In all the hurly-burly of day-to-day life, I recently reached an inconspicuous milestone. As of this month (October 2024, for those looking back), I have now been a licensed lawyer for 5 years. While there are certain charms and perks to this job (flexible hours on some weeks, civic pride, and decent pay), being an attorney is a lot of work that can wear you down if you’re not careful. To properly balance out my life, I spent most of the summer (and am spending the ongoing fall) with a simple quest: try to enjoy myself more by taking full advantage of what free time I have. Benjamin D. Fischberg, Attorney at Law has his needs met (and I can’t discuss the particulars of his work); it was time to reconnect with Ben Fischberg, the gamer, cosplayer, and opportunistic adventurer.
One adventure that I took full advantage of was Canterbury Faire in late July. I haven’t been to a renaissance fair in five years; the last one I went to was right before being sworn in as a lawyer. As such, it was a grand time I spent with friends enjoying the atmosphere in my festive purple velvet robe and perusing the wares of various artisans (when not watching a mother***ing joust tournament). In the process, I scored a parasol that I’ve been making good use of throughout the summer, along with some fudge and raspberry cordial that I did my best to make last (*burp*). I didn’t take a lot of pictures (taking photos usually feels out of place), but enjoy these majestic mechanical dragons I found.
On a more day-to-day basis, a lot of leisure has been dedicated to video games. I’ve spent the summer and early autumn dipping my toes into various games old and new—Animal Crossing: New Horizons, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages, Hades, and the Battlefront series, to name a few. However, one game that has been taking a notable amount of time is Star Wars: Bounty Hunter. This solid licensed third-person shooter was a major staple of my childhood, helped turn me into a serious gamer, and is indirectly the reason I became a lawyer (it’s a long story—I’ll probably get into my origin story in a later blog post). It’s been a blast to catch up with the newly remastered Switch port, which has slightly better graphics, better lighting, and multiple control options. Caught up in the glow of nostalgia, I’ve been spending my evenings zooming around on jetpacks and gunning down criminals. As you can see, I’ve been hunting down the worst of the worst: gangsters, drug runners, animal abusers, graffiti artists, art critics, and people who don’t flush public toilets:
All my shooting and hunting paid off, as I accomplished something that had seemed far out of reach for the past 2 decades: I achieved 100% completion in Bounty Hunter! Catching every secondary bounty (alive when wanted) was no small feat, but I managed to do it in less than 2 months since buying the remastered port. I don’t know how I stack up as a gamer in the big picture, but 10-year-old me is impressed and proud of 31-year-old me.
(I also achieved 100% completion on Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, which is no less impressive, this summer. I’ve been on a roll!)
As summer
started to wind down, I geared up for another big adventure: Rose City Comic
Con! After a long trial early in
September (where 5 hours of jury deliberations kept me in court until 10pm :P),
I put on my Pokémon trainer costume from last con and met up with my buddy
Carson (who was a great sport and helped me take loads of pictures) for 3 days
of cosplay, perusing art, photo ops, and overall goofiness. Having gone 6 years without any conventions,
it feels great to have gone to 2 cons in a single year. Even though there are still 2 months left in
2024, I’m looking forward to whatever cons I can make it to in 2025 (I’ve
already looked into 4 so far). For now,
here’s (some of) the highlights of Rose City Comic Con 2024 in photographic form:
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| I got plans for this prop pistol... |
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| me and Carson :) |
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| The inevitable result of my wacky antics (fortunately, I know a competent attorney in the area). |
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| A quick portrait I commissioned. |
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| Someone was selling anime body pillows of General Grievous and Manfred von Karma. I bought these $10 keychain versions, as I certainly wasn't shelling out $50 for full-size pillows...yet. |
At the tail end of summer, I enjoyed a slightly lower-key adventure with Cthulhu with Salem’s Pride in the Park. Given that Pride events are usually kept to June, having a second helping in September is an excellent treat for Salem residents (or weekend visitors, in my case). The event got crashed by some homophobic @$$hole protesters, but we had an awesome time on a beautiful day. There weren’t too many photo ops, but I stepped a little out of my comfort zone and got my hair temporarily dyed purple:
All in all, I’ve been doing my best to enjoy my free time; aside from these main adventures covered here, I’ve been trying other little tricks and hobbies. I’ve been working on future cosplays one day of a time (in preparation for the aforementioned ~4+ future cons), I’ve been extending Rosh Hashana by enjoying apples with honey for dessert (also a great way to get rid of excess caramel sauce), and I’ve been pushing myself into picking up old hobbies (such as Lego and mixing rum with things—more on that another time). Moreover, I’ve been preparing the blog entry that you are currently reading as a reminder to myself that fun is out there and that working hard doesn’t mean I can’t play hard. As we go into Halloween and the holiday season, I look forward to finding out how else I can fill the time between court hearings in my 6th year as an apprentice attorney.
