Update October 2025

Oct 31, 2025

What did we get up to this past month

This style of updates is very much inspired by those of Joe Woods. It's a great addition to my normal monthly reflection routines, and offers a needed opportunity to share more informal writing.

It's been a busy, beautiful month!

Things I did

Went to a wedding with Gramps. We also camped and hiked at Sky Meadow State Park. They have an awesome campsite that is a 1-mile hike in. The ranger may tell you that you can use a cart to haul your gear from the parking lot to the camping area (which we opted for since Gramps and I only have one good overnight backpack between the two of us) however, I would not recommend you do that if you can help it. A mile feels a lot longer when you are dragging a cart (overly) full of glamping gear mostly uphill as darkness descends and "Do we worry about bears here?" is the topic of conversation. Beautiful place though, highly recommend checking it out if you get a chance.

Every time I go on an outdoor trip I come away thinking "Why don't I do more of this?". Gramps and I share that sentiment and plan to get one more trip in before the winter.

Started taking a drawing class at the Visual Arts Center.

TTRPGs

A good friend of mine started a Crooked Moon campaign. I created Lord Petrarchus who is heavily inspired by Peter from 'The Great'. I had a ton of fun playing him as I smashed imaginary shots, and followed them up with raucous shouts of "HUZZAH!".

This was the first time I felt that I roleplayed successfully. I attribute that success to having simple motivations and quirks, a strong inspiration, and constantly asking myself "What would Peter do?" even to the point of making sub-optimal game play decisions that could result in my death. Historically I tend to overengineer my character backstory, and thoughts about what I (Grayson the player) might be doing would dominate my playstyle.

Having a tropey, idiotic but lovable and fun character really helped get me out of that mindset, I HIGHLY recommend it.

ShadowDark also got on my radar, and it seems to answer a lot of problems I have with the bloat of 5e. I've got some players and I'm hoping to run Trial of the Slime Lord in the next weeks so I'm very excited about that!

I linked this gist url to an NFC card to quickly share bardic inspiration rules, and track how inspiration usage. Physical cards are fun to hand out, and help incentivize players to use their inspiration.

About content consumption

A conversation with a close friend of mine motivated me to read more. I've always loved reading but I have failed to make it a priority amongst other things.

In an effort to be more mindful of my content consumption I started a digital note to track what I've seen or read. It doubles as a handy conversational piece. You can ask: "Seen any good movies or read any good books lately?" A list prevents you from forgetting what you have seen (as I often do) when you are put on the spot in a conversation.

I've wanted to prioritize reading, drawing, and creative programming, and this has been a great motivator for that.

Content

Movies

Crimson Peak (I should watch more Guillermo del Toro)
Harry Potter Prisoner of Azkaban (better than I remember, still has some interesting practical effects)
Last Night in Soho
Yes, God, Yes (Excellent period piece of early 2000s AOL)
The Descent
The Fall Guy (I'm a sucker for meta Hollywood plots where characters quote movie lines to each other)
Harry Potter Goblet of Fire (The best one???)
21& Over (Not Mi Tells finest work)

Books

Malazan Book 3, Memories of Ice (WOW, I love this series, this one had some EPIC moments and quotes)
Animorphs n20, n21, n22 (THE MOST INTENSE STORY ARC SO FAR! I crushed these)

Music

Manic Focus, Other Side Of Paradise (AWESOME album)

Articles

James Hague has an excellent take on programming! How and why you should embrace the creative aspects of it:

Interesting mental model for dealing with excessive ideas:

What to Do When You Have Too Many Ideas

Stats

Ran 21.9 miles