J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Category: Personal Updates Page 3 of 10

This Too Shall Pass

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On January 6

In Culture Rants/Shares, Personal Updates

This too shall pass.

Sounds like a Biblical phrase but its origins are Persian, popularized by Sufi poets.

It’s been on my mind a lot recently.

Referring to the pandemic, of course. Which feels like it might go on forever. Maybe Omicron is the last, most contagious, least lethal wave. Or maybe it’s just one more wave in the middle of a dozen or more.

But eventually, and I’m guessing sometime in 2022, the pandemic will be over. There will still be Covid, but it won’t be any more lethal or notable than any other infectious disease. And at that point we’ll have to figure out what “normal” looks like.

I’ve left so many activities behind: playing racquetball at the Y, playing tabletop D&D, hosting parties at our house, going to parties, eating indoors at restaurants, seeing movies in the theater.

I don’t think we’re going back to the movies anytime soon — we bought a huge OLED TV and it looks incredible. The San Francisco Y doesn’t have racquetball courts. My D&D friends have dispersed to different cities. Some of my regular weekly activities may now just be part of my past, like DJing at clubs and hosting huge dance parties.

I’m reflecting, not complaining. The pandemic has been gentle to us. We survived getting Covid, and only a few friends have gotten seriously ill. My family relationships and friendships are still strong. We have a roof over our heads and we’re in good financial shape. Mental health could be better but we’re hanging in there.

But it’s strange to think that there’s no going back to the way things were, even when the pandemic ends.

Not entirely, anyway. I’m sure I’ll still play D&D and racquetball again, sometime and somehow. And we’ll go out to the movies once in awhile.

Slowly, a sense of normality will pervade our collective consciousness (unless the United States plunges into civil war or a fascist dictatorship).

This too shall pass.

A Merry Covid Christmas to You!

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On December 24

In Personal Updates

I’m in good spirits despite probably having Covid, as does my whole family. I was exposed a couple weeks ago, but thought I had dodged a bullet despite having some minor cold symptoms. I tested negative three days in a row via home tests, then on day five after exposure got a negative PCR test. All clear, right? You would think. But a few days later Kia came down with symptoms, including a fever, and tested positive for Covid. Our kid is sick too, though she has yet to test positive.

We’re all vaccinated and Kia and our daughter are already feeling somewhat better. My symptoms are 90% gone. Of course it’s possible that I actually just had a cold and am about to get Covid, but that seems unlikely. My suspicion is that Omicron can spread even if a person is testing negative. But if I do/did have Covid, I’ve had colds that were much worse.

I’m sad that we have to quarantine and won’t be able to celebrate Christmas with the grandparents, but we’ll doing something in January to make up for it.

Treatment plan has been C, zinc, bromelain, black seed, and lots of garlic.

This and That

  • Finally started The Witcher on Netflix. How did I overlook this show? It’s so good (at least for a D&D/high-fantasy fan such as myself). Might have to read the books and play the videogames as well.
  • I have a new music release out today, a single from the forthcoming Momu album Moons of Jupiter.  Momu – Io (Remixes) opened at #16 on the Beatport Breakbeat releases chart and the Jondi & Spesh Remix is featured at #3 on Beatport’s new Hype releases. The other remix is from Nosk, one of my favorite breakbeat production teams.
  • I’m freelance consulting more than I have in a long time, doing Salesforce config and project management, and well as maintaining Access and SQL Server projects. That’s only leaving me a couple hours each morning for writing, but making good progress nonetheless on some new short fiction. The project management work is harder to batch than I’m used to, but I’m building up the skills and discipline to silo the consulting work into blocks and protect my deep work/creative time.
  • As always, a reminder that my new novel The Last Crucible published by Flame Tree Press is available for sale. And a huge thank you to everyone that has read and/or reviewed any of the books in the series, or mentioned one to a friend.

I hope you are having a great winter holiday. And if you celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Be Stupid Faster

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On November 20

In Metaprogramming, Personal Updates

I’m in a life phase where I’m doing a lot of things for the first time. Kia and I are remodeling our Oakland house. I’m managing projects and coordinating teams of software developers. I’m parenting a teenager. In all these cases, the stakes are high, but my levels of knowledge are low (or at least have significant gaps).

I’m finding some success in a new strategy: admitting my ignorance as quickly as possible. While I’ve never really minded “losing face” because I didn’t know something, I often took pride in trying to figure things out on my own. And sometimes I’m reluctant to bother other people with questions because I don’t want to impose.

But my life circumstances don’t have room for such delicacies. These days I’m asking, and asking aggressively. Of course I’m still going to make mistakes and take wrong turns, but I need to make as few mistakes as possible, and correct the mistakes I make quickly.

That’s my thought for the week! I’ll eventually have time for longer blog posts, but my to-do list is insane at the moment.

Life Update

  • We continue to enjoy life in our San Francisco high rise apartment. I’ve noticed I have an enhanced sense of security here. Some of that has to do with moving to a city with less gun violence, but I think most of it is the environmental psychology effect of my primate brain thinking I’m high in the trees.
  • While dance music has taken a back seat this year to everything else, Loöq Records is spinning up some new releases for December and 2022. We’ve landed a remix from Nosk, some of my favorite breakbeat producers, and I can’t wait to hear what they come up with.
  • I completed a first draft of a new novelette, “Alexandria”, a far-future archeology expedition featuring cuttlefolk, dogkin, and a godling construct of Anubis.
  • All editions of The Last Crucible are officially released. I’m so happy to have a science fiction trilogy in print (and digital, and audio book). If you haven’t yet checked out any of my Reclaimed Earth series, please consider doing so. And if you enjoy the books, you’d do me a huge favor by leaving a rating or brief review.

Did I Plagiarize Lloyd Alexander?

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On November 4

In Personal Updates, Writing

Recently I started rereading Lloyd Alexander‘s The Book of Three, a fantasy novel I hadn’t cracked open in roughly four decades. My daughter was giving away some books, and this was among several I rescued. As a child, I remember being fascinated and slightly disturbed by the first edition cover art, and enjoying the entire series immensely.

But reading the book again, I was astonished to realize the opening scene is between two arguing blacksmiths — that exact same way The Sky Woman (Book 1 of Reclaimed Earth) opens.

Fortunately the similarities end there — The Sky Woman has no oracular pig, or princes and kings, or epic battle between good and evil.

But I’m sure it’s not a coincidence. The Chronicles of Prydain series was my introduction to high fantasy, well before I read the Lord of the Rings. The Book of Three sat in my subconscious for decades, influencing my thinking and decisions in who-knows-how-many ways.

The stories we hear and read when we’re young shape our lives forever. I wonder what other stories are rummaging around in my subconscious, influencing my decisions.

Personal Updates

  • I’m loving living in San Francisco. It turns out we’re in the East Cut neighborhood, not South Beach. After living in the Oakland/Berkeley flats for most of my life, the vastness and scale of the architecture (the Bay Bridge, the Salesforce tower, the Ferry Building) is refreshing. Walking the Embarcadero at night is stunningly beautiful. Of course the novelty will wear off in time, but I’m enjoying it for now.
  • We’re about to start remodeling our house in Oakland. We’re in a good financial position, and we have a good team, but still the money stress is getting to me. Even modest remodels are crazy expensive. But it’s what we need to do to make the house nice and rent it out at a good price. And if/when we ever move back in, we’ll appreciate the upgrades.
  • I got my Covid booster. So now I’m J&J plus Pfizer. No side effects this time except for a day of mild tiredness and a sore arm.
  • Still taking a break from all alcohol, approaching two months. The main thing I notice is that even though my stress levels are high right now, so is my emotional resilience. Usually high stress, for me, comes with some feelings of despair and hopelessness. But lately I’ve been facing my problems energetically with a non-forced sense of optimism. I would guess at least some of that emotional shift is from not drinking, perhaps related to neuromodulatory microbiome changes. Or it could be unrelated — no way to easily test. But for the moment, I’m happier abstaining from booze entirely.

I Manifested High-Density Housing

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On October 24

In Personal Updates

Well, here I am in my South Beach San Francisco high-rise apartment, looking out at the Bay Bridge, feeling surprised but pleased with the situation. If you had asked me two months ago where I would be living now, I would have bet serious money that I’d still be in the Oakland house that we own and have lived in for the last twenty years, in the same historically Italian-American neighborhood where my maternal grandparents met and lived in the thirties.

And I would have lost that bet.

If you’re wondering why we moved, read my previous post. This is about how we ended up here. The literal answer is that we didn’t have time for a long housing search, and many of the high-rises had available spaces at lower-than-usual rents (still expensive, but within our range). Covid has created additional availability and emptied out San Francisco in general. Many people lived here only for work, and remote work has triggered a migration to the East Bay and up the coast in search of larger living spaces, more green space, lower rents, etc.

But there’s also a figurative, or mental-model answer to the question of why we ended up here. Recently I was describing the apartment building amenities to Spesh. He commented “You’re moving into the ringstation.” This was an astute reference to the ringstations in my Reclaimed Earth series, which Spesh has read (good friend that he is). And he’s absolutely right. There are many similarities: the density, shared facilities, complex organizational systems, and so forth.

So I’ve been thinking and writing about high-density living for years. The trend continues in my new novel Saint Arcology, which (and I don’t think this is a major spoiler), features an arcology. And also the World One luxury high-rise in Mumbai.

My subconscious was pulling me here, I’ve realized. And so far I like it. Initially I thought our apartment was the same size as our house, but it’s actually nearly half-again as big. Having not moved in a long time, I’d forgotten that a space looks bigger when your furniture is moved in, not smaller.

Maybe I was sick of weeding and gardening?

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