Out of the Wilderness

Spring of 2022 has arrived at last, and I’m happy to announce that I’ve stepped out of the wilderness.

“But, isn’t that where you belong, Harrison?”

Yes, but it’s a metaphorical wilderness to which I refer!

I’m back to work in web development! I’ve joined Mindgrub, an agency out in Baltimore as a WordPress developer. After a decent hiatus in my career to sort out weird feelings and burnout during COVID and then eking out a solid adventuring season in 2021, I’m optimistic for this next chapter. They are an agency with a good pedigree, everyone I interviewed with has radiated integrity, and I will be fully remote. This also includes some real flexibility in my hours on Pacific Time versus their workforce primarily being eastern.

Balancing the adventurer’s call while maintaining an advanced career is a challenging act. My strategy after taking off on my last job for as long a break I did was to stay current, and that was mostly handled with what I did here on this website with a new theme in Vue JS and WordPress. It still was a challenging interview process that took months, and got a bit demoralizing at times. I entered the search in December with a conviction that the economy was a buyer’s market, but it turned out to be an arduous search to find roles of interest [that were also interested in me!] at a wage I was happy with.  One company I interviewed with to the offer stage before Mindgrub I had to decline due to their wage being too low once revealed. After that debacle, I got back to my roots and leveraged technical recruitment; I got employed at the rate I wanted without any further games on my end.

The only game I have time for right now anyway is Elden Ring, a spiritual sequel to the Dark Souls series by FROMSoftware. Over the years I’ve dabbled with Souls games here and there, they’re medieval action games notorious for their difficult boss battles and dungeon crawling. These games have always lured people for their beautiful environs, customization options, and lack of handholding that is ubiquitous in gaming today. Elden Ring is the newest title, the seventh in the series, and most notably changes the format by dumping one into a massive open world. 2017’s Breath of the Wild earned just accolades for its exploration, I can assert that Elden Ring definitely rivals it while improving greatly on the combat and dungeon crawling that was Breath of the Wild‘s Achilles’ Heel. The ability to wander about offers a new facet to Souls of taking a break from beating your head against a wall on a boss that was typical of its more linear predecessors. It is still a brutally hard game at points, but doesn’t punish you as hard as past games for death, and also offer some accessibility options to tamp down the challenge and experience more of the story.

I’ve been in it intensely these last two weeks as I began this new job. I am glad it runs well on my Macbook (I know, right?) at minimum settings, my FOMO was getting unreal seeing my gamer friends striving at it and sharing their collective feels. If you are an internet denizen, it’s more or less become ubiquitous online as its earned universal praise. Besides its accolades, it’s just refreshing to see a major game release without a bloated UI, excessive handholding or microtransactions.

While exploring the world of Elden Ring has been a hoot, it’s the wilds of Arizona where I’ve been out and about a lot this Winter. I made trips into the Mt. Wrightson, Catalinas (Pusch Ridge), and Superstition wildernesses, all of which the Arizona Trail also intersects. It still surprises me how cold it gets in this state. The 0 degree sleeping bag was a necessary item on my thru-hike in Autumn in the high elevation north of the state, but also down here in the southern mountains. Most of what’s in this article’s photo gallery are excerpted from those trips. I even helped the Arizona Trail Association out with photography on a three night work session. It’s definitely been a fulfilling calling to help maintain hiking trails, and the quality of much of the trails here shows to the dedication of the ATA and its volunteers.

As a wee vacation, I made a trip out in February to Los Angeles. Yes, I finally made it to California again in 2022 after being smoked out by fires in both 2020 and 2021 (The trick is to visit before wildfire season!). I made it out to LA sort of on a lark, after I discovered one of my favorite musicians, Phil Elverum (aka Mount Eerie), was touring in support of The Microphones in 2020, a forty five minute album with a single song where he deals on his musical origins in rainy Washington. It’s a really cool artistic effort, pretty chill to listen to, never boring for as long as it gets and also not likely to be performed live ever again; unfortunately, the closest I was gonna be able to see him was a six hour drive to Pioneertown, CA near Joshua Tree National Park. I figured if I was going that far, why not just finish the drive. Having a lot of friends who have relocated to LA made it easy to drop in on people for a few nights and spend a week reveling.

In LA, I just kept it intimate reconnecting with folks I hadn’t seen since pre-COVID; not that there weren’t fun moments! Hiking up the San Gabriels with Amir, trying vegan soul food and climbing with Ben, or tabletop gaming with Erik. We crushed bottles of wine playing Magic and I then lost an entire day viciously hungover. I recovered enough for another night sampling an interesting board game, Chaosmos, a multiplayer hide and seek game involving aliens flying around a galaxy trying to find an artifact. It’s a good game to put your poker face on for, since finding the space mcguffin is only half the battle.. and if you want to fly around protecting it, others may outstrip you on combat potential and yoink it!

After games with Erik, I made my way outta town and stopped into Sen Bernardino county to see “Bluemoon”, an old pal who’s been a fixture on my sanity-preserving Discord chats and a dedicated karaoke singer. Between him and home on my way out was one final lad, “Boymilk”, a new gamer friend, I was glad to meet in person out in Borrego Springs. And then, ’twas simply a long, dusty drive back to Tucson along I-8. All in all, a nice journey full of renewed connections and spirit.

In music, I’m pretty jazzed on The Microphones as mentioned, but also really thought the Tears for Fears return album, The Tipping Point, was really quite cool. I played it through a few times, and it even got me to watch Donnie Darko again. 2012’s Melody’s Echo Chamber has been on repeat more recently in anticipation of her upcoming record in the psychedelic pop space. I love this album, it makes me feel like I’m floating in outer space. While we’re on 2012, Chromatics’ Kill for Love also turned 10 recently and Stereogum had a nice retrospective worth reading and absolutely, worth listening if Chromatics eluded your ears in the past.

Mixing music and politics wound up with me opting to cancel Spotify over the controversies surrounding Joe Rogan and COVID misinformation. I personally have disliked him for ages for platforming the worst of the right wing grifters and pleading neutrality while letting them spout off. Since Spotify has signed him to an exclusive contract, they also fill a role analogous to publisher and pay him an ungodly amount of cash while a lot of my favorite artists get nary a pittance. It’s not like Apple Music will be paying them any better, which is, alas, a different knot to untangle, but at least I don’t have that awful juxtaposition of knowing my cash supports Spotify’s gambit in bankrolling a toxic podcaster. If you’re still on Spotify, I exhort you to think about putting your money on a different platform.

In other media, I’ve been big on two TV shows lately: The Witcher & What We Do In the Shadows. The Witcher is the first fantasy show I’ve seen to approach early Game of Thrones in quality, with characters that are genuinely interesting and a great medieval setting, though a little convoluted. Whenever Geralt faces the monster of the week and drops the f bomb, I laugh. I might pick up the books should I find the time. What We Do in the Shadows made a great transition from film to TV featuring oodles of campy vampire mythology and fish out of water comedy. I can’t praise this show enough for its cleverness and humor. Lastly, I’ve nearly wrapped up The Expanse, with only the ninth and final book in the series remaining and a high anticipation to finish that journey. The TV show just ended to high praise, but the last three books were not included in that adaptation.

One chapter has closed and another began this week as I resume full time coding at Mindgrub. I’m glad to be employed somewhere that is a good step in my career, back on the familiar ground of agency hustle. As a remote worker, I will be taking advantage of that flexibility to spend some time outside Tucson as the hot season sinks in. In the meanwhile, I’ll be helping some friends find their way to the trails, and maybe a few folks hiking as well, while continuing to build myself up.