General Blog Update: It’s Alive!

Summary: This is a simple update about where the blog is at, what has been happening since my previous post, and what my plans for the future look like.

Alive! Even though only barely. 

Under the perfect circumstances this post should have arrived just at the end of 2020 so that I could reflect a little bit upon its wretchedness, muse over the goals that I would aspire towards, and ultimately wish all my readers many blessings moving forward. Since the circumstances ain’t perfect, you’ll get something similar albeit belated.

So… 2020. The year that went above and beyond with opportunities for some truly fucked up Nurgle-inspired Cyberpunk LARPing. Truth be told, I think I am one of the lucky bastards that drew quite a lot of positives during this shit-show. For starters, a steady work-at-home gig and the isolation time was extremely enjoyable with my partner and our lovely cat.

"Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog" by Caspar David Friedrich

Personal highlights of the year:

• I got married!
• Received a permit to live and work in another country (move pending! it’s 2021. when this post gets published, so I’m actually wrapping it up from my new home!)
• Created this blog
• Successfully submitted an entry for the annual 1-page dungeon contest
• Some of my writing landed in an RPG zine
• Mustered enough courage (#1) to submit an unsolicited pitch to an RPG publisher
• Mustered enough courage (#2) to run a few games for people who are completely out of my usual gaming clique
• I’m pretty much in the best physical shape of my life

Not a bad run, not at all. However, in order to strike some balance, there have been a few negatives this year as well. Aside of the plague, we had:

• A major fallout with a person with whom I’ve played RPGs for the majority of my gaming career
• A long dry period where I have/had no motivation (and a surplus of performance anxiety) when it comes to running RPGs
• Moving to another country, although extremely adventurous, is painfully stressful and chaotic
• Work has been blooming and the company where I am employed has been on the rise, but at the cost of, again, lots of stress and turbulent happenings

Thinking about it, it is rather funny that the majority of the “bad” things happening last year have been gaming related. Some of these have definitely been caused by a lot of stress generated by hectic happenings at work (which, actually, remained stable and on the rise despite the pandemic) and many obstacles caused by the upcoming move. Luckily, things are slooooowly beginning to calm down and I’m now able to recuperate and focus my energy on hobbies and other non-move/work things.

As we’ve already dipped our toes into 2021. I’ll take some time now to reflect on things I’d like to accomplish this year, hobby related at least:

• Write more - I’ve got a dozen notebooks waiting to be splattered with my ideas. I have a lot of RPG projects in mind, some are campaigns that I plan to run, some are things that I want to make into zines… we’ll see! All I know is that I just want to pour all those creative thoughts out of my brain.
• Write some more digitally - I’d love nothing more than to write here more often, at least biweekly. I’ve drafted many posts already, currently working on a lengthy article, but just need to grab enough focus to actually complete all of that. Also, my old music blog is in dire need of an update.
• Form a new gaming group in my new city - this will be a quest, but I’m hopeful and will definitely try. Several of my coworkers already played in The Wandering Misfits games and I know a few other people who are RPG-enthusiasts, but it will take quite a lot of effort herding them in. Challenge accepted! If I fail, then I plan on starting a West-Marches-kind-of-game online with random web folks… Who knows, YOU might be one of them?
• Catch up on the stacks of board games that I own - This… this has been haunting me for quite a long while. I sank in tons of money into various games, but most of them are untouched. For now, I’m looking at you Arkham Horror LCG.
• Delve a little bit into one of my many side-projects - I’m currently setting up two more blogs, one being a non-fantasy RPG blog and another about an out-of-print card game that I adore. Aside of that, planning to start writing some music.

Ambitious? For sure! But it has been a rough year for all of us and I’d say we deserve a gentler 2021. See you soon, I hope!