Can’t believe it’s been six months already. Today marks the last day of my sabbatical, a new project is already waiting for me at my day job. So, besides some adventuring and emotional growth and all that fluff, what did I actually accomplish? Let’s look at the hard facts.
Top achievement has got to be designing and publishing The Horrors of Frostbite Isle, in the process of which I’ve also started engaging with the Twitter TTRPG community, which I’m eager to venture further into.
Second place I guess goes to posting on here twice a month. I mean, sometimes there would be posts like this one right here, kinda forced just to maintain that ratio, but hey, some of them I’m actually proud of. So yay for me.
In third place, writing competitions. I’ve participated in four so far. No winners yet, but three of them are still pending. Fingers crossed. I’m supposed to finish my entry into a fifth one today.* Let’s see how that goes.
Fourth place goes to doing writing exercises with a fellow author (hey Caran!). We didn’t get in as many as I’d hoped, but I’m confident that time will come.
Then there’s the obligatory failed project, the short film with Art and Bulb. Heavy on the drama side, and as such definitely a necessary part of any up and coming artist’s CV – not so strong as an actual achievement.
And I guess that’s pretty much all. Funnily, I’ve hardly made any progress regarding the two novel ideas I went in with. Just some notes here and there. I have, however, come up with an idea for an entirely new roleplaying system. So there’s no shortage of threads to follow going forth (and go forth I will, so much is clear). I definitely wanna tackle some of that meaty stuff next. And some of the smaller stuff, too. There’s so, so much ahead.**
I’ll also be further exploring the compatibility of work and career; this next project I’m tackling at work will keep me busy full-time for a few months. I expect it to be a bit of a challenge to keep doing creative stuff on the side at a satisfying pace.*** Maybe I can switch to a part-time model after, and lean more seriously into my writing and game design projects. I’ll keep you posted.
For some reason, the thought of Thoughtstrands turning into a straight-up journal bugs me though, so I’ll try to write mainly about those aspects of my life immediately relevant to the creative process. I mean, I can’t promise that. But I’ll try. I know I’ve come close to pointless rambling more than once. And sometimes I enjoy rambling… anyway. It’s super early. I should sleep, and then get to work on that short story. I really want it to happen, so I better make it.
* I think the plot has a lot of potential, and I like writing the main character. Just not sure whether I’ll be able to finish it in time. Would be a shame if not, since I tailored the story to fit this rather specific competition. And I’d like to win it.
** Sometimes I’m about to burst with excitement for it, and sometimes I actually sit down to do something, and deflate. January’s been kinda heavy on that. Maybe the marketing portion of Horrors was more straining than I thought.
*** I finally got around to watching the first of Brandon Sanderson’s fabled lectures on Sci-Fi and Fantasy writing recently. The fact that his go-to example for a job that makes a bad fit for a writer was software engineering was a tad disheartening. Especially since his reasoning corresponded to thoughts and experiences from my own past. He’s spot-on, I’ll need a solution for this. Maybe part-time is it.