So here it is folks I’m 37 today. Not a stella b’day and by all accounts one of the quiet ones for me. I’m spending it with the family, which involves looking after small child and a flu ridden Rachel, tidying up the house to look for a misplaced baby monitor, with the Black Horse County troop coming round this afternoon for the lastest ‘episode’ of our Battlestar Gallatica game (which rocks on toast!).

I’ve been slightly up and down of late and I came to the conclusion early on that I’m going through my own personal apocalyse (in the occult sense of my own world is changing dramatically). This has brought on the Fear big time. Worries over health, my job and even my core friendships and relationships. The most fearful moments was when I started thinking I was going to lose my marriage and my life due to a heart attack!! Both were more or less all in my head, as a quick heart to heart with Rach on the former confirmed, but might manifest in the long term if I don’t sort myself out now.

I kinda realised that some sort of sort was in order but being in the thick of it couldn’t see the wood for the trees.

Until this morning when Amazon.co.uk sent me an ad for a version of Journey to the West, that I haven’t got.

"China’s most popular traditional novel, "Journey to the West" is the thrilling story of the Monkey King and his epic quest, with his trusted companions, to redeem himself. They face fantastic foes, demons and monsters during their amazing adventures traveling to the Western paradise. No matter what obstacle was put before him, the clever, wily Monkey King always got what he wanted – unimaginable strength, eternal life, even his own position in the Celestial Realm with the gods. More than anything else, though, the Monkey King loved mischief and rule-breaking, and was sure he was the most powerful creature in the world. But after defeat and punishment for his tricks, the Monkey King found himself wanting some things he never expected: to be disciplined and good enough to help the monk Hsuan Zhang on his mission to bring Buddhist Scriptures – and enlightenment – to China."

It struck me my life has paralells with Monkey, when he is just about to be kicked out of heaven. I’ve pretty much got all I want materially and can with a bit of imagination and work get things outside of my current reach. Most of my current ‘problems’ are caused by having an abundance (my weight and having a house stuffed with things are the two most obvious things). What I need to do quite badly is grow up in a ‘spiritual’ sense of the word, else I’m forever going to be burdened and hindered by arrogance, greed and most destressingly Anger. I say ‘Anger’ with a big A, to distiguish the big emotionally draining fits of agression I have which are completly pointless from the more every day irritations that I can easily process and are useful to have to see what is wrong.

Its with this great revelation, and birthday present I move foward into a new Era of Newtness.  I have a few resolutions coming out of this, but I’m not going to blog about them. Some of them might be obvious next time you meet me in the flesh. Some might be more subtle. Either way I’m making a consious effort to do what my subconsious has known all along from now on.

My mood has bounced back into violently happy. Alot of this has to do with the fact I had a lovely normal weekend with Rach. That’s right for the first time since she’s been back at work (getting on a good five months) she’s not been put down to work a shift. So we had a lovely little ‘normal’ family weekend. Nothing particularly exciting but it did my mental health a world of good.

Update on the health front, after a visit to the GP last week I’m officallly a fat bastard and now on a diet and have made a solemn and binding pact to increasing my exercise levels.  My little scare last week was a form of heartburn (as timgray suggested), but I’m taking it as warning sign I shouldn’t ignore. Heck I’ve been getting warning signs I shouldn’t ignore for years. Now time to do something about it, in a conistant sensible way.

Furnace threatens to suck me into vortex of pre-con stress, since I’m doing to much and have too little tiime to do it. Might have to drop some of the things I’m doing, because I’m now at the time I’ve not got any time to finish them off. I’ll be making a sensible measured decision about this later.  Nutter that I am, I’m already mentally making a list of stuff I’m going to work on post-furnace.

In other news I’ve started a new blog for Hearts in Glorantha, which as well as a preview of next issue has the start of a review of HeroQuest 2. See it here http://heartsinglorantha.ukrpgblogs.net/

Its took me until two this afternoon to get back to my usual cheeky self.  Conbination of a panic attack this morning, a fit of anger (mentally aimed at someone who deserves it) and bizarrly a short sharp pain in the chest (don’t worry it only lasted about 30secs), which left me a bit depressed until I bounced back this afternoon.  Ho hum.

In other news the weekend was good. On Saturday Operation ‘Clear the Jungle’ was well underway and the back garden is now covered with branches.  Sunday was lovely and sunny, but there was a poor turnout at GoPlayManchester and we were last to get a table at Fanboy 3, due to a Magic Convention. Less than happy about this. Looks like our days there are numbered….  Had a good game of Cthulhu Rising, despite it feeling like we were playing in the street.

So I’m back from the Newport family invasion of the Cotswolds. A nice time was had by all. Eve is now fully up and walking ran around the cottage and I’m glad we went for the next price bracket up so that she could do so. in fact the cottage, in Bibury, was one of the best we’ve ever stayed in. Nice roomy and comfatble.

Despite this being a ‘chill out and recharge’ holiday we managed to get out every day and do something. A walk round a park here, a visit to a musseum there. All of which was good for the soul, but reminded me with a bang how physically unfit I am these days. Tiredness aside from chasing small child around various tourist attractions, I do feel refreshed and I realise how much sitting at the computer takes it out of me since the holiday was a  computer free zone. Also how junky and crap my diet is. So more activity and fresh veg for Mr Newt from here in 🙂 

Being away from work gave me chance to reflect on it. Once again I’m falling into a comfatable state of complacency. Its time to step up a gear and get on in life. Working at the Uni on one hand can be an oportunity to take it easy and sit in the slow lane, with bosses and colleagues that will quite happily turn a blind eye, but its also an opportuntiy to really try out some new ideas and run with it. i shall be doing the latter from now on. The part of my brain that glowed with joy when I pushed myself during my masters will do so again.

The big realisation, this being very much a ‘family holiday’ was that I spend far to much time and energy on my RPG nonsense. On holiday I actually engaged with what I was doing with Rach and Eve and had a great time doing it. Some RPG writing did get done, but it was more focused and quick and got the job done in a tenth of the time than my usual meandering work. A lengthy chat with Rach on Saturday evening after we got back confirmed that some times me musing about by RPG nonsense takes me away from what’s really important in my life. Which isn’t fair to anyone. Don’t get me wrong I’m not going to be giving up doing D101games, GoPlayManchester, Furnace and my Sunday group. Its still a big part of what I am and more importantly a bunch of fun. But its just now I have a sense of perspective that its not the most important thing in my life.

Overall a much needed rest with some life changing realisations that I now need to act on.

Back to a bumper three days of work, so in true LJ fashion I need to take time out and post 🙂

Weekend was good if a bit challenging at times. Rach was on shifts both days, so I was left in charge of Evie who was suffering from teething particularly badly on Saturday. Had a bit of me time, courtesy of small child sleeping and Grandma’s taking her out, and as well as doing the housework reaqquanted myself with the joys of Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Quake3 arena on the PC (courtesty of the ID megapack on Steam being £20 for the weekend). It was like the last seven years never happened, but shiner.

Other highlight was the Black Horse County chaps (Rob, Mark , Steve) coming round on Sunday to kick off our Battlestar Galattica campaign. We are using the liscenced game by Margret Weiss productions, and actually as a system it is very good. A bit of an indie rpg in mainstream clothing. It has traits, hero points (called plot points) and a skills system where you roll characteristic +skill + trait all in a very glossy hardback book. Content wise the book was very complete, the players had everything they needed to create characters, the startship deckplans came in very handy, as did the stock npcs. It allowed me and the players to make the game up as we went along. I’ll probably witter on more about it, but it was very strange and exhilarating to be running something other than HQ as a campaign game.