Steve’s Update 5/16/2021

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Here’s a quick roundup of where I am.

Giveaways!  I’m in a self-help giveaway and a writer’s help giveaway!  Pass the links around, it’s also a chance to get some books you might want for free for a limited time!

Speaking! I’ll be at the  Prolific Writer’s conference on May 22nd and Fanime May 29-30th!

For the Way With Worlds series, The next book gets written this week! I’m aiming to get it out in June (I have these down to a science)

A School of Many Futures is in the hands of pre-readers! I’m taking a break on it into June!

The Seventh Sanctum rewrite has covered almost all generators! Before I rewrite these “oddballs” I’m going finish and tighten up other code on the sight.

Steven Savage

Why I Wrote It – Chance’s Muse

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Chance’s Muse is my first book on my principles for creating random generators. I took what I’d learned over two-plus decades of running Seventh Sanctum and compiled them into a collection of guides and theories.

I created it because of my own sense of mortality.

Seventh Sanctum started in 1999 after I’d made a few random generators. At first, it was a subsection of my personal site, but it became its own thing due to popularity. It is one of the oldest random generator sites on the internet that I know of, and obviously, an older site means an older creator.

In 2018 I realized I had to ask what the legacy for Seventh Sanctum should be. Though I am in excellent health, I will age at some point, and I won’t be here. Though I love the site, there might be a time of change that means I’d pass it on. I had to ask, “what should be next.”

This resulted in a multi-pronged effort:

  • I identified an inheritor if I die.
  • I participate in a community of randomizer enthusiasts, so I have people that may help.
  • I am rewriting the site in a more modern code base for anyone that may come after me. Plus it helps me keep up on coding.
  • Third, I decided to write things up in a book. That became Chance’s Muse.

Chance’s Muse is part of my legacy, something that will be out there when I’m gone. I’m a writer, so obviously, that was one way to pass on what I learned to others. I am not sure how much good it will do, but then again, what is certain?

There will probably be a sequel or two for it, additional legacies for the future.

This is something I want to encourage in your writing – finding a way to leave a legacy. This is part of mine, but I have talked to other people about writing down histories or experiences – one did not live to do that. This is your chance to create something to outlast and to reach others.

Steven Savage

A Future Of Nows – Redux

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Well this is embarrassing. I re-published my math column under this name I had for a philosophy one. So uh . . . let’s post the right one.

The future is fundamentally unknowable, but we seem to work very hard to live there. My friend Serdar explores this in an epic, poetic post at his blog that you should read and reread. We are only ever in this present moment, so any extrapolations on the future are phantasms, if well-directed ones. Our predictions are partial by definition.

This may sound troublesome, but it brings us to a lesson many a mystic has stated – we need to be more aware in this present moment. If you’ve ever practiced meditation for some time, you know that moment of being “here.” Those are the only times in our life we can act, the now.

If you give up on needing the future to be solid, then you can get to where you are. Too many times, we’re somewhere else than the only place we can be – living now.

But the future still vexes us. What can we do about the future, because we wish to have one. Indeed, if you are any kind of meditator, you’ve probably come to realize the only world we have is the one we make for all.

The answer to this, I have found by hard experience, is that we are best off setting goals for a future. Prediction is all well and good, but a prediction can be a trap for arrogance or fatalism.

Thus we can make decisions each there-moment to advance towards our goals. With the future we want in mind – however solid or vague – we can make progress with every second, every minute, every bit of awareness. You build the future in tiny increments of now.

This build-a-future-in-bits even keeps us aware of the now, the only moment we know.

It is with no irony I note this is one of the lessons of Agile philosophy and methodology. Agile approaches emphasize setting goals but knowing we face unknowns and changes. With our future goal in mind, we navigate bit by bit towards what we want, evolving both our approach and what we desire.

An excellent way to live – and perhaps the only one we can do with any sanity, humility, and responsibility.

Sure, it may sound strange to combine mysticism, the human condition, some Zen and Agile. Certainly, I hadn’t foreseen I would write something like this last week.

But as I noted, the future isn’t as easy as it seems.

Steven Savage