T.M. Shannon

I’d like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land I’m on, the Cabrogal people of the Darug nation, and all Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders, and I pay my respects to Elders past, present, and emerging.

Australia’s is a land with over 50 thousand years of history, and I support all efforts for reconciliation and correcting the past wrongs of colonisation.

Hi everyone,

I’ve done the Episode 9 trick – somehow, I survived November and living with a weak heart for a number of years.

More on that later, I’m glad the month has gone, and not the least because we’ve come into Advent and it’s only 24 sleeps at posting until Hans Gruber falls to his death at Nakatomi Plaza.

But while December isn’t the best month mental health wise, either in general or because my car park will be crazy busy, and I’ll be watching my stress and heat levels with the heart meds, I get to sing all three verses of “O Come All Ye Faithful,” a carol I loved even as an atheist kid.

It’s pleasant, evocative, the range is beautiful, and it just wants you to travel its road to Bethlehem—perhaps it was an agnostic sign, who knows?

On that note, here’s to celebrating a dozen different winter festivals, the Feast of the Nativity, Hanukkah, others, and acknowledging that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

A Dose of Diablo II and Detox

I’m an old-time fan of Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo franchise, at least up to the therapeutic demon-splattering retcon and reboot of a third installment, so it’s no surprise I bought Diablo II Resurrected to relive the old buzz. And yes, it was a buzz.

First bought and played on release in 2000, with memories of the story, lore, and Baal runs, I clicked on the remaster a few years ago, played a couple of times, even got some headway, but only sank into around when I was getting the cardio looked at.

it ages ago and played a few times, but only sank into it recently after a TES 4 Oblivion stint, right about the time I was getting the cardio looked at, and lost for how to play, I looked up some guides.

To say I was confused was beyond me. Don’t increase Energy on your mana-thirsty Sorceress. Follow this exact play guide. Gear up with these Rune Words. The old 1337, “Play the same like everybody else or you’re a noob.”

When I wanted the D&D freedom? To the burning place with that!

Still, I latched onto meta stat gameplay (with points in Energy), but boy did I get obsessed with the builds for characters yet to play, agonise over them mid-difficulty level when I’d changed things, left myself hanging for a re-spec after I’d burnt a re-spec

Yep, another drug, denial in the guise of distraction. I let the builds and gameplay eat my time, I put it before Three Ways, and it kept me cozy in the worst way until Jason got his dates mixed up and killed it Friday 14th, I suspect in the form of a Windows update.

First the computer ran throttled, everything slow and jolty, the CPU fan going full bore at minimal CPU temp. Then I played, and my laptop just turned off by itself. Played again, same thing, and I figured a heating problem

I checked my MSI Centre to find the GPU fan wasn’t running. Then the GPU fan ran at exactly 3636 RPM here and there. Not good, but I’m hoping my 3.5yo laptop just needs a clean, or else it’s a loose/faulty wire or sensor, or I have to accept it’s borked for games.

Bruv-in-Law for the first option, it’s going to be a fix next year issue while I keep up the writing, play OG Morrowind, jump on the X-Box—long story there, too—focus on the main addiction, quitting the vapes, and maybe getting back to that e-Book I’m hesitant to continue.

So, detox it is, and I seem to be doing okay.

A Dose of Hearty Weakness

That lappy isn’t the only thing borked. There’s also this brain of mine, and I’d love to do scans to see what’s what inside my cranium. But now post-angiogram and a trip to hospital 26th November, I have a major problem.

It happens to be a weak heart, first recognised by a cardiologist’s mere glance at the scan, and I’m putting it down to lifelong lethargy, all the smoking earlier in life and vaping for the last 3 years, possibly my other meds, as well as bad luck.

And it’s not just some chest, arm, and neck pain that’s been happening for longer than I’ve let on—plus some heavy palpitations I’ve ignored over the years. This is the risk of a sudden, pass out/drop dead heart attack.

To see mortality at 44 is quite humbling, and sent me through three of the grief stages—a bit of anger at myself, depression, denial as mentioned above—but there’s no bargaining my way out of this. I have to accept doing something, or dying.

That’s not rhetoric, by the way. But in saying it, there are people, even kids and babies, facing their mortality in worse ways than me. Let them be considered far before my own issues.

But it’s caught, I’ve started treatment, and there’s a way forward, either in the new meds or an implanted defibrillator. However it’s going to happen, and my scare on the 26th being ruled out as a heart issue, I’ll find out January whether I’m improving, or I become a cyborg.

There’s also diet change—besides the usual avoidance of high fat and cholesterol, I gotta limit potassium on the new meds, which isn’t too hard as I’m not a supplimenter, but sports drinks are off the menu, and bananas/melons are cut back.

I seriously have to walk, and I’ve been procrastinating on that, though it’s not hard exercise and the block I live on is completely flat. Maybe I can get to bike riding in the future, but small steps first, I can’t put my health on the line just to make the cardiologist happy.

Those are good things, but what hurt out of this was breaking my kid’s heart with the bad news, done on a vid call with his mum. He hasn’t gotten teary since our first goodbye from overseas, and that lingered with me for a while after the call.

And as for that scare, ambulance to hospital and all, I think two meds that lower blood pressure on a very hot day (that also lowers blood pressure) triggered a stress response that got me on edge that started the arm and neck pain.

After two ECGs and two blood tests, plus sitting in cool air, the Dr was happy it wasn’t my heart, and it looks like I have to take a lot of care over summer. But everyone at work asking how I was doing after was nice, it’s good to know people are around.

And on check up with the Dr, gonna get the neck and liver scanned—I’m overdue on the last for quite some years.

A Dose of Released Blockage

Diablo II on ice, builds left in the dust, things settled on the processing front, I got back to the WIP which I had struggled with at the start of November.

Don’t get me wrong, I managed to finish a chapter, but I felt way off about it, even when it was a transition to bring the story back up to speed and I feel I hit it.

Onto the next chapter, I came unstuck. I didn’t even know what was wrong, I was just blah, hated what I’d written, didn’t want to go on. But somewhere in the mix, my inner atheist threw in the towel, and I hit up my Higher Power.

“God, what’s going on here? What do I need to do?”

He answered me a lot quicker than when I prayed for money—a 2-year gap between that faux pas and the Redress Scheme payment—saying that afternoon, “You’re crutching with the colleagues and repeating the previous chapter. Also, you need to fix that phone call.”

So, I deleted the crutching. Bam, gone, not even saving it for later. Adios, darlings. I considered re-starting that chapter, then latched onto the previous call as mentioned, and all set, I got down to writing.

I still didn’t finish the call or the chapter, but I felt so much better about it. The opening begats a new inciting incident, that incident leads to a discovery, and all I need now is the discovery to make the something happen.

It’ll speed things along, maybe I’ll cut another chapter, and it should work out for the best. And hopefully, I’ll get back into the swing of things, because let’s face it—coming into the absolute pits after the acute midpoint crisis wasn’t fun at all.

And though this isn’t the worst blockage on the WIP, eleven-year long journey and all—if only I’d gotten a manuscript assessment earlier—it’s good to see it and find the way out.

And the Monthly Dose of Au-Revoir

It felt like a bit of a mixed bag when starting the post, so I don’t know if it’s my best work.

But for the month ahead, and that fast-approaching year’s end, I hope you’re able to make the best of it, and if not, I hope you’ll be okay and can make it through.

Catch you all in 2026,
T. M.