tafeanorn

I'm going to come right out and say it from the start: 2008 falls into the category of one of the best years in my life. Top ten without even thinking about it, top five with little competition. Top 3? After 1992 and 1994. I think so.

Hobbies: History
The work on Ellis has really brought me back to my love of the medieval. I've got a great bunch of blogs that I read and I've been reading a lot more. My interest has really coalesced into everyday village life and the microeconomics surrounding the village. I really want to understand the complex customs and institutions governing the foundation of medieval world.

I decided back in August to play around a lot with experimental history, that is actually trying to do medieval things. My bread and wheat experiments have been very fun and interesting, although not very in depth. I'll work more on that in 2009.

Family:
Family life has been very good this year. Chris and I are both getting along well. Our communication isn't perfect, but I'm doing a better job at talking about what's going on in my head. The cruise was fabulous and greatly reinforced those things that we have in common.

Becca has matured quite a bit over the year. She is struggling at school a bit which is good, because we are sure are sure she can succeed if she tries a little harder. Getter her to try harder and to take pleasure at a job well done is the thing really being taught.

Poker:
After the cruise I decided to put poker on the backburner. I am still interested in it. I still want to become better. I still think I could be very good.

But to do so I need more time to devote to it. Internet poker has changed a lot since the US has passed laws to curtail it. It is no longer easy. And while it is beatable, I would need to give it more time and effort than I currently have to do so. There is no point in throwing money at it if I'm not giving it the sort of attention it requires, so it needs to be set aside.

Live poker is still easy, but less convenient. Yes, the good card room is only 10 minutes away, but finding the time to sit there for six hours at a spell is hard. It will become easier in a few years once the kid goes off to college.

The Cruise:
In August we took an Alaskan cruise that was also a floating poker tournament. There are not words to describe how good a time we had, how relaxing it was and how refreshing and inspiring it was. Best vacation evah!

We are committed to doing it again in 2010, this time in Scandinavia, and the saving of money to do so has already begun.

Sabledrake Enterprises:
I haven't done any of the year-end financial stuff yet, but I have little doubt that 2008 will be SDE's lowest earning year. Despite publishing five books in 2008 we have given the business little attention. We did sell over a hundred copies of Naughty & Dice, which is a pretty big accomplishment considering the demise (?) of 3rd edition D&D.

One of my big goals for 2009 is to fix that, but that is the topic for another post.

Ellis:
The work on Ellis has been my biggest triumph of the year. I gave up on Simulacrum exactly a year ago and started Ellis on Jan. 5th, 2008. Since then I have written more than 100,000 words about the game system, roleplaying and monsters in that world. That is an incredible achievement for me and something I am very pleased about.

Playtesting has gone well, but I have had trouble getting strangers interested in giving it a try. No con game has ever had people willing to play it. Chris and I may try to co-run a Viking-themed scenario at GameStorm in 2009.

I have big hopes for Ellis and with a little bit of luck I'll see some of those come true in 2009.

Education:
This has been a big success thanks to my discovery of educational audio books. I have been working my way through literature and philosophy. I've listened to multiple takes on Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Beowulf, Virgil and St. Augustine. I listened to classes on video game design, Vikings, rhetoric, and the history of the English language. I took an online class on speaking Anglo-Saxon which I dropped out of after three weeks, but still feel like I learned quite a bit.

Anxiety:
If there is one aspect of my psyche that dominates my life and actions it is anxiety about the future which manifests itself in frequent (read that as incessant) worrying. This is certainly not a new realization but it one that back in February I took a good hard look at, fully owned up to at and decided to do something about.

Whether or not I have been successful at doing anything about it is questionable, I do feel more in control of it, which in itself is a win. It does generate a drain -- a constant leeching of creative energy -- which is something that I don't like. The hope is, however, that as I become accustomed to dealing with and facing this sort of worrying, over time the same amount effort will produce less stress.

Confidence:
What could have been one of the big disasters of the year turned out, for me at least, to be a huge learning experience. I instigated a big blowout with a friend whose bulls**t I couldn't take any more which is a huge deal for me, in two ways:
1. For me to get so upset about something that it demanded action.
2. For me to start a conflict.
Both of these are things that I never do, which is an indication of how big a deal they were, but also that I am becoming more able to treat myself with respect and consider my own feelings and needs.

The whole event was infuriating, stressful and all I could think about for weeks, but it was ultimately liberating, eye-opening and brought in a new level of confidence. Although I didn't get what I wanted, I got what I needed but only because of my own difficult actions.

Social Networking:
This year I was determined to interact and become more a part of communities that I shared interest with. To do that, I subscribed to a bunch of medieval history, game design and game publishing blogs. The goal was to at least lurk and hopefully comment. I also wanted to subscribe to and read people that I actively disagreed with so as to get a better handle on their points of view.

I was quite successful here, at least with the lurking, and have a large number of blogs that I read daily. I think eventually I'll start up my own topic-oriented blog, but not this year. That may be a project for 2010. I did not, however, comment as much as I wanted to. One attempt failed spectacularly and left me a little gunshy -- quite a bit gunshy actually, I am very embarrassed about it, though I still maintain that I was right considering the information given.

RL Friends:
My relationships with my real-life friends have grown well over the year, I think, and I am very thankful to have them. I scheduled quite a bit more time to spend with them in 2008 and it paid off with a lot of fun, some great experiences and insightful conversations.

Failures:
My inability to fix a computer virus attack in November followed by the rash purchase of new computer is a source of constant regret. The new computer looks great and when it works runs like a charm. But there are still things it won't do and things it won't do easily enough for anyone but me to do the. It was supposed to be an upgrade but was definitely a downgrade.

I wimped out on doing yardwork this summer. The fence needs some serious fixing and needs some cleaning up. I promised myself several times over the year that I would do those things but never did them. I also didn't clean out the attic for the third year in a row that I've been saying I would.

I came back from the cruise weighing 194 lbs. I managed to get that down to 176.5 lbs just before Thanksgiving, but since then I have put much of it back on, and came in at 185.5 lbs. yesterday. My goal is to hover around 175 lbs. which I almost made, and then let go to pot.

Look for a "Goals for 2009" post in the next few days.