We’re already chugging along through 2019, and I think we’re at the point where 2019 doesn’t quite feel new, but (at least for me), it doesn’t feel like anything has really happened, either. Which is a bit surprising, because there’s been a lot of new and interesting things going on.

So let’s jump on in with the Monthly Update Topic Order™: blog, writing plans, video games, reading/listening, school, and other things.

Not much to say about the current state of the blog. I’m pretty happy with where it is right now, forcing me to write regularly but not often enough to be oppressive. That said, I might want to be upping the content come summer. More on that in a bit.

As you probably know, I don’t really have a whole lot going on writing wise. That story I posted last week was one of my first forays into the world I’ve been working on with some friends, but since that’s a collaborative project, I don’t like to talk about it much. I will say that we plan to have stuff to present some time this year, though, and when that day comes you bet your butt I’m going to be talking about it here. Apart from that, I’m working on that full length Lisa Stenton play for school. Have I mentioned that on the blog? Well, now I have. It’s still in a very rough draft and nowhere near at the level in which I can show to anybody (the public especially), but it’s coming along, which is exciting. That’s pretty much all I’m working on at the moment.

I don’t feel like I’ve been playing pretty much anything lately. I pretty much get home from work or school, try and fail taking a nap, and then work on whatever needs to be done. When I do have actual free time, though, I usually watch videos while casually playing Heroes of the Storm or Hearthstone. I haven’t even been playing on the Switch lately, which makes me feel a little bad, but I know I’ll get my hours in with time. Also, my brother and I have been dedicating a few hours every other week to playing classic games, which has been fun because we’ve been narrating characters to each other in silly voices. Right now we’re going through Secret of Mana, which has been a blast. I’d say “expect a review on that soon”, but I’m realizing I’ve been saying that a lot lately and have yet to review anything in 2019. Oh well.

Listening, though. I’ve been listening to a lot of Day9 and Critical Role. Those two channels combined produce about a dozen hours a week, which is more than the amount of free time I can spend watching YouTube, so that’s pretty much all the media I’ve been consuming. Haven’t listened to podcasts or audiobooks in months, but I’m sure I’ll binge on stuff a few months from now to catch up.

As far as school goes, I mentioned last month that this would be my last semester. Well, that’s not happening. One of the classes I needed got cancelled, and there’s no way around it beyond taking an extra semester. For one class. So all my plans for picking up a second job after this semester and saving up have kind of gone out the window. Sucks, but can’t do anything about it now, so there’s no use dwelling on it.

Second-to-lastly, D&D is going great. I just finished my first full city, Craydon, which took about 10 hours of work to build. It houses roughly 18,000 people, complete with about a dozen factions, shops, and lots of events and secrets to uncover. The Aleor campaign is going great. I will one day post a campaign diary of the story. When I get around to it.

So, that last thing. I’ve been considering finding a feasible way to take commissions on story writing. Like, fanfiction, micro fiction, writing prompts, whatever. It’s something I could certainly do, but the only thing would be monetizing it in a way that actually provides me with an income. People would need to know and have read my work for that to be any sort of business plan at all, which is not something I can magically make happen. It would be a good hobby for a bit of extra change, but it’s not on my radar just yet. I need to give it some more thought first.