Nothing serious. Don’t worry about that. I just seem to have broken my year long winning streak of not getting sick. Doesn’t seem too bad, I’m just not feeling 100% at the moment. The bummer is I had hoped to knuckle down and get the current chapter of Serenity Base done. It’s nearly there. I just have one more game to write along with a little bonus section for the climax. Still, I had hoped to get it done. All things going very well, I might get it finished tomorrow. If not, it might run to the end of the week. I’ve got a couple of full evenings to write, plus I’m going to try to grab a couple of hours here and there. That’s the plan anyway. Along with that, I’m planning out the rest of the episode arc, including the zones and the kinda games they are gonna play. Things will definitely go a lot faster writing wise with that leg work done.

I’ve also got a few shorter story ideas that I’m working on, some around this theme and some a little broader. Hopefully they will make up for the wait for this current chapter and more of these short project will fill the gap between future chapters. I also want to thank all of you who have stuck with this project for your patience and continued support.

I’ve never been the most social kinda person. It’s not one of my strengths to effortless start a conversation or get to know someone. That’s definitely how it goes with my neighbours, I’ll say hi to them in passing, follow up a conversation. So I was surprised to get an invite over to my new neighbours to see their newborn baby, given we’ve barely exchanged a dozen words. Still, it was an opportunity to get out of my shell a little. While I didn’t stay long, the ice was broken and I got a blanket invite to drop round whenever I like. Something I’m going to, well, not take advantage of. That sounds like overstaying my welcome. But avail myself of for sure. I think it will be good for me.

It’s something of a recent realisation, to me at least, that good writing isn’t the be all and end all of a writing project. This is something I’ve worked out recently while writing Serenity Base. It’s not that I’m having trouble writing the content of the story. It’s just that the content could be a little more punchy, have a little more zip. I’m working on the last game of the current chapter and, don’t get me wrong, it’s a good game. It’s got action, it’s got thrills, it’s got tension. And I’m getting nicely into the flow of writing it. That’s not the issue. The thing is, it makes a good game to play. If it was in a video game, you’d love it. You really would. The thing is, it’s pedestrian, it’s binary. It only goes one direction and it’s either win or lose. It needs a little more engagement, something in the way of a little madcap energy. That’s really the best I can do to describe what I’m looking to generate here. It’s kinda a ‘know it when you see it’ moment. And my rethink has that and honestly I’m feeling excited to play around with it.

There is a lesson here as well, just cause something doesn’t work out first time doesn’t mean it’s not been worth the work. That’s part of the development process, you write what works and change what doesn’t. If that’s the words, that’s fine. If that’s the ideas, that’s fine too. It’s part of the process.

…staffing wise that is. We’ve been having an ongoing issue with holiday allocation for a while now, almost slavishly following the guidance to have no more than 10% of the workforce absent in any given week. And that works just fine on paper, but this week has highlighted more than even the cracks in the system. To break it down simply and without getting two much into jargon, most of our absence this week has come from two areas, Fruit and Veg replenishment and Service Counters staff (cafe, delicatessen, butchery etc) which leaves us with huge gaps on a very specific skill set that we are desperately trying to cover with shift swaps and changes of hours. It’s just a mercy that checkouts didn’t have huge absence as well or nothing would be getting done in the way of actually getting stock on shelves. Hopefully we can get this sorted out soon.

…mostly. Had a bit of a crazy patch at work and home life that started sucking up a lot of time and leaving me pretty shattered. Late nights, early rises, not good for a person. I did it to myself of course, pushing myself a little too hard. Felt okay for a while but it did kinda drain me. What with work, my apprenticeship and work writing it’s been hard to find any evening time to settle down and put pen to paper…digitally speaking. That being said, I’ve nearly got the next chapter of Serenity Base finished. Just one more game to finish writing, a last proof read and then it should be ready to upload. I know it’s been a while since the last upload but I do feel things are getting back to a more regular schedule.

Writing wise I mean. My new plan of writing little and often seems to be working. I’m using the word seems a lot here out of prudence maybe, cautious optimism. I’m nicely on a roll and I don’t want to jinx myself. I’ve had moments like this before and that’s what has happened. Self fulfilling prophecy maybe. Anyway, I’m not just getting down ideas for the current episode but future ideas as well. A few that I’m tempted to put pen to already, as teasers you might say. One you might even see in a couple of days. We will see how it goes.

I think it kinda helps having started to get back a normal libido you might say. I’ve picked up recently that my troubles in that area were a stone I put around my own neck, an issue I figure I created by myself. That problem does seem to have gone away, except that it does come with another little problem. That being the urge to stroke one out shall we say while writing, which does take the edge off the creative buzz and flow I’ve gotten into.

Back on the writing front, I’m going to be away next week for my birthday and as well as enjoying a good long rest, that’s going to leave some decent time for writing. I hope you guys are staying well where you are.

…then it’s back to rank and file at work. Or level ten as I’ve recently found out we call it. Not sure where that sits on a scale of level. Never heard about level 5 or level 15 so I’ve no idea if that’s at the top of the scale, the middle, the bottom. No idea at all. I can’t say I’m sad to be stepping down from this role I’ve been making my own for the last year. Following a catch up with the Branch Manager it came up that he’s been impressed with my progress over that past year and how I’ve come on and improved. Despite all of that I’ll be glad to get back to something less stressful and actually have some time to focus on my development career wise. Namely getting the chance to focus some time into the Apprenticeship I’ve started recently. Which has been a struggle to get in the hours for the studying off the job.

Once I have that completed and a solid body of evidence of progress under my belt I can use that to start applying for permanent position which is scary in its own way. But that is a way off yet so I’m going to focus on the journey rather than the destination.

While I can’t say I love my job, I can see some perks to it of course. However recently I’m not loving it on a whole other level. I’ve kinda been given a target to achieve and it feels like I’m chasing the impossible. One of our recent investments has been into accepting grocery orders from Deliveroo, Uber and JustEats and it’s just exploded recently. My main focus is to minimise rejected orders and keep them below a figure that our Branch is measured on. Trouble is that’s very hard to measure, since our analytic software only gathers data once a week. So I’ve got to keep this figure down and can only see if we succeeded or failed once the week is done. Even keeping a close eye on orders for all the shifts I’m there only covers half of each day, and I’m not there at least 2 days out of a week. I can call out the orders getting close to being rejected or running out of time but the second I step away that control is lost. Most days I come in and already feel I’m behind the curve before I’ve even started.

It’s somewhat of a cliched saying that the modern world moves pretty fast but I’ve never really experienced that in a way like this week. One of my game plans for the year is to grab any opportunities that come along, so when I heard that work was offering an Apprenticeship for a Level 5 Operations Manager I jumped at it. I figured I might have a few weeks to prepare and for things to get rolling. So it was kinda a surprise to get into the preliminary session four days later. That was way faster than I expected and did kinda throw me. Still means I can get down to and get into starting to learn. And there is doing to be a lot to learn. We are talking 22 months of dedicated learning and projects to improve my skills as a manager. And that’s really what I need. Everything I’ve learned has been on the job and on the fly. I’m learning retroactively, not proactively. That’s going to be the biggest benefit for me. I’m excited for it though.

…hopefully. My work schedule recently has not meant as much time as I would like to write. I’ve been coming home pretty much shattered after too many late nights. Far too late really. I’m going to have to work on the balance of that. And going to get a little balance of writing. It’s not enough to get in one long stint and have that be that. Of course that will still help, but it’s going to be boosted by little and often as well. To those waiting on the next chapter I can only apologise that it’s taken longer than I intended. I’m going to give that a try and see how much of a difference that makes. Thank you once again for your patience.

Not the punchiest of names I know. That’s one of the many things I'm still developing on my Patreon for this series. It’s still not too late to get in on the action and throw your two cents into the ring. In a nutshell we take one celebrity, sometimes unsuspecting, bring them onto the show, get to know them a little then challenge them with a series of messy games. It’s gonna be a real blast.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/gunge.....tent=join_link

It’s my own fault really in a way. I knew I was getting sick on Wednesday and I could have taken Thursday to recover except that Thursday was the first management team day of the year and since it was setting the plan for the first quarter of the year, I really couldn’t miss that. End result of soldiering through I’ve kinda just had to crash out today and try to get over it. I’d prefer not to take more than one day off but I guess we will have to see how I feel tomorrow. Hopefully a good nights rest will do the trick.

Now that I’ve gotten a feel for what DreamUp AI generator can and can’t do, at a basic level; I’ve been wondering what it could do to help generate ideas for games that will grace the pages of Serenity Base. It sounds like a great way to play around with ideas I would have never considered and go down routes I might never have explored. And it’s already proved its worth I would say.


Since FA has a problem with AI art I can’t upload these images here as I would like, so for now I’ll be posting them to DeviantArt. The idea for this prompt was a game played swinging across platforms in a jungle setting. And while DreamUp didn’t quite nail it it did give me an idea for a game I’ll be calling Jungle Gym. If you are intrigued you can check it out at the link below.



https://www.deviantart.com/jmereel/.....Art-1153316218

My current working schedule is still causing difficulties with actually settling down and getting a solid stint of writing in. By a solid stint I mean two hours or more, which was the way I used to write. Block out some time, stick on some music and just write for that time. Now it seems a ‘as and when’ plan seems to be working for me. Usually as the evening is winding down as we are watching wallpaper tv. Music is a must here as well, helps me focus and stops me getting distracted. Plus it’s familiar so that helps as well.

I do need a certain relaxed and comfortable mindset to really get into my zone and I was worried that wouldn’t work with this short stint approach but it seems to be working out just fine. On another good bit of news writing wise, I’m finally getting some Sundays back as free time. For the last year and a bit I’ve been working every Sunday which kills the social life more than you might expect.

The upside is I’m already making some decent progress on Serenity Base, hoping to get a good chunk of the next chapter underway and some planning of future arks as well. Watch this space for future updates.

Well, more accurately an AI art generator on DeviantArt. Like most people I haven’t exactly been able to avoid the rise of AI across the world, in art especially. Most notably on Twitter (I still can’t take to calling it X) where a lot of accounts seem to be cat fishing with AI generated images. And while I can’t exactly condone such a use, I have been wondering how it might be useful in creating images for inspiration for my various projects. Including Serenity Base.

Right now, I’m still working out its strengths and weaknesses. It’s quite clever, in a stupid sort of way. It’s managed to work out some fairly complicated prompts and yet not get the quite right. I’m going to keep playing around with in, see what I can create. I’d love to share some of them here but FA seems to have an issue with AI art being uploaded. I haven’t yet checked out if SoFurry and InkBunny are similarly circumspect about the whole idea.

Meanwhile I’ve already uploaded a few images to DeviantArt so if you’d like to have a look I’ll add the link below.

https://www.deviantart.com/jmereel

Here we are, ringing out 2024 and ringing in 2025. It’s been quite a year, filled with unexpected yet welcome moments. Mostly surprising ones. I’ve found myself the recipient of a couple of opportunities I could never have imagined finding myself anywhere near. And this one that will run to the middle of the year is one I’m going to take full advantage of. Even if I’m not sure what that will look like yet. One of the key events of early 2025 will be a performance review at work that will help to shape the rest of it.

In that spirit I wish you all a safe end to the year and a prosperous, safe and successful one to follow. May you chase and realise your dreams and find that which truly inspires you. And if an opportunity should come your way, grab it with both hands. That’s my lesson for the year.

Christmas is a time for being with family, for sharing good times and making new memories. New Years is a time for remembering old times and family no longer with us. That’s how I’m going to be spending the end of the year, ringing it in with some bubbles, stolen and a toast to those who aren’t here to share it with us.

Of course I’ll be staying up till midnight to celebrate the new year and to welcome the year ahead. That’s part of the tradition as well. And I think this year is going to be pretty full on, the year when I make some serious progress on some goals I’ve been working on.

I’ve got a few ideas already bouncing around in my head to finish the current sector of Serenity Base as well as starting the next one. Some I’m really sold on, and others not so much if I’m honest. Maybe it’s just a hang on from the exhaustion from the manic Christmas build up at work. Maybe it’s my depression rearing its head a little. Maybe I just haven’t hit the right note of inspiration yet.

Whatever the reason, it can’t be denied that my libido feels a bit flat right now. Without putting too fine a point on it, I do find that I write better ideas when I’ve got at least a little bit of arousal simmering. I’m not going to let that hold me back though and keep pressing on, seeing if I can get into my groove. If that doesn’t work by itself then I was thinking of booking an appointment with my therapist anyway, she’s very good at helping me sort these things out. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and Happy Holidays.

White

Well, it’s nearly here. It’s Christmas Eve and I’m pumped for tomorrow. Firstly I just have to get through one day of work, which hopefully will be manic but it could be dead and then will drag. The last hour might be the worst as we get ready to lock up the whole building, doing all the tedious last checks before we set the alarm.

Once that’s done though I’m home free and heading there for a Christmas Cocktail to celebrate. This Christmas is going to be a little more family filled than previous years. We have some extended family coming over, including three no doubt hyper young girls who are bundle of energy on normal days. But it will be great to see them.

While that might not leave much time for writing, I’m hoping to pen a few ideas for Serenity Base as we chill with the family Christmas classic of Hogfather. I hope you all have great Christmas.

…but you shouldn’t do something just because it’s not something you would normally do. Call it peer pressure, call it feeling it was the thing to do, call it seeming like it was a good idea at the time; tonight was my work management Christmas meal and I really hadn’t been looking forward to it. Not that I’d been dreading it or anything like that, I just literally had no feelings towards it one way or the other. Had it been anything else, something activity based like a game or a quiz or something I could have dropped into for a short while, that might have been different. But a three hour long meal with people I still feel a bit of distance from making strained small talk which has never been my strong point, no that wasn’t for me.

There is a lesson there really. Push yourself, challenge yourself but still be yourself at the end of the day. Don’t do something that doesn’t sit right with who you are just because you feel it’s the done thing. Stand up and be yourself, don’t be who others think you should be or do things because you feel they think you should.

Kinda had something happen yesterday that has me a little down. Sounds like a silly thing to say but I kinda got too deep into something that should have been just a game. Yesterday something went wrong and I lost all the progress I made. Now I kinda feel almost…bereaved in a way. Guilty too. Lacking in energy. Almost like a full on depressive episode. It’s easing off but I still don’t feel quite right yet. Hopefully I’ll bounce back soon.

It’s understandable given recent changes in the world political landscape. And I’m not immune to that. But I think we have to look on the positive side. Yes, the next presidential administration will be fraught with worries and uncertainties but the world and America weathered that before. And like all stormy times these two will pass. No matter our worries we must not lose hope and courage.

While I expected to get another chance to prove myself in a management role at work, I expected to have to actually work to get it rather than just being offered it. I suppose it could be argued that I’ve earned it with my recent willing attitude that has caught the eye of our new Deputy Branch Manager. Yet I expected to have to actually actively go after it. Still, I’m not going to pass up the chance at this and I’m going to get the most out of this as I can. Especially with the offer of a job at the end of it. That’s my main end goal. Even if there doesn’t end up being a position available at the end, six months is a long time in that perspective of course, I want to end this with the skills and experience to at least apply for a job as soon as one becomes available. This time I’ve got a manager to serve as a mentor of a sort, which will help me out leaps and bounds I’m sure. Interesting times ahead, since this time I’m going to be managing the branch over Christmas which will present me with new challenges.

…well, more of a scuttled ship if I can stretch the naval metaphor. Without getting too in depth to the rather boring details of corporate money saving decisions of my employer let’s just say a small premises they own is being closed down and most of the staff, managers included, have jumped ship and swam away. Which is where I come in. The few remaining staff can run the place on a day to day basis, they just don’t have someone of a management stripe to complete the end of day, close down and lock up. Hence my quick crash course in closing down a petrol station yesterday. That’s the real step outside of my comfort zone, doing something I never imagined myself doing. It’s a good thing it’s not that hard, cause I have a feeling I’m going to be doing a lot of this.

That’s not meant as some kind of complaint, more a reason as to why I’ve not been active here recently. Most of my time, energy and a good deal of stress has been focused on a real humdinger of a task I had dropped on me at work. There are other choice phrases I could use for it as well but I want to keep this family friendly. Still, you know you have been kinda lumbered with something when even the managers think you’ve been given a tough gig with not much help for it.

Plus side is it’s done and I hopefully don’t have to deal with it for another year. Downside is I did it so well I’m likely to get asked to do it again. What makes it worse is I’m likely to volunteer since I know my experience will be useful.

All of this means that I haven’t had a much time to devote to my writing as I would like, just grabbing the odd hour when I can. Which sadly includes Serenity Base, although I’ve been hit by one bit of inspiration so that’s a start. Not so much a game as an introductory scene for an episode that I think you guys will like.