For any writers out there(and that means all you bloggers!), have you ever begun to write a story with one idea in mind, and ended up writing something coimpletely diferent and perhaps way better? This is the current experience I’m having writing where I am in Chapter 5 of my book. I set out with an idea of what the characters would be like, and how they would react in situations and all of that, but as I write them out sometimes what feels natural for a character goes from being a one-line thing into a whole new realm of possiblities for future chapters.

This happened to me this afternoon in my book, The Light Warriors. The main protagonist, Eve, reacts a certain way to adults that are around her. She’s strong, yet through her writings she is humble at the same time. This afternoon her character made it back to one of the towns after having vanquished the towns foe(Astos for those of you familiar with Final Fantasy 1), and I had planned out how the adults would react to her, but all of a sudden it just occured to me how the children would react to her and the other Light Warriors. This forced me to have Eve write about her thoughts on the children of the town. This forces me to consider how she’ll react to other children in other towns during the rest of the story. This, in turn, forces me consider how she will think about these kids and thoughts about having children of her own one day.

Do you see how that went. This morning I had one idea for Eve and the other Light Warriors in mind. By this afternoon that one domino had fallen and now a whole slew of other dominos are falling into place for later chapter ideas. How exciting!!

One last thing related to this book: Eve is going to learn how to play the Lute. Anyone on here know how to play a Lute or know of a quality site where I can learn some of the ins and outs of how to play it. I kinda need to research this before I have her start learning in a few more chapters. Thanks.

First read this article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/27/ohio-elderly-landline-service_n_1382659.html?ref=business

Then read this article:
http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2011/09/smartphones_overtake_feature_p.html

Now that you’ve been informed about what is going on with the whole cell phone market, what are your opinions on what the elderly and poor are supposed to do when they get in emergencies or, gasp, just want to talk to their kids and grandkids?

A few friends have been posting Introductory posts that let people who follow their blogs know a little more about them. So I’ve decided to do one as well. I’ll just list off the various things about me and explain for you what I’m all about. These will be in no particular order and just so you know, this post will be referenced in just about every future ‘Schizable’ post.

1. My name is Daniel. The name means ‘God is my Judge’. I believe that when I die he will judge me by what I’ve done and what I’ve intended to do during my time here on this Earth. There will be plenty of Earthly judges who will have all kinds of opinions about me, but in the end(literally haha), God’s is the one opinion that matters.

2. I am a Christian. I grew up in a Christian household so perhaps I was predisposed to becoming a Christian. However when I moved out on my own back in 2003, I never went to church and completely drifted away from all things Christian. If you would like to know more about how and why I became a Christian you are always welcome to message me, or you can read my post about it. http://shadowrunner81.xanga.com/757737764/my-testimony-mark-836/

3. Just because I am a Chrstian does not necessarily make me a Republican. Nor am I a Democrat. I am an independent. My Mother has accused me of being ‘swayed’ as if that was a character flaw. I rather take that as a compliment as I believe that those in congress who cannot be swayed by solid argments from the other side of the aisle(this means both parties) are at fault. Genuine cooperation is what will get my vote.

4. “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own..” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. I don’t drink anymore. I don’t smoke. And although I do take medications, I do not take recreational drugs. I suppose you could call me ‘straight edge’. Kind of a high-school label but I’ve been called that before and if the shoe fits.

5. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. Yes I’m referring to the same verse again because I believe it extends to the treatment, not just of ourselves, but of the planet. I don’t identify with greenpeace or earth first, but I pray, seriously pray, that the global warming alarmists are wrong. BUT, just in case I do my best to take care of the environment even going so far as to wait for the hybrid bus to get to the stop instead of taking the normal buses. COTA rocks!

6. I love the postsecrets website. It is a great place for people to say what they really feel without feeling guilty or ashamed in some way. This is the primary reason why I like the Confessions and Secrets site here on Xanga.

7. I’m VERY backwards when it comes to technology. I don’t like HD, I don’t like smartphones, I don’t like the idea of servers turning into the ‘cloud’ matrix or whatever(see what I did there?). Yeah, the way technology is moving these days scares the crap out of me.

8. You may think I’m a little paranoid after #7. Well guess what? You’re right. I have Schizophrenia, Paranoid Type. Over the course of time I will talk about my dealings with this illness through my Schizable blogs.

9. I also have Social Anxiety Disorder. This means that if there was a Xanga Meet Up scheduled in my living room, I would be busy typing in my bedroom. :-/

10. I have not been diagnosed as being on the spectrum of Autism Spectrum Disorder, but when I read about many of the issues faced by people with ASD, I can think to myself, “Wow….that’s me!” Social Interaction is the worst for me. I cannot read body language. Period. When in a conversation in real life, I don’t pick up on the in-between-the-lines type of things. I don’t always pick up on implications online, but I’m getting better at it. Sometimes you just have to be more explicit.

11. I am a huge Trance fan. Darude, Andy Blueman, George Acosta, Tiesto, Armin Van Buuren, Paul Van Dyk, Cosmic Gate. Love em all. And it all started with this CD(Specificaly the song ‘Africa’). http://www.amazon.com/Tranzworld-4-Webster-Hall/dp/B00005ABJY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332717916&sr=8-1

12. Now before you ask, I’ve never been to a club or a concert for any of these Trance artists. I enjoy listening to their music, not the club scene.

13. The only music that even comes close to Trance/Techno/Ambient is Classical. Opposite end of the spectrum you say? The kind of electronic music I enjoy most is purely instrumental. I got that liking from my love of Classical music. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Pachelbel…I have a lot of classical CD’s and listen to them often. In fact I listen to Chopin in the Rain when I write my book. Which leads me to….

14. I’m writing a book. It might fall under the label of fanfiction, but I’m really not sure. Imagine someone took the game centipede for the atari, and wrote a story explaining why the little ship shoots at the centipede. That’s what I’m doing. It’s an established universe, but the characters had no personality at all. I mean that literally. You never find out a thing about them. They go from point a, to point b, to point c and you never find out anything about them. So I’m giving the game I love a soul.

15. Because I’m so invested in my book, I don’t think I will be looking for a relationship anytime soon. When I’m in a relationship I want to be able to give, if not 100% of my energy, as much of my emotional energy as possible. Right now I’m 100% invested in my book. I will not get into a relationship where I go half-ass.

16. If I was to get into a relationship, I believe I could be happy in the context of a relationship where we just send letters back and forth. Maybe one letter a week? She could be living next door and I would send letters in the mail and if she was happy with that, then I would do everything I could to make it a great relationship. Sometimes emotional relationships are more fulfilling than physical ones.

17. I have been in an emotional fight where I’ve been wrong. I’ve been in an emotional fight where I’ve been right. I’ve been in a physical fight where I believe I was in the right.

18. I feel like I should explain some things about my profile photo. That picture was taken about five years ago on my old cell phone that had a datalink cable. It’s the most recent picture I have. It’s me, but it’s not. That picture was taken before I started taking some medications that cause weight gain. I’m 6’1″, and weighed 185 pounds in that photo. In the month following when I started taking my meds, I gained 40 lbs. One month! That wasn’t fun. I’ve gained 3 lbs in the five years since. I also have a full goatee, not just the bit on the chin so there’s that too. If I don’t have it, I look like I’m 12. :-/

So I think I’ll leave my Into post at that. I may add some more over time but for now, this is just an introduction afterall. Hope you found some of this interesting! Feel free to comment or message me if you have any questions.

-Shadowrunner81(Dan)

Yeah Baby! Ohio State is in the Final Four! That is all.

I received an email last night from a fellow fan of the Blue Jackets(though he says he’s going back to the Red Wings). It said this, “I honestly don’t care if the team leaves at this point. They’re a bunch of losers. The game wasn’t even entertaining, it just pissed me off and made me feel bad for putting in the emotional investment for as long as I did.”

I also was at last night’s game. Less than ten minutes into the game the score was already 3-0. The final score was 5-1. Yes the score was bad but your play was piss poor. Jeff Carter coming to town was the best thing that could have happened and while yes, he never wanted to come here, I think that if he and Rick Nash had clicked and worked together that the top line could have put up some great numbers this year. Both of them are perennial 30 goal scorers. Nash even tied for the league lead in goals a few years back.

Now Carter is gone and Rick Nash, our captain, has publicly stated that he wants out. More than likely he will be traded to the Rangers, or perhaps to another big spender like the Toronto Maple Leafs who tried to get him a couple years ago when he was a free agent. In any case, our captain is leaving and it seems like the team, your team, has given up on the season, their teammates, and the team itself. I went to four games this year, the worst year of the franchise, and watched four lousy efforts leading to four defeats. I went to a game in December, January, February, and now March. All four months were terrible for the franchise. I mean, you guys had a four game winning streak and were still seven points out of second to last place Edmonton! That’s terrible!

So the question is: What are you going to do now? The franchise is in the gutter, everyone wants out, and the fans are holding rallies to get everyone out, including management. Supposedly Columbus is going to pay for the arena from now on by using money from the new Casinos. I’ll bet you just about anything that this issue is going to come to a vote as that money was supposed to be used by the city for roads and bridges etc. People are not happy with this. So what will happen when it comes to a vote and that money gets shot down? Will you move to Quebec and become the new Nordiques?

No one can answer these questions except the people who run the team. And I want to know what the plan is moving forward. You have about ten or eleven games left in the season and then this miserable show is over. What will next year’s team do? I’ll probably go to some games still and support the team. I’ve been a fan of the team since four years before it even got here in 2000. I feel like I deserve an answer. I feel like WE deserve an answer.

Signed,

A Blue Jackets Fan.

This post, and others like it, are inspired by the @autisable blog. I will, periodically, write a blog about my dealings with the illness known as Schizophrenia. I will be telling it from a consumer’s point of view. I’m not a doctor, don’t think I am one. All I know is that I’ve been dealing with this illness for about five years and I know firsthand what it is like to live with it.

I wanted to do a whole introductory post, but when I logged onto my netscape account an article caught my attention and I thought I would share it with you.

http://www.everydayhealth.com/schizophrenia/the-stigma-of-schizophrenia.aspx?xid=aol_eh-emo_2_20120312_&aolcat=HLT&icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl14%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D144272

I will also post the main point I want to get across about this article in case you don’t feel like reading the whole thing:

And I quote: “A recent survey undertaken in 2008 by NAMI reveals the depth of the stigma surrounding schizophrenia. While the survey found that 85 percent of people understand schizophrenia is a medical illness, and most of those people recognize treatment can enable people with schizophrenia to live independently, there were some dismaying results:

Only 43 percent of respondents said they would tell their friends if they had schizophrenia.

Twenty-seven percent admitted that they might be embarrassed if a family member had the illness.”

So my questions for you relatad to this first of many Schizable blog entries are these.

1. Are you on the Schizophrenia Spectrum?

2. Would you be embarrassed if a family member had the illness?

Thank you for reading this.

-Shadowrunner81

First of all, this post is in response to @Crying_In_Color ‘s post about why she chose her username. In it she explains herself and then asks the question ‘why did you choose your username’. Click on the tag and go post there, not here to answer that question.

So my username has its’ origins in high school as I went to summer camp for a week in between each year of my high school career. The camp was called Camp Otterbein and even though I went there starting in about 3rd grade, I never went to the Night Camp version of it until my freshman year of high school. At night camp we would stay awake all night and sleep all day. I seem to recall eating breakfast at 12:30 AM. haha. Oh I loved that.

Anyways, one of the main activities for the campers and counselors was to play a game of 2-5 AM capture the flag. So my freshman year it was really foggy with no moon and everyone who was running around looked like shadows. So I figured that when I went on the offfense to try and find and capture the other team’s flag I HAD to look like a shadow. And I was running.

So in 2000 when I chose my first email name(and AIM) it was Shadow81Dan. In 2005 when I signed up for this site it morphed in Shadowrunner. Unfortunately someone already had ‘Shadowrunner’ so I added the 81( which was the year I was born) and bingo….Shadowrunner81.

So there you go. The origins of my screenname here on Xanga(and on Youtube where it is Shadowrunner81Dan).

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

Yeah I know that Xanga’s Featured Questions is pretty much offline now…but I figured I’d answer this last question. Who knows….I may browse through some old ones over time.

So my answer: Just like when I went from a small private Christian high school to the largest(screw you University of Texas) and most diverse college in the nation(Ohio State) and had my eyes pulled way open at all the different perspectives that were out there on the world, Xanga has done the same. I joined Xanga in late 2005 and gained a few friends that followed my page until I left(and most of them too) in 2007. There were about four or five total and I was happy with that. I only just rejoined the Xanga community last November and since everyone I knew from before was off of Xanga now, I decided to browse and comment on the main pages and find(and be found by) new Xangans with whom I could share my perspective. @lkjslain was the first one to friend me upon my return. Since then I’ve gained about 85 more friends here on Xanga and thus, have been exposed to 85 different points of view. I think that is the greatest blessing ever. Sure I don’t agree with every perspective on things, but for those of you with whom I’ve disagreed just know that I’ve changed my own point of view a number of times in my life. It’s called gaining perspective! ha.

So my question for you is this: How has Xanga impacted your perspective? Or if you’re not on Xanga, how has blogging itself changed your perspective?

So I put this thought into a comment on someone’s blog the other day, but I thought I’d make it a full post for those of you who follow my site. First watch this short clip:

Now I take Mohatma Gandhi’s words and morph them into my view on homosexualty.

“I am a gay man, I am a straight man, I am bisexual, I am a lesbian, I am transgender, I am queer. And so are all of you.”

That’s it. That’s how I see it. Thank you for reading.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/pittsburgh-psychiatric-clinic-shooting_n_1332766.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D141949

I’d like to know what people think about this article, and maybe even the comments related to this article. Many thanks. All I’m going to say right now is that I am sad for everyone involved.