The Shovel of Truth

The Shovel of Truth (pictured above) is a +5 golden holy shovel of lie smiting and depression bane. Its use is designed solely to clear away all the nasty crap one's mind comes up with at the worst of times. Like when you think that nobody cares about the things you do.

It's not true.

It never has been, and it never will be. Somebody will always care about the things you are doing. And, sometimes you won't even realize those people are there.

I've been feeling that way recently. I've been kind of in the dumps about a lot of things, and one of those things happened to be my blogging and the results I didn't think I was getting.

Well, I had a real long drawn out chat with a friend of mine and she was telling me about how depression is just one great big lie. It's your mind working against you, telling you things, hateful things that aren't true. It's the voice that whispers about how you messed up that job interview. It's the voice that tells you you're worthless, that everything you've done up to this point has been meaningless.

After a while, those lies get heavy, and I told my friend about how I am. I told her that all I wanted to do was collapse beneath them, let them run me over, just so I could get a little rest. I told her I wanted to give in, and give up. Then I told her what giving up meant to me (and that's not something I'll repeat here), and she told me that I didn't strike her as the type of person who just gave up.

I believe that.

There have been so many points, so many places in my life where I've just wanted to give up. I've wanted to lay in bed and wallow in my grief and self-pity. I've believed the things depression's been telling me. But, I didn't give up.

I kept moving. And, it hasn't always been my own will that's got me going. More than once it's been my wonderful Cupcake pulling me up out of the muck and getting me to start moving again. And, I thank her for that. She like's to say she's a flashlight for me, to help me find my way in the dark. I like to think of her more as a lighthouse, one that shines as bright as any star, and let's me see the world for miles and miles.

And, now I have a shovel to help that lighthouse. Lol. Poor analogy, but I think you get what I mean. I now have a weapon to use to beat that depression back. I have the truth to back me up.

The lie: Nobody cares about my blog/writing.

The truth:

Blogger- On average I get between 20 and 30 hits a day, with one official follower.

Fanfiction.net- One of my stories has 59 favorites, 107 alerts, is featured in 2 communities, and is just shy of 50,000 views.

Hubpages- I have 10 followers, and I haven't posted a Hub in the last three months or so.

People care. The proof is there, and I just need to be patient to get the numbers I want.

So, I'm going to take my Shovel o' Truth, and I'm going to go beat some depression/lie zombies to death. Later.

Ryan
4-23-14

CM Punk

So… yeah… this last weekend kind of sucked for me, but it’s not something I’m going to get into here. I’d rather keep things light and cheery, and the weekend was filled with dreariness and pain. The only bright spot in the whole thing was our DnD game. I wrote one encounter for the game, and I prayed it would take the PCs more than fifteen minutes to plow through it. It took them two and a half hours to get through what I had prepped… and technically they still aren’t done yet. There’s one third of the maze left, but I think my little Childlike Goddess is going to fix it so they don’t have to work through it. I put them through enough hell with the last two thirds. Lol.

Anyway, that’s not what I’m supposed to be talking about. Nope, today cupcake gave me the topic of CM Punk. Well, at first she gave me the topic of the WWE, then I asked her how she expected me to work the WWE into my DnD game without getting sued. So, she narrowed it down to CM Punk. It will take a little finagling to get him into the game, but I think I can do it lawsuit free.

Anyway, CM Punk…

I don’t know what to say…

My first exposure to CM Punk was when the WWE brought ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling) promotion back from the grave they sent it to a decade earlier. I watched it infrequently when it came on (I’ve always been an on again off again wrestling fan) and for the longest time, right after it premiered I believe, CM Punk had a winning streak a mile long. He was a fantastic technical wrestler who, I thought, didn’t need to add a lot of flash to his matches. I mean really, his finishing move at the time was a Cobra Clutch (a submission maneuver). And, he was good with the mic. Punk had, and has, a mountain of charisma and would have excelled at whatever field he chose to go into.

And, he excelled at wrestling.

But, he’s had problems with the WWE off and on over the years. Punk doesn’t fit the stereotype the WWE caters too. He’s a short guy, shorter than me (though since I’m 5’11” that’s not a hard thing to do) and he probably weights between 190 and 220 soaking wet. (I’m taller than he is, and I weigh more than he does, but GD he could kick my ass up and down the basketball court.) And, what the WWE thinks a wrestler should look like is 6’2” and between 220 and 300 pounds, and cut like some sort of Athenian god. Yes, a body builder like the Govenator is what they’re looking for. CM Punk is not that.

Still he jumped through every hoop the WWE lit on fire and more. He made it to the top, spent a year and four months, or something like that, as the WWE champion and they still treated him like trash. Not once has CM Punk headlined a Wrestlemania (he’s had championship matches at Wrestlemania, but he’s never been the main event, last fight of the night), he was down played when it came to The Rock, who hadn’t wrestled in nearly a decade, decided to come back and face John Cena for the WWE championship. It was The Rock Punk lost the championship to at the end of this legendary title reign.

And, now CM Punk has a new problem with the WWE. Daniel Brian. Punk doesn’t have a problem with Daniel Brian, he has a problem with the way they’re treating their fan voted superstar of the year. The WWE is treating Daniel Brian the same way they treated Punk at the beginning of his career.

So, Punk quit, and now everybody’s speculating as to what will happen next. Will he go to MMA and face off with Power Ranger’s legend Jason David Frank? One can only hope.

As for me, I’ve got a bug to pick with a Halfling. The damned little thing as come close to getting the party Cthulhu’ed twice! So, I’ve decided to work this Halfling and CM Punk into one entity. Introducing CM Puck, like the character from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the one who gave the prologue, (Puck was his name. Lol.) and as CM Puck this little Halfling is a bard fighter multiclass character (maybe even a level of monk or two… er maybe not) whose been seen showing up the bigger baddies in the bare fist boxing ring. Now he’s up against Really Repulsive Ricky (Triple R), whose manager is Vance McClavical, and the odds are in CM Puck’s favor. McClavical will do just about anything, at this point, to keep CM Puck from winning, maybe even going so far as to hire the PCs to fix the match for him.

Cthulhu’ed: summoning the great old one for the explicit purpose of eliminating the player characters.

Anyway, I’m going to stop working on the next adventure and get back to my current one. The PCs might be upset if I’ve got nothing ready for them this Saturday.

Ryan

2-11-14