Here we go then, another year, another number ticking up and… hoping for a better year this year.

2024 was seven shades of hell all too often, I’ve wrote about it elsewhere and to be frank, I don’t fancy going over it all again. It’s mostly all in here if you fancy finding out and/or fancy helping me out of it more, I’ve been able to cover a lot but there’s still so much more to be done.

Needless to say, I’d like less of whatever that nightmare stuff was and more, well, peace, quiet and comfort. Something I know a great deal of my friends, relatives and peers are hoping for also. Everyone I know seems to be having some shade of a bad time and everyone deserves better.

In more hopeful news, the bits of 2024 that haven’t been dealing with one shitshow or another have been good for me.

I’ve been finding me again. It’s been intermittent but I’m managing to piece myself back together bit by bit and it’s been nice enjoying things again, it’s been nice being able to help folk (even in an admittedly small fashion) get their own stuff out the door and so on. The stuff I’ve done is probably more intimate and personal than most people’s but it’s been a lot of years of a lot happening and it’s really big stuff for me.

Music

I can listen to it properly again! No more “oof, that made me vaguely feel an emotion and now I’m exhausted”, no more avoiding stuff I really like because I’m too sensitive over the noise, the speed, or whatever. I’ve been taking full advantage of this and huffing everything. It’s been so good. And miserable! Man, I’ve missed properly gut wrenchingly miserable noise.

Films

I have watched so many. Very few of them were made any time past 1990. It is bliss. Heavenly! Ever since I was eight years old I’ve had the deepest love for old and maybe rubbish films, the more chance of it having a wobbly rubber monster and a flying saucer in it, the more I’m there for it. Losing this for years at a time was one of the more heartbreaking things for me about the last decade. I am making up for it.

Games

I’m not there yet. I’m still having to avoid a whole lot of videogames because they need attention and effort, energy expenditure that I don’t yet have. So I’ve been playing a lot of ESO, a lot of Fallen London and a whole load of arcade games that don’t ever demand anything of me other than moving and shooting or moving and jumping and aren’t going to erupt into a story or something.

That said, I have still found the time to rummaging through so many games for the IGF and played a handful of small games that suit whatever mood I’m in. I think, partly, I just have little interest at all in what’s going on in the big games space anyway and never really have, in some ways I’m absolutely just leaning into the stuff I love. A work in progress then.

Art

I’m not anywhere close back to where I used to be on this but it’s been a complete pleasure learning to enjoy doodling again. Often exhausted by the “AI is for disabled artists” thing the weird cultists keep harping on about because whilst I know everyone has different needs, for me what I needed was a tablet, a pen and the ability to control how much my hand tremors effect the lines I’m drawing. I can sort the rest.

Basically, I need tech that helps me, not does a shit job of doing things for me. The “doing the actual drawing” part is the good bit, the disingenuous nobs.

Anyway. I like doodling again. It is good.

Putting Stuff Out There

Still messy. I was enjoying doing link gathering and putting together regular posts of games I think are neat. Then I got a round of COVID because have you tried being a parent to school kids and avoiding this stuff? It’s unpossible. That put a stop to that, and to be honest, a lot more too. I have even less energy now than I’ve ever had. Anything approximating work, even if I really enjoy it, is just a no no for a while longer.

I did however manage to do some contributions to a couple of games for other people and I’ve missed being able to do that so much. I grumble a lot about the state of videogames culture and it’s for the exact same reason I love helping or encouraging getting a videogame out there, it’s fucking wonderful when people can just put their head down and make something they want to make and if a nudge helps that, I’m all for it.

2025

I don’t really have any concrete plans for 2025. The next month or so is going to be taken up doing house things, I’m not as spritely as I once was and I keel over really easily so it’s going to take me longer than I’d ideally want, just gotta go where my body permits on all this.

Beyond that, more of all the above – more films, more doodles, more noise pumped into my face and hopefully, inbetween all this, finding the time and energy to help a few more folks get their stuff out there. I’d like to get back 100% into making my own games again for me and to my exacting and fiddly tastes and I’d definitely like to help others again where I can but I can’t put in energy I don’t have, health I don’t have these days. Just gotta wing it on what I’m able to do at the time.

As long as I’ve got rubber monsters, cool robots and flying saucers, it all could be worse.

I could still do with a bit of help getting through tho. I’ve a gofundme here and an Amazon wishlist here if anyone fancies chucking in for me and the kids. It’s already made such an enormous difference and we’re all so incredibly grateful. Having a bunch of appliances that work! Brilliant!

Regardless, my hopes for 2025 are the same as my hopes every day. I can get some chill and have enough overhead to do some things I want to and everyone, not just me, has a little more comfort and peace in their lives, folk who just want to be left alone to get on with their lives in peace can do so and everyone who isn’t a bell end finds their chill.

2025 isn’t going to give that one up easily so… let’s do what we can, where we can.