I just recently returned from Gary Con, a Roleplaying Game Convention named after Gary Gygax. First and foremost, I want to say that I love Dungeons & Dragons with all of my heart, but anyone who had read some of my past blog posts know I recognize the legacy as not problem free. In kind, Gygax is someone who I am first to say far from problem-free, yet my attendance meant I supported many gamers, including wholesome authors and people of marginalized backgrounds. This experience became a life changing event for me in more ways than I can even do justice with in one or more blog posts. So I will start my summarizing of events I had gone through this past two to three years with this latest happening.
I had a very, very unexpected occurrence there in addition to having met great people such as Ed Greenwood, Andrew Valkauskas, and also saw Rose Estes, Banana Chan, La Tia Jacquise, and others. Because I respect a person too much to give their name, I will only state what I promised them that: 1) I would not give up on my passion(s), which includes my writing and doing right best I can; 2) I would one day see my ancestral lands; 3) I would connect with my ancestors better and subsequently, continue venerating Asiatic gods. Suffice to say, having this sort of conversation did not once appear on my Con experiences Bingo card, but I will take it over the getting sick at one any day.
This leads me to my segway into the rest of this blog post. I think in more ways than one, I really needed to attend this Con. I found a community of gamers who all shared love and enjoyment of analog games, supported the tabletop experience of dungeonmasters (DMs) who all came from various backgrounds. Creatives were naught but encouraging for me to continue my passions to become a writer of both fiction and nonfiction, world building and otherwise. Yet the previous paragraph of this post notes something deeper than all of this: that I have to somehow promise to do all this before I die even as my country goes into the Hells.
Somehow, I have to find my way to the Heavens, to liberation of these cycles of death and rebirth, and my own paradise in this existence in midst of all the existential dread, increased presence of fascism in my backyard, and more. I do not know if I can live up to such a promise, but now I must. People who know me well know I go out of my way to keep promises and only life and death situations — if even that — could stop me. Even as I find myself getting sick a little more often the past few years, as my acute allergies to dustmites and the environment where I live erode at me, I need to do this.
I also still need to find a job to make it easier to do all this, and that still requires no small amount of work. Right on my agenda this week: to try finding places to apply for and then on Thursday night to actually do the work. All the while, I had set myself up to make sure I keep up with my writing, starting with this post. My hope for my future job not only rests in having a beautiful scenery where I am not surrounded by half a population who might want to kill me or my loved ones. With this job, I want one with comparable benefits to my current one or better, has similar work/life balance expectations, and more. Because of the painful reality I might just have to make a Plan B for leaving this country, I am also getting TESOL teaching certification.
That leaves me with one other thing I did not plan for my Bingo card: being in a career that one day might be sabotaged by two grown ass manbabies and their administration of dictatortots. All the same, I cannot say I am entirely shocked the more I understand history. Knowing of course how these people act toward dissenters, I will not say more than thus. The only reason I do not wish certain people I shall not name a slow, painful, and agonizing death is that I fear the satisfaction it might give such people. They live to see the world validate their reason for existing and for hating many of us, to see our pains and agonies because of them and our drastic responses because of them. Instead, I will wish they one day live, powerless and uncomfortable, to witness all they had hoped to achieve taken away from them, their loss of power, and they see themselves remembered for the shame they are to humanity. Nothing more painful to an unchecked narcissist and sociopath than to see all the power they try to hold over people taken away from them, never a chance to gain again so the world lives free without their influence.
Until then, I will look for obituaries on the first few pages of the newspaper, proverbially speaking. Please be kind, and especially to yourselves.
—Arya
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