On Relationships
Posted on 18 August 2010 | No responses
Here’s the thing about relationships: they are as much about an individual as it is about a couple. Take care to take care of yourself. Continue with your own pursuits and hobbies. Go out with your friends sometimes. Give yourself some “me” time.
This is important for two reasons: First, there’s nothing more annoying than having that friend who goes all puppy-dog over a woman and abandons their friends. Second, there’s nothing less attractive than a man who loses his identity to become a mere reflection or shadow of the woman he’s dating. You attracted her because you were yourself and doing your own thing. She was interested because you were so passionate about your hobbies and liked the way you were with your friends. But when you take away what it was that she liked about you, what else is left?
I suppose I wonder about the nature of what some people think when they enter a relationship. Romance novels are in the fiction section for a reason. But, even then, the male leads in those novels have their own pursuits and passions to pursue.
I guess what I’m trying to say is yes, people change when they are in a relationship and often this change has to do more with their expectations than with their feelings. A romantic relationship should be a part of your life, not simply become your life.
Stay classy.
Projectus Everywhereus
Posted on 24 June 2010 | No responses
So, I have all these balls up in the air and I wanted to take a moment to share with you fine folk what it is I am doing with my life.
LastMage
LastMage.com. I am writing an ongoing serial chronicling the actions of this reality’s last Mage, Elijah Valentine. The writing is going very well. By setting myself at an even pace, I think things are going well.
Alorium
Alorium.com. Temporarily closed as I work on a redesign for the site. It will hold my other ongoing fiction, mostly fantasy. While I want to turn LastMage into a brand and hopefully get some Alternate Reality stuff going, Alorium will just be a repository.
Trans-Dimensional Cafe
TransDimensionalCafe.com. Three hosts, geekdom and laughter. This is an ongoing project. We’ve been working at it for a few months and hopefully we’re getting into a good rhythm. The conversation is flowing a lot better and we’re just now thinking about advertising.
ImageChaos
ImageChaos.com. The dark side of the coin that is Eckhart. I am trying to get this podcast up and going again. At it’s peak, the podcast had several thousand listeners all of whom I’m sure have gone off to other things. I really do want to get this going again as when I was recording it regularly, there was a profound sense of catharsis afterwards. Very shotgun, minimal editing.
MAGEAssociation
MAGEAssociation.org. Masters of Art and General Entertainment. I always wanted to have letters after my name. I wanted to start a professional association whose purpose is to provide reciprocal resources to those of us who create online. Those of us who have created great things but haven’t bottled the magic that lead to the meteoric rise of Tee Morris and his contemporaries. Also, you’ll be able to put MAGE after your name. Andrew Eckhart, MAGE.
Alltern8
Alltern8.com. I’ve started blogging here and I will be doing various pieces on character development and the like. Hopefully, it will help me get my views out there as well as get my name recognized in some capacities.
Of course, I always have other things going on in my head. Other plans. Other goals, but these are the ones that are the most concrete.
Progression and Projectus
Posted on 11 June 2010 | No responses
I have a few projects that I’m working on and a few that I have stuck and floating around in my head.
The LastMage website is going beautifully. I am looking forward to updating my ads and starting my third round of advertising in August or September. The chapters have been coming slowly and easily. The story has its own life and is creating its own momentum, which I am very glad for. More than that, I’ve been getting a few comments every now and again with generally positive sentiments.
The only thing I need to focus on is to cut down on typos. It’s embarrassing when someone says “Hey, I really liked this but in paragraph 7 there’s a misspelling.” Though, if people are willing to spend time to tell me about these things, I am extremely grateful. They could have said nothing and moved on.
Otakon is coming up, so I plan on trying to commission some character artwork for the site, design something after it. Some of those Otakon folks are amazingly outrageously talented and I really and truly envy them.
I plan to write another short story in the LastMage Universe dealing with Lorenzo and his story. Lorenzo is turning out to be a sort of conundrum to me. We’ve only seen him in one scene and he’s abrasive, curt and not extremely personable. While I know why he is that way, I’d like to discover how that inciting incident occurred. What were the steps that led him down his path.
Also, the nature of some of the other characters who I though I’d known for years have changed, as with some of their motivations. I hate to be needlessly vague, but I don’t want to spoil it for folks.
Beyond that, I’m working on pulling together a theme for “The Interview.” I was inspired by the usage of “The Doctor’s Theme” in seasons 3 and 4 of Doctor Who. They really gave the viewer a sense of the character in auditory form. I hope to capture that with this upcoming project — which should prove to be significantly easier than attempting a 3-D trailer for the story. That was an idea that died on conception.
Perhaps I should take some animation courses.
I’m coming up on my 25th birthday. A long, long way from highschool graduation where I thought that things would have been much different. But, alas, I have what I have and I am where I am. So, I continue working, dreaming, hoping.
For a less… PG version of these thoughts, see the flip-side of the blog, imagechaos.com .
Cheers.
Working for the Weekend
Posted on 12 April 2010 | 1 response
The Washington Monument (Look at all that pollen!)
Am I the only one who finds the weekend more stressful than the weekdays? I suppose that would require a great deal of people to like their jobs more than spending time with friends and family.
I took this picture this Saturday after the Japanese Street Festival when my group of friends and I were nearing E on the fuel gauge of energy. I believed we walked a solid eight hours that day — or we were on our feet for that amount of time. It was an interesting day. Saw some sights, listened to some interesting music and saw some interesting art. I’ll see about putting up videos as well.
We took some time to see Date Night which was hilarious and we saw a performance on the Mall, something we hadn’t expected to encounter.
Though the entire time we were out and looking and experiencing these things, I could not help thinking about my stories, especially Last Mage and the titular character. This isn’t really a spoiler, but if you don’t want to know more about the story than what’s being told on the site, then skip over this next paragraph.
Washington D.C. gets broken. Broken like when you drop a hard cookie and it cracks into several pieces. Roads jutting, gas lines going. Just… broken. As we walked through D.C. I kept thinking what would it look like? What would people do in response? What would Elijah do? I already know what he -does-, but not really what he exactly feels about it.
But I digress.
Work is coming along great, and so is my writing. Life is still a constant even keel, though things seem to heading in a much more exciting direction this coming few months.
Until next time.
(Download) Taiko Drums on the Mall
Yet Another Beginning
Posted on 4 April 2010 | No responses
I seem to be creating a lot of beginnings recently. Read more