Really, I’ve just been busy with other things. I have been doing very little geofiction – exactly zero on OGF for the past month, and only minimal work at Arhet on my own server. I’ve been quite busy with real life.
And just now, I’m traveling. Here is a perhaps-geofiction-inspiring picture of Astoria, Oregon, seen from the Washington side of the Columbia River.
This blog is one year old today. I founded it on Saint Patrick’s Day, last year. That’s why there’s that little shamrock on the first entry.
I really haven’t posted as much as I intended, here, over the last year.
My life underwent such huge changes, mostly unexpected. I ended my 11 year residency in South Korea and moved back to Southeast Alaska. I’m still in a bit of transition in terms of career, and meanwhile living off my savings.
I took a break from the OGF admin team last summer, then worked really hard the last few months. I have become very frustrated with trying to do admin on that site. Indeed, I have become deeply disillusioned – mostly with myself, and my inability to maintain a charitable and good-willed mindset in dealing with a never-ending onslaught of faceless trolls and juvenile idiots. I’d rather cope with a classroom of unruly 7th graders.
In a few days, I’ll be traveling to my mother’s in Queensland for a few weeks: a long crossing of the Pacific. I’ll be constrained by obligations to relatives, so I’m taking a leave-of-absence from OGF and geofiction. I have resigned the admin position permanently. It will be hard to let go, but I feel I must do so for my own peace of mind.
Music to map by: Olga Bell, “Пермский Край.”
I took a really mind-blowing road-trip around the US (plus a bit of Canada).
I drove 11000 miles (17700 km).
I traveled with an elderly relative, as a kind of assistant or care-taker. It wasn’t bad. I met old friends and relatives I haven’t seen in years, because I’ve been living in Korea for the last decade.
I even got to meet one of our fellow geoficticians, in person. That was interesting, and inspiring. We’ve shared the OGF experience for these past four years, and became sort-of friends – but only online. And then we got to meet in person, and gossiped about the OGF community and all the personalities there and its various issues.
I took a lot of pictures – most of nature, since that’s my thing, and since many of the places visited were rural. I’ll post the pictures here, completely without description or comment. Take it as a challenge, to figure out where they are. All of them are Western or Midwestern North America.
I have now returned to my new home in Southeast Alaska, where I’ll hopefully spend a bit more time actually mapping and less time snarking on OGF (it’s hard to run JOSM on a laptop while traveling place-to-place).
Music to drive by: Dismantled, “Dystopia.”
I have moved to Mahhal. Well. The closest real-world place that I know of, and the basis of my Mahhalian concept to some degree: southeast Alaska.
I have relatives here. I didn’t grow up here, but it’s easy for me to think of it as home, and I am now intending to settle here. This is partly because of the demands of family, but also because the Korean project (my living there) was becoming unsustainable, for me personally.
I will hopefully have more time to do some mapping – in Mahhal, Makaska, and Ardisphere.
Out on my uncle’s boat, this morning:
Music to map by: 유승준, “사랑해 누나.”
I have successfully moved out of my home in northwest Seoul. I’m in a temporary situation in Portland, Oregon. I will now be putting the pieces in place to get settled in Southeast Alaska. Moving to Alaska is complicated, and now I need to get my stuff there. I shipped my possessions in Korea directly there, but now I have stuff in the lower 48 that needs to be moved north.
I lived there before once – I have relatives there.
Music to map by: Wado, “Esqueleto.”
Huge changes are afoot in Lucianoland.
After almost 11 years as a resident in Korea, including a productive career teaching and an intense battle with cancer that nearly finished me, but which my excellent doctors here helped me to overcome, I am forced by circumstances beyond my control to move back to the US.
I am thus currently very busy (overwhelmed) with the preparations for the move. Once back in the US – within a month – I have no idea what my job prospects will be or even what sort of work I will do.
I may be too busy to map or participate in OGF much. Then again, I may actually participate in OGF more, as I seek a way to deal with stress and just to relax doing something familiar and comforting in my down time. I can’t predict.
Anyway, if I don’t respond for long periods, you know what’s happening.
I haven’t mapped anything, these last two weeks. But I thought about mapping a lot. That’s because I spent the last two weeks in Seattle and Portland for a family emergency, driving around and thus getting lots of ideas and thoughts for Makaska. Certainly I had already been intending the main metropolis, Ohunkagan, to have some similarities with Seattle (although with a Minnesota climate), situated as it is on an isthmus, but getting to drive around there and around Portland, too, gave me some more ideas, anyway. Call it a kind of “Field research” for eventual mapping.
This is a pretty short entry, then, just to give an update of what I’m up to on the geofiction front.
Now that I’m back in Korea, I may have some more time and opportunity to do more mapping.
Music to map by: Taylor Swift, “Delicate.”
