Starting in November I made the highly advisable choice of deleting Instagram and Twitter off my phone, and have since found I've had much more mental broadband for doing things that are cool and I care about. In interest of those not slipping away into occasional and erratic expressions of frenzied passion, which I find unsustainable and often deflating, I thought I'd start a little column thing where I can talk about and reflect on them. Furthermore, as the end of my Masters looms, and living a life no longer structured (thinly as it was) by the imperatives of studying and writing, I want to make sure I'm still doing things that are meaningful and creative, rather than just sliding into anhedonia.

Painting Minis
In a life that has been thoroughly defined by being a nerd with niche interests, this maybe takes the cake as the most nerdy and niche interests, deciding to get really into painting Warhammer miniatures has proven to be as sickly satisfying as I feared it would be. I'm mostly joking here, I really enjoy the patience, care and craft that goes into making these little guys, and it feels like I'm doing something cool, and I want to keep working on this and getting actually good at it. Right now I'm working on some flying Space Marines and having a lot of fun trying out blending and layering, and trying to develop a depth of colour on the model, and the thought of getting better and painting cooler minis is very exciting.
Writing
I have been woefully lax in this area, letting my more formal writing slide for a variety of reasons that aren't that good. This column itself is a small attempt to improve that, and I have some ideas for what I want to do next. I definitely want to write up a little Album of the Year list soon, there are a few different ideas I've had rolling around for a while that I want to put in motion, to actually make something of. I just need to get off my ass and write, the notion that there is some ideal situation or pretext for it is bullshit, just write. I have an idea about open-mindedness and Warhammer 40,000 that I want to make happen, and just writing that out is so embarassing that I now feel compelled to write it just to defend myself.
Some TTRPG thing
This is connected to writing, but I have always really enjoyed coming up with settings and stories in my head, but had always sort of accepted that they wouldn't be fulfilled or realized in any way, they would just be interesting ideas sitting in some document somewhere. And then recently I saw Mataea do an incredible job DMing a one-shot campaign (which naturally took about 2-3 months to complete), and I've seen other friends running TTRPG campaigns and realized "oh I could actually realize these stories in a compelling and fun way", and have been very interested in the idea of DMing my own campaign with a lot of backstory and shit. In particular I love reading RPG rulebooks and looking at their art, I've linked my Google Drive where I keep all my rulebook PDF's here. I especially love CAIN, Settlers of a Dead God, and want to cook up my own campaign using Morkborg as a ruleset. I want this to happen so I'm making it one of my projects for this month.

If you guys have your own projects you're plugging away at, or have any thoughts on my projects, please discuss, I would love to hear about them and steal your ideas. Cheers!