Skip to main content

What Are We Doing Here?

Hey, what’s up, it’s Mechanic M-

It’s TTRPG T -

Fuck it, it’s Whatever I Want Wednesday.  Even if I am starting to draft this on Tuesday.

My thoughts today are all about what’s in the subject line.  I’m at a peculiar place in my artistic/craft space, maybe I have been for a long while, but it’s crystallizing for me lately as a confluence of a number of factors: chief among them, the pretty damn dire state of my theatre company, and the Chicago storefront theatre scene it belongs to.  Weirdly, this low point in my chief artistic practice coincides with unexpected success at my dayjob, and some recent wins on the writing side: I’ll be performing a piece for a sold-out storytelling podcast recording next week, and I’m getting some paid writing work for a supplement of a TTRPG I admire - my second time being able to say that.

But beyond individual bright spots, I’m trying to look at the big picture: What’s all this for? What am I working towards? Have I been honest with myself and others about the answers to those questions? Because I think that although I’ve said my writing (both plays and games) has been a hobby-level pursuit, a lot of my plans - particularly the ones I’ve had a hard time following through on - have been built around higher ambitions, and entail a kind of self-driving work that would have others dependent on me; and that kind of work has been burning me right the fuck out over the last five years.

I've been saying that I don't want to commit the energy and hustle to building relationships with publishers and trying to get my work sold - but the way I think about my work still focuses on publication, just with, I guess, me doing it all myself?

Part of what I’m realizing is that while my commitment to theatre taught me a lot about how I wanted to approach my other creative pursuits, and I tempered my expectations for them to a degree, I still have all of these ideas programmed into me of what constitutes a failure and what is worthwhile and all this self-exploiting toxic grindy stuff.

What am I talking about, in tangible, relatable terms? I’m starting to resent other people’s successes.  Even those of creatives I admire.  Everything feels like an affront, or a reminder of my own inability to cross the the finish line, or frankly a sign of how old I’ve gotten.

This could be a big realization shift for me… or, as I also know about myself, it could be just the combined weight of this particular moment, where I have accumulated months of SAD, along with accumulated years of theatre admin failures.  Maybe this is a funk I can regenerate and bounce back from, maybe this will change how I view creating.  For the time being though, I want to think - smaller.  More manageable milestones.  Less thinking about the final product.  Less worry about who my creations are for.  And just taking work on projects other people head up - that feels sustainable, that I can do.

Not a very cheery or inspiring post, I know, but honestly much more coherent and less maudlin than I expected.  Just wanted to get these thoughts organized and out from ping-ponging in my brain.  Til next time!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TTRPG Tuesday: Three Means Of Resolving

Hi it’s another TTRPG Tuesday! First of the year.  Let’s get right into it. Saw a challenge on Twitter to make some resolution mechanics.  I can do those! Here we go: Hand to Hand The player performing the action and the person running the game or otherwise opposing the action both put their dominant fists toward one another, bounce them three times to get a rhythm, and reveal a number with their fingers, 0-5.  Sum the two numbers, and if the number is greater than 5, subtract six, so that the final number is always between 0 and 5.  On a 0, the action fails catastrophically, on a 1-2 it fails, 3-4 it succeeds, on a 5 it succeeds spectacularly.  The player taking the action starts the game with all five fingers up on their non-dominant hand; after an attempt, they may lower fingers on that hand to add to the sum of the attempt. Ex. Alice attempts to seduce Cat’s character over to the coup conspirators.  They put their dominant hands together (right for ...
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: Minimum Viable Product for WWDW?

Hello and welcome back to TTRPG Tuesday! I’ve put together a barebones introductory document for We Won, Didn’t We? and, well, I think it speaks for itself.  Check it out HERE ! This introduces the skeleton of the game, as well as walking through the steps; I’d say next up is a rudimentary character sheet, and maybe I can bring this to a Playtest Zero session and see what folks think of character creation within one of the starting Bulbs.  I’ve opened the doc up for comments, so if you have thoughts dear reader, fire away.  Brain fried, go read the doc, til next time!
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: Beliefs as Roles

  Hello from high above the Rockies, as I make my way back to Chicago from Big Bad Con 2023.     This was my first con in five years, and only my second ever.     I had a better time at it than I did at GenCon, which I understand derives largely from this being an industry con vs a consumer show.     I made a modest number of purchases but it was easy to stick to the constraints of my limited luggage space, which was fine; shopping and new releases were not the attraction here.     Gaming, panels, and (as I soon learned) networking were. This con was certainly less overwhelming and I think my expectations were clearer and my FOMO much lighter, but I’ll readily admit that I had a lot to learn.    I misunderstood or made mistakes regarding almost every event I signed up for, including happy accidents like sitting in on the wrong panel only to learn a ton, or expecting a mending workshop to be about fixing one’s writing when the app...
Post a Comment
Read more