2018 End of the Year State of the Master!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, the end of 2018 is upon us and the beginning of 2019 is looming. As I sit down and write this 2018 End of Year State of the Master, I am suddenly struck by a thought – a very relevant and somewhat odd thought:

The Far off Year of 2020 hangs over us like the Sword of Damocles.

It only just dawned on me the era we are about to enter. All the stories I grew up on that took place in the Far Off World of 2020: Comics, films, TV, Prose Short Stories and Novels (IRON MAN 2020 anyone?). Some showcased a beautiful vision of a peaceful world, others a post-apocalyptic nuclear nightmare, while many others used it as a backdrop for any number of types of stories.

My point is in my childhood the year 2001 was far off, 2020 was almost too much to consider. I never even consider that I would live to see 2020, considering it was fodder for so many sci-fi stories and seemed so far into the future, but here we all are: 2020 is only a little over 365 days away.

What once was a far off future time, is soon to be the here and now.

I, for one, am look forwarding to it.

That was just a thought – a tangent I am known for going off on once in a while. So, back to 2018.

For the most part 2018 could be consider a good year – Hey I made it through it!

But it was also a mixed year at best – another year that derailed. Oh, the first half was great, but once July HIT . . . Whoa.

Yeah EVERYTHING that could go wrong went wrong. Murphy’s Law on steroids . . .
What’s everything? I’ve give a small list:

Air Conditioner; Clothes Washer, Dryer; Plumbing; Car; ME

Yep, you name it, if it could breakdown it did, to the tune of lots of $$$.

If you’re eagled eye you’ve no doubt noticed the last thing that broke down: ME.

This is not Hyperbole here, in a way I actually did break down. And I don’t mean break down as in losing my focus on projects and getting a little stressed with Murphy’s Law in late 2018 – though that did happen.

I don’t mean not posting on my blogs and putting them on hiatus – which I did.
The second half of this year had a lot coming at me, so the blogs and my projects were all put on hold to deal with them. These are typical household stuff – but all at ONCE? Come on.

They were also put on hold to deal with ME. I am talking about this: On the afternoon of Wednesday, October 31 – Halloween – I collapsed and was taken to the Hospital. A fine hospital with a good staff and Halloween Spirit that sort freaked me out when I woke out (This will be written about in the first This Is A True Story blog in 2019).

Even though I felt fine up to that day, my mother didn’t think I look good. Well, she was right! Walking Pneumonia was the culprit and I spent the next week on Meds.
Good news is that I am fine, fully recovered and good to good.

Bad News is this: I Saw a new Doctor on that Monday – who failed to check me out properly. I am failing to ever see him again.

Since then, I have been focusing on getting things straighten out – they are now – and getting ready and planning for 2019.

2019 is going to be a Great Year – and I will make it that way. Having the Pneumonia was a bit of a wakeup call – I got myself straighten out and actual have started getting my focus and mojo going again.

2018 is ending nicely.

2019 is going to start with a Bang.

And keep on going.

For the first time in a long time, and after a lot of introspection, I feel like myself again.

In 2019 it is time to turn anything Negative into a Positive.

It’s also time to put my personal motto back into effect:

I NEVER LOSE, I NEVER FAIL, I NEVER FALTER

I LEARN, I EVOLE, I GROW STRONGER

Ace Masters

State of the Master - Blogs Hiatus

State of the Master

Well, I’ve said this before, I will say it again: HERE WE GO AGAIN.

In August I put out a Blog Statement announcing I was putting my Blogs to a Monthly Schedule for the remainder of 2018 – excluding Raw Flesh.

The plan was to put them back on track on 2019.

Not long after posting that, after much consideration, I decided to put all Blogs, including RAW FLESH, on hiatus until 2019.

This was supposed to have been announced weeks ago, but didn’t happened because I was sick and spent Halloween in the hospital with pneumonia. Getting better was a more of a priority then posting.

In the New Year, the Blogs will return starting from scratch. I need to prioritize certain things and this is the best decision at the moment – and will be better for the Blogs in the long run.

Upon their return The Burning Mind, This Is A True Story, What I Watch I Review and Raw Flesh will be posted on a Monthly Basis. As the year progresses and things play out I may post more often, perhaps even moving back to a bi-weekly or weekly schedule.

Right now, a monthly schedule will be best.

I will however return to doing the Burning Mind weekly Reviews each Saturday.

Wrestlementary will be handled differently – an actual format for Wrestlementary will be figured out and announced later.

All Blogs Will Return with ‘State of’ initial posts on:

• Monday, December 31st – State of the Master
• Tuesday, January 1st – Wrestlementary
• Wednesday, January 2nd – The Burning Mind
• Thursday, January 3rd – This Is A True Story
• Friday, January 4th – What I Watch I Review
• Sunday, January 6th – Raw Flesh

Then, they will resume being posted on what is (for now) planned as the regular Schedule:

• The Burning Mind – Wednesday, January 9th; Then the FIRST Wednesday of Each Month
• This Is A True Story – Thursday, January 17; Then the SECOND Thursday of Each Month
• What I Watch I Review – Friday, January 25; Then the THIRD Friday of Each Month
• Raw Flesh – Sunday, January 27th, Then the FOURTH Sunday of Each Month
• State of the Master – The Last Day of Each Month
• Wrestlementary – TBA

So, for January expect two posts per Blog, then monthly after that. With Wrestlementary’s schedule to come.

I will still be making periodical postings to Facebook and Twitter with updates as we close in on the New Year.

Thanks.

Ace Masters.

State of the Master: A Blog Statement

Sometimes hard decisions need to be made. Sometimes what we think are hard decisions aren’t, we just don’t like them. Sometimes I get so backed up on projects and things to do I won’t admit that I need to back off – failure in a way.

Sometimes we can be our own worst enemies.

I’ve written on this before in my State of the Master Blog a few times. I usually don’t open my heart out online – but the reason I am doing so right now is I do know that my Blogs do have some followers – Especially Wrestlementary and RAW FLESH.

While 2018 has been a freaking great year, I haven’t done so great on my projects. Yeah, I’ve made great strides on getting back into my writing, but haven’t really finished much. I have defiantly been very lackluster on my Blogs.

Few and far between have been my Blog posts – even when I have claimed “This time” will be a ‘real’ return to blogging – I’ve not done it to any real degree.

Recently I’ve gotten somewhat back on track, but not enough.

So, long story short – I am announcing a change to my Blogs effective immediately:
The Burning Mind, This is a True Story, What I Watch I Review and Wrestlementary will be going monthly for the remainder of 2018, starting September. In December I will decide whether to keep the Blogs monthly, or try going back to the originally planned schedules.

Trying to do all these weekly – while writing other projects – is a little much at the moment. That is one big failing of mine – trying to do everything at one time.

So, my Blogging Schedule will be as follows:

This is a True Story – Monthly – The First Thursday of each month.

What I Watch I Review – Monthly – The Second Friday of each month.

The Burning Mind – Monthly – The Fourth Wednesday of each Month

However, I do plan on doing my weekly comic book reviews.

Wrestlementary – Monthly – This will be handled a little differently. For the remainder of this year I will focus on the Main Roster WWE, as I am behind on other promotions, and NXT.

The monthly format for Wrestlementary will be this: On the Thursday before each PPV I will post a monthly RAW and Smackdown Live piece discussing the happenings of the last month leading into the PPV. Friday I will preview the PPV with a breakdown of the Build to it, and the matches on the Card. Saturday I will post my official predictions.

The following Wednesday I will post my thoughts on the PPV and the Fallout.

I plan on being up-to-date on other wrestling shows I am behind on and discussing them again in the New Year.

Now, my final Blog: The serialized ‘Zombie’ story RAW FLESH.

This will NOT be effected by any changes. It will continue weekly as planned.

As I wrote above I am putting this out there because I do know people follow my Blogs, and I want to give them a heads up (this time).

Making this change is a bit of a hard decision, because I want to keep ALL them going weekly. A big part of me also wants to try and write and post every single planned blog posting I have missed. But this is the right decision right now.

This is also going to allow me to get other non-writing things down as well, and some personal and work related issues out of the way without putting the stress on myself to get these done and then not doing them.

This is part of what I have talked about in my State of the Master Blogs: making positive changes/moves in my life and stop being my own worst enemy.

Later,

Ace.

State of the Master - July 30, 2018: FRUSTRATED!

My State this time around is more FRUSTRATED than anything. I had planned to get stuff done this month, streamline things, making some changes and write a good State of the Master this time around.

Maybe even more than one for the month.

Well, very little of that happened – I did get a lot written for Raw Flesh – but other stuff not so much. It’s really frustrating, as I had announced and planned that July, my birth month, would in effect by my Re-Birth.

Somehow along the way I got stuck in the Birth Canal!

I am a firm believer that one can often hold themselves back – and I know I have done that – I am also a firm believer that other people – knowingly or not – can affect one’s life negatively and hold one back from moving forward.

One of the major things I have been doing this year is cutting out the negative people from my life. The biggest and worse of these negative people are long gone fortunately. Some people, unfortunately, stick around like flies – unable or unwilling to understand that they are not wanted.

People sometimes can be a negative effect on one’s life without even trying, which brings me to now. The first week or so was going good and then things started to get sidetrack on Wednesday, July 11th. That was the day the home phone rang and my mom answered due to it being someone we know – bad news, her neighbor – someone else we know – fell.

This 82- year old woman who refuses help, doesn’t want anyone around her and refuses to have a Life Alert fell, claims she was laying there for 12 hours, and wouldn’t call 911. Nope. She called her neighbor, 87, to help her. The neighbor call 911.

Long story short, the woman who fell has been in the hospital and rehab for 16 days with a fractured hip. Since she lives in the Sun City Retirement community and no one there likes or will help her because of her attitude – guess who’s doing it?

Well, I did a little running around for her, and my Mom has tried to help with things, but the part that has really sent things spiral down is her Boston Terrier . . .  excuse me the Boston Terrible also known as just THE TERROR.

For the last fifteen days I have been dog sitting a Boston Terror . . . and it has been a terror of an experience. This little terror is a Five year old, defiant, vicious little XXX that has never been trained and has been allowed to have the run of everything in the lady’s house and never disciplined.

It pees and poops inside her house (it’s a pigsty) and it has continued that behavior here.

This dog doesn’t know basic commands, goes to the bathroom inside my house, will not leave my dog alone and turns if I (or my mom) tries to discipline her. She’s even bit me on my hand, and ruined some of my shoes.

This unwanted house guest has thrown everything into disarray. I spent more time trying to discipline and train the little XXX then doing anything else – especially the writing I had planned to get done!

This feels like an excuse, and partially probably is, but it is hard to try and get anything done when I spend 99% of my time trying to keep this little XXX under control.

The good news is, as of this writing, the lady is out of the hospital and the little XXX is out of my hair.

Part of this is also my fault, I’ve allowed this crap to get to me. I’ve had a hard enough time trying to focus and keep on what I need to do without havening to deal with other people’s problems or fix their mistakes.

Ok, that’s off my chest – thanks for listening.

This is one of the things I need to change and am working on. Not letting things get to me and affect me negatively. As I have all too often over the last few years.

Now, even though I am behind – again – my plan is to moved forward in August and do what I had planned for July – and not let things get in the way! I need to stop letting things STOP ME!

The Re Launch of my blogs will now happen in August, starting on Wednesday, August 1 with WHY COMICS at the Burning Mind Blog, and will go forward to all my Blogs from there.

This probably feels like a bitch blog, but I needed to vent. I also believe I owed a reason for the lack of blogging to the people who do follow my blogs.

Ace Masters.

Well, Hello and welcome to the first of July!

The month I mentioned in my last (and only of the year) State of the Master Blog that I would be reborn. I plan on living up to that.

A good first start is this post is up, on time, on the 1st of the month. A second good sign is the upcoming first story post to RAW FLESH in a few months – on time as well.

I mentioned in my last State of the Master that two important changes I am working on are focusing on projects and the right things, and not trying to get everything done at one time.

Well the good news is that I have succeed on focusing, I’ve streamlined a lot and on now focusing on the priority projects. On life in general I’m doing the same, focusing on the good things, and cutting out the negative. 

Where I have had less success, but not failure, is in the idea of not trying to do everything at one time. I’m still trying to get too many things done at the same time, and am working to break this habit.

Because I have taken specific steps I achieved most of what I wanted to do in June projects wise and have set up the second half of 2018 for reaching more goals than I did in the first half.

As I said – REBORN.

My only real concern is my nagging skin infection – I have now seen a specialist who has given me a different diagnosis then my primary Doctor – and who echoed something the Pharmacist mentioned to me – that the steroids my Doctor put me on only made things worse.

Great.

But I’ve been through worse.

In another note July is a special month – on the 27th I celebrate my Birthday! Old enough to know better, and NOT CARE!

Okay, that’s it for now. I am hoping next month to have a little more to say and some info on projects.

Later

Ace.

This is my First State of the Master Blog for the year of 2018! Only five months in!

So far, this year’s mostly been good, but also has been a rollercoaster.

In life and in my many projects I am caught up on some things and way behind on many others. Way behind.

I kept meaning to write and post a State of the Master piece monthly as originally planned, but there has always been one problem: As much as I love to write, I hate writing about myself. I am my least favorite subject to write about. That’s one reason I have never kept a journal.

Though this blog was never 100% planned to be about me. A mixture of me, my projects and my ongoing blogs. Truly my attempt to keep, or make myself, more active on Social Media. Mostly a fail there: 

Three things have prompted me to sit down and right this piece: Seeing a new Doctor, reconnecting with a few people and reconnecting with old friends I haven’t seen in years.

The common thread? My Aneurysm. (Though I do wish it wasn’t.)

With the Doctor, I’ve known him for a while, he is my mother’s Doctor, but I have only just started seeing him. Since it was my first visit with him, he went through my medical history, focusing on the Aneurysm for obvious reason.

With a few people I have ran into and reconnected with (acquaintances and former co-workers), that I haven’t seen in while, but knew about the Aneurysm, the Aneurysm became the first topic of conversation.

Same with three old friends I have somehow ran into in May: one an old girlfriend, another my best friend from college. None knew about the Aneurysm, but it became a topic anyway – along with my father’s death (it has been a long time since I had seen these friends.)

I am very glad to reconnect with a few of these people. I don’t mind talking about the Aneurysm, my father’s death not so much.

But this is what prompted me to write this State of the Master for 2018 finally!

I am going to touch on a few topics here: Me, because so many people asked about me; Changes I am working on personally and Projects.

First off, I want to thank everyone I know, and especially Facebook friends and twitter followers I don’t know, for showing care and asking me how I am doing. At least once or twice a week I get a message from someone I have never meet in person, who asks how I am doing in relation to the Aneurysm. For that, again, Thank You. Sorry to anyone I failed to respond to.

The answer to how I am doing in relation to the Aneurysm? Great!

That is not even my answer! It is the answer from the Doctor, whose name you wouldn’t believe, who did my last checkup and helped perform my surgery. Doctor SunnShine told me everything is great, there’s been no growth in the Aneurysm area, the repairs and healing of the blood vessel are great and I don’t need another checkup for three years.

I still have his voicemail on my phone. 

My health is excellent, despite being a little sick in January (which put me behind on writing) and fighting an infection right now.

Never believe anyone when they say All Natural products can’t affect you negatively – and many people do say that. I am currently on some heavy duties meds to fight an infection caused by a reaction to a new All Natural soap I started using.

Hypoallergenic my ass. An ingredient in this soap can cause Contact Dermitis – which it did, along with constant itching, burning, boils, rash and finally full bore infection. Bad news I have been dealing with this for the last few weeks.

Lastly, with the Great all clear and my tendon shoulder injury finally getting better, I have finally started and kept to a workout routine for more than a week. Since the Aneurysm, I limited my exercising and weightlifting by Doctor’s order for the first two years, then just got lazy.

My Six Pack is a thing of the past, and hopefully will be a thing of the future again. Current goals are to drop weight, tone up, then bulk back up. I use to go about 235 to 240 with about 20 inch biceps and around 15% body fat. Right now, around 250, higher body fat and 17 inch biceps. That needs to change.
Getting into better shape is not the only change I am working on. There’s ME as well.

I’m someone that always strives to be better – not just at doing things, but at being. As in being a better person.

There are things I am working on changing about myself this year – and I am really trying. Many of these are things I have become lazidasical about over the last few years, and not just since the Aneurysm.

Some things I am working on are just me: personality wise, mood wise . . . attitude wise. Certain quirks that I know are iffy at best and I want to change, but it takes time.

Other things I want to change are such things as: priorities, focus, working on projects, getting things back on track and getting things done. Being more reliable.

There was a time when I was “Mister Get it Done.” There was no question about, I got things done, and I had the drive, motivation and passion to do things, especially when it came to my one true love – WRITING.

The Aneurysm had no effects on that. But my father’s death did. After he died I started slacking off, just didn’t feel like doing things. I didn’t deliver articles on time for the Burning Mind when it was at Comic’s Bulletin. I didn’t follow up on opportunities like I should have.

Yes, I still got stuff done - a couple of short films, Web Series, short stories – but not as Go To as I was. My Dad had been a big part of many of my projects, especially Masterpiece Comics.

I just slacked off, I know many people would disagree, but I know how I was before and how I became.
Then the Aneurysm hit and I allowed myself to slack even more.

That is one of my biggest changes I am working on: To Refocus on things. To being the guy that gets things done. Not just on time, but ahead of time. Being the guy that gets things done others don’t.

So, here is the long and short of it. Over the last few years I know I have done and achieved some things. I also know I could have done so much MORE.

I had a lot I want to get done in the first half of 2018, and maybe done around 40% of it. Mostly because of a bad habit I have of trying to get EVERYTHING done at the same time. That is part of what my refocus needs to be: Prioritizing and focusing on getting projects done one or two at a time, not ALL of them at one time.

I took May off from any projects to just relax, look over all my plans and decided on what needs to be done now, and what can wait.

In June I am going to prep for the second half of 2018. I have chosen to focus on my Blogs (BURNING MIIND, RAW FLESH, THIS IS A TRUE STORY, WHAT I WATCH I REVIEW and WRESTLEMENTARY) as continuing projects and four other writing projects I will work on one-at-a-time until each is finished or as near to finished as it can be.

It may sound big headed, but I know that at 43 I am a more mature and better person then the hothead I use to be. I also know that hothead was more driven. It’s time for me to combine those two natures NOW.

I have always lived by this motto:

I NEVER FALTER, I NEVER FAIL, I NEVER LOSE

I LEARN, I EVOLVE, I GROW STRONG

It’s time to start living that what again.

JULY 1ST – I will be reborn.

ACE MASTERS