Masterplan 2024

I would have posted this earlier but I noticed that I had 69 posts in 2023, and I am a child.

Well, 2023 was a bit of a crapper. Indulge me as I moan about why, or just click here to skip to the optimistic bit.

I have had a day job since February in which I don't know how to do anything, and there's no one to train me in how to do those things, which ends up being massively demoralising every day. So that's great for my mental health.

My creative work has also suffered this year. I did get some books out, and got noticed by wargamer.com and The New Bloody Yorker, but I felt my creative energies fail and flounder in 2023. I struggled to get anything written after Winnie-the-Shit; it has felt difficult to write anything and what I did write felt bad and shonky.

At the same time, while I've never held any illusions that I am a great artist, I've always felt at least competent, but in 2023 I became more dissatisfied with my art than ever before. I feel like I've got as far as I can with my current style and I don't know what to do about that. Is it too late for me to develop a new style? Is that something I can even do, or is the way I draw just the way I draw, no backsies?

I haven't done much gaming this year and I have missed it. I've played a few games with Stuart over the year but I haven't met with the rest of my so-called-regular group since around October 2022 (!). Again I seem to have lost confidence, which is a bit weird considering it's a hobby and doesn't require much effort, but there it is.

A loss of confidence is an apt description in general. I feel like a bit of a failure in all walks of life. Incapable or incompetent, surviving rather than thriving. A pointless existence. Heavy, man.

So, 2024 then. How do I turn this around?

Well, the intent is there, so that's something.

I have some long-delayed projects that I am going to try to finish off in January, to start the new year off with a clean(ish) slate.

After that, I have two adventures for Lamentations of the Flame Princess that I want to get out this year, plus another non-adventure book.

That's probably enough to be getting on with and if I get those three out I will consider 2024 a success, but I've also got plans for a non-LotFP adventure book, and also branching out to work with some new people. There are also some tentative discussions about a couple of comics projects, which should be a fun return to an area I've long missed.

I hope I'll get back to some more regular gaming too. I'd like to play more Stargrave, and I bought a copy of The Doomed -- or is it The DOOMED? -- and that looks like good fun. And of course I would love to get Legions Imperialis to the table at some point.

It would also be nice to get to play some of those unplayed games too.

So let's see what 2024 brings! I'm going into it in a more positive frame of mind than I ended 2023, which is a good start. Let's go!

Broken

Everything is broken. Everything is wrong. Except it isn't, and I know it isn't, but cold logic doesn't mean much when whatever this is, is happening. I feel a bit silly, because I know it's just chemicals, or worry, or something like that, and it shouldn't knock me down the way it has, but it has knocked me down, so I sort of have to accept it.

Is that defeatist? I don't know. It feels like it is, but at the same time, I know I'm at the mercy of forces beyond my immediate control.

I am rambling. I don't know what to say, but I needed to get some of this out of my head, and it's what blogs are for, after all. I don't like to write these personal posts, because it feels like self-promotion -- and how absurd is that feeling? -- and I'm so terrified of appearing arrogant or conceited that I always try to avoid talking about myself, but I do think that talking -- or at least writing, or typing, or whatever -- will help.

I'm not fishing for sympathy, and I am sincere when I say that I am sorry if what I'm writing here makes you uncomfortable, or isn't what you expect or want to see from me; as soon as this thing passes, then you'll see more of the content you're used to, I promise.

This will pass. It always does. Sometimes it goes away on its own, and sometimes I have to give it a kick and a shove, but it will pass.