Getting Older

I am currently sitting at the Black Island Satellite Uplink site for McMurdo Station Antarctica. I turn 38 at the end of this year. Once again there is another Christmas I'm away from friends and family. Between remote telecommunications contracts and military service, I seem to have developed a bad habit of doing that these days.

A man becomes somber as he realizes that many of the things he had hoped to achieve by forty are just not going to come to pass. I can not complain about my life. It has been good so far. I've served my country well, and I have a beautiful family.

Recently I've lost track of some very dear friends, and had some friendships imploded. It reminds me of my own mortality. The death of several comrade in arms in the Sandbox really eats at my soul as well. But I guess life goes on, all you can do is have faith in something bigger than yourself and that it is all to a purpose.

I'm plowing away on my mathematics fundamentals and half a dozen speculative projects on space technology. I might not ever get anywhere with this, but my own hopes and dreams are tied deeply to me succeeding in completeing all my schooling for Math and Engineering aleast through to my Masters. But it's not an easy row to hoe when you have a family to support as well. I know so many people have walked this road before me, I am just amazed at how many have succeeded.

I still hope to get the small publishing house WWW.STELLARCOLLISIONS.COM off the ground with the help of my wife and some very dear friends. I am trying to work with our web designer Raina to get the whole website into some semblance of order. I still have 5 book manuscripts just piled up waiting on rework. Two hundred essays await work for our science fiction setting, Unwelcome Neighbors. There just never seems to be enough time and energy in the day.

I am still debating on whether or not to put together two webzines or if it is worth the effort. The idea for Myth and Starship was to create a contemporary fantasy setting, short story focused webzine quarterly. War Fantastic was conceptualized as being a quarterly containing fanciful military analsysis of science fiction and fantasy warfare, along with wargame reviews and suggestions. I still debate whether it is worth all the work. I just can't make up my mind nor stay focused at this stage in my life.