2021 in Review
Merry (belated) Christmas and Happy (early) New Year! I hope your holiday season has been filled with love, joy, and some much-needed relaxation! Those who are missing out on R&R due to work or other complications, I wish you well and thank you for putting in the time and effort for those around you!
2021 has been a year with many ups, downs, and crazy turns in between. Naturally, I figured the best way to celebrate the year’s end is to use my last post of the year to reflect on it and take a quick peek at what lies next for 2022.
But first, some Special Thanks!
This whole operation would be completely impossible without the support of friends and family, who offered encouragement, ideas, insights, and critiques. Your assistance has been invaluable, and it will definitely be just as important as we dive into the next year!
My biggest serving of gratitude goes to Koseki, who was not only a vital confidant as I started building this place, but provided phenomenal artistic representations of the concepts I’d come up with to make them real. Without him, this place would not have nearly the spirit and charisma that it does today. Thanks again, man. Seriously.
And, of course, thank you, dear reader(s), for taking the time to stop by and check this place out. I hope it’s given you as much joy as it has to me.
Now, on to the reflection!
Looking back at 2021
This has been a year of immense growth for me. Ever since I began gratitude journaling in March (something you may have already heard me sing praise for before), I underwent a chain reaction of positive developments. I overcame longstanding bad habits, reconnected with friends I previously let drift away, found my stride from a perspective of faith, and, of course, started this little website with the goal of updating it with a new blog post once a week.
It’s been 4 ½ months since its creation, but I am incredibly proud of what I’ve accomplished here. This humble little site has given me a chance to finally let out all of my writing wiggles, present my work and progress to a willing audience, and plant a presence on the internet so that, no matter what happens, something will be left to prove I existed and got to do what I loved.
I don’t know if I could pick a favorite blog post, so instead, I wanted to reflect on the ones I was really satisfied with:
Lessons from Gratitude Journaling: When I wrote this post, I was worried that I’d come off as heavy-handed or insensitive to people’s struggles. Thankfully, most of the people who did read it and reach out told me about how helpful the post was, and that it inspired them to at least consider gratitude journaling themselves. I’m so grateful that I was able to help folks out with this one, and it encourages me to keep going and not give up on gratitude journaling myself! Definitely my favorite of all my Blah Blah Blog posts thus far.
The Grifflet: A Project Warden’s Short Story: Originally, I wanted to recreate that scene from 101 Dalmations where Roger tries to resuscitate the stillborn Lucky, but that just ended up not working in the grand scheme of what I could write at the time. Even so, I really liked writing this one, and I think it holds up pretty well in my eyes yet. I feel like I got to do more with this one than I got to do with my previous short story, especially regarding characterization.
The Godfather’s Most Beautiful Moment: This one was a very nice change of pace. Nothing to do with grandiose projects, just some good old-fashioned babble about a scene I really liked from a movie I really liked. I’ll probably do a lot more movie-themed blog posts in the near future, if only to shake things up.
Project Spellcheck Wardens: Introducing Liam: The last little piece of Wardens-related content for the year. After twiddling my thumbs over what the “apprentice” character’s name would be, I finally settled on Liam. Why? Because it has “I am” in it. Anything else is subject to death of the author.
The Destiny Principle: A Project Spellcheck Story: This one was fun, because I was basically forced to write a properly “smart” character who sees the world from an elevated perspective (It was intentionally left out of the story, but the character’s name is Colvin). It’ll eventually tie into the overarching story of Spellcheck, if you’re curious about that but that won’t be for a while. For now, just enjoy it as its own little narrative.
Even though I don’t have a specific favorite post, I do have a least-favorite: A Laissez-Faire Approach to Media. All honesty, I really don’t feel like I ended up saying what I set out to in this post. I just ended up going with some lukewarm take about the dead horse topic of “the internet can be toxic and you should let people have their opinions.” Like, sure, that’s important to say, but it wasn’t exactly some groundbreaking discovery or approach.
The past is the past, but there’s no time like the present. So, how about I briefly revisit this topic and put in a couple paragraphs what I couldn’t in a full-length blog:
If a movie/game/show goes in a direction that sucks, then you are free to be angry or disappointed in how it turned out. However, if it gets to a point where your anger leaks into the rest of your life, becomes all you ever really talk about, or provokes you to try and demolish others’ enjoyment of that thing, you’re treading in very dangerous, very unhealthy waters.
Whenever I start feeling that way about stuff, the best thing I can do is just tell myself to adopt a laissez-faire approach and just let things be. If something sucks, make a note of it and move on to something you might enjoy (if you’re lucky, the IP could be big enough that you don’t have to look very far). Nothing wrong with being critical, but at least try to make it sound constructive. Some fans can be toxic enough without poking at them with a stick.
…phew! Now, I’m happy!
LOOKING AHEAD TO 2022
Next year is absolutely going to be the most important year of my writing career, if not my whole life. Project Wardens will be kicking into full swing and I am dead-set on hitting that early ’23 completion window for book 1. I also have a little something special planned in the realm of Project Spellcheck, but I don’t think I should say more until the details are cemented. Lastly, look forward to some tweaks and overhauls to this website, such as proper email campaigns with monthly recaps and a gallery for all art associated with this website and anything posted here so that you don’t have to dig through the blogs to find them. Of course, you can still look forward to the usual weekly blog posts as you know them.
And with that, it’s time to say goodbye to ’21 and hello to ’22!
Off to the next great adventure!