The Murverse Mothership

I’ve started the Artist’s Way again- specifically the Finding Water, the Art of Perseverance book.

I have a weird relationship with The Artist’s Way. I’ve found it very useful. But it’s hard to read as an atheist; Cameron does her best to accommodate everyone, sometimes calling it God, sometimes the Universe. Essentially when you open yourself up to being creative, then God (or the Universe) sends you opportunities and gifts and stuff.

To reconcile this with my own beliefs (or lack thereof) I see it as opening yourself up to creativity just makes you open your damn eyes and look around you. Opportunities are there all the time, but usually we don’t think they’re for us, like the delivery person standing on your stoop with a bouquet of flowers. “Sorry, you must be at the wrong house.” Or you don’t even see something as an opportunity. But doing the Artist’s Way helps you look around and maybe just try something you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Julia Cameron either is brilliant or she is knows a good thing to milk: all of her programs have the same basic principle: write 3 pages of longhand every morning. Go on an “artist’s date” alone during the week. She’s also included walking in the program by now, but I don’t think it was part of the first one. But they all focus on a different part of the artist’s life, usually in memoir form.

Finding Water came to me right when I needed it. It’s a meditation for artists who have a career but may be feeling a slump, or imposter syndrome, and how to get your focus back. I picked the book up last year when I was feeling some particular professional jealousy, and read the first chapter. It was just what I needed. (note I said least year; I didn’t start doing the program hardcore until recently. Honestly I hate morning pages. So I do them, drop them, pick them back up.)

I’m starting week 3 now, and I’ll report back in later to say how i’m doing.

—

I started playing Overwatch (PS4). It was hard for me to warm to because I a) am not good at shooters and b) hate playing online games with strangers. But I should have trusted Blizzard. The only game design they’ve ever done that I’ve disliked is Hearthstone. (I just don’t get it. It’s a card game when I’ve played better card games on other apps. What am I missing? Anyway. I digress.) Overwatch is designed with four kinds of characters: offense (high damage), tanks (high defense), defense (neutralize the other team), and support (healing, buffing.) The vastly different characters offer a style of play that works for different people.

I find myself liking the support characters (Mercy the valkyrie and Zenyatta the robot monk) and the occasional defense characters (Junkrat the Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight and Mei the climatologist). When I play offense I just turn into a smear on the ground, and I have never enjoyed tanks.

What Blizzard has done so brilliantly is take an idea from Splatoon and take it a step farther. To keep people (teen boys) from frothing all over the game with homophobic and sexist slurs, they don’t have a chat function on the console. There isn’t an obvious way to choose a team, although my daughter says it’s possible.* You can do vocal team chat, but since you can’t choose a team you could be playing with people all over the world. The options to communicate with people are signaling in game things like Hello and I need healing. There isn’t a gay slur among them.

You can unlock other things to say. (I unlocked Zenyatta’s saying “I dreamt I was a butterfly,” which I love) You can unlock things to spray on the wall. I am of course unlocking all sorts of awesome skins and sprays and sayings for people I don’t play at all, but I figure the more I play, the more shit I will unlock.

When we got Overwatch, my daughter started playing on my account (long story, misunderstanding, let’s move on) and pushed my level up. I feel like I should apologize to people because it says I’m level 16, but I promise i’m not playing like a level 16 player. So if you see mightymur out there flailing about, blame my kid.

Yeah. All her fault that I’m not good at this game. Totally…

Anyway. I love it. Despite my moans of despair when we are against a team of fucking sniper campers who destroy me the moment I respawn, I actually am having fun. It’s what I needed after last week’s stress of book launches** and turn in.

And so he says to me, you want to be a bad guy? and I say Yeah Baby! I want to be bad! I says Churchill space ponies I’m making gravy without the lumps! Ah ha ha ha ha haaaaa!!!!!

---

* This is not an official review. I’m just saying this from what I’ve experienced playing the PS4 version. You may indeed be able to do these things, but I choose not to.
** The books are still getting great reviews. I got a very flattering email from someone Friday night – I won’t say who, cause I don’t have their permission, but goddamn, did it make my weekend.