2002: It Was A Year
Jan. 1st, 2003 03:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aWith 2002 now a few hours over, it seems apt to take a few moments to look book at the year that was.
It was a hard year. A busy year and a frustrating year. Kimberly spent much of the year fighting with her depression and anxiety. Skotos spent much of the year fighting with not enough income and too much expense. And I spent much of the year fighting with too much to do and not enough sleep.
But, despite that, it was a year of progress. Kimberly's really been working hard with a fair degree of success. Skotos is getting its income and expenses slightly more in line. (And, I guess I'm up at 3am because my brain's still going too much from closing up 2002's finances. Ah well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.)
Over in her entry about the new year, Kimberly calls it a mixed bag, as most years are, and I'd agree with that assessment.
And, 2002 was very definitely a much better year than 2001 which goes into my personal annals as worst year ever. It was much, much better.
The Seasons of The Year
Winter was a time of renewal for me. After the crazy, terrible times of 2001 I finally got to get my bearings again and start looking at moving forward with life.
Kimberly and I had a rededication ceremony and offered each other new vows.
And, I resurrected my interest in writing.
I put together 20,000-25,000 words of text on monsters from the Lovecraftian mythos. Some were edits of older material that I'd been creating since 1996 or so, while some were totally new. When I got all done, I put together a nice package for Chaosium that I hope will see print as a cohesive whole at some point.
I also outlined and began work on a whole set of books on elves that I'd been wanting to develop for some time for Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha. Once I outlined the 4(!) books and talked them through with Greg, I started work on the first in the series. My hope had been to finish by summer, but alas I got derailed ...
Looking back at my writing notebook, I'm amazed to see that I wrote a comic book script for Castle Marrach, Skotos' premier world, back in January too. Unfortunately I couldn't find anyone interested in putting it out at the time.
Spring was a time of work and busy-ness. It was the time that I rediscovered my interest in programming, which had previously been totally destroyed by my CS studies at UC Berkeley.
I spent the early part of it walled up at home, adapting Galactic Emperor: Hegemony (in Perl CGI) for the Skotos community, and thus really spreading my programming wings once more.
When I was done with the initial release in mid-March I realized that I was really enjoying myself, and so spent months afterward programming GE:H code whenever I had free time (and playing a number of GE:H games in the process, just so I could how my changes were affecting things). With all my free time spent programming, writing alas fell by the wayside.
Summer was when I burnt out on work, mostly in August when I attended both GenCon and WorldCon, a total of almost 10 days away from home, all spent in heavy socialization mode. Just before going to GenCon I'd finished 90% of the work on a major new diplomacy system for GE:H. It didn't get released until October, because I just couldn't find the oomph to get that final 10% done. (In the end, I released as is, to pretty good acclaim.)
Fall, finally, was a time of change and recuperation. I watched lots of TV, including Oz, Stargate SG-1, and the disappointing Farscape and played lots of zangband and T.O.M.E., all with the purpose of recharging those synapses.
In October my best friend got married. I had the privilege of being best man and got teary quite a lot.
In December we closed down the old Skotos office, which took an exhausting amount of time, but is finally done.
Also, on the topic of change, I did reinitiate some programming work, but this time it was PHP and even some web design, over at RPGnet. I'm still enthusiastic about doing some more changes there.
I don't entirely know what 2003 will bring. I expect it to be somewhat hard once more, but again less so than the year before.
I'm feeling revitalized at Skotos, though whether that's due to the new office or just the week or so that I've taken off, I'm not sure.
Home life is very good between Kimberly and me. She's still working through bunches of stuff, but she seems to learn more stuff about herself every day, which is great.
We'll just have to wait another year to see what 2003 looked like, I suppose ...
It was a hard year. A busy year and a frustrating year. Kimberly spent much of the year fighting with her depression and anxiety. Skotos spent much of the year fighting with not enough income and too much expense. And I spent much of the year fighting with too much to do and not enough sleep.
But, despite that, it was a year of progress. Kimberly's really been working hard with a fair degree of success. Skotos is getting its income and expenses slightly more in line. (And, I guess I'm up at 3am because my brain's still going too much from closing up 2002's finances. Ah well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.)
Over in her entry about the new year, Kimberly calls it a mixed bag, as most years are, and I'd agree with that assessment.
And, 2002 was very definitely a much better year than 2001 which goes into my personal annals as worst year ever. It was much, much better.
The Seasons of The Year
Winter was a time of renewal for me. After the crazy, terrible times of 2001 I finally got to get my bearings again and start looking at moving forward with life.
Kimberly and I had a rededication ceremony and offered each other new vows.
And, I resurrected my interest in writing.
I put together 20,000-25,000 words of text on monsters from the Lovecraftian mythos. Some were edits of older material that I'd been creating since 1996 or so, while some were totally new. When I got all done, I put together a nice package for Chaosium that I hope will see print as a cohesive whole at some point.
I also outlined and began work on a whole set of books on elves that I'd been wanting to develop for some time for Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha. Once I outlined the 4(!) books and talked them through with Greg, I started work on the first in the series. My hope had been to finish by summer, but alas I got derailed ...
Looking back at my writing notebook, I'm amazed to see that I wrote a comic book script for Castle Marrach, Skotos' premier world, back in January too. Unfortunately I couldn't find anyone interested in putting it out at the time.
Spring was a time of work and busy-ness. It was the time that I rediscovered my interest in programming, which had previously been totally destroyed by my CS studies at UC Berkeley.
I spent the early part of it walled up at home, adapting Galactic Emperor: Hegemony (in Perl CGI) for the Skotos community, and thus really spreading my programming wings once more.
When I was done with the initial release in mid-March I realized that I was really enjoying myself, and so spent months afterward programming GE:H code whenever I had free time (and playing a number of GE:H games in the process, just so I could how my changes were affecting things). With all my free time spent programming, writing alas fell by the wayside.
Summer was when I burnt out on work, mostly in August when I attended both GenCon and WorldCon, a total of almost 10 days away from home, all spent in heavy socialization mode. Just before going to GenCon I'd finished 90% of the work on a major new diplomacy system for GE:H. It didn't get released until October, because I just couldn't find the oomph to get that final 10% done. (In the end, I released as is, to pretty good acclaim.)
Fall, finally, was a time of change and recuperation. I watched lots of TV, including Oz, Stargate SG-1, and the disappointing Farscape and played lots of zangband and T.O.M.E., all with the purpose of recharging those synapses.
In October my best friend got married. I had the privilege of being best man and got teary quite a lot.
In December we closed down the old Skotos office, which took an exhausting amount of time, but is finally done.
Also, on the topic of change, I did reinitiate some programming work, but this time it was PHP and even some web design, over at RPGnet. I'm still enthusiastic about doing some more changes there.
I don't entirely know what 2003 will bring. I expect it to be somewhat hard once more, but again less so than the year before.
I'm feeling revitalized at Skotos, though whether that's due to the new office or just the week or so that I've taken off, I'm not sure.
Home life is very good between Kimberly and me. She's still working through bunches of stuff, but she seems to learn more stuff about herself every day, which is great.
We'll just have to wait another year to see what 2003 looked like, I suppose ...