Where the Magic Will Happen (the New Place)

One dream, one soul, one prize
One goal, one golden glance of what should be
It’s a kind of magic

— Queen, It’s a Kind of Magic

In many ways, the move had brought about a new way of life for me. Well, Not brand new, just one I haven’t experienced in quite a while. I have a bedroom and an office, and they aren’t the same room!  That a pretty big game changer.  Heck, I even quit eating most meals at my desk (until I started watching The Get Down during my lunch and supper breaks – though, that didn’t last long, since it was only 6 episodes long.)

And because of weird timing and various events, I even had time to sort through everything I owned.  That gave me the change to reorganize it all, and to trash a lot of crap that no longer needed to be in my life. But, that’s the subject of a completely different blog post that I already wrote.

So far, it seems to have had a beneficial effect on my sleep.  I don’t have the computer in the same room, so I don’t have the whir of the cooling fans until it goes into sleep mode, and the glow of the monitor until it shuts down.  I don’t have the glow of all those little chargers and such that have an LED light in them to tell me they’re working.  And, well, it makes the bedroom specific to the concept of sleeping, not working.

It also helps that I have a queen sized bed in there, though that presents a bit of a problem: the bedroom is only slightly larger than a queen sized bed wide.  That does present a little bit of a problem.  I still haven’t figure out how to organize the (smaller) closet and bedroom in such a way that everything has its place.  My dirty laundry exists at the end of the bed in basket, and my phone charges on a little stand I made out of left over crates after The Great Culling and Sorting occurred.  If you looked at my bedroom, you’d get a bad impression of my new setup.

The office, on the other hand, is a much different deal.  It’s much larger than the bedroom, with a much larger closet.  This allowed me to have room to do quite a few things.

First, my video game related stuff actually has a home.  In fact, it’s got a bit of a display area that I set up that holds it all, ranging from an 80’s Coleco Donkey Kong mini-cabinet to an OUYA console, with little stops along the history of video games. Sure, it’s not as expansive as I’d like, but it’s a fun little thing.  Someday, I can explore exapanding on the idea.

My knives and swords are something that have been stuff away under a bed or in a corner.  Now they’re all hung on the wall where they belong.

The liquor cabinet has returned – even if I rarely drink.  It shares a shelving unit with board and card games, odd gifts and knickknacks, stuff like that.

The workout area takes up the end of the room, putting it close at hand, so I can take a break from work, workout, then get back to work as quickly as possible.  Plus, being in the room, it’s sitting there, judging me when I don’t use it. ;-). I even have the yoga mat rolled out with its own little home in the are, though with the squishy carpet, it’s really not as necessary as it’s been on concrete or wood floors.

Then, the actual workspace.  Whirl the desktop is the same setup as before (though, less cluttered), it’s a little different than before.  Now, the stereo is hooked up, the X-Box 360 is hooked up (though I can’t find my games for it!), the Razer Forge TV is hooked up for testing, etc.  I also have the addition of a small hardware workbench at the end of the space.  I’ll expand that a little longer later, but for now it works.

And, coming back around to the entrance of the room, there’s a fairly good sized closet with shelves in it to put all the extra stuff – all my little storage boxes, and my tool cases have plenty of room in the closet, this it is close to reasonable capacity (and by that, I mean it’s easy to look on the shelves and find what I need.  If I started packing it much more full, that would become difficult.

Of course, on the front door exists my Entrepreneur poster given to me by Devin Walker.  While I suppo it’s not necessary, it acts as a reminder of what I’m doing.

 There is other stuff in there – this isn’t a complete listing by any means.  And that would be even more boring than what I’ve written so far.  There are two other items of note:  my faire box lives in there, too, giving it s resonance home now.  My filing cabinet also exists in there, making it much more usable than when it was in the garage – now I can just file something after I get it, rather than it hanging around on my desk three months before I get around to it. 🙂

Here’s the thing:  it’s awesome.  I have enough space for everything (except potentially in the bedroom – that will always be somewhat cramped.  I guess it’s fortunate I don’t have a girlfriend to worry about 😉 )  It’s about the amount of space I need now, in an arrangement I needed.  Things have spaces.  It looks like more than a workplace, even if it’s not quite as stylized as I’d love to have.

So, what about this magic?  Mainly, just a parody of “This is where the magic happens”, combined with a Facebook post I made today (which was from a conversation I was having in messenger) about if I was happy.  I am happy.  Things aren’t perfect by any form of measure.  On the other hand, who cares – I’m doing both what I set out as my goals (game development), and working to expand on other goals.  And I enjoy the hell out of what I’m doing:

“Consider that last night, I was writing the first (of a couple) algorithm that builds a small world from scratch. Every time you launch the game, it builds an entirely new one. It’s not an impressive world by any means, just some randomized grass based on complex math centered around really large prime numbers, and a few buildings thrown in. But, it builds a unique world every time. You don’t know how many buildings they’ll be. You don’t know how large they’ll be. You don’t know how they will be laid out. When it’s done, it will be only admired for moments, as the game throws the player “in the shit” very quickly, swarming them with enemies that were also randomly chose and laid out by that algorithm. I make a special form of magic. Sometimes my magic is building worlds. Sometimes my magic is making someone else money. Sometimes my magic is making someone’s website introduce others to the magic of science. But, overall, I do magic – and I love it.”