It feels a little disingenuous to pretend this is a blog post I have planned out. Instead, this is part of my ongoing desire to start 2024 off on the “right foot” and put an incredibly tumultuous year behind me. Part of that effort includes a push to get myself back on track.
If you’ve followed me for the past year, you know 2023 was not my easiest year. It is not my intention to turn this blog post into a woe-is-me pity fest, but instead to reflect on what happened and to put up the goalposts for where I’m going in 2024.
If you’re reading this, I encourage you to subscribe. I hope to finally dust this old thing off and use it a bit more, both for blogging and displaying links to the projects I’m working on, written or otherwise. I have no plans for releasing paid content through this site right now, though that may change.
(I considered moving to another platform like Substack, but, as always, people I have no desire to be associated with reared their heads. Ho hum.)
The year that should not have been
I’m not a particularly staunch believer that a fresh year will erase all woes and give you a chance to start over, but I hoped 2023 would be a year of ship-rightening. I had a pretty stellar 2022 – I lost a ton of weight, went to SDCC for the first time, and was (I thought) kicking ass at my job with a promotion to Senior Features Editor for CBR.
But it had ended on a rough note. My promotion pushed me over the income threshold for my apartment, so immediately after returning from SDCC, I had to find a new place to live. This was amid a massive storm that knocked out the water in my area for over a week. Trying to find a new apartment within a few weeks during a housing crisis when you don’t have the money to make a deposit or the running water to shower is not an experience I wish on anyone.
I landed on my feet and was content to kick off 2023 in a stronger fashion. A nicer apartment, faster internet, the promise of becoming an actual employee instead of a freelancer; everything felt like a clear opportunity for a new start. The first few months were pretty unnotable, but I had plans for a year of personal and professional growth stemming from 2022’s successes.
Then it happened.
I still have no desire to air out my dirty laundry about my time at CBR. If you read my moratorium Twitter thread, you’ve read all I really have to say about them in the long term. To describe that as a particularly stressful event that still weighs on me today would be an understatement. The outpouring of support still overwhelms me, and the truths about those who employed me and those who took advantage of me have been cold lessons about the value of caution and maintaining my faith in myself.
Things spiraled in a way I wasn’t prepared for. Finding yourself a news item on multiple outlets is not a fun experience. I spent longer than I would have cared for unemployed, to the point that I thought I was going to be waiting tables again.
I’m still adjusting to the post-Valnet life. I had been warned for some time by others who had left it was something of a wake-up call, a realization of just how bad things were and how much you were sacrificing because you felt you needed to keep your job. I had largely dismissed this, but now that I’m on the other side, I can see it.
I’m furious at them still. I feel betrayed and taken advantage of, as if I was used and discarded. But based on the lowering standards they maintain that are readily apparent even now from the outside looking in, being fired may wind up being the best thing they could have done for me.
The 2024 that will be, come hell or high water
I’ve spent much of the last few months just trying to get my shit back together. I’ve been working seven-day weeks across two jobs, and honestly, I’m just trying to survive. I’ve not written much outside of work stuff. Streams remained my one creative refuge, but even they only scratch that itch for so long.
My goals for 2024 are pretty straightforward. I’m sharing these here to put them out in the universe, to manifest them, and to hold myself accountable.
Just fucking write
I write a lot as it is, but I write for work. I haven’t written for me in too long.
A few of you have seen the half-written unfinished manuscripts that I knocked out during events like NaNoWriMo (which ALSO had its share of undesirable people this year, jesus christ). I don’t stop thinking about these after November, though.
The one I wrote in 2017, Born of Fire and Sand, has been a persistent thought of mine for over a decade. What I wrote for NaNo is planned to be the first of a five-book series. What I wrote for NaNo five years ago is also criminally short and almost certainly undone by the years I’ve had to think about it. I’ve been chipping away at a story bible, and my early goal is to finish that story bible enough to start writing a clean copy of what I’ve got. I’m sure I can salvage some of that original manuscript, but honestly, it’s been long enough that it might be better to call it a wash and start over.
I’d love to have some written manuscript or timeline for a finished copy by the summer. If you’re in my Discord, you can hang out in the writer’s chat to ask me about it or discuss your own work!
(Oh, and also, I’m aiming to blog more and curate my portfolio better, which is the purpose of this site. You did subscribe, right?)
A writer needs to read
I used to love reading when I was a kid. I can’t tell you how many days I spent lounging in my room reading Henry Huggins or The Hitchcock Trio. Yes, I’m old, and I always have been.
I still love reading. I have a stack of books I’ve been meaning to get through. But it’s hard to find time, so I just…don’t. For 2024, I’m aiming to improve them. I’ll be forcing myself to read, and I’ll be doing so with a mix of self-improvement books (I have so many books about writing better, holy shit) and plenty of fiction books (I got a copy of House of Leaves that I’m eager to tear into).
I’ll probably use GoodReads to track my progress if you want to join in, and I’ll probably make a Book Club role and/or channel in Discord.
I’m a writer, not a streamer
I love streaming. I’ve sank a lot of time and money into it, and I cannot stress enough how much I appreciate the people who do show up. I love you all, and it makes me so happy when you tell your friends about me. But very few people show up, and even fewer are staying. I’ve tried more schedules, fewer schedules, weekdays, weekends, evenings, late nights, green screen, no green screen, bigger cam, no cam, only RPGs, only fighting games, only live service games, only new games, only old games, and more. At a certain point, I just have to take a step back and re-evaluate. Logically it should be a thing I just do for fun, but we all know my brain doesn’t work like that – I have to succeed. As it is right now, streaming is a time sink that I’m getting next-to-no return on.
The bottom line is my numbers on Twitch have been stagnant for years. I crossed 300 followers ages ago, but I’m nowhere near 400. My use of Restream to bolster those numbers or build a community on YouTube has been wildly unsuccessful. I’m not saying I need huge numbers or a massive income to justify streaming, but streaming to one viewer for hours on end is just cutting into time where I should be writing.
No, I’m not stopping streams. But they will only be once or twice a week, and I have no plans to return to a set schedule at this time. I’ll still be streaming a little bit of everything and will have the occasional unplanned stream.
I did start replacing a lot of what would have been unplanned streams with more casual Discord hangs, and those have been a lot of fun. I’ll be doing those still, but I’ll only be doing actual streams once or twice a week for the first few months. This year is also packed with massive RPGs that I want to play through, and I have no desire to hinge my playtime for those around when I have a few spare hours to go on Twitch.
A return to edited content
Where I do have a weird level of tangible success is edited content. Years-old comic reviews and edited Let’s Play series like The Fastest Man Who Survived did well by recognizable metrics considering how little I promoted them over the years.
I also really miss dabbling in podcasting or the few video essays I did, things I have put off over the years because I didn’t feel like I was “good enough,” but I need to get past that. I really love the nature of videos I did like my Jim Henson’s A Tale of Sand review or my retrospective on the Justice League of America origins.
I’ve been in the early planning stages for months now for a couple of projects. I don’t know how they’ll manifest. Maybe podcasts, maybe video essays. I’m going to continue the planning process, and they’ll be relatively low priority, but I would love to have some kind of proof of concept soon.
We’re being our best selves in 2024
I am well aware this blog post is me casting the widest possible net, and I’m okay with that. If I accomplish half of what I put on this list, I will call it a win.
At the end of the day, I’m still beholden to things that I’m obviously going to focus on. Professionally, I’m rebuilding a lot of shaken confidence and realigning a lot of broken beliefs. But I know my work is good, my copy is clean, and I am a valuable hand.
I’m also putting more of a focus on my health in 2024 than I have in the past. I turn 40 this year. I’m not looking forward to it. So expect a lot of “Well, I forced myself to go to the gym again.” posts on social media.
I spent a lot of 2023 in a bad place, but what happened to me this year does not invalidate the work I did or the success I had. I’m going to spend 2024 reminding myself of that, and being much more gracious to myself.
If you made it this far…hot damn. Thanks. I’m excited to see what the upcoming year brings, and I hope you’ll choose to be gracious to yourself in 2024, too. We spend far too long in a rat race, grinding ourselves down to bone and wasting away. It’s time to be better, but that doesn’t have to come at the cost of our physical and mental health.
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