New Site

baroquebobcat.com

W00t

Some of the students discovered they could install games on the dorm computer lab computers. So, we've been playing Age of Empires II and Starcraft for the past few days, LANed up and against computer opponents. Personally, I would prefer to go head to head with people, but that can get sticky.
Time for breakfast.

In Whites

Today I won my first medal in Epee. It is a silver. I really think that I am getting better at epee. Last year I didn't even place. The thing that I kept reminding myself of is patience. Patience got me points. Bravado and impetuousness only gave defeats.
My style of epee fencing is one of patient speed. Wait for an opening. Wait until my movements create an opening. Wait to commit to an attack until it will work with certainty. Attack without hesitation when an opening presents itself. These are the things I aspire to do.
Impatience is my enemy. It was the reason I lost the final bout decisively. I had been tied for the first two periods and very well could have pushed the bout into over time. Instead I rushed and lost ground.
Despite that, it was an excellent match. I loved every minute of it, trying to out wit and out work my opponent into making a mistake that caused an opening. I found a few and my waiting game paid off. But I lost because I did not want to lose.

Perhaps next time I will accept the possibility of failure and not worry about it.

Writing For The Sake of Writing

A lot of the things I have read about writing say you must write to become a good writer. This seems obvious but is harder in practice to accomplish. I started this blog to try to improve my writing. I have this tendency to use more and larger words than necessary to explain myself in prose. It really irritates me sometimes to go back and read something that I wrote and find that it has no flow, that it is choppy. I want my writing to be smooth and easy to follow. If I am ever going to write good technical documents, a good writing habit will make that easier. Writing itself would be easier if I did it more often.
I should be writing more now than I have ever done in my life. I am in college where, arguably, I should be writing so much that it hurts my fingers. As it is, in the two years I have taken so far I have only written maybe 100 pages of material, one sided double spaced.
I am not saying that I need to write mountains of pages, it's just that I know I can write more than I do now.
In some way I realize that most of the things I will be hammering out on the keyboard will look like nothing more than drivel to many people, but that is why I practice.

I don't know

The streets cleared themselves of rubble. The debris was deftly washed away. It had been only the day before that the world was calm. The tumult had passed, the dice had been thrown and nothing was the same. On that day I stood alone, surrounded by machines of my own making.
Watching them return my city back to the pristine order and cleanliness it never really knew, I wondered if my phone still worked.
I should call someone, I thought, Carla perhaps.
Carla and I had been dating off and on for the past year or so. She worked at the university as a desk clerk. We met in the spring. It had been a beautiful week, the smog had all been blown out to sea and the sky was a brilliant azure.
It is not that clear today though.
The phone was dead inside the apartment but the lights worked, The power p

I Read The News Today Oh Boy

I have this habit of reading when I feel anxious. Especially things that make me want to continue. I like to read books that are slow and complex. But when I am anxious I read op-ed columns. Ususally these make me angry or frustrated. Really not helping at all. But the more I read them the more I desire to read, until I have devoured 20 or so. After, I feel like doing something. My chest melts into stone. what I mean is, I feel this burning desire to change the world, to work against the terrible things I hear about. I know the power lays within me to do it but as of now I have not begun.
The things I learn about the way the world works, the way power is used and channeled away from those who have increasingly little of it unnerve me. I need to get these ideas out of my head so that I can begin to do other things.

Where have my stories gone? They haunt my dreams but cannot impinge upon my concious thought. Perhaps that is what has happend, they have gone nowhere but cannot pass the mental wax I have built up around the fonts of idea creation. I have become ever more effecient at doing a number of things, all of which require creative energy. But in so doing I have reworked the plumbing of that pool and made other paths more difficult to flow thorugh.

I Have a...

Blog. I don't know what I want to do with it though.

I have considered getting a journal online for a while but I really never did anything about it. I don't know how often I will update this or even if I will at all. I guess it may come in handy as an outlet for things. My goal in the coming months is to write more but I don't really know where I will start. I think this may help, if I can find a purpose for it.