This week’s sidequests included sending a handwritten letter, learning a life skill I’ve wanted to learn, and creating my own planet by writing or drawing details of the landscape.

A handwritten letter seems easy enough – I’ve got a few friends that I could have chosen to write a letter out for and mailed it. But I’ve also been lurking on penpal reddits for a long time, despite never having had a penpal. So – what the hell! It could be fun to actually try to penpal thing for a bit. I decided to splurge on getting a PO Box for the next few months (to be safe) and made a few posts asking for penpals. Then I left that up over a very long weekend while I was out of town to watch the solar eclipse – I had rented a cabin in an area where totality was going to pass over, and I took my mom.

As a slight digression, the solar eclipse was awesome and the cabin was luxurious and the area was beautiful. We were visited by a large luna moth two nights in a row. During the eclipse, I realized it was stupid that I hadn’t brought my SLR camera, so the only pic I have of the event are a few crappy cellphone pics, but seeing it in person was more important to me than capturing the moment.

Through my vacation weekend, I got a couple responses and narrowed the options down to a few people closer to my age that seemed interesting. Then, once I was back in town, I finished opening the PO Box, wrote the letters, and then sent them. I will say that writing about myself to a stranger was a bit hard – I don’t really find myself or my thoughts so interesting that I’m used to sharing them (I find it hard to extend these sidequest posts into anything more than basic updates, for example). But, done! Now I’m just waiting to see if I get any responses.

As for the life skill, it’s hard to get near 40 without knowing basics on a lot of things. That being said, I’m sure I’ve got loads of gaps on relevant life skills, but there have also been things I’ve just not been interested in learning, so it took me awhile to try to think of something. Even though I have no reason to ever wear a tie, I have always been curious about tying one. So once again, Google was the master that led me on the way to this website, which apparently sells ties and such, but also has good step-by-step guides on how to tie different knots.

The picture is from maybe a third attempt at a more basic knot. They offer video guides, as well as step by step illustrations with descriptive text (which works a bit better for my word-brain). And yes, I did specifically buy a tie just to learn this. I don’t foresee it being a skill that I put to use often, and since I don’t use it often I will likely forget it in about 30 minutes. But I do know what website I will likely visit to walk me through the process in the future, when I never need it again.

The last sidequest involved creating a planet and writing or drawing the details of the landscape. I’ve made many imaginary worlds for many stories, but a lot of the worlds I’ve made usually are places very Earth similar, with various biomes and environments, but that seems a bit extended for this particular card. So, let’s do something simple.

Hmm. The planet of Levia is an ocean world, primarily covered by water, all of it saline. There is no fresh water on the planet, and no landmasses beyond the occasional island. Massive storms, similar in strength and force to hurricanes, form easily and last for days or even weeks. Because of all the surface storm activity, it is hard for humans to actually create any staging points above the water, unless those structures are very resistant to the high winds and waves.

Underwater, there is flourishing life everywhere – the water teems with schools of fish-like creatures, and even massive leviathan sea monsters. Similar to Earth, the deeper you go, the weirder things get. There are massive underwater caverns and tunnels. But in the shallower areas of the ocean, there are massive coral communities that play host and home to a variety of smaller creatures and plants.

Owing to the fact that there are no landmasses, nothing has ever had a need to develop lungs, so there are no underwater mammals, but there are creatures similar to whales in size and ecological scope – they just don’t need to surface for air.

So there’s a very basic one-note world. Not even the most original, I think there’s a game I’ve heard of that takes place in a similar environment (I’ve always wanted to play but never have, Subnautica?). Or on the flip side, could always do a post-apocalyptic ocean world like the Kevin Costner movie and describe the creatures that have adapted to live that were once surface dwelling. But dunwanna.