Posted last night. For those who are relatively new to my journal, rockworm tells the story of a dwarf far from home. The first post can be found here.
I plan to keep updating at least once a week. One reason I'm picking it back up is for collinsmom, who said she enjoyed reading it while at school. As she's still at school, I hope this helps.
If you're curious about the world of Rockworm in general, you can find my world-building entries in my memories here.
The sky is like a big blue glass bowl, with clouds painted all over it. On those days, it feels like you could stretch out and touch it, if you could just reach far enough.
Today has been a good day. We flew kites. We took a walk around a lake. We ate Chinese takeout.
Well, I'm not watching the Olympics, but every once in a while I do hear about something noteworthy. Usually, it's something bizarre or illegal China's doing, but today, it was about soccer. It seems that the US women's team beat Brazil to take the gold in a 1-0 game that went into overtime.
We kept to our exercise agreement and did some heavy exercise today. In this case, off to Mount Trashmore.*
We ran and fast-walked two miles around the lake, then just fast-walked an additional half a mile. I was able to run more than last time. There are no real hills in the path there, but there's a constant wind, so half the time I had extra resistance.
Sunday, we plan to go back for our 'light exercise' day and fly a kite or two as well as take a more leisurely walk.
*I kid you not, there's a city park in Virginia Beach called Mount Trashmore. It's a nice artificial lake and hill built over an old landfill.
I've been thinking about rockworm the past couple of days. I've had to accept that I failed at doing it - mostly because I didn't keep it up.
I think I know why I didn't keep it up. Part of it would be the ups and downs of my life. Energy comes and goes, and sometimes it's easier to keep going and other times it isn't. That's really just an excuse, though. The real reason is that I just didn't know where it was going. I was world-building as I went, and got tangled up in things and didn't know where it was headed.
I feel bad about abandoning it. I still like the setting. I'm not sure how to start writing in it again. Maybe something that's not just Jasper, so I can give more perspectives. Certainly, I need to have definite story goals in mind, rather than just writing what seems to come up. If I don't have a goal, it doesn't seem to get anywhere.
I know there weren't a lot of readers, but I still feel bad for giving up.
The boat had been out of service since June and the 11-strong crew, fed up with waiting for it to be repaired by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), spent £2,000 of their own money on the work. But the repairs had yet to be approved and the boat - which has rescued more than 120 people since 2000 – was languishing in the boathouse at the pretty fishing village awaiting a further inspection.
Ian Pedrick, 49, the station officer, radioed for permission to launch the boat because the girl was already 150 yards out to sea but the crew lost radio contact with coastguard headquarters at Brixham and went ahead with the rescue.
Within three hours the boat was towed away by a senior MCA officer and is now locked in a garage at their office five miles away in Kingsbridge.
This is a prime example of too much government at work. First, the government agency wasn't able to affect repairs. When people did the repairs themselves, they couldn't get somebody out there to inspect the boat. And even though these same people clearly knew what they were doing and managed to rescue the girl, they've been reprimanded and the boat has been outright confiscated until bureaucracy can be reasserted.
Nanny state governments do not trust citizens to be able to take risks and do things for themselves.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
stryck's journal
Previous
thoughtful