The Bazaar #84: So This is A FadeTown?

GENERAL

The struggle is real. Not just in maintaining interest in hobbies and role-playing in general, but also balance between personal life, work, and other challenges that life just finds a way to throw at you. While most think of the summer as a time to rest, relax and recharge, that just simply hasn’t been the case for me this year. So, without just posting a “Back Soon!” sign, I thought I’d do a quick summation of what’s on the go.

DISCUSSION

Work-Life Balance. We all have our careers/jobs to help pay the bills. I make no effort to conceal my currently career as a senior officer in the Canadian Armed Forces. I often use that experience, leverage it in the discussions we have when they stary into the more tactical or military-focused milieu. But we all have families, and work needs to be balanced in a way that provides time to spend with your partner, your family(ies), siblings, and friends.

Personal Life and Hobby Time. We all know how family and personal life events can and reasonably does have impacts on our ability to commit to hobby time. It’s not something any of us like happening, but if we’re going to have rational, adult conversations about the subject, you first have to present your own limitations and ways you’ve developed to overcome things within your scope to solve; some of those are not, and thus you find your agency eroded, or flatly stripped away.

DOMESTIC OPERATIONS

Atlantic Forest Fires. Hot, tinder dry, like many places across North America. For those that don’t know, a series of wildland forest fires have been sweeping across various parts of the fours Atlantic Provinces. Some are under control, many are controlled, several are unchecked.

• Newfoundland & Labrador. An official Request For Assistance (RFA) was presented by the Province and accepted by the Minister of Defence. We’ve begun deploying personnel to assist.

• New Brunswick. A few fires are raging, a couple specifically troublesome for the threat they pose to communities.

• Nova Scotia. A few fires, some very close to significant residential communities.

• Prince Edward Island. Nothing yet, fingers crossed.

• Rest of Canada. It's early days yet, but there are hundreds of fires burning out of control.

• United States. Early days as well, but with mutual aid agreements aplenty, I've no doubt there will be cross-border movement of wild land fire crews and equipment.

CONCLUSION

So how the heck does this fit into Rifts? Well, getting there. For all the actions the Canadian Government does to support Atlantic Provinces with an RFA, my role is support and coordination to planning of training, and execution of supply/logistics to the Task Force. Some of this isn’t onerous, other parts, more so…. That’s the job, the career. Those with a military background will surely get what I mean.

Thus I find myself at in a position where I simply have to announce a temporary hiatus from Scholarly Adventures. Given the 8+ hours a day committed to assisting the conduct of our deployed forces, I still have a day job that asks for another 6 to 8 hours of input. In order to maintain that critical Work-Life Balance spoken of earlier, Hobby Time is just going to take a break until things literally cool down.

Despite having several posts in draft form, the time to edit and finalize prior to posting just isn’t there. I expect things will be back to normal in a couple of weeks, but don’t expect anything until after Labour Day.

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