Resolutions '25

Here we are again. A year has passed, some progress has been made, but ultimately life gets in the way especially when you're forced to live under the capitalist hegemony. I've dealt with a lot, and faced some pretty scary things recently, but I'm still here. Still breathing. Still writing.

I've been browsing worlds on here that don't make it to the front page and honestly I've got to say it's really giving me a sense of hope. No, I'm not making worlds on here that are flashy with gorgeous CSS and perfectly organized worldbuilding. I'm messy. I'm inconsistent. I've got things that conflict and I'm going to have to edit them, but that's what I wanted to accomplish last year. I'm getting my notes from random scribbles, or worse simply ephemeral concepts floating around my brain meat, and I'm putting them down here where they could potentially be reviewed, revised, and ultimately organized. That hasn't been happening at all on paper so this feels like a step.

And it is only just that, a step. I've got a lot more to accomplish before I can even get into revisions. I'm proud to say for the first time since I joined WA I've actually succeeded at World Anvil, but I did fall short of my personal goals in a lot of ways this past year. That's alright, I went in with the understanding that I needed to get worldbuilding, writing, and game design back to feeling like something I did out of passion rather than simply the job I did when I could get away from my other job.

So what am I learning? Well for one thing I'm learning that there's a skewed perception looking at the content of World Anvil compared to the literary and ttrpg markets. We're all people who proactively decided to join a worldbuilding toolkit and social media site, for which many of us pay an annual subscription fee. We're people who want to craft worlds which means we're making things differently than most of the rest of the world. That's not to say others aren't worldbuilding, but there's definitely a much greater variety out there while in here the variety is more narrow (though still pretty impressive) while the depth is incredible.

Beyond that, I'm learning to let go of perfectionism (a bit). It's a lesson I tried very hard to stick to in the past year and I'm going to continue those efforts going forward. There are so many worlds here that with zero offense intended very far from publishable. Honestly, that's wonderful. People are here creating things and sharing them with the world and it doesn't matter if they're in their first draft or their 500th revised edition with extensive rewirites and focus testing. The people here have gotten things written. That's always 1,000% better than dreaming of doing it. I need to keep that lesson in my mind at all times. Better written and in need of revision than totally perfect in my head I swear just trust me bro.

I've also learned to be a bit silly. One of the things I think frequently has weakened my worldbuilding in the past is that I write things to be epic or vast in scope and I forget that the real world is so inherently dumb so much of the time. We humans do silly things. We make little rituals of things that amuse us. We create whole organizations dedicated to traditions than started out as in-jokes. I should know this, I live it, but sometimes it takes seeing other writers accomplish such to remind me to write things that are real and goofy. Have fun and let the denizens of my worlds have fun as well. In this way, so many worlds have made themselves feel truly alive and real.

Genuinely, you all amaze me. I know it sounds a bit excessive, but I feel lucky to be a part of this group. With so much in the world that makes me wish I'd lived in a different time, it's things like this community and others I've been fortunate enough to be become a part of that remind me there's good in this world that's worth fighting for.

I don't know if this really fits the "resolutions" intent of this particular WA event, but I'm going to continue striving to create from my passion rather than simply executing tasks to meet deadlines. I'm going to strive to continuing learning from you all, not just the ones who become icons and feature prominently but all of you wonderful worldbuilders who continue to pour your incredible imaginings into this site.

Now I will admit, I do have a professional goal here. I want to publish the first supplement for my New Dark Age world this year. I've still got a lot of work to do, more yet unfinished than I'd hoped for the start this year, but I want to try to push through. But again, when I say this is something I want to accomplish this year I still want to keep it within what I've said above. NDA can't be a thing I do because it's a job and I want to get it to market. It has to be something I'm passionate about creating, that I genuinely feel the world needs to have in it. This isn't work for hire where the motivation behind it is purely professional. Yes, I want to create something that propels me further into the world of writing, game design, and publishing, but not just for business' sake. Like everyone who gets into game design, especially ttrpg design, if I were just in it for the money I'd be in something else. So my goal is to continue building up NDA this year, getting the draft version from its current state to something written down and able to be revised. And once I've got that done, I will delve into that revision process.

It's not going to be easy, and I've got a wealth of other things that need to happen this year, from financial goals to medical necessities to volunteering in my community in an attempt to offset the harm that's incoming. But this is something personal, something deep that means a great deal to me. So I'll keep striving for it.

And to you all I wish you great success in your own endevors this year, be they worldbuilding-related or otherwise. Let's all do our best.