At Year's End (I look back at all the drafts I started and didn't finish)
Look, dearest darlings, I am a chronic starter. I have a draft list full of unfinished ideas jostling to be the ones to the finish line (but then the sport metaphor changes and there isn’t a finish line and it’s all really a mess). But despite all that and my inability to finish any post I started for this blog, I did still do some things in the year 2022!
For one thing, according to Storygraph, I’ve read 49 books! I was aiming for 50 at the start of the year, then I got cocky and increased that to 75, and, well, now we are where we are. Some highlights from the year are Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint’s Names for Light: A Family History (a haunting memoir about the shadow colonialism casts on the families surviving it), Zoe Hana Mikuta’s Gearbreakers (revolutionary mecha action drama with enemies to lovers tropey goodness), K-Ming Chang’s Bestiary (a beautifully written multi-generational story about identity and belonging, and by beautiful I mean hard to read and pulls no punches), Cassandra Khaw’s The All-Consuming World (speaking of pulling no punches and maximalism in writing), among many others! For me, this was a year of branching out from my comfort genres of romance and fantasy and into the world of people writing about things very close to their hearts (not that romance and fantasy is not that, but this was really a year for memoir).
I played a lot of games! My spreadsheet so far indicates that I played about 162 sessions of TTRPGs (give or a take a few where we cancelled sessions and I forgot to adjust my calendar). My most played system was Storybrewers RPG’s Good Society (I included variations in my count, aka Penned to Good Society games), followed by Austin Ramsay’s Beam Saber, then Magpie Games’ Urban Shadows, and Storybrewers’ Fight With Spirit. I even facilitated some Fight With Spirit, and I’m so excited to see the final product (soon!).
I put some things on itch.io! I wrote three little supplements (two Monsterhearts 2 skins and one extra Firebrands game). I’m happy with the fact that I finished something (and one of my friends has even played with a Skin I wrote, which is exciting)! The Kumakatok skin for MH2 was one of the first times I’ve ever really written something with a conscious desire to draw on my cultural knowledge (sparse though it may be, but I’m trying to fix that). My current mode of creating things is “write a thing and then hope it works” so maybe one of my goals in the next year will be to toss in a playtest stage for the things I write (maybe, we’ll see…). Learning to see things through is a process and I am full of nerves all the time.
This year, I started working harder on my ceramics - we’re getting better at centering! I started taking dance classes again! I read Phil Chan’s book Final Bow for Yellowface (about orientalism in the Nutcracker and ways to move forward from caricatures and stereotypes in dance). I learned how to develop film (that photo preview for this post is one I developed and scanned)! I’ve made it 700ish days on Duolingo! I met friends from online in real life! We went to Big Bad Con and also played Once More Into the Void In Person!! I went to Ireland and Scotland and drank Irn Bru (it was a mistake, the drinking of Irn Bru). I kissed the Blarney Stone (questionable life decision, does not have appeared to affected my vocal ability to blather, but possibly has increased my wordiness in writing)!
It’s been a long year, but I’m grateful for the games I’ve played, the books I’ve read, the experiences I’ve had, the friends all along the way!
And uh, hopefully, I’ll be here in a week with another post about things I want to finish in 2023. You know, like maybe accountability might help? Maybe?