Two Heads Are Better Than One--Unless Perhaps You're A Troll

In my last post, I shared an aspiration to become more regular and more structured about both these musings and my social media presence in general. Two days later, my family suffered a tragedy which, while not completely unexpected, reinforced for me how important it is to integrate everything I do with my role as a husband, brother, son, and father. Now, more than a month removed from those events, I think I'm ready to begin executing on several of those priorities.

First, this blog and my other social media posts are increasingly going to be joint efforts. My wife--sometime author C. L. Schock--is going to periodically share her thoughts and insights in this forum, occasionally substituting for me and occasionally acting as a counterpoint to my opinions. Look for an update to my banner in the near future reflecting this change, as Owl, Cowl and Blaster will then be more accurately described as "a couple embracing geek as performance artist and nerd as a verb." She and I have similar but not completely overlapping interests: she's an epic Potterhead and Whovian who also waxes nostalgic about some of my favorite 80's and 90's fandoms (Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel and DC Comics, etc.). Her tastes skew a little more towards the literary however--Tolkien, Martin, Lewis, and others--whereas I rarely find much time for pleasure reading these days. And her opinions of all of these works and franchises are by no means cloned from my own. So I think her contributions will help to add balance and texture to this outlet.

Second, I'm on the verge of aligning my various social media accounts to form a single multichannel voice and strategy.

• You can expect to find a new blog post in this space weekly--ideally on Mondays
• That post will generally serve to set the tone for our social media for the week
• Next week's installment will likely be an introduction to/from my spouse
• Springboarding from there, I will be maintaining a weekly schedule of regular posts to my Instagram account across the other weekdays
• Tuesday and Thursday will be posts of "Migratory Meeples"--fun and funny pics of game pieces shown outside of their usual context (i.e., combined with pieces from other games, on other game boards, in real-life situations, etc.)
• Wednesday will feature forays into "Life as an NPC;" picking up a topic I'd first introduced in November, I plan to create what will be--at least at first--some simple random encounter tables for the purposes of making minor decisions for that day or the week on the whole
• Friday's posts will represent a continuing stream of story starters; "Pencil Prompts" is the tentative label, but that could change
• Not at first, but perhaps within a few months, I also hope to add at least one new design--be it for T-shirts, phone cases, pillows, whatever--to my CafePress storefront every weekend.
• Additionally, I hope to convert an old Twitter account into a series of "Dear Universe" posts--a stream of observations and suggestions related to "pie in the sky" ideas I'd love to see someone make happen (theme restaurants ideas, movies or TV show ideas, etc.)--impressions too small to warrant a blog post

I'm sure these ideas will continue to evolve over time, but this seems like a good starting point for a reboot. And hopefully you won't find the resulting two-headed monster that is OC&B too terribly scary a proposition to follow along. After all, we're a tandem of husband and wife geeks with strong--and often differing--opinions about a plethora of nerdy topics. So what could possibly go wrong?

;)