It’s been a big month for me – full of surprises and sudden changes in plans. Despair of a hard Brexit that was inescapable has become something that I only need to worry about for a short time. The big news of this month, as you will have seen from the Patron newsletter, is that Mrs Meeple and I are moving to Sweden. And honestly I couldn’t be happier about it. This is a move that solves a lot of the problems I currently have with my location, and my current job, and opens up a whole pile of new and exciting opportunities. It does mean that Mrs Meeple and I go from being a two-salary family to a one salary family, and in an expensive city, but I’m sure we can make it work. I’ve run the numbers pretty obsessively. She’s already resistant to the idea of taking time off to decompress from her own job because she doesn’t know how to take time for herself. My intention is to make sure she takes a year of, at most, light employment. I’ve done that a couple of times myself. It is the absolute best.
So, yeah I’ve been offered (and accepted) a new job at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. I’ll be their new Senior Lecturer in Interaction Design with a focus on games. The work I have been doing with Meeple Like Us was a big part of my pitch in the interview so in a real sense you all helped me get what looks like it may very well be my dream job. Seriously – if I had written the person specification myself I could scarcely have done better except that in my version I’d teach exclusively from the decks of a refurbished pirate ship. Short of that, the job has everything I want and in a new city that was a delight when we visited a few months ago. Plus, and this is a massive benefit, if I stay long enough there’s an opportunity to naturalize and I’d get to be an EU citizen again. It’s like being an indentured servant and working back your human rights except it’s being done in a job I anticipate being awesome. The next few months will be bananas. If anyone wants to buy a house in Brechin, Scotland let me know. It’s a nice house!
This is a massive change, as you will undoubtedly realise. I’ve handed in my notice at work. Resigned as the treasurer of our local Union branch. Discussed the move with friends and family. Signed the offer letter. It’s all official, and terrifying, and fantastic, and frightening.
Now, this isn’t just Michael and Pauline news. It’s Meeple Like Us news too because this move has implications for the site. You all know I’m sure that I put an expiry date on this project – April 2020 is when, barring our funding reaching $500 p.m, the site was due to come to a close. It’s a little more complicated now, and I haven’t really worked out myself what the move means for the site. It does though mean good things. I’m just not ready yet to make any formal commitments. A statement and post will come about in the fullness of time (probably in September) when I’ve worked out where things stand.
Here are the main considerations though:
- At Robert Gordon University for the past year and a bit I have had no research allocation in my duties. That was mostly my choice – I didn’t like the strings that were being attached to research ‘support’. But it did mean a redistribution of my activities and the adoption of Meeple Like Us as a fully personal project without any connection to the university. The site was contributing nothing formal to my professional life. RGU has a focus on data science, with games and user facing research being the most trivial of minor side-lines. It wasn’t always thus, but that’s how things stand now and I don’t fit in well to that agenda. Meeple Like Us in that project is purely a passion project.
- At Chalmers University of Technology I will have both a research allocation and an institution with an excellent track record for games related teaching and research. Meeple Like Us – or rather the broader umbrella project of Meeple Centred Design – will be a major plank of the work I do there. Running and writing for the site won’t be part of my job, but the substantive work that gives me things to write about will, at least in part.
- Patreon funding is still important to the site because, at least initially, I will not have any actual formal funding attached to my research allocation. As such, nothing changes in terms of the money needed on a monthly basis. My time on the other hand will no longer need remunerated to sustain the site. Research funding will be the main mechanism I look to for keeping the project going long term. In the fullness of time I will be looking to fully support the site through research and consultancy.
Patreon will still serve as an indicator of public interest – as a way of proving to myself and others that this isn’t an endeavor of underwater basket-weaving. Support of this type is something I can point towards in grant applications and say ‘Look, people actually care about this topic’. What that mostly means is that instead of money going to pay for me to do work for the site it can go to other things. I’d love to bring in more (paid) guest writers for example, and that’s something that a grant application couldn’t include. Patreon will most likely remain then to cover the site’s core expenses, but once it does that it deals with ‘nice to have’ rather than ‘must have’. The site once again has professional benefits that justify me investing free time in the work. I’m really happy about that. It does though put the site on a slighter shakier foot in another sense – since I am no longer hoping to fund myself, in whatever small amounts are possiole, from what it brings in it has a more nebulous need to ‘feel like it’s worth the effort’. That’s now going to be some intangible function of funding, views, and perceived impact.
What this move is also going to do though is accelerate, and violently, the plans I had for gradually downsizing my possessions. Chalmers will pay for us to move across, and they’re offering up to a 40ft shipping container for all our stuff. I have no idea what our living circumstances will be there though so we’re going to travel relatively light. We have some good furniture we’re not going to give up, and various electrical items such as computers that are vital. I’m going from five stuffed cases of books down to one though. There’s a bit of Marie Kondo in there – if the books don’t spark joy, they’re not coming with me. As such there’s a lot of fond nostalgia on my shelves and not a lot of future reading material. I’ll make up the difference with ebooks – I don’t intend on leaving myself short of literature.
We have a similar issue with the board games, but that’s a trickier story. Since Meeple Centred Design will be the project for which I initially most aggressively pursue funding a lot of this still counts as ‘research material’. Nonetheless, when we went to Tabletop Scotland we took a total of eighty-four games to the bring and buy to get rid of some of the more easily abandoned titles. There’s another couple of boxes of games that will go to friends. We’re unlikely to drop below about 150 games though, and even that would require sacrifices I might not be willing to make. I do though thankfully get an office in my new position (oh my god, I get an office again) and they have a pretty great game collection at the university. There’s a good chance that a substantive portion of the books and games I am bringing will end up slowly being transferred over to work. Currently the Meeple Like Us collection sits at 190 games and there’s not a lot of give there. There aren’t many that I look at and think ‘Yeah, that can go’. Still – I don’t see us coming close to filling up a full shipping container so there’s no great need to pare ourselves entirely down to the bone.
Books and DVDs have already been the subject of a ‘selling pass’ – looking for any that are worth selling on and stuffing them into separate boxes. It’s a little sad to think how little some of them are worth given the quality of the contents, but that’s life. We’re not taking any DVDs with us. In this day and age, what’s the point? I have a media centre loaded up with digital versions of everything. I suppose it’s a little legally dodgy to keep those and give away the originals but I have no ethical qualms about it. I paid for the media. I format-shifted it into something appropriate. I no longer have a need for the physical shells. I don’t lose sleep over throwing away an empty box after I finish the cornflakes.
There are about 200 books we’re selling and about 30 DVD box-sets. The rest aren’t worth the effort of boxing up. I’m not sure what we’re planning to do with them yet, but I think we’ll probably just open up the house and let friends and family come and collect whatever they like. I’d just donate the lot to the local library but my Tabletop Scotland experience makes me wary of volunteering for a big moving job like that. I’d much rather people came around and picked through and saved us that effort. In the end we’ll probably be looking at a blend of solutions. My mother suggests doing a car boot sale but I don’t really want to spend a weekend haggling with people over a 25p DVD of the Flumps. Mate, if you don’t want to spend £1 for the spectacular UK version of House of Cards I don’t even want you to have it.
The real lesson here though is that the only thing that keeps me hoarding all of these things is complacency. I had no problem being pretty brutal in the cull when I had an incentive to do it. The Tabletop Scotland bring and buy ended up being flooded with dozens of games I’d never played. I’ll be getting rid of a lot of books I never even opened. Anything I find myself missing can be replaced on the other side of the move. Eventually. Gothenburg has a fantastic sci-fi book store that will hopefully be a regular haunt.
Pauline’s view here, and I agree, is that we want to consider the move as starting from nothing and then we add things to take. We’re not going to consider the move as starting from everything and then getting rid of stuff we don’t want. It’s pretty cathartic to think that we’ll enter the last month of my Depth Year with a massive purge of possessions. I didn’t anticipate that at the start of 2019 but it feels right. It feels ordained.
Somewhat offsetting this though is that this move needs me to break a number of Depth Year commitments, but I think you’ll agree it’s necessary. The first of these was ‘no new hobbies’, but now I’m learning Swedish through a combination of Duolingo and Rosetta Stone. That’s definitely a new hobby but I think if you’re going to live and work in a new country it’s beholden on you to make an effort to integrate. I was told at the interview that people sort of expect that when you’ve been there a few years but I fully intend on becoming a Good Swede in the fullness of time so I want to start early. Jag vill vara Svensk medborgare.
Is that right? I don’t know. It’s the best I can do at the moment. Still, it’s an improvement over when we visited last time and the only Swedish I knew was ‘Elefanter dricker vatten’. That’s a phrase of pretty situational relevance, and I only got to use it when we visited the natural history museum.
I’m still amazed at how well trained those animals were. We went to Edinburgh Zoo last month and none of the animals would hold still for photos. Swedish animals are just much better behaved.
The second commitment I broke was ‘No new shows or movies’. I mentioned Welcome to Sweden in the patron newsletter and yeah – I had to watch it to get at least something of a feel of the culture shock between American and Swedish perspectives. I’m not treating it like a documentary but you can tell a lot about how a country is different by looking at where people find the comedy.
The third commitment I broke was ‘no new books’, but again the ones I’ve bought are all about Sweden and Swedish culture. They’re necessary preparatory reading. Basically if I didn’t actually read a bit about the country where I’m going I’d be a bit of an arrogant asshole. I mean, I am that already but for different reasons. It’s important to me to make an effort. I don’t expect anyone to adjust their cultural expectations to fit that with which I am comfortable. I’ll adjust mine to fit them.
Oh wow, apparently I also promised at the start of the year to avoid new albums until I had listened to all the ones I owned. Man, I have broken that one pretty much constantly this year because I have been discovering dozens of fantastic new artists through Spotify radio. Spotify is a Swedish company, by the way. Is it cheating to break a rule you didn’t remember you’d set? I only just looked at the original post. Never mind, never mind. Can’t fix that now, and it feels like that rule was a mistake anyway. My Spotify playlist is now a musical renaissance full of great talent and artists so 2019 would have been a darker year if I had done what I said I was going to do. I’d still be listening to the songs and artists that I’ve been listening to for years.
In that original post though is something of a prophecy. ‘By the end of 2019 I intend to have made a large dent in my various media todo lists. One way, or another.’
Buddy, you were absolutely not kidding. You just had no idea what that actually meant.
It’s been a good month. Even the overwhelming negativity of social media hasn’t punctured my mood. I haven’t fully cut down on Twitter to the extent I want yet but it’s becoming less and less important that I keep tabs on what’s happening. Focusing only on my notifications and site announcements has stripped 90% of the unpleasantness out of my life. So much upset, anger and virtue gazumping that dissipates within hours and I’m ignoring almost all of it. Given all that’s happening at the moment I’d be in a darker frame of mind if I wasn’t. Social media is terrible for my mental health and it feels good to be taking steps to address that. What’s helped most of all is knowing that it makes very little difference to the bottom line for the site. Views, if anything, have been up week on week since I stopped obsessively tweeting. I have a plugin that auto-tweets stuff from our archives on a daily basis and it gets approximately as much engagement as any bespoke, artisianal tweet that I send out. Galling! But… also important for building perspective.
Wow, this is already a long diary so let’s get on to the wishlists! Here’s where it was at the end of last month:
- Chernobyl
- The Terror
- The Wandering Earth
- Avengers Endgame
- Return of the Obra Dinn
- Good Omens
- Captain Marvel
- Into the Spiderverse
- Sex Education
And really, if I’m honest… none of this currently ‘sparks joy’. Even Good Omens – my excitement for seeing a beloved book by a beloved author adapted is tempered by the fact that every time I see Pratchett turned into a TV show or movie it’s ‘passably good’ at best. It’s probably though the thing I am most interested in from the list. I’ll still watch Avengers, Captain Marvel and Into the Spiderverse but they feel like – I don’t know, obligations? At this point they’re just entries on a todo list rather than anything I’m longing for. Chernobyl and The Terror are shows I’ll likely check out, but again – not with any urgency. They don’t feel like things that I want any more so much as things that are on a list of ‘maybe worth checking out at some point maybe’. If I’m idly browsing through TV shows and I see either, and I’m in the mood, I might give them a go. I can’t say more than that. They’re no longer wish list entries. Similarly with Sex Education and the Wandering Earth. I just don’t really care any more.
Ooft. I guess it’s not just my physical possessions that are getting culled this month.
In terms of things I wanted, well – not many. I mentioned last month that the Outer Worlds dropped off my wishlist. Then I found out it was getting a Switch release so it went back on. Similarly the game Astral Chain looks amazing and since it’s from the makers of Bayonetta I’m pretty sure I’ll like it. That goes on the list too. That’s it though. So now the wishlist looks like this:
- Avengers Endgame
- Return of the Obra Dinn
- Good Omens
- Captain Marvel
- Into the Spiderverse
- The Outer Worlds
- Astral Chain
I might have added Slay the Spire here but it turns out that’s another game that slipped into my possession via the Humble Monthly. A depth year forces you to be a patient gamer, and it turns out if you’re happy to live your life a year or so behind the mainstream you often get what you want without making much of an effort at all.
That’s it for this month, hopefully see you all next month too!