The Hardest Month #
I haven’t had much a chance to look back on October. The truth is, it is now March 2024 and I’m just now getting around to setting up a way to update folks on progress for Parallel Games company projects like The Gentleman Game Designer and my upcoming game, Elderwild.
I am not ready to tell you about Elderwild, but I am ready to start looking back on the journey that got us to March and to set up a way to talk to ya’ll about what we are doing and where we are going. Think of it as a sort of “Behind the Scenes” all-access pass. Well, most access anyway.
So what happened in October? Let me tell you…
On October 5th I got fired from my day job as a Sr. Staff Software Engineer at a healthcare company for fighting against ableism and discrimination in the place where I worked. Good trouble as the late Honorable Congressman John Lewis would say. I did my best.
On October 7th I learned that my cousin lost his wife to cancer. 32 years young. Stage 4 metastatic melanoma. You have to understand my cousin’s wife was the same age as my girlfriend. He is the same age as me. Reality hits different when its so close to you.
Then on October 10th my Dad calls me out of the blue to tell me that my grandfather’s heart is going and he isn’t expected to live through the next few days. COVID got him in the summer and despite survivng it then, the bill was coming due. My grandfather and I were very close. We agreed on many things idologically, spiritually, politically. We saw the world in a similar way and he is one of the few people in my life who I felt truly saw me.
I got to spend my grandfather’s final moments with him. I got to show him my trip to Amsterdam and we got to look at all the beautiful artwork from Van Gogh and the Old Dutch Masters and explore the Tulips of the Kukenhoff together. His final words to me were “Thank you!”.
On October 15th at 10:06 in the morning my grand father drew his last breath. On October 18th I went fulltime on my dream. I’m not stopping until I get it. Thank you Grandpa!
