I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions, and I don’t think my contemporaries do either, at least not as often or with as much gusto as our ancestors did. Yes, I joined a gym one early January one year, and if I learned anything from that it’s that no matter how strong a person’s desire is up front, a 365-day stretch is a formidable opponent that can outlast the 21st century mindset.

But as part of my “Scopique Beats this Drum of Half-A-Century” World Tour, I’ve been looking ahead to 2025 not with a “why bother?” attitude, but rather with a “what happens if I do bother?” question. This isn’t me going back on my opening paragraph; I still know myself well enough to understand that intentions are poor fuels if one needs to make it to the church on time, so maybe a promise to at least try is as good as anyone can expect.

Narrowed Focus

I talk a lot about how often I switch projects. I always blame it on too many varied interests, hitting roadblocks, and even the goddamn calendar itself like it was some kind of spell inscribed and slipped into my pocket by Father Time. As this weird staring contest with the upcoming year commences, I gave it some thought and have come to the conclusion that I just never cared enough to focus. I have mentioned in the past how much I enjoy the learning experience and I always thought that one reason I never leave the learning environment was due to that claim. Now I’m wondering if it was always an excuse to not move from learning to doing.

To that end, I now feel the need to focus on fewer projects and to stop spreading myself so thin. I believe that there are two best-chance options among the plethora of interests I’ve accrued. The first is personal application projects, and the second is 3D modeling. I chose my development projects because I realize that, if I were to lose my job, I have no portfolio projects to show for my 30+ years as a professional developer. All of my current career accomplishments have been on intranet apps, and the majority of my personal projects exist in bits and pieces. I have selected my “Adventure Outliner” project as my mainstay application because I like the idea the most out of anything I’ve started, and because I think it’s doable; time-consuming, but doable. I picked 3D modeling, then, because of all of the things I’ve set myself to learn over the years, 3D modeling is the one concern — aside from development — that I have noticed where I have progressed, and that my progression has been significant. Again, it’s been a long, long road to this point and there are miles to go before I will be satisfied with what I know, but I have faith in where my skill set lies right now in this domain; I am not afraid to show my work and while I would never compare myself to professional modelers at this point, I don’t think there’s any reason why I shouldn’t showcase the work I am proud of. This is a task worth continuing because I know there’s little chance I’d get worse and nothing but the certainty that I will continue to get better.

Creative Concentration

This isn’t to say that I’m walling up my other interests in the wine cellar. While my primary focus will be on my development and my modeling projects, I do have ideas in my head for other tasks like VFX, video, and compositing as well as TTRPG projects. These kinds of projects in particular have caused me grief over the past few years because while I want to work on things in these realms, I’ve been finding it very difficult to get in the mindset required to concentrate on “being creative”.

For example, I always have a low-intensity urge to put together some kind of TTRPG adventure, even if I never get around to using it, but I am lacking the ability to come up with interesting stories. When I attempt to think of a situation or a setting, my mind either shoots off in a completely unrelated direction, or I find my own thoughts betraying me by offering derivative plots that probably came from some movie I watched last year or a book read 20 years ago.

A second goal, then, will be to see if I can best this problem. I have absolutely no idea how. I’ve started to distill and compile core info from The Secret World TTRPG into a setting housed at World Anvil and I’m hoping that doing the translation from rulebook to my own notes will plant seeds of ideas as I go. If not, then I’ll have to find some other approach.

Be Kinder

A lot of the time I write posts but never finish them. One reason is because I write the post in my head and by the time I finish that draft I deem it “good enough” and never even start with a written version. Other times I get bored with my topic part way through writing it. I figure that if the author doesn’t care enough to write it, why would anyone want to read it? And most of the time, the voice I deploy is peak 2024: sarcasm that’s just a thin veneer over a modern urge to just burn everything down. I don’t like confrontation, though, so I pull it back just enough to sound grumpy, but not so that I start a flame war in the comments or online where I live.

That’s not how I want to be, though. I used to be able to write (by my own admission, if I do say so myself) amazing posts that focused on positives by way of hope. I liked re-reading my old posts, between 2000 and 2012 or thereabouts. Now I revisit many of the posts I write a year later, two years later, or even six months later and I just shake my head. I’d take some posts down if I had other content to make this site hosting worth paying for. Thankfully I am my own worst enemy and a lot of those posts are lost, which is even better as this gives me the opportunity to work harder to get back to being hopeful. In reality, I think we’re going to need to all get hopeful come 2025 because life isn’t going to get easier for the majority of people worldwide. My posts may not change the course of history, but I would be immensely pleased if my posts made someone happy somewhere.