More Musings, More Thoughts for Monday, May 29, 2023, or: Memorial Day 2023 Update (Nighttime Edition)

It’s night here in Lithia, Florida, on Memorial Day 2023. It’s cool outside (75°F/24°C) under clear conditions, and the house is quiet except for the sound of the air conditioning and Mantovani: Great Concerts playing on my PC’s Amazon Music app. I’ve already had dinner – the last two slices of pizza that I ordered last night from Pizza Hut, and now that it’s getting dark, I am trying to decide how to spend the night before I go to bed after a frustrating, mostly unproductive day.

Today Was Not a Good Day to Write

I am disappointed that despite my plans and best intentions for today, I didn’t work on The New Story. And, seriously, how could I? I woke up at 4:20 AM, didn’t fall asleep again afterward, and got out of bed, tired, cranky, and none too happy, at 5:30 AM. Still, I hoped to at least write one scene for Chapter Nine of my Work in Progress, even if that didn’t necessarily end the chapter so I could start the next one tomorrow.

But, considering that it took me two hours to compose a relatively short blog post for A Certain Point of View, Too, it shouldn’t surprise you that I couldn’t even manage to start a new scene, much less write a complete one. I was, and still am, so tired that I was unable to let my mind wander into the world of my story and its various characters. And if I can’t do that…If I can’t visualize the people and the setting, or hear the characters’ voices and their words in my head, I can’t write the scene.

Make War, Not Love (or Sex)!

So, instead of spending a few productive hours working on The New Story, I played one Skirmish in Regiments. I wasn’t happy about it, but I wasn’t in the mood to watch anything, and even though I did read for a bit, all I could think was Man, I should be writing my story right now! Listening to music would also trigger the same thought since the music I listen to is the “soundtrack” I have on the background when I write, especially Leroy Anderson’s Forgotten Dreams, which is to The New Story what As Time Goes By is to Casablanca.

I needed to be distracted, and it was either play Regiments or one of my adults-only “visual novels.” Regiments won in the end not just because it’s Memorial Day, but because erotica right now reminds me that I’m single but not in a suitable situation for dating anyone right now. (Breakups, even ones that are now several years old, don’t help my self-esteem, especially when I’m the dumped party!)

Considering that I was not – and still am not – at my best today, I did well in the Runway scenario. Once again, I set the game’s time limit for 60 minutes – the maximum allowed – and pitted my favorite American unit, the 1^st Brigade of the 3^rd Armored Division, against a Polish division in an Attack mission.

As I may have mentioned in previous Regiments-related posts, the Runway scenario involves – in Attack missions – assembling your various task forces and sending them forth to capture eight Objective Zones (OZs), designated Alfa through Hotel, in and around a captured U.S. air base in West Germany circa 1989. As in real battles, you must plan your moves with great care, use your cavalry scouts and helicopter gunships to reconnoiter ahead of your attack force and strike hard and fast at the enemy before he can do the same to you.

I won’t bore you with a detailed account of the battle. I no longer keep a written record of what happened in a wargame; back when I was in college and played the Apple II port of Crusade in Europe, I’d write detailed after-action reports of the scenarios I played, as if I were submitting them to the history division of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in 1944 and early 1945. I can’t do that with Regiments because the older Crusade in Europe is a strategic-level map-based wargame, while Regiments is a real-time tactical level game that is not map-based but shows you the “actual” battlefield and the various vehicles and helicopters used by both NATO and the Warsaw Pact in Regiments’ Cold War-turned-hot version of 1989.

(Additionally, writing those after-action reports was time-consuming and tiring!)

I will say, though, that even considering that I woke up super early and that I was exhausted, I did well in Regiments. I did lose 25 vehicles and 74 troops were killed,145 were wounded, and 10 were missing, plus the Poles managed to ambush several of my task forces during the battle. However, I inflicted more casualties on the enemy force than it did me, and I managed to capture all eight OZs before time ran out on the game’s clock.

I’m glad I won, too. It would be embarrassing if I had taken the day off from writing – even if it was involuntary on my part – just to play a game…and ended up losing!