So I Went Outside Today, With Strangers. Mostly.

Today was the Dominaria prerelease of Magic cards, so I called up a couple of friends and went down to the tournament.

This is something I’ve been working on.

Those of you who have been paying attention will notice that I had a breakdown last fall, culminating in emergency therapy and even-more-emergency medication. And one of the things my therapist has asked me to consider was, “If you could plan a month out – just a month – what would that month look like to you?”

And I concluded, “I’d spend more time with the friends I have.”

Because I was getting out to conventions a lot, flying to exciting places, but literally once a month I was driving off to some gathering, then seeing my LDRs on the other two weekends, and a weekend with Gini at home, and all my local friends had become kinda distant.

I mean, I’d see my friend Karla… Once every eight months. Or I’d catch her at a party and go, “We really have to catch up” and then we never did. And I was talking and texting a lot but sort of aching for real-world connections.

So I started emailing people. “We really have to catch up,” I’d say. “So let’s catch up. Let’s set a time.”

And I have. It’s been nice.

So when the new Magic prerelease was announced, I texted some friends and saw if they wanted to go down and play with strangers. I hadn’t been to a Magic tournament in roughly eight years, so that was a long time. And the idea of hanging around other people and talking with other people was…

Well, like most social events for me. About 60% nice, 40% pure terror.

But I did it. I met some nice people. I played some cards. I won four packs.

That doesn’t sound big, but it is.

And there’s a balance now, because I’m currently spending so much time with friends that my writing’s suffering. I gotta get serious about it again – because staying in the publishing business involves a commitment, and now that I’ve taken a vacation between books I gotta finish this short story I’m committed to and then get around to this next novel. There’s a part of me that *has* to be a hermit to get this career moving, and that’s a thing.

But next weekend? I might go down and play some more cards. I might see if my atrophied Draft skills mean anything. I might change my life a little more to suit me, because I’m big on FetLife but absent from my local kink scene, and that’s bothered me because I *want* to get out to see all the wonderful people in town, I *want* to have new fire dates, I *want* to be involved in the town I live in.

I’ve been living online a bit less lately. And that’s the balance I’m going to have to strike – my fun times online, my fun times in life, my work in fictional worlds.

But I am retuning. Just playing in a tournament made me feel like I lived in a town – as opposed to being a floating, unrooted persona who occasionally touches base with a thousand locales but nobody really knows him.

I need to be a regular somewhere. Even if that’s just a regular with friends. But it’d be nice to be a regular at the Magic get-togethers, a regular at the local kink clubs, a regular in general.

Maybe I’ll get there some day.

I’m certainly closer now.