Fast Forward - greetings from 2017

• life

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

Kate of kate says stuff did a “Fast Forward” manifestation type post where she projected herself into 2017 and wrote about life as she would like it to be then. I’m giving it a go, partially because it sounds amusing and partially because I currently have trouble thinking past later in the day never mind any further.

Despite JJ’s constant contemplation of moving out further into the middle of nowhere and my constant whining about wanting to move home to Christmas Island, we are still stuck on our lovely almost quarter acre block. Our chicken breeding programs are progressing fairly well (though his is going a lot better than mine) and we have been mostly surviving off the veges, fruits, poultry and fish, with the occasional hoggit from The Farm and topping up from the markets, and only buying stuff from the supermarket down the road that we can’t get anywhere else. Not needing to buy as much in the way of groceries has enabled us to buy the rest of our house (we’re on a Keystart loan) and dump more money on it to pay it off faster.

I’ve managed to cobble together a great crew to work on AEfter Ragnarok, the voice actors are perfect! I’m hoping it will eventually make enough money to pay them properly. It has a decent following and we’re making some money thanks to Vodo and by distributing dvd packages (dvd quality download of the ep plus dvd artwork, available for a donation of however much a person wants to chip, so people can burn their own copies) or selling traditional dvds (for people that don’t know how to burn dvds and don’t have anyone to do it for them…or maybe we put special feaures on our dvds… :). I am animating the second or third ep! bekandloz is cruising along. We take care of the clients we have and very slowly get new ones by word of mouth.

Little Big Boy is 12 and has graduated from building things with Lego to building Lego Mindstorm robots which he programs from one of the laptops we have kicking around the place (perhaps my MacBook, perhaps his crappy little netbook, perhaps JJ’s less crappy tablet laptop) which probably has a linux distro on it. He’s a midcore gamer, playing strategy games and chess online, and other types of games on the PS3 (or whatever is next), loves tinkering endlessly with things, always has some weird science experiment going and posseses his father’s irritating but useful ability to run complex calculations in his head. We’ve finally relented and got him a drum kit (and soundproofed the boys’ room) and I occasionally play my bass along with him. We’re quite glad of the urban farming as he eats a prodigious amount and we’re still not sure where he puts it all (perhaps he stores extra mass in the umbra). He’s still playing footy and doing kung fu more seriously now. I find amusement at having to look up at him, but it doesn’t stop me from telling him off when it’s warranted.

Very Small Small Girl is 10 and gangly, same height as me and all arms and legs. She is like me with the “organised mess”. The house is littered with her easels and sketchbooks and drawing implements and paintings and sculptings and other art projects in various states. We’ve spent small fortunes at art stores. It drives JJ mad. She has her own computer with my Cintiq (did I mention I got an upgrade? :D) for digital art and her own little blog for showing it off, and writing about the various things she likes to write about. She never did get into dance in the end but she’s really good at kung fu. While she doesn’t seem to find maths and science particularly hard she isn’t terribly interested unless it’s approached in a manner that’s interesting to her (go build some molecules/a scale model of the solar system/draw a diagram of leaf cells).

Little Small Boy is 8 and has been playing Auskick because his big brother does and doing kung fu because everyone else does. He’s probably enjoying it if he’s still doing it. He fares a lot better at wrestling matches with his older brother these days as they’re a bit closer in size than they have been previously. He’s still fairly cruisy and full of mischief and still needs to be checked on when he’s too quiet! He kicks around with his older siblings who are happy to apprentice him in whatever they’re doing as long as he doesn’t do it “wrong”, and has his own interests to keep him occupied when they’re being too bossy.

All three of them still tell stories and roleplay, their play has gotten a lot more complicated and involved. They’ll even sit and play roleplaying games with us these days. The tones of games we have with them is a lot lighter and less intense than we get into with other gamers. The cubby house still holds appeal even for the Little Big Boy though it’s as much clubhouse as play area.

Our friends without kids and who aren’t used to kids find the kids a bit easier to handle now that they’re not babies, toddlers and little kids and going out is a lot easier, they last longer and can entertain themselves for longer periods without becoming too ratty, or alternately can stay with relatives without it being too much of a problem. They’re old enough to leave at home on their own if they decide they don’t want to come grocery shopping (the shops are just down the road). Because a lot more of their learning is self directed and I’m not having to constantly arbitrate fights or spending hours putting certain toddlers to bed when it’s naptime or betime, I can spend a lot more time on AR or work.

That’s a pretty nice looking future. We’re kind of on our way there but will the actuality meet the imaginary? :)

What are you doing in 2017?

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License