New Sunrise

It’s easy to see how well I got this project off of the ground in 2017. I don’t think I even visited the site much after the first few months I purchased it. It’s easy to dream big and then lose focus on said dream or idea. I think everyone knows how that is. A lot of things were happening in my life in 2017. Primarily I was in the midst of adventuring as a party of one for the first time in five years and that did a lot for my creative energy. I spent quite a bit of that energy writing daily, but therapeutically. There wasn’t anything, but mind clearing stream of consciousness in those daily pages. One day I’ll look back at them. I’m sure there’s some type of inspiration or some ideas to be mined from them. I had all kinds of ideas for this blog then, but nothing was clearly defined in my brain. The thing I struggled with most was writing things that would upset or bother one person or another. It’s easy to get that way when you’re meeting new people that you know will probably view this at some point.

I can’t say that I’ve discovered a specific direction still, but I want a place to exercise my writing muscles. They’ve atrophied in their disuse. I’m working on an overhaul of my personal and work habits that should make it easier for me to allot time to my creative pursuits. I’ve been consuming in the time that I should also be creating and I need to change that. There’s time to consume literature, video games, and films, but that needs to be balanced with creation. Going without creating leaves me feeling similar to how a person starts to feel after they’ve been sitting around for months with no exercise. That’s something else I’ve been struggling with lately. I’m getting my butt outside more now that spring is almost here. Simply lifting weights two days a week doesn’t completely do it for me. I need cardio. Just ask my jeans. The desire to write and create has finally hit that point where it’s weighing me down. I have to start bailing the words out before my brain capsizes. I’ll get myself on a schedule eventually, but I’m happy for this first step. This is my year to get my writing legs back. I said it two years ago, but that was from the heart and fueled only by its passion and desire. I feel that again, but I feel it both in my heart again and on a primal level .

The final push came this past weekend. I went to a live recording of a podcast that I love to listen to. Recently, two of the guys were able to quit their day jobs to focus on their podcast network that has become profitable enough to allow them to take a salary from it. After the show I got to meet the guys and while chatting with them they expressed how unexpected and awesome it was to have this success. They couldn’t be happier to create something they love. This is a pen and paper role playing live play podcast. There’s a lot of work involved, but it boils down to a bunch of guys playing a game of storytelling and dice rolling and recording it for the masses to listen to. Besides being a bunch of friends having fun and laughing a lot, the thing that I think helps their popularity is how creative they are with the medium. They all create characters that are well thought out and rich; they all work together to tell interesting stories within these worlds; and they play those characters in interesting ways. Meeting these guys broke me out of some kind of trance I’ve been in. I think I’d kind of set my creative self under a shelf to collect dust with all the other old toys. I had the realization that these guys aren’t very different from me besides having some entertainment background and being ten or so years my senior. They’re just having fun being creative and creating a community around their creations. Something about all of that awoke this dusty, dingy old creativity in me. I’m looking forward to what I can do with this. I hope I can finally push myself to have good habits. Even if I do nothing but create stuff for myself. I’ll at least have this blog where I yell at clouds and talk about doing my best to avoid getting eaten by bears.