Control: Life Update

I, Dalton Lewis, thought that I’d give an update on my life and how it’s going. I thought that I’d use a numbered list.

1. Reading. I’m reading The Double by Dostoevsky; I’m considering calling it and not finishing it. I’m not thrilled by it — the main character is self-conscious around society and nervous and embarrassed all the time and I don’t like that at all. Before that I read The Bookkeeper’s Skull and another Warhammer book in the Siege of Terra series. Before that I read The Fellowship of the Ring. I may read The Two Towers next, or another Warhammer book. The goal is to read a book a week. It’s the sixth week and I’ve read three books. I’m not on pace yet, and one of the books I’m reading is 1000 pages — The Wise Man’s Fear. I am reading it because I love the characters and their relationships and their lives at a magical college. It’s gonna take me more than a week to read it, though. The Bookkeeper’s Skull is a nasty horror thrill ride about terrible people on a backwater planet far from the heroic space marines. The Fellowship of the Ring is a marvelous book — one of the all time greats — in which a group of friends stands up against the ultimate evil. The Wise Man’s Fear does a marvelous job of developing the everyday life of a bard/mage at college. It’s amazing.
2. Writing. I just finished writing a novel called MKM: Mech Kaiju Mars. This one took me six months on and off to write. I wanted a pulp masterpiece — a story about giant space battles. I tried to also include themes of following/conforming vs. individuality in the story as well as develop some interesting and diverse characters and try to have some sympathetic villains instead of cartoonish monsters. It’s important to me to create sympathetic villains and to try to develop themes instead of just having a surface plot. I’m working on an Imperium-based fan fiction, and I’m blogging. I’m keeping busy. I’ve been finishing a book every six weeks or so — but I don’t want to do that going forward. I want to spend three months on each novel going forward. I’ve finished enough books that I’m not in any hurry to finish another one. I’m starting to write and prepare a book about control and power dynamics — and what people do in difficult situations. It’s a fantasy novel — those tend to do well for me. It’s called The Dark Gods.
3. 40k. I decided to play Adeptus Custodes for fun. I bought an entire army and collected it and put it together and painted it. I got up early on Saturday morning in order to go to a tournament at Games Plus in Mount Prospect. I woke up early and showered and grabbed an Uber after changing clothes and brushing my teeth. I rode quietly in the Uber for forty-five minutes and then arrived at nine-twenty or so with my freshly painted army. My first match was against tyranids — crusher stampede, the hard-counter to my elite army. I lost the first game because I has no idea what I was doing or how to play the army. I didn’t have much strategy or tactics. Game two I played against thousand sons and put a few units forward but not everything. Those few units got decimated while the other half of my army sat around doing nothing. I lost badly. Game three was the last place game. I won that game in a close game. I need to play better, to do a better job with the army.
4. Mental health. I still have paranoid schizophrenia. At this point it looks like I always will have paranoid schizophrenia. I talk to voices inside of my head. I will always do that. However, the medication reduces the “noise” of the voices and enables me to live a normal life. I can have friends, communicate with friends and family, and play strategy games in order to try to be smarter and more productive. I can write novels and publish them. I still take the same medications that I have taken for a long time — this is a good combination of meds.
5. Weight — I have lost twenty pounds over the last year or so. I’d like to lose more. I’m under 290 pounds now. I was around 308 or 309 at my max weight. I stopped eating bad foods — unhealthy foods like donuts and burgers and candy and popcorn. I regularly work out — twenty to sixty minutes a day. I don’t order food from delivery several times a day anymore. I eat healthy meals at home. I cook.
6. Video Games — I am continually losing at Starcraft 2. I started playing it after boycotting it for six months or so because of a scandal at their parent company. I can’t seem to play well anymore. I can’t win a game no matter what I do. Nothing seems to help me to win. I can’t attack for anything. I can’t make any aggressive moves. I just sit, slowly building, without developing anything, and my opponent builds more quickly than me.
7. Football — Football season ended with the Los Angeles Rams winning the Super Bowl. They deserved it. Aaron Donald, the league’s best player, deserved to win the Super Bowl. I was happy for him.
8. Phillip is trying to make it as a film maker instead of having a normal job. Some people don’t pay him, some jobs destroy his equipment, and some weeks he doesn’t have work, but he is living the dream. Way to go!
9. Simon is running a role-playing group in which we are playing Star Wars characters in the Old Republic setting. Fun stuff. I’m glad to be in a role-playing group again. I missed it.
10. I think that I’m spending less money now — I’m going to the movies less often and I’m eating out less often. I’m saving money.

That’s a summary of my life and how I’ve been for the last couple of months.

Thanks, and take care, friends.