2011.03.29 Free Write
I wish I could say that I'm expanding my horizons musically with Pandora while I waste my time with these late-night expansive surfs of the intertubes, but I'm really not. I've found a rich vein of really terrible music that fits perfectly into the cognitive mode of my crusty geek brain: TRON Legacy radio. Screaming atonal electronica assuring me that the world is both as fucked up as I imagine it, and that it also has a tendency for regular twitches of garish noise.
With that spitting in the background, I can conjure the daemons and machinations to fill my own personal fiefdom of futuristic dystopia - also know as My Next Game, after Dave kills off my Rainbow Death Faerie character. What I really should be doing now is drawing a picture of the RDF, except that somehow I don't think I have time to tackle my muse and get enough sleep tonight. Because this is yet another work night. And work is getting to sink its teeth in my more and more lately. Not because its teeth are getting any bigger or pointier. I think I'm just slowing down. It's not good. Maybe that's the real subconscious reason why I'm even contemplating shifting from being an alpha-doer to a micro-manager.
Except that it sort of seems to completely disregard my developed skill set. I'm something of a design maestro, and a problem-solving savant, which has lead to considerable ego problems. That coupled with my dire lack of social skills would seem to make management as a non-optimal path for me. Except, you know, realistically you can only design so many optimized brackets before it starts getting a bit old. I've done this, all of this, to death. Brain cell death, since I regularly find that I've actually forgotten huge realms of stuff. But even then, I re-learn what I need to know as well as anyone, and that's the real trick to being an all-around guru: knowing how to learn things well.
And untapped (professionally, at least) is my power for scheming. If I can manage to string together a management technique that is even only half-bad, my gift for scheming should make me a very effective team leader. Plus there's the fact that a huge portion of my time is spent teaching people best practices anyway; might as well make it official.
But is that all just rationalization? Aside from the obvious urge for the additional benefits and my standard-issue ambition (fed by my unholy ego), do I really sidestep towards this path because I see it as a way to let my skills fade in a timely fashion such that it is unimportant? Do I fear the slowing of my fast-click synapses such that I struggle more with every new iteration of systems, and find myself unable to excel? No, let me answer that now that I've said it out loud: yeah. That would suck. Massively. But I guess the original thrust of the question in my head was a contemplation of how likely I think that fate is. Huh. Maybe not such a big deal, nor all that likely - thanks to my knowledge of what Grandpa K is still capable of.
And my thoughts tumble off the edge of a plane of thought and free fall back into realms of pure imagination, populated by shaggy monsters obsessed with philosophical issues and willing to wage brutal war for it. Man, I think it'll be interesting, but boy it sure might be annoying for Dave. I guess we'll see. I think the scenario would technically work best with a larger group of players, but the high mortality rate would make it a pretty short-lived game overall.
A piano solo? On TRON Legacy radio? (Tabs to check what the fuck is going on.) Yeah, that's gone now. Uh. OK - one annoying thing about TRON Legacy radio: the very oddly popular trend to make electronica versions of Zepplin's Kashmir. Sure, it's cool, and even with some remixing it's cool in a different way. But, seriously, enough retries already.
Well. Time's up. Thank you for listening. I hope your ears/eyes aren't bleeding too badly.
OK, that's a lie. If I've made some part of you bleed with HTML, that's actually fairly awesome and I'd probably be pretty happy about it.