End of 2024
This was a weird year. Every year is a bit of a weird year, but I feel it more here, at the end of 2024. I'm more financially secure than I've ever been, but work a job in a budget crisis that demands everyone perform more work with less support. I hit three years since I left Florida, but still feel like I am behind with actually setting down roots, and even question whether I should or if I should be making a plan to start job hunting again in two years. I lost my last grandparent. I reconnected with an aunt over cooking. I didn't find a new, in-person gaming group. I took my first vacation in a decade and met a friend I only knew online. Cohost shuttered. I took meaningful steps to take care of my mental and physical health. The election broke bad. I saw a solar eclipse!
At the end of the year I just feel tired, but in ways I've started to get a hold on. And that gives me some hope and encouragement that I can do more things I want to do in the upcoming year.
I have actual directions for improving my health, and some small confirmations that changes I made this past year are for the better. I can look-up hiking trails near me and build-up to tackle the larger trails I wasn't able to hike when I visited friends over Thanksgiving.
I want to travel more. I will need to make a visit home - it's been two years since I saw my parents, and they visited me - but I can keep that short and make plans to visit my friends who have scattered to the four winds in the past decade. If I am really on the ball, I'll finally renew my expired passport and plan an overseas trip.
I'm back to writing and playing games. My game group played a year of Grandpa's Farm this Saturday, swapping letters about a roving space flotilla recovering from a string of bad luck. I put aside my frustration with writing for traditional style RPGs and resumed work on my Beyond the Wall campaign. Just today I finished updating the Break!! adventure I've tooled with on-and-off for over a year and created templates I hope will help me draft the dungeon that's truly the thing I've wanted to work on this year and was too busy and exhausted to commit to. I don't think I can do a "dungeon25" - my Beyond the Wall campaign comes first - but if the mood is right tomorrow morning, I just might be back here, describing the well-tread entrance to a temple swallowed by a dragon and contested over by immortal prophets, otherworldly elves, manipulative dragons, and a possessed sorceress.
Goodbye, 2024. You were weird. Hello, 2025. You frighten me, but I am gonna do my best to meet you head-on.