Real life has been... something.

How eloquent.

I'm updating this site. Mainly aesthetically. I want to try some funky stuff with CSS (and even JS) and see how it feels. At time of writing, I've already updated the index page and decided to drop the bit I was doing where it was intentionally difficult to navigate back to the index. Most of the sidebars have been replaced with a simple button that takes you there.

I published a book! A little 65-page RPG about monsters who are dads. I got a lot of help from friends of mine - two friends took care of the art, and four more provided some editing tips and a little written text of their own. I'm extremely grateful to them. While I did the bulk of the writing and formatting, it really was a communal effort. But all human projects are communal efforts, really. No matter what anyone tells you, nobody truly accomplishes anything alone.

Finishing that book checks "Publish a Book" and "Publish a TTRPG" off my list. I still want to publish a nonfiction book at some point... I feel so capable now. I've been knocking items off my bucket list left and right the past few years. There's still so much I want to do, both extremely important and not-so-important. The extremely important stuff, ironically, I am keeping under wraps for now. It is the unimportant stuff I am more keen to talk openly about. For instance, now that Monster Dads has been published, do I make a video game like I've always wanted? Finish writing, shooting, and editing a YouTube video essay? Write a book? I haven't decided yet. I might just wrap up Monster Dads 100% by finishing the supplement of ideas that I edited out of the core doc. Plenty more dad archetypes to include, y'know.

I've also been working hard on educating myself on things that I had struggled with before. I've learned a bunch about marketing campaigns, branding, sales, graphic design... a lot of things I avoided learning about, instead of tackling. Well, now I've been tackling them. It's taking me to some interesting places both personally and professionally.

Beyond that, I've been making an effort to get out of the house a lot more. I've gotten increasingly involved in my community. I've even tried linking up with local political organizations, and I've learned a lot about how things move (or don't, in many cases) around here. Right now I'm working on a couple things to better my community, though I can't really talk about them here.

I have come to realize that the best thing for me would be to get away from the 40-hour work week and employment within hierarchical organizations. I need to strike out on my own. I've got plans for that. I was working on a very important one earlier today, in fact.

I'm not as scared as I used to be. I'm excited.