My 12-year-old cat has been exhibiting some behavioral changes lately, so before I took him to the vet, I wasn’t sure if this week’s post would be an early eulogy for him or not. Thankfully, the news is not the worst it could be, although it’s still something that needs to be taken seriously.
We’ve learned that he has diabetes and that there are two treatment paths for him. One involves twice-daily shots and another involves a daily pill that may or may not be as effective as the shots. Either way, life for him is about to change (again, that is; he’s already been through half a dozen moves just since I adopted him as a kitten, so it’s not like he’s altogether unfamiliar with upheaval).
I’m going through some changes of my own, in fact. Nothing as drastic as diabetes, nor as Kafkaesque as waking up as a giant bug, but changes all the same. Evidently I have really high cholesterol, so we’re planning some lifestyle changes (the dreaded “diet and exercise”) in the hopes of not having to go on yet another medication. And all that is in the hopes of me not keeling over dead from a heart attack or stroke about 35 years too early.
And of course, all of that is happening within the context of the continuing search for new employment, which has itself brought changes to how I need to approach my time and how I need to sell myself to employers.
“The only constant is change,” as they say. Which is why I like to write in the fantasy genre, where global civilization is perpetually set in a late antiquity/early Medieval era and no one ever makes any discoveries or advancements that result in wholesale societal upheaval. (Seriously, why do we all default to that setting so readily?)
I just finished reading a book about the collapse of the Bronze Age and at no point did I think to incorporate a wide-scale societal collapse and rebirth into my world-building. (I DO have a full-scale societal collapse written into the history, but no rebirth, only replacement via migration.) The transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age is a fascinating one, though, and one (or something analogous to it) that could be an excellent element in a fantasy setting, I feel. Perhaps it’s hard to write because of the confluence of so many factors. It may even come across as “too much” if it appeared in a fiction setting. Then again, Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis pulled it off pretty well in the Dragonlance setting (albeit using a more immediate and dramatic transition from “the world before” to “the world after”).
I actually do have an idea for how my fantasy setting could advance technologically and incorporate magic and machinery. Trouble is, I have no particular stories for such a setting; it’s just a (malleable) statement of fact that Estéa will eventually advance into a magical steampunk era. What to do with that fact, I have no idea just yet.
Neither do I have any idea how to end this post. So I’ll do my usual thing and say, “Reject fascism, embrace creativity and artistry, and above all, be kind to each other. It’s the only way any of us are making it through all this mess.”
Until next time,
-Marc
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