2022 Plans

Hello, 2022!

In my last post, I talked about what happened in 2021, and now it's time to think about what I'll do in 2022. Some of this will be addressing concerns from the last post, so I'd recommend you read that one first since this is kind of a two-parter.

2021 ended up being a year of game dev and improved mental health through having more of a social life and living in a safe environment. 

Before I get into the details, check out my updated improvement image:

So let me start by talking about goals over the years and what I plan to do.

Looking back at 2020 even, my goals were really to stop worrying about posting every day and focusing more on making art for myself, which is really great. I think in 2021 I took that to its own level which was when I stopped drawing every day (or even once a week in some cases), which was when it really became more of an issue.

I know there are artists out there that warn against the whole draw everyday goal, but for me, I really need to get back into drawing more. One of my big goals this year is to "draw every day". That doesn't mean posting every day. That just means doodle anything I can every day, even if that just means a 10-second doodle in my sketchbook. I just really need to get back into this habit.

Last year I was also a bit unfocused overall. I had a lot of ideas for projects, but because it was so freeform, I realized I didn't hold myself accountable as much because there was no real main goal. So this year I want to bring that focus in more.

My goals this year are to mainly work on Compass Nays (my RPG Maker game), and The Nays (ultimately in the form of Twines). I'm not going to set a specific amount to get done, I just want to focus on those projects primarily this year.

This year is the 20th anniversary of The Nays, so I really want to make a lot of progress on two of my biggest projects currently that are related to it, so that more people can experience the story from the beginning!

So to make this a bit more focused, I'll give myself some minimum requirements. For Compass Nays, I want to at least finish the prologue so it's playable from beginning to end. The art/menus/some mechanics can still be rough, but I want to at least have that much fully thought out and complete. I was hoping to have that done last year, but I think for this year that'll be doable as a minimum goal for this project.

And then for The Nays, my goal is to finish at least one more Twine. I realize if I finish only one a year, it'll take me at least 137 more years because that's how many more Eventures there are that I haven't made Twines for yet though. Obviously, some are shorter and some I've drawn storyboards for already, but putting that into perspective really inspires me to want to make those more frequently so I can actually finish this entire project in my lifetime. The first step to this will be organizing everything that's written so far into documents and also everything that's been drawn so that I know which areas need more drawings before converting them into Twine stories.

I've been talking with my brother and I'm hoping we can schedule at least 1 day where we dedicate to The Nays per month. This could be writing an Eventure, doing a Nay activity, creating projects about our characters together, or really anything related to The Nays just so I can stay motivated and continue working on this project, even while we're not still living together. A big pain point of last year was that I didn't feel as motivated to work on it, but after meeting up for Christmas, it helped bring that motivation back, so I want to make it more of a regularly scheduled time where we can continue to work on things together.

I realize that there are other projects that will come up that I get inspired to work on as well, so I don't want to push those away when I'm inspired, but I want these minimum requirements to really hold me accountable for those at the very least.

Other projects that I might work on throughout the year include more video editing projects like sketchbook tours, organizing Notion pages like The Nays Wiki, our OC trading card game, gifts for family and friends, and then anything else that I think of along the way.

I also do want to fit in other areas like keeping up my social life, playing more video games in my backlog, exercising with VR, etc. So I'm thinking that maybe I can put something together in Notion to help with this. Right now I have a "dailies" template task that I'll put for each day to check things off and see how well I'm balancing everything, and then I can figure things out from there.

Towards the end of last year, I was starting to get a schedule down that helped though, so I do think continuing that would be good. Basically every day after work and dinner, I would play VR for ~30 minutes, then draw/work on projects for a few hours. I would make a list for each day of smaller tasks to check off of the bigger project and once I finished those tasks, I would reward myself with about an hour or so to play a video game at the end of the night. This was really effective in December, so it's something I want to keep up so I can stick to this schedule. And then on my days off, I'm able to dedicate a lot more time to working on my projects and feeling motivated. So far it's worked the past month, so I hope this motivation continues into the new year!

So overall I'm trying to get more structure back into my life so I can stay motivated and inspired to work on things that I love!

I know these are always my longest posts of the year, but thanks for sticking with me and reading through this! I'm looking forward to a productive year to celebrate The Nays' 20th anniversary!