Another year is drawing to a close. December in Canada means the cold closing in. Normally this would mean a shift from playing in person to playing online, as we hibernate and stay warm. With the global panini still in effect there’s no real shift in how I’m playing, it’s just colder when I answer the door for my food deliveries.
This past year was a bit of a let down from what I had planned. Back at the start I had envisioned so much more for myself, for the site, and for the channel. More and better videos, more posts here, a more active TTRPG year all around. None of that happened. Illness (both my own and my family’s), more aggressive depression, some personal stumbles–all of that led to me having a year in a much lower key than anticipated. Not going to lie, at times I didn’t really feel like I had a place in the TTRPG hobby anymore, not the one I hoped for myself, anyway.
Not that 2021 was a loss by any means. I worked on some truly excellent editing projects, I got to play with the Clockwork Vines folks again, I kept moderating over at Jason Mills’ Twitch channel and having a blast. So definitely lower key, but not a waste by any stretch. I guess what I missed most this past year was creating. I consumed a tonne of really great stuff, I helped out on other folks’ creations (which is fulfilling in its own way), but I didn’t produce anything of my own this year. The ideas were there but the drive was not.
And I could beat myself up over that, but I’m not going to. Re: the aforementioned global panini, maybe it was enough to just take a knee this past year, get my work done, and rest up as best I can for better things ahead. The plans and ideas are all still there, waiting for me to take one out of the box and get to work. They’ll keep until I’m ready to start.
So if you found yourself in a similar position over the last year or two, be kind to yourself. These are stressful, uncertain times and maybe, just maybe, it’s enough that you made it through. Rest, look after yourself, and what you choose to do will come in its own time.
Dorklord Canada 
Agreed. It all happens in its own good time, or even own yucky time. I had all kinds of fantasies too–I bought the giant expensive Mage: the Ascension 20th hardcover and some supplements, D&D 5th, and a load of the most physically-beautiful dice that I have seen, and I figured I’d find like-minded folks online and we’d play a leisurely and excellent game all night maybe once a week for each game, become great buddies like back in the olde days when people played in person simply for the fun of it, and all that great stuff. None of it happened, and it went so weird in ways that when I contacted an ex whom I hadn’t chatted with in decades but who used to play rpgs with a few of us way way back, he got paranoid and said that ‘NO ONE wants to play rpgs or watch him and our friends play rpgs online, so what was I really after???’ Huh. It used to be so simple to just have fun and be friends and play lame rpgs with buddies and eat snacks and have fun and not film it and not worry about looking hot for selfies or videos. That isn’t even taking into account everybody’s crappy health and mental health and social isolation and other obstacles.
Best wishes to you and to all and I hope we all have better times from now on–