they tell you how they feel. Accept it.

If you don’t, they’re going to stop being honest with you about how they feel. They may even stop talking to you altogether.

You have no actual insight or understanding about what’s going on inside someone else unless you actually listen to them. Their mind and heart is not your mind and heart. Good relationships are built on that understanding.

It’s just fine to be excited about the positive developments in someone’s life… and this is 100% a net positive development. So I’m fine with you being excited… just, y’know, don’t expect me to be excited in the same way (or at all). I’m still mourning the plans that had to be killed to make this work.

On a deeper level, this was never going to be anything other than a bittersweet event, even if it was something I’d planned for. Buying a house just for myself was never something I considered. It was always “supposed” to be a team effort and a shared adventure. Another one of those big “firsts” that’s just never likely to happen at this point. I’m still trying to be completely okay with that.

What’s next?

It’s time for my annual TableTop Day game event. I’ve been holding off on sending out the invite for that until all this house stuff was a “for sure” thing one way or the other. So that will be doubling as a preliminary housewarming party. But it’s not going to be quite as lavish as my Spring event usually is.

There aren’t a whole lot of renovations or other things that will be able to go on. The money just isn’t there for that. Yet. In another few years (or if I win the lottery), I’ve got a lot of plans.

There’s a lot that needs to be done in the yard. And I’ll be doing some of it anyway, since that was already in progress and it’s all just me doing manual labor (and I’m still somewhat capable of that).

Inside the house, maybe some paint here and there to change up some colors. Maybe some fixture updates here and there (if I can budget them in).

Mostly, though, it’s going to continue to be business as usual.

Except now I’ll be able to finally get rid of all those boxes I’ve been saving just in case I need to move again. (And everything that I was keeping around just in case the owners ever asked about them for some random reason.)

Most importantly…

The Durosian Empire is now officially landed… about a quarter acre and a nice, with a solid “castle” on it, in a nice quiet cul-de-sac in close proximity to all the important things.

Great things will come of this… once the coffers are refilled.

The State of the Empire

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Throne RoomThe last time I did one of these was back in 2011.

Back then there was a lot of wild change going on.

That wild change got a little out of hand and, well, it really hasn’t been worth looking at the state of the good ol’ Durosian Empire since then.

It’s pretty much been in steady decline, despite some flailing attempts at reclaiming some of its former (or, at least, planned) glory.

Most of those attempts didn’t last more than a post or two on most of my other web properties.

That, of course, led, to a lot of digital dust being gathered. (Not that this lack of follow-through stopped me from buying domain names for other ideas I had, mind you…)

In short, the last few years really haven’t been good ones when it comes to all my pet projects. So we’ll skip over the retrospective and focus on what isn’t, what is, and what I’m aiming for.

Gone But Not Forgotten

There are a few sites that just won’t be updated any more unless something really extraordinary happens. I won’t be taking them down, for one reason or another, but they’ll continue to gather dust.

How to Crush Without Being Crushed was a distinct casualty of time passing and things changing. There’s no good way right now for me to do anything worthwhile with it.

Presence @ Durosia.com, my freelance site, will also remain in mothballs. I learned the hard way that I can’t deliver freelance work when I’m working a day job.

My writing and gaming sub-domains for Durosia.com. Both of those were taken out by a patch I didn’t apply before an exploit got into the wild. Not that there was really a lot to lose on either of them. I may get them back up and running sometime later this year, but there’s currently not much point in that.

Moving Forward

There are a handful of things I’m planning on moving forward with over the next year. They fall into three categories: Projects, Events, and Interests.

Projects

The Searcher Journal, my metaphysical site, will be spun back up. Soon. Like maybe this weekend. I have a need to get back to some basics in this arena in my own life. In part to help recover from the past few years. In part to try to really figure out what I’m doing for the next few decades. So, Metaphysical Mondays may be returning very, very soon.

ToobTalk, my entertainment and review site, may get a little touch up and start getting new content again. I’ve been putting a bunch of stuff directly on Facebook (movie and show reviews, mostly short ones), so I may just try to get into the habit of doing those on my own property first.

Hat From Hell, my horror-flavored site, fell to the same unpatched vulnerability as a few of my other sites (was really too busy focusing on day job sites that needed the same thing done to worry about my own sites). I still have big plans for it, but need to put together a team and get content in order before I bother resurrecting the dead. Had hoped to get some of that done before the end of last year, but reality had different plans. We’ll see what this year brings.

Durosia.com, right here, will still be serving as the hub of everything else. I just need to keep it spinning. And touch up the paint job a bit. Tune it a little under the hood. Maybe extract all the really old blog posts from their hidden archive on a different platform and finally transfer them over here with the newer stuff.

Events

Every year for the last few years, I’ve hosted two board game events: International TableTop Day and Kier’s Spooky Game Day. Those will continue to happen, as people have generally enjoyed them and they give me an excuse to play at least some of the board games I’ve backed on Kickstarter.

I’ve been threatening to do some themed movie nights for well over a decade now. I want to get to at least two of them this year. That’s mostly just a question of figuring out when people are available. I do low-key “couch movie nights” on any Friday I’m not doing other things (those are when I watch movies I’ve never seen before but have been meaning to get around to). I may try to make those a little more structured (but still low key) and then toss a few bigger planned movie nights out there.

I really don’t have the venue for too much more than that.

Interests

I need to get back to getting out more. Or better at convincing people to come over and hang out. Either way, more trips out to movies, more impetus to get out to museums, lectures, and whatever else goes on out there in the world. More than just club nights.

Gaming, in general, is something I’ll definitely be doing more of this year. I’ve already been lucky enough to have a more or less stable Apocalypse World game that I’m running and a semi-regular Call of Cthulhu game I’ve been playing in. I will have at least one more game that’ll get pulled together for a new game coming out in February/March… that’s going to be a year-long commitment of a couple of sessions a month. And there are a lot of one-off/short duration games I’d love to run or play in. Most of that will likely happen through Roll20.net, which has served me quite well so far.

There are also a couple of interest group-like things connected to some of my projects that I want to get up and running. But those, as usual, hinge on people being interested and able to participate (preferably in person), so those won’t come easy. I’ll see what I can fit in, but, really, it’s all just more reason to get together with actual people more in settings where we can have actual conversations.

Roundup

So, that’s about it. Things have not been good. Some things are dead. Some things aren’t. And I’m mostly just trying to make some new stuff grow from the dried out husks that I have around here.

Guess we’ll see how that goes.

Hopefully, you’ll come along for the adventure.

 

The State of the Empire and a Special Offer

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Durosia-HeraldryApparently, it’s been a very long time since I’ve done a proper “State of the Empire” update.

Let me explain why in one word: Chaos.

It has been absolutely crazy around here in the past year or so. Upheaval in just about every direction you look. I’ve changed apartments, changed jobs (more on that in a minute), and had a lot of things to adapt to in my personal life.

So, while suffering the slings and arrows of “real life”, the idealistic realm of Durosia has kind of suffered a bit. Sure I’ve thrown out some token posts on Toob Talk and The Searcher Journal. Of course I’ve tried to keep up with things over at How to Crush Without Being Crushed. I’ve even managed to squeeze some posts out here (and over in the old blog archive). But none of that has come together quite as I’d hoped (yet).

Mostly, things have been changing behind the scenes. Underground, if you will, I’ve been digging down and building more solid foundations for all of these areas. Things like the migration of this blog to it’s own little subdomain and the complete update and redesign of Durosia.com are part of that.

Oh yeah, and I started my own business…

The biggest change has been parting ways (on good terms, of course) with the company I’ve been working with for the past handful of years. Now I’ve set out on my own (over at Presence.Durosia.com) to help people, organizations, and businesses focus in and tell their stories in ways that connect with their customers.

That’s been a long time coming.

A good hunk of that time has been spent learning about how business can work in the modern, interconnected, world.

See, I minored in business back in college, but that was just as the Web was taking off for the first time (and right before the first web bubble burst). A lot has changed since then. While I’ve kind of kept up on it (as part of my job), there was always more to learn that didn’t quite fit with my day job’s requirements.

So I turned to the current experts. The people doing things I was interested in doing. Living lives I wanted to live. People who were out there, breaking new ground, taking big chances, and making the new rules.

Now, as I push to get my own business up to speed, those people’s stories are serving heavily as my inspiration and my road map.

I want to share some of that knowledge with you.

Amazingly, the folks over at Only72.com have put together two fantastic packages of books and courses that I would have killed to get my hands on two years ago.

The first package is aimed at those just starting off on their own, a crash course in how not to crash and burn when you launch a new enterprise. It features thirteen courses from well-known online trailblazers like Danielle LaPorte, David Risley, James Clear, Lewis Howes, and others. Topics include how to best make use of the various social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook), how to connect with the top people in your target market, SEO techniques, productivity, and the new ways of thinking about (and doing) business that the Internet has given us.

That “business launcher” package is worth over $1000 and can be had for less than $100. Check out the full details.

The other package is more of the same, but bigger. There are 12 more programs from more big names (like Chris Guillebeau, Laura Roeder, Laura Roeder, Ashley Ambirge, and others) that will really help even the seasoned business person do more online (and off).

Each of the courses in the the “business amplifier” retails for well over $100. Plus you get everything from the launcher package, too. That’s over $4,300 worth of knowledge and experience. You can get it for just under $500. Go and see for yourself.

There is, of course, a catch…

This deal is only good for 72 hours (and it started selling at noon on Monday). After that, you’ll have to bounce all over the web (and pay a lot more) to get all this info on your own. And, trust me, you want this info–it will make your business life much easier (and more profitable).

That not enough incentive? How about if a portion of every sale goes to charity? This time around, the Only72 crew will be donating to The Women of the Americas Sustainability Project.

(And if you really want a more personal reason, if you buy through the links I’ve given you, it puts money in the Durosian coffers, too… which will significantly help reduce the chaos around here.)

Anyway, that all said, thanks for continuing to come around… even if things are a little dusty and sporadic every now and then.