I have been pressured by several people who want to know when the blog will return.  I have wondered that myself.  Can’t you, they ask, write the blog without talking about the people who don’t want their lives made public?  No, I can’t, really, because the blog makes my life public, and they are part of my life.  There’s not much I can do about that.

Well, there is, really–I can stop talking about “my life”.  The point of the Blogless Lepolt, ultimately, is to let you, the Valdron/Multiverser fanbase, know what is happening with forthcoming product.  It is incidentally to let what might be called the Mark Joseph Young fanbase know about my other creative work being produced outside the Valdron/Multiverser stable.  In all this time, it has also been a place for talking about what has been in the way of producing such work, and thus the events and distractions of my personal life.  Part of that was because I was writing this every day, and I wasn’t getting anything done every day (or sometimes even every week), so I had to say something, and I felt I had to explain why there wasn’t any time to get something done every day.  One of the comments noted that this was something of value to him, to have some understanding of the conflicts that prevented me from writing so much.  That, though, is the part that gets personal–and thus the part that has to go.  Similarly, since I’m not going to be explaining why things have not been done, I will no longer be writing the blog daily–there will be posts when there is something to post; it won’t always be much, and it won’t always be very informative, but at least it won’t be about the progress I did not make.

It will also move that last blog post off its prominent position on the front page of this site, which will make me feel a bit better.

All of this suggests that I have something to tell–and indeed I do.  As I have been typing, I have realized that there is more than one thing to tell.

The impetus for resuming is that there is a new page in the Bible Studies section of M. J. Young Net, On Sabbath.  The brief story behind it is pretty much stated on the page as an introduction.  For those curious as to how someone who has always “regarded all days the same” justifies being part of a Seventh Day Baptist church which very clearly “regards one day above another”, there’s some insight into that there.

As I was typing, though, it occurred to me that I did not mention having made progress on the Multiverser Triple Play:  Horror.  I did what I am hoping will be the last text edits (and neither Jim nor John have commented on them, so I’m feeling fairly secure in that hope).  That puts the ball in the court of our art director.  He, however, takes an extended visit to family overseas every summer, so he might not get to the artwork as soon as he would like.

There was a third thing that came to mind while I was typing, and that is that Collision, the band, now has its own MySpace site.  There’s nothing there yet–not even a picture of the band, and no music–but it’s a start.  I had been thinking it was a necessary step, but that I did not have the time to do it and we weren’t really ready for it, when Baxter asked me about it.  He and Brittany have been overseeing it (I’ve not yet even had the chance to log in to the editing page–but I’m not particularly good at maintaining MySpace sites), and it’s progressing.  What do you think–should our lyrics be posted there somewhere, somehow?

Anyway, that’s the situation.  I will post again when I have something to tell.

–M. J. Young

I did not really get enough sleep last night; however, when I returned to bed this morning I was antsy.

Part of it is that I’ve been thinking I’ve got to make a change in an arrangement of one of the Collision songs–I’m demanding too much of my bass guitarist, and if I want to get the six core songs down I’m going to have to take some of the riffs from the fifth on myself so that I can push him to learn the sixth.  Thus I was lying in bed trying to make sense of riffs in my head–where are the notes on the fingerboard, on the staff, in that nebulous tonal recognition center in my brain.  After lying in bed for half an hour locked into this, I got up, set up the coffee for later (which I should have done sooner), and picked up a guitar.

Fifty minutes later, I was satisfied with that and had run through a few other guitar parts, and decided that I was no closer to going back to sleep than I was when I got up, so I might as well find my glasses and start my morning.  That’s not to say I’m not tired; only that I’m not sleeping.

It also occurred to me that I did some work I neglected to mention.  Sunday night, after doing the weekly file backup, I created a new specials page, uploaded to the site for the M. J. Young Net site, complete with a descriptive banner.  It announces throughout the site the availability of the new books Faith and Gaming and Game Ideas Unlimited Volume 1, which hopefully will help sell the books.  Meanwhile, I also did a fair amount of updating of the pages on the Multiverser site, but have not uploaded these.  The changes include adding links to our other Cafe Press storefronts, the new Game Ideas Unlimited store and the long-neglected Nagaworld store in addition to our standard Multiverser merchandise.  I also did the work to launch the announcement of Game Ideas Unlimited Volume 1 on the Multiverser site, but am awaiting a banner from our art director before uploading all of this.

So I did a fair amount of web work, but it doesn’t all show yet.

If I’m going to make this early rising thing work, I’m going to have to get something done, so let’s move to it.

–M. J. Young

At some point last night I did a few weeks on my own web site, M. J. Young Net. Most of what I did involved hooking up from the index page to various aspects of the Christian Gamers Guild; after all, I have a substantial amount of material in the Chaplain’s Corner there, as well as in The Way, the Truth, and the Dice, the group’s e-zine. I also created a page, and linked it, inviting people to join the Corinthians study. At least a couple of my participants spoke well of the Romans study, and I picked up some new members from that, so I’m encouraged.

I’m not sure whether this was before that or after that, but I also took the time to view Primer again, and to put together a first set of notes. There are still some very confusing sections which will require my attention, but at least I’ve got the beginning of a framework.

There’s other stuff happening, but nothing worth reporting at the moment, so I’ll move to the forums.

–M. J. Young

I am very happy with how much I accomplished on Saturday.

I set up enough of our new web site, Multiverser.org, that people will be able to find it and still find M. J. Young Net without too much inconvenience. There a few apologetic placeholder pages, a few dead links, and a few existing pages that need attention, but there is something there on which to build.

I also organized my notes for today’s directors meeting–a task which turned out to be of less importance than anticipated. One of our directors had informed me over a week ago that he was going to be out of town this weekend; one had a death in the family midweek and between the funeral and the visiting relatives anticipated being otherwise occupied; one did not make it for reasons that are as yet unclear to me. Two directors is not sufficient for a quorum, so our meeting notes were more a mental exercise for me to work through what I needed to remember.

I made an appearance at the funeral Saturday morning before church, and connected with the couple who were interested in the audiobook version of What Does God Expect? at the fellowship meal following Sabbath school to deliver the two-disk set for their perusal.

The meeting was not a loss, however, as the two directors present happened to be the vice president for development–me–responsible for product and product support, and the vice president for public relations–not me–responsible for publicity and promotions. As you probably can deduce, between us we split responsibility for website design and content, and this gave us an opportunity to talk about what steps to take next.

I also managed to pick up the 7dB equipment. I still have to decide where it will live for the present now that it’s here, but at least it’s not there anymore. Late in the evening I remembered to send the other four Quick Word radio show recordings, and even managed to listen this week, to hear the show myself.

Of course, not everyone was happy with what I accomplished on Saturday, and I got reprimanded for failing to do a few important errands, which I did this afternoon instead, so I’m not too terribly unhappy. I also remembered to update the autoresponder letter on the e-mail account for the radio show, so that people who write for information will get information immediately, and I can answer their letters leisurely.

So I’m headed into the week with a good feeling about the accomplishments of the weekend, despite the amount on my plate in the days ahead.

–M. J. Young