A beginning...

is a very delicate time

So, since I have the time and before the world crumbles completely, I thought I would start this as a way to document my writing projects and to highlight the Shadowdark RPG game I hope to begin running in the very near future.

As a brief introduction for those who care, my name is David J. Fielding. I am in my early 60s, an author, writer and former actor. I have a small modicum of fame or perhaps notoriety depending on how you view those things, having been fortunate enough to be a part of a pop culture phenomenon known as Power Rangers.

I’m not going to spend much if any time talking about that though. All you need to know about me and my time on the show is already out on the interwebs for all to see in dozens and dozens of podcast & video interviews. All you need to do is search for them.

What I’d really like to do is to have a place to explore my thoughts and ideas in long form format. To see if anyone would be interested in what I have to say and to see if I couldn’t turn it into some kind of newsletter people might be interested in reading.

The trick of course is to figure out a hook and to try my best not to repeat what I am sure is already being posted on other sites and blogs or stacks. Sounds like an easy task, right?

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So, to start…

I began playing table-top role-playing games back in 1978. I was introduced to TSR’s Dungeons & Dragons and was immediately transfixed by the idea of a game that was also a kind of adventure without a board or liner track to follow. This wasn’t Monopoly or Candyland - this was something much more fascinating.

This was a portal. A way to step into the books I had sitting on my shelf at home, an entryway into living out the fantasy of being John Carter or Tarl Cabot or Aragorn - it was a chance to be a hero.

Those early days of gaming were a tabula rasa, a blank slate we wrote on and filled in on weekends and weeknights after school. To say I was obsessed with it is an understatement.

I had been an avid reader from a very young age. My mother taught me to read early and I was always four grades ahead of my class when it came to reading comprehension and I devoured a lot of adventure books from the age of 11 onward.

Back in those days (the early and mid 70s) the Scholastic Book Club offered me the chance to purchase and read about all the things that fascinated me - namely myths, legends, the fantastic, the strange. Anything having to do with Greek heroes and science fiction, Argonauts and the Golden Fleece, the thrills of a million years B. C., Space Odysseys, Planets of Apes, gargoyles, werewolves, journeys to the center of the earth or to Venus or the Planet Mongo - all of that was how I navigated the world of my early childhood.

Probably to my detriment, because I wouldn’t exactly call myself a success at what it takes to live in this era of late stage capitalism we are all suffering through. I could’ve cared less about money, how you make it, how you save it, how you grow it - all I cared about was stories. And girls. But they came later. As a 16-year-old the only thing I truly cared about was escaping the real world as often as I could.

Even after high school, when I had to be more present in the real world - you need money to eat, to buy clothes, to afford that new D&D module - I would still continue to try and escape the confines of society as much as I could. I learned I could do that away from the gaming table. I fell in love with the craft of acting. Of actually bringing to life some of the characters I had only been acquainted with in books. I found I could (if I was good enough) even earn a living doing that and so, embarked on an overly-long decade of classes and plays and productions at college that gobbled up nearly all of my time in the 80s and early 90s.

Even then I still found time to read more books, and play more sessions of D&D.

We hadn’t yet begun to feel the impeding crisis of what trickle down economics was inflicting on us and so, making money was fairly easy to do and even a few part time gigs was enough to live on. Again, I wasn’t thinking about saving, wasn’t thinking about the future, wasn’t fretting about how the hell everything might be falling apart because, my mind was elsewhere.

I had been conditioned, consciously or unconsciously, to understand that I was one of the have nots. I wasn’t born into money, my parents had no clue about how to save it or how to generate it other than the paychecks they got and their jobs and I did not have friends who were bankers or stock brokers or that knew and understood how the financial world worked.

I was still operating under the delusion that all I had to do was to work, and that should be enough.

It wasn’t. I won’t bore you with the details, but I followed a path - sometimes by design, sometimes by accident - that to my understanding was the one that led to a home, health and happiness.

But life throws us curve balls and unfortunately, I found myself woefully unprepared to handle the few thrown at me. I didn’t exactly pick myself up and dust myself off and carry on. I fell down and I stayed there. For much longer than I should have.

And, all the things I had leaned on to get me through life - well, they fell out from under me and for a good five years I stumbled and fell, over and over and to be honest - I am still struggling to stand up.

So, here, at this late stage of my life, in this late stage of capitalism, here I am, trying to regain the firm footing I once had.

here I am, trying my best to find joy and purpose in the things I once held so dear.

I am telling stories. I am reading book. And I am playing table-top role-playing games.

If you are interested in following along, please join me. I could use the company.

I’ll close this entry by asking you a question.

What are you playing today?