31

My birthday blogs are like an annual 1:1 with myself. I review progress against my goals and set new ones for the year ahead. This birthday is special because it’s my last one as a non-parent. So, before I get to the annual status report, I’d like to express my feelings about turning this corner. (Soundtrack to this post, and source of the quote below: "Mother God" by Deante' Hitchcock) 

Somebody asked me why I think God is a woman
And I said, "Your momma's cooking

must not be as good as mine.
Your little sister must not warm your spirit when you see her crack a smile.
And you never seen one hold a child

in her arms after she just birthed it."
Hands down man, walking this Earth's surface,

shorty's the closest thing I done seen to perfect.
Girl I'm with now is a nurse and

working two jobs on the side, still trying to find purpose,

giving love to those who need it, and not just those who deserve it.
That's the type of shit that make me love her more,
couldn't cut her loose if I had scissors, this love galore.
She bring me peace, and nah she ain't street in the least,
but if it's beef, I know that she'll hold the heat for me like the oven door.
Really becoming more and more convinced that I love y'all,
but y'all may love me more.
I don't think that I can compete with my mother's joy,

seeing her baby boy live out his dreams,

'cause years ago I wasn't even sure what I was living for.

Just know I love more than life itself.
My heart's cold but I know the ice can melt.
How I'm your son but you shine like one?
And all them tears you cried for me,
to get through 'em, you must be Michael Phelps.
As the cards in this life get dealt,

I know I always got me some queens;
all my grandmas, partners, cousins and aunties
always on time like Ashanti,
whether I need me some advice

or just wanna talk, but it haunt me

to this day,

that I ain't go see Brianna up in that hospital bed.
Convinced myself I had a lot on my head,
it ain't a lie, 'cause at the time, man, I did.
Lessons learned, putting things I should do today off for tomorrow instead.
You, my momma, Nique, Granny and Brenda and Lina, Mama Jay
Auntie Tyra, Jaae, Tenae, auntie Kita, Claudine and Claudette
Steph and Josette, Icy and Lisa, miss Tina, Caroline, Blaire and Amethyst, Khi, Amina
made sure I started with love like Serena.
And if love is God and God is love, then these a couple places I've seen.
Started with love like Serena
If love is God and God is love
Man, I mean Women, yeah

Women are amazing. I'm all in on having a baby girl. But when we first learned the gender, I was nervous. I thought it would be harder to bond with a daughter than a son. Since then I’ve done a complete 180; now I can’t wait for the two of us to teach each other all about life. I credit Felicia for the confidence. She is my everlasting fountain of inspiration. If our baby is anything like her mama then we are in for a treat.

COVID-19 hike

I also want to pay respects to Kobe Bryant. He died in January, the same week we found out we were pregnant. Kobe was a transcendent basketball player - my favorite Kobe moment was his final game - but after he died I also learned about his family life. He was a proud father to four girls (daughter Gianna passed alongside him in the helicopter crash) and he inspired the #GirlDad movement. I was already planning to say “Kobe!” when shooting dirty diapers into the bin, but now I’m gonna say it from the heart. RIP Kobe and Gianna.

Felicia and I have been told warned our relationship will change when we have children. My parents were unhappy together throughout my childhood, so that’s an ominous warning to me, and it’s really the only part of this pregnancy that has made me uncomfortable. Whatever happens, I’m just happy to be starting this journey with such a loving and competent partner. I’ll do my best to not take my girls for granted.

Developments since last year

• * House -> jungle transition is in full swing


• * Launched a website for my greenhouse projects


• * Achieved my goal of staying in the PNW for a whole summer


• * Got really fit (then regressed when the gym closed)


• * Formed a Super Smash Bro’s league based on last year’s birthday party


• * Developed functional prototypes of a couple games

Plants

This has been my best growing season so far. My living room has really filled out in the past year. Some plants have actually outgrown their area, so I took cuttings and started a jungle in the greenhouse. Eventually I ran out of greenhouse space too, so I remodeled the foyer. Plants went from the house to the greenhouse, then back into the house. It’s the houseplant circle of life :)

one year of growth (minus cuttings) in the living room

foyer before/after

My hydroponic jalapenos are thriving. The alpha plant is seven feet tall and climbing. Felicia got in on the gardening action this year too. Her raised beds have squash, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, chard, and kale. Here’s the timelapse from April through July.

Games

I first thought of Salary Man a couple years ago in New Zealand. It’s a game that mixes 2D and 3D as different dimensions of work/life balance. It's a tale of economic corruption, set in a corporate dystopia where not everything is as it seems. When I say it out loud it sounds like the movie Parasite. Great flick. Anyway, this work is my magnum opus and I don’t plan to finish it any time soon, but I’m happy to share some artifacts from development.

3D "Life" demo (February 2020)

2D "Work" demo (July 2020)

Next Year
I love funemployment, but my days of abundant free time are coming to an end. We plan on spending a few months together as a new family, and then I’ll be back to work or on full-time dad duty. Either way, time off has been great for my mental health and I feel like I’m set up for success in my next adventures.

I’ll keep working on games in my free time. I wouldn’t have been able to do that when I was working full time before because I didn’t know the tools. Now that I know what I’m doing, a spare hour can be really productive.

I discovered a new life goal this year. I want to use houseplants to embody my personal relationships. There’s something special about two friends nurturing propagations of the same plant. Houseplants are also the perfect little “something to remember me by.” I’m not sure why I have this urge to leave a legacy, but if I can leave a trail of foliage in my wake then mission accomplished. Most of this year’s plants wound up in the new foyer, but I was able to gift about a dozen plants. Now I’ve got more stock than ever and I’m looking forward to sharing the wealth.

Birthday

Rabbits are my favorite animal. One of our pastimes during quarantine is to walk around the neighborhood hang out with the baby bunnies at our local community garden. We did that on my birthday, and then Felicia made me this carrot cake. It was delicious and she is the best.

There’s a saying, “Build a life you don’t need a vacation from.” I think I actually took it a step further this year. I built a life I don’t want a vacation from. Even when we took trips I still brought my projects with me. I just want to thank the universe for making that happen. It has been really clutch in the age of COVID.

TGIB

The Swindell Heart

Legacy, what is a legacy?
It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see
I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me
America, you great unfinished symphony, you sent for me
You let me make a difference, a place where even orphan immigrants
Can leave their fingerprints and rise up
I'm running out of time, I'm running, and my time's up
Wise up, eyes up
I catch a glimpse of the other side
Laurens leads a soldiers' chorus on the other side
My son is on the other side
He's with my mother on the other side
Washington is watching from the other side
Teach me how to say goodbye
Rise up, rise up, rise up, Eliza!
My love, take your time
I'll see you on the other side
-The World Was Wide Enough, from HAMILTON

My grandfather “Scoop” passed away last month. He earned that nickname from his love of ice cream and his hall-of-fame career as a journalist. He was my dad’s dad. The last time the three of us were together was last summer for his 90th birthday. Scoop was 30 years older than my dad, my dad is 30 years older than me, and I was turning 30. We didn’t plan to have a 30-60-90 weekend but serendipitous special moments were a normal occasion with Scoop.

Many of my special moments with him had to do with baseball. Ask me sometime about grand slams and inside-the-park home runs. Just don’t get me started on the legendary softball game because I won’t shut up. That being said, Scoop was more brilliant than he was athletic. In his later years he was blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, and hard of hearing in the other, but what he lacked in sensory ability he made up for with an incredible memory. He knew everything that was published (and some stuff that wasn’t) about the entire history of Hollywood, professional baseball, and United States presidents. He loved to reminisce about his family too. His 5 kids, 11 grandchildren, and 1 great-grandchild were his proudest accomplishment. I’ll never forget all the idyllic holidays that we spent together with him.

The Swindell heart is notorious to the men in my family. Scoop wrestled with it for 31 years, but ultimately it got the best of him, just like it got the best of his father, brother, and cousins. In fairness to Scoop, he won more battles than he lost. He had his first heart attack at the age of 62, and the prognosis was that he might live to be 70. Well, 70 came and went and so did 80. He had a second heart attack at 81 but he still wasn’t done. Just before his 90th birthday the prognosis was “weeks to months.” After his birthday dinner he stood up and announced “I feel better than you all might think, and I suspect that this is not my last birthday!” He was right.

I’m told that if there was a Father of the Year award, Scoop would have won several. Father’s day came less than two weeks after he turned 91. I like to think of it as Scoop’s victory lap. He went peacefully in his sleep the morning after.  

In loving memory of Larry Nolan Swindell, known to his grandkids as Scoop.
6/10/1929 - 6/22/2020

The love of Scoop’s life was my grandmother, Ellie. She died of cancer six years before I was born. I admire Scoop for carrying on so gracefully after suffering such a profound loss. Felicia and I hadn’t been dating very long before she told me about her genetic disease, Cystic Fibrosis. She was casual about it, but I liked her a lot and I wanted to know more, so I did some research when I got home that day. The long term implications of CF aren’t great; among them is a reduced life expectancy. I contemplated that for a while and I cried because it’s sad, especially for this amazing young woman who I just met, but it didn’t change my aspirations for our relationship. In fact, I came away from that with a sense of urgency to move things forward. The result was that I took some extra classes so we could graduate together, and then I asked her to marry me a couple years later (she said yes!). Those are the two best decisions I’ve ever made. In hindsight I think that my confidence came from Scoop’s relationship with Ellie.

There are 10 weeks between Scoop’s passing and Felicia’s due date with our first child. As I find myself at a generational crossroads, I can’t help but think about things biologically. The biological imperative is different for every species, but in its purest form it is to survive and reproduce.

Consider baby sea turtles. From the moment they hatch they have incredible instincts to dig out of the sand, sprint to the water, and swim until the current takes them across the ocean. They never even meet their parents.

For humans, there’s no way that turtle-like instincts could prepare us for the shifting sands of modern life. Instead of hardcoded programming we are born with insatiable curiosity and the capacity to learn from our surroundings. As children we are sponges, soaking up everything we can from the advanced members of our group. The biological term for this behavior is "Monkey see, monkey do." We’re less impressionable as we age but we never completely stop aligning ourselves with the people around us. I was so lucky to spend my formative years in a family of Scoop’s making. He had an enormous influence on my life directly through our personal relationship, and indirectly through the values instilled in my dad, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I feel well prepared to raise the next generation. I think that’s the highest praise I can give to Scoop.

The Swindell heart is flawed medically, but as a metaphor for love it’s damn near perfect. My family oozes joy, empathy, and creativity. We celebrate each others’ wins and pick each other up from our losses. Scoop’s loss stings for all of us, but the beat goes on, and I can’t wait for the next couple months to pass so I can share it with my daughter.

Thank you for everything, Scoop. Rest in peace.

--

P.S. That turtle article is from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Scoop took my brother and I there when we were kids, and my brother has taken his daughter there several times. Maybe someday I’ll take my mine there too :)

P.P.S. This post was the most difficult thing I’ve ever written both emotionally and technically. Writing normally helps me organize my thoughts, but once I got going on Scoop ‘organized thought’ was hard to come by. At one point I was juggling extended metaphors about clay, roads, sea turtles, sponges, and the human heart, while also drawing inspiration from Hamilton, a Will Ferrell movie, and rap lyrics from three different songs. The challenge was appropriate given Scoop’s stature as a writer. Fun fact: His memoirs inspired me to start this blog in the first place!

P.P.P.S. Here are the Scoop halls of fame that I'm aware of.

• Texas Literary Hall of Fame
• Classic Film Hall of Fame

All Over the Place

A lot has happened in the last nine months and somehow, even though I’m unemployed, I haven’t found the time to write about it. Until now. Buckle in because this is gonna be all over the place.

Baby on the Waybe
Speaking of nine months, Felicia and I are having a baby! Our due date is in September. We know the gender and we have a name we like, but for now it’s our little secret. We’re both a little nervous and a lot excited to start this next chapter. I doubt we’ll have a baby shower because of the pandemic, but if you want to celebrate with us then send a nice message :)

Thanks Auntie Mama for the baby swag

COVID-19
We read about the first US COVID-19 death when we were boarding a plane to Hawaii. This virus on the other side of the world wasn’t a factor in our lives, and then all of a sudden it was infecting people in our neighborhood. We had a blast exploring the big island, but we didn’t exactly find peace and relaxation there because whenever we checked our phones there was more news about the deadly breakout back home. When we started our vacation on February 29th there were two announced cases, both fatal, from Life Care Center of Kirkland. By the time our vacation ended on March 8th, Life Care had announced 48 cases and 22 deaths, and an unknown number of staff and residents had yet to be tested. We tossed around the idea of staying in Hawaii until we had more clarity on the outbreak, but ultimately we decided to take our scheduled flight home.


The Kirkland we came back to seems a lot quieter than the one we left, not that we get out of the house much. The extent of our activities is basically my weekly grocery run and our evening walks around the neighborhood. Thankfully I’m an introvert and I have plenty of hobbies at home so I’m comfortable. Microsoft was ahead of the government issuing work from home orders, so Felicia hasn’t been into the office since February, and by the time she’s done with maternity leave the total gap will be over a year and life will be totally different.

I want to give a shoutout to my friends and family members who had wedding and graduation plans cancelled, and of course pay respects to the families that have been directly impacted by the pandemic. When this is over I hope we can all live with a greater sense of urgency and purpose, because today’s opportunities might not be there tomorrow.

Fitness
Before the breakout I was as fit as I’ve ever been. I had a different routine every day of the week involving weights, running, and pickup basketball. I’ve been able to touch the bottom of the rim throughout my adult life, but in February I could get about three inches above and pull it down. If I kept at it then the sky was the limit. Unfortunately the gym is closed and I haven’t adapted to a new routine, so the buffness is gone.



Having a nice bod was fun because I got a lot of compliments on my appearance, and that was a new experience for me. I was working out to improve athletic performance, but positive feedback became a new motivation. I never understood Instagram culture until I realized that I just wasn’t attractive enough for it. Praise is addictive! I’ve come back down to earth now, for better or worse. But when I was working out I had a lot of confidence, so I joined a baseball team for the first time in 15 years. When the virus canceled those plans it felt like my teenage years again, when a broken hand derailed my career at its peak. Maybe I’m just not meant to be on the diamond.

The good news about being sidelined is that my feet are back to normal. They were overworked and nasty, and I’ve always defined myself as someone who has nice feet, so that’s a pretty big deal. Slide into the DMs if you want to exchange feet pics. Just kidding...unless??

Projects
Instead of working out I’ve been spending time on hobbies at home. I started this solar-powered greenhouse project over a year ago, but then forgot about it when we went to the Galapagos Islands. I picked it back up a few weeks ago, and it felt really good to tie up all the loose ends I left for myself. You can check it out at https://smartgreen.house/



Just before the outbreak I finished up a demo for my game, Salary Man. The vision I have in my head for this game is amazing, and it’s been a lot of fun bringing it to life. The incarnation that you see here is nowhere near the final version. Everything in this video was an educational experience for me, and I plan to apply the lessons I learned from it. Hopefully you can still grasp what it’s about. Wu Tang!



Video Games
Video games are following the same path as the movie industry; the biggest studios are milking the same franchises over and over again because it’s the best bet financially. Meanwhile the purist content, the media from independent studios, rarely reaches a mass audience. I haven’t bothered with recent installments of Pokemon or World of Warcraft, two franchises I grew up on, because commercialization-forwardness is an affront to game design. Maybe someday in the distant future, after Salary Man DLC has made me rich, I'll re-read this paragraph and cry at my loss of innocence while wiping my tears with hundred dollar bills.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Super Smash Bros is one franchise that’s trended way up for me. I’m part of an eight-player league that competes in olympics-style tournaments whenever somebody has a birthday. It’s fast paced and there’s something at stake every match, so it’s a good burst of adrenaline for a couple hours. I need to shout out my dudes Link and King K. Rool for making me champions, and also my friend Marlene who made an app to help us manage the events. You can check it out at https://flammcon.github.io/smash/



For a more prolonged social gaming experience, six of us play an asynchronous online game of Civilization VI. Civ is a crazy complicated strategy game where you have to juggle resource management and relationships to take over the world. For us it’s basically a Game of Thrones simulator. Each person spends maybe 10 minutes a day logged into the game, but the plotting and scheming between turns never stops.

My favorite game in recent memory is Cuphead. It’s perfectly difficult and the artwork is amazing. Plus it’s co-op, and like I said earlier, playing games socially is a whole different level of fun. Props to my man Mugman Phil for beating the Devil with me.

I also just finished playing the new Final Fantasy VII Remake. I never played the original FFVII, so right now I have more questions than answers, but I thought the visuals and music were amazing. The characters and story are also well written. The only part of the game I didn’t like was the side quests.

Holidays

• For Halloween we dressed as chefs from Overcooked
• We spent Thanksgiving with a bunch of friends at home. Gotta shout out Jan and Lauren for hosting their Friendsgiving every year.
• We were in Tucson for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. For us that’s like a no brainer because both of our families gather there and the weather is great. They had a lot of rain just before we arrived, so the water features in Catalina State Park and Sabino Canyon made for awesome hiking.

Miscellaneous Highlights

• I saw Logic live for the first time in October. He’s got such a positive energy it felt like a Christian rock concert.
• I got a flu shot for the first time. I’ve always had good health so it’s never seemed important, but I got my ass kicked by the flu last year and vowed to never let it happen again.
• I saw the ‘Cats hoops team beat UW in Seattle. Last time I was there in 2018 they lost on a buzzer beater, so payback was nice.
• We rented a house on the Olympic peninsula with some friends for a weekend in November. Lots of food, drink, and Cuphead until 4 AM.
• We spent a weekend in Vancouver with the in-laws. Always a good time with them. The only bummer was the border line on the way home. Felicia and I were motivated enough to get Nexus status (which include Global Entry and TSA precheck), but with this outbreak I doubt we’ll use them any time soon.

Bear Down!

Stay safe out there.

TGIB