That's such a great question and one I struggle with a lot. What am I doing with my life? What am I doing with my blog? How can I accomplish what I want? What do I even want?
I'm sure many people struggle with these questions. In fact, I know many people do. In my youth, I was a missionary for the church I was raised in and the message I carried did manage to help some people. It's a message I've since rejected due to a lot of factors and experiences, but that doesn't diminish the fact that it was of help to some individuals.
I've been finding my own way through life for many years. Due to the manner of my upbringing, the journey has been tumultuous. And, that journey is not over for me. I have many more things to learn, many more things to figure out about myself and for myself. But, I've found peace in that journey. Not that all my problems and issues and resolved, but that I have learned and discovered that the journey itself brings peace.
I'm not perfect. I don't know everything. And that's part of what excites me about the journey.
So, what does that have to do with anything and everything? Well, it has to do with everything, I suppose. The stated purpose of this blog when I started it was to talk about writing fiction. That purpose has changed as I've realized that I'm not much of a fiction writer. Oh, I do love writing fiction, but writing long-form fiction is a lot of work and I don't tend to enjoy that. I do love writing vignettes, and world-building. I do love creating characters and their backstories. I do love talking about those characters and stories. And most, I've come to realize that my true love is collaborative storytelling in the form of tabletop RPGs.
That is my first love when it comes to fiction. I love preparing an adventure and presenting it to my players at the table. I love creating interesting non-player characters and having them interact with the player characters. I love driving home after a great session, considering how to react to the actions taken by the players through their characters. This is what I love.
It's more niche than writing fiction. It's for a much smaller audience. And, it will likely never gain me the recognition that I, for some ingrained reason I've yet to discover, crave so badly. But, I've learned that this is who I am. This is what I love and what I have become quite good at. This is what I want to do with my life.
Read, tell, write, create. These four words embody the things I want to do in the TTRPG space.
- Read: I want to read games and game play reports. I want to read other people's thoughts about games and game sessions.
- Tell: I want to tell people about my own games, about the games I've read and what I think about them.
- Write: I want to write game play reports. I want to write reviews of games I've read and played. And, perhaps at some point, I want to write my own games. Well, write more games.
- Create: I want to create NPCs and worlds for games to take place in. I want to create adventures my tables will enjoy playing through. I want to create content that the general TTRPG space will enjoy consuming. Though, I think I may be on my way to overcome the desire to create to receive admiration and recognition. I want to create because creating is fun.
I am a flawed human being and I've stumbled a lot on the path I've walked through my life. But, each stumble has taught me something, even if I was too stubborn or thickheaded to see the lesson until much later. I am a person who thinks about his own life a lot. I like to talk about my own life, about my struggles and the lessons I've learned and the things I want to accomplish. But, up to now, it's been very hard for me to actually sit down and put the work in towards those things I want to accomplish. Not that I've had some sudden epiphany and now all that work will come easily.
Life is hard. But life is worth it. Goals are hard, but working towards them is worth it. These are things I know conceptually, but are difficult to put into practice. Well, this year I want to put them into practice. I feel driven right now. I know this feeling will fade and I'll be left with goals on which I still have to work. That's life. This is my life. No one else is going to do this work for me. If I want something, I have to take the steps towards it.
To accomplish my goals, I'll need to be SMART. This is not a new concept and I didn't create it. Setting goals is something I did a lot of while on my mission all those years ago, and it's a skill I've let fade. It's a skill I'll have to redevelop. For anyone who doesn't know, SMART means "Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound." I'll have to break up each goal into steps that fit those criteria.
I've done a lot of thinking about my purpose in life over recent years. I've come to realize that the thing that drives me (after my family of course), the thing that I adore, is the TTRPG space. I think about games constantly. I think about stories I want to tell. I think about systems I want to try out, or systems I'd like to design. I think about scenes I'd like to run in the various settings I like.
Honestly, it's a curse, but a curse I wouldn't trade for anything. I love wrapping myself in ideas for stories, in the stories told around the table, in rules that codify the world characters inhabit. It makes me happy in a way I never before experienced. And I'm not going to give it up. I'm going to dig myself even deeper into it.
This post rambles a lot, I know. This is how my journal entries go; it's very stream of consciousness. Putting my thoughts on paper (digital or physical) like this is very therapeutic for me. Externalizing the thoughts means I don't have to hold onto them and let them fester into some unhealthy obsession in my head.
I guess what this post is saying, in some round-about way, is that the purpose of this blog is going to change yet again. This blog is going to be about my four words: Read, Tell, Write, Create. I'm excited. I'm ready to put in the work that those four words imply. I'm ready to engage with the purpose I've chosen for my life. I'm ready to have some fun!
And, before I sign off, I need to address the little nagging voice inside me that says TTRPGs are not a valid purpose for my life. I realize that a lot of people will think TTRPGs are meaningless entertainment, that they don't add anything to the world. I vehemently disagree. TTRPGs are art in a very human sense. TTRPGs combine so many different mediums into one. More importantly, TTRPGs have helped me become a better person. Why would something that has been so influential in my life be so unworthy of becoming my main focus?
I have always felt like an artist, but never had the focus and discipline to dedicate myself to one artistic pursuit. I've realized that TTRPGs are my art medium. I am a TTRPG artist.
Wow, that feels powerful. I am a TTRPG artist.
I'll leave it there. Until next time, dear reader.
