This past year was a hell of a ride, and almost nothing about it I would have seen coming from where I was in January 2022. I had just cleared 2000 followers on Twitter, there were so many friends I hadn’t met yet, so many projects coming that weren’t even on my radar. And so many hills to climb that I couldn’t have foreseen; health issues for myself, a cancer scare in the family, going suddenly viral on Twitter. Safe to say, 2022 did not at all go how I figured it might at the start of the year. And as you would expect, that brought both the good and bad.

But rather than linger on all of that, I want to look forward to 2023. After the chaos and derailment of much of the past year, my overarching goal for 2023 is consistency. Achieving that is going to require two things from me: a) doing the thing when I say I’m doing the thing, and b) knowing when not to agree to or take on the thing, so that a) stays achievable. Or more simply put, I have to manage my time and effort so when I say I’m doing something, it gets done.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to stay huddled in a corner not doing anything. Over at The Rat Hole I outlined some of my plans for my articles there. Some of that work is going to overlap with projects I already have in mind, because one of the ways I’m going to achieve a) and b) is by using any particular project in as many places as I can. As I said in yesterday’s post, expect a lot more crossover between The Rat Hole and here, but also on my YouTube and Twitch channels.

So what do I have planned? Right now, I have two projects and a more general goal set.

• Continue producing the Wanderhome Actual Play we presented this past December, whatever that looks like.
• Revisit an idea I had a few years back called “The Back Catalogue”.
• Continue to edit for Indie TTRPGs but also get some experience working on projects for larger companies

The Wanderhome AP is going to be the trickiest one to pull off as far as supporting everyone involved so they can do their best work. Put plainly, we need to raise money in order to make this the amazing project everyone involved knows it can be. So that will be a huge challenge. I’ve never crowdfunded anything before; forget learning curve, I may very well be scaling a learning cliff. It might not work, but it definitely won’t if we don’t try.

The Back Catalogue is an idea I had over a year ago and then promptly got too busy to work on. But my thought went something like this: Indie creators are sort of forced into a loop of creating and promoting The Next Thing if they want to gain and keep attention in the TTRPG space. That doesn’t give them much time to promote things they created even six months or a year ago, never mind further back. So what if I did a video every couple of weeks where I picked a creator, and instead of talking about their newest shiny, I do a deeper dive into their previous works, their back catalogue? That could help get their neglected gems out in the world again, and the video would stand as a great intro to their body of work. And if one of the creators I feature also has a new project coming out, I can pair this with an interview over at The Rat Hole to give them as much of a boost as I can.

And finally, more editing! This is more of a goal than a plan, but I feel the need to stretch some more as an editor. While I love working with Indie creators and plan to keep doing that, I plan to go after some freelance work from some larger companies. I want more experience working on larger projects, get a better sense of that entire process. The only way that’s going to happen is to go after it, so go after it I shall.

 There are some other projects I’m still planning out. I had talked about a project called TTRPGeneology which I was going to produce with a friend. Their schedule unfortunately doesn’t allow for working on it now, so I am taking some time to do more digging around and planning. During a hiatus we had taken I had already decided I wanted to fall back into a production role instead of on-screen talent, so that gives me the option to make this project much more inclusive than previously envisioned, which is all for the good. And I don’t mind the extra time; I think this is one of those things that needs to stick the landing from the first show so it’s worth taking the time to get it right.

But planning is downtime work. I’m going to focus on the three things above. I thing those, combined with my plans over at The Rat Hole, are going to yield some excellent things this year. Moreover, I’m excited! Like, “I can feel the excitement through my SAD” excited, which is a hell of a thing and does not manifest often.

In any case, that’s what 2023 is looking like around here. And of course, I want to play games with folks, run games for my friends, all that. So as I am so fond of saying on Twitter: Allons-y!