State of the Silas: 2013-14

It's been an eventful year. I became a father, I became a published author, and I discovered just how badly my brain had been screwing me over for about a decade. Anxiety disorders are really tricky to talk about; you're dealing with something that most people have no real referent for.

That said, there are some notable improvements in my mental stability resulting from being properly medicated for anxiety. I've lost my irrational fears of heights and of spiders. I've also, with the help of my therapist, been able to finally move past the panic reaction I used to have when someone touched my neck. That dates back to my schooldays, and the incident which prompted a rapid exit from one school: on the train home, one of the other pupils began strangling me. Naturally, such an event leaves an impression, but I've made good progress in getting away from the panic. I can lie down with my daughter crawling all over me, have her put an arm across my neck and her full weight on that arm, and I no longer panic.

Speaking of my daughter, she's now more than a year old and insists on walking as much as she can. She picks up something, be it a burp cloth, a tennis ball, or the Mog stuffed toy her grandmother sent as a first birthday present, and toddles around carrying it. Her current favourite toys are Mog, her stacking rings, and as of this Sunday, an empty tissue box. Her growth is frankly astounding; at her last checkup, she was over 22lb, or a bit more than four times her birth weight. She's also above average for height, and for head size, although that's now a little more normal; she had been high on the curve for head size compared to her other stats, she's now at roughly the same point for each.

Matters authorial are feeling wonderful. My short story for the anthology is now locked in; I have approved the final page proofs. I have also started a longer project; I've been plugging away on a fantasy novel for the last four days or so, at a nice sustainable pace. I know exactly what I'm stealing from in terms of influences, but it's still feeling fresh to me. I'm taking feel rather than content. As the setting I'm writing in richens, I'm looking forward to revisiting it.

Unfortunately, all these projects rather take away from my blog-writing time. I don't mean to neglect it, it just happens because there are other things I want to write more, or because I'm busy taking a little girl out to the park for some time watching the ducks and saying hello to friendly dogs.

I ride!

Not on a motorcycle, or even a bicycle. Not even a stationary one. But I'm eating better, as a result of making sure the LA eats better (it being far simpler to do two portions of good food), and this morning I weighed myself.

I'm down a stone from my peak weight. I'm aiming to get rid of another stone, which will likely take a while. (For the Americans in the audience, that's 28lb overall, from a peak of about 195. I want to try to stabilise around 165, at which point my doctors should hopefully nag me less.) I am, however, on the right track, and the LA is also on a downward trend for weight.

In other news, this weekend I'm running my first convention game, and we're also waiting to hear the outcome of our house-buying efforts. We've an offer in on a place which, frankly, is just about perfect. Slightly smaller than the current house, but better laid out, and in better shape overall. However, there are competing offers, and so it's a nervous time. If it works out, though, well, it's a large point in my favour on certain things which I'm not quite ready to discuss here. Suffice it to say that October's shaping up busy.

Using the right tool for the job

As you probably know, our landlord is nominally responsible for fixtures and fittings in the house the LA and I rent. That said, it's usually quicker, easier, and gets better results, if we just take care of things ourselves. For instance, the curtains provided by our landlord are three for three on "breaking", since they were never properly done in the first place. If you're screwing into sheetrock, you need to drill a pilot hole and use a proper anchor, because otherwise you're asking plaster to hold against screw threads. That's not something plaster does well, to say the least. As a result, today I bought a box of Drive Wall Anchors, which are ever so clever, and ever so cheap at $10 for 50 of the blighters. For your 20 cents, you get a screw-headed bolt (fine pitch engineered thread, to mate with a matching thread, driven by a screwdriver), with a sharpened tip, and a clever metal contraption designed to slip through behind the sharp tip (and a plastic insert provided to bridge the gap) until its final plate reaches the surface, at which point it bites in and prevents the metal thing from turning. You then tighten the screw, which causes this clever metal wossname to expand outwards, ensuring it'll never come back through the hole. Then you loosen the screw (or remove it, if necessary; the anchor being an integral part of the wall by this point) and put the thing you needed screwed to the wall on, then tighten up again. Simple, easy, and it actually works. Of course, it does cost about 20 cents per hole more than "that'll hold until I've left the building", which just goes to show that the most important tool is the one between your ears!

A little housekeeping.

You may have noticed that the theme changed recently. I've also added the "sharing" buttons, should anyone care to use them, and the tickyboxes to say things. The "more please" and "less please" ones will be used to judge what you fine folks enjoy reading about, so that I (hopefully) don't bore you too much.