Tag: Writing

…and hello 2026!

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Happy New Year! Geth and I are at home in Newcastle again for New Year, looking forward to a quiet start to 2026.

This year’s New Year Resolutions:

  • As ever: sort the house out. Get rid of the rest of the stuff that needs getting rid of, paint the walls that need painting, find a proper place for everything kept.
  • Do more writing (prose fiction, text adventure games, and this blog). More importantly, get it out into the world.
  • Overhaul the training plan, make improving in the half marathon the focus for the year, and DO NOT run any marathons in 2026.
  • Keep prioritising videogaming, and play more games that aren’t Disney Dreamlight Valley. I love it but I spent far too much time on it in 2025.
  • Don’t go on any out-of-town trips in 2026 that weren’t considered by the end of 2025 (barring weddings and the like).
  • Make more serious efforts towards the long-talked-about midlife career change.

And today’s the day: happy eighth birthday to my blog!

Goodbye 2025…

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Time for the annual wrap-up post. In many ways, I feel a bit blah about this year, though it has still been an important one in the process.

Business is still the same as last year: i.e. there’s not enough of it. I’m really hoping to have the time to do more branching out and make more changes in 2026.

Like last year, I only released two short games, and one of them was a deliberately bad one for the Bad IF Jam. I would love to be able to make more time for game-making and creative pursuits in general, but it just can’t be a priority at the moment.

I’ve been consistent with my running but I’ve not improved this year – I didn’t get any PBs at all in 2025, which is disappointing. I do still feel I have them in me but I think my training needs an overhaul. I’ve done a lot of thinking about that and I know what I’m going to change next year.

I did a bit better with the parkrun goals! I earned my 250 shirt in March and visited another 12 new-to-me venues, achieving my 50th different venue at Ekebergsletta in November.

Music: I listened to a lot of classic pop and film/game soundtracks! I also went to see the Duran Duran Hallowe’en gig (very exciting, review to come soon) and the Boomtown Rats in November (ditto)!

Videogaming: I have done a lot of gaming this year, largely because I have played an obscene amount of Disney Dreamlight Valley (in total: 724 hours and 27 minutes, which is over 30 DAYS of gaming time – meaning I spent an entire TWELFTH of my life in 2025 playing this game). As such, you wouldn’t think I had much time for any other games, and largely you’d be right. However, in addition:

  • I have finished Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology, Etrian Odyssey HD, Disney Villains Cursed Café, Layton Brothers Mystery Room, and Parascientific Escape 3: Crossing at the Farthest Horizon.
  • I have continued my years-long journey playing Block-A-Pix Colour and Luigi’s Mansion.
  • I have started Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice, Layton’s Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires’ Conspiracy, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Sea of Stars, and Zombies Run! (all to continue next year).
  • I played a few text adventures from the IF community, but not as many as I would like.
  • Finally, I have continued to play Wordle, Monopoly Go, and Water Sort Puzzle daily on my phone!

My successes and failures regarding last year’s New Year Resolutions:

  • Finally finish my de-hoarding in the house and get started on the decorating. I CAN do this. De-hoarding I didn’t have much time for this year (the house is manageable, so I tend to forget about it, but there is still quite a lot to get rid of). Decorating… well, I did at least get some painting done! (It was just anti-mould paint, but still something I’d been putting off for a long time!)
  • Put some work into getting my creative energy back (largely by taking some downtime from my race training every now and again, which didn’t happen last year). I did take occasional training downtime, and the creative spark has returned at times, but I’ve not been able to make time to be productive with this.
  • Run PBs in all four main running distances – they don’t have to be big PBs seeing as I’ve already improved so much over the last two years, but I do want to keep improving! Complete fail. No PBs this year.
  • Make time for videogaming like it’s part of my job. It’s really important for my mental health. I did make a lot more time for it this year and I do feel happier as a result.
  • Live a slightly quieter life again – fewer trips, fewer races etc. I thrive on daily/weekly routine and get distressed if things disrupt it. Special occasions are lovely but they need to be rare or I start to resent them rather than appreciating them. No more than two events/trips per month. This is really difficult to do as Geth and I both get so excited about the idea of doing things that need to be booked many months in advance. What I have realised in 2025 is that some times of year are better than others for being a little busier.
  • Don’t go back to regular scrolling of social media. I am so much happier since I took a permanent break from it. I’m nowhere near as bad as I used to be but it has crept in now and again. I really wish it weren’t the default way of keeping up with people.

2026 resolutions coming up tomorrow!

Streaks, making things whole and letting things go

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In recent years – and certainly since I got sober at the start of 2019 – I’ve been in the habit of daily streaks. I started a 4thewords (writing RPG) streak in December 2018, a daily run streak in January 2020 and a Duolingo streak in June 2022. Longest of all, though, has been my daily streak on this blog. I’ve published at least one blog post every day since I started the blog on 1st January 2018.

Streaks are a really good motivational tool for keeping up a habit, and are usually rewarded on systems such as 4thewords and Duolingo (both of which do have mechanisms for repairing a streak if you forget or need a break). Part of the reason I’m attracted to them is because I’ve started so many hobbies and projects over the years that have just petered out because I don’t prioritise them. If you have a streak going with something, you have to prioritise it, even if it’s just for a few minutes a day.

Recently, though, I’ve had so many of these things ongoing that they’ve started to become a bit overwhelming and I’ve felt like they’ve been taking up a significant chunk of my time. However, I’ve been really loath to let any of them go, and I’ve recognised in the last couple of months that this is connected to my hoarding and addiction issues. I’ve made really good progress with the hoarding this year, and so I’ve been trying to apply that experience to help me let go of a few of my streaks.

I gave up the 4thewords streak a few weeks ago. It was getting to the point where I was so obsessed with logging every word I wrote that it was sometimes taking an hour or more, and since I stopped doing it I’ve realised how subconsciously entangled it was with my day (because I couldn’t write anything at all without noting it down to add to my 4tw files later on). I’ve also largely moved away from the reason I started doing it – my prose fiction writing – as most of my creative efforts go into my text adventure games now. As such, I’ve not missed it at all and my life has become a little bit easier.

I’m going to keep going with my run streak (which is huge for my mental health) and my Duolingo streak, which can take less than ten minutes on days when I’m busy. But I need to avoid adding any more daily habits to the to-do list, as they mount up so easily.

One thing I have been finding positive is the Codecademy weekly streak. You only have to do a short lesson once a week to keep the streak going, and that feels so much more manageable and less stressful (and also keeps it fun, which is important). I also don’t feel upset when I break my weekly streak by having a few weeks away from it, as it doesn’t feel addictive in the way that daily streaks do.

All of this means that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my blog going forward. Keeping the daily streak has meant that most of my posts are short filler entries, especially recently, and it takes me a long time to compose them as there’s often nothing I can think of to say.

As such, a few weeks ago, I decided that from the start of 2023, I would only blog when I needed and wanted to blog. I will keep going with my parkrunday and Phone Box Thursday posts, as I enjoy those, but all other posts will be spontaneous rather than an obligation. I think I will enjoy blogging much more as a result. I thought the start of 2023 would be a good time to make this change, as I was spending 2022 working towards the ‘blog every day in a calendar year’ badge over on FetchEveryone by syndicating all my blog posts from here, and so I wanted to get that finished first…

…and then this last Thursday, I forgot to syndicate my phone box post to Fetch (I ticked it off my to-do list by mistake as I was so tired) and just like that, blew all the daily progress I’d made towards the badge over the last nearly eleven months. Sigh.

So there’s no reason not to give up my blog streak now. I feel a bit uncomfortable not ‘making the streak whole’ by rounding it out to five years, but that’s an issue in itself, and I think it would be braver and better to let it go now. So tomorrow, I won’t blog. Which is absolutely terrifying, but it will make my life happier from this point on. Of that I am certain.

(There are a few more bits and pieces of streaks here and there that I could also do with letting go, largely involving daily visits to various web forums and things like that. I’ll try and work on those next year.)

A sort-of-new process

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I’m doing a serious revamp / redraft of a game project at the moment. I did the first draft in March and intended to release it as part of the Spring Thing competition at the end of the month, but following feedback from testers decided to make a lot of changes and submit it to ParserComp at the end of June instead. It was clear what needed to be changed and planning this out was very easy, but it’s a fairly big editing job, which is something I’ve never done for a game before (only for novels). It’s been a really interesting process so far, partly because I’m simplifying a lot of things, whereas usually I’m making them more complicated. I should have done the bulk of the editing work by the time of the Edinburgh Marathon, and I’m looking forward to having any spare time I can grab in June (which is a bit busier than most months this year) for polishing.

The taper moves on, and running is still short and painless – though I am looking forward to doing a final six-miler on Thursday to test out the pacing strategy one last time.

Finishing a story

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I wrote the ending of the story for my current game project today. There might be some more bits to add in over the next week, but for all intents and purposes the writing is done. Looking forward to changing focus and working on some simple illustrations and a bit of experimental music.

Then I can start testing it. That’s when all the real issues will start showing up!

Pipes etc.

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We had a plumber come to visit this morning to fix a leak (a task we’d been procrastinating for a few weeks). We now have a new tap and new bits of pipe under the sink, and more importantly, a greatly reduced risk of flooding the house. I’m looking forward to not having to mop the floor multiple times per day.

Other than that it’s been a fairly quiet day of writing. More tomorrow.

Day of emails and writing

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In this morning’s email: email from the London Marathon to tell me I was unsuccessful in the ballot for 2022. Not disappointed about not getting into the race (I don’t really want to do an autumn marathon again for a while as it doesn’t fit into my preferred race season structure – I would have deferred to 2023 if I had got in) but slightly disappointed that they don’t seem to be doing a rejection magazine anymore!

In this afternoon’s email: approximately 30 emails from other autumn marathons saying ‘Didn’t get into London? Come and run OUR marathon instead!’.

Also in this afternoon’s email: my official certificate for graduating from TechUP. Very happy!

I’ve been working on the writing for my current game project today, which is going to take up the bulk of my free time this week. It’s such an enjoyable thing to be doing while I’ve got a bit more spare time, and I hope to be able to do a lot more of it this year.

It’s all on the list… somewhere

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At times like this when I have a lot to do, I’m really glad of my fairly obsessively organised daily to-do list. I do have a good memory but it can be quite stressful to hold everything in my brain at once, and I feel much better when it’s all written down.

There are probably hundreds of non-urgent items on the ‘future’ part of the list at the moment. I tend to develop huge backlogs of such things (too many project ideas, not enough time). It’ll be nice to be able to pick and choose again when I’m no longer super busy.

Adventures in Coding: Knowing When It’s Time To Stop Tweaking

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That is probably a slightly misleading headline. It’s never really time to stop tweaking in my world! If I didn’t have deadlines imposed by jam deadlines and the like, I would probably just keep making tweaks forever and never release anything as a result. This is also true for non-code-y writing, which is why I’ve always found it so difficult to bite the bullet and send out my novel pitches to agents. It always feels like things could be a tiny bit better with just one more pass.

However, even when no deadline is involved, I can still sort of tell when it’s time to stop, even if I’m slightly in denial about it. When I do yet another playtest and there’s just one or two tiny things, and I’m dithering on whether I should even change them, and I go back and forth on those tiny things for a few runthroughs without spotting anything else I want to change… at that point, I really do need to stop faffing and get the project out into the world.

This post is a result of prepping my post-comp update for The River of Blood this week. The EctoComp judging period comes to an end on Friday, and after that I’ll be free to update my game (you’re not allowed to do so for Petite Mort games while the competition is still on). Originally I was just going to fix the one bug somebody had pointed out, but then I started messing about with something else due to somebody else’s feedback, and then while testing that I found another bug, and it took me ages to pin it down… I’m done now, though, and I’m sitting on my hands with that for the rest of the week (unless anybody flags up anything else, which is unlikely at this late stage of the competition). I’m looking forward to posting that update.

It’s time to get back to playing other people’s games, which was the main aim of this week!

Morris on Borogove
In other game update news today, my most recent game, Morris, is now playable online on Borogove.

No room at the inn

Dee Leave a comment

My week has been very busy, in the way that a lot of my weeks have been very busy during lockdown. Lots of day job work, lots of working on my own creative projects (writing and coding), a bit of running but not as much as is ideal due to a bad hip, quite a lot of strength training to try and fix said hip, and a lot of playtesting and competition-judging other people’s text adventures (the most fun part of my day and a good way to give back to a community that is giving me so much joy at the moment).

I’ve been working really hard recently and it’s been paying off. There have been a few developments in my editing business that I’ll talk about later in the year, I’m starting to get bits and bobs of writing published, and my text adventures are doing well and getting a good reception. I hit RED day 500 this morning – my 500th day running in a row – which is enabling me to feel like I’m still achieving things with my running even though I’m having a bad time of it with my hip and a general lack of energy at the moment.

All of this has been made possible by the pandemic allowing me to sit on my sofa all day long and get things done. I am one of the people for whom lockdown has, on the whole, been beneficial – of course I’ve had my anxious moments like everyone else, as I really don’t deal well with uncertainty, but in general I have been really, really happy having an excuse to stay home. I’ve realised more than ever that I don’t actually like leaving my house, and that it’s okay not to like leaving your house. The real anxiety I have now is adapting to the world going back to normal again. I’ve said for probably a year now that I won’t just be able to jump back into my life as it was pre-pandemic; there were a lot of things I used to do that, I have realised, caused a lot of unnecessary stress. Constantly going out to group activities and classes, gigs and races every week, travelling every other weekend… I can’t go back to all that. My personal return to normality is going to have to be very gradual, and there are a lot of things I probably never will do again.

Learning to say ‘no’, to myself as much as to anyone else, is probably going to be my biggest challenge this year. I’ve found out how important it is to feel in control of my own time. It’s a precious thing, and I’m not going to give it up.

Lego USB stick
Life is starting to fit into place, gradually.

This week’s earworm playlists:

Saturday

Michael Land and Clint Bajakian – ‘Opening Credits Part #1’
Whitesnake – ‘Here I Go Again ’87’*

Sunday

Patti Smith – ‘Because The Night’
Dee Cooke – ‘Control Room’

Monday

Dee Cooke – ‘Outside Building’
Fisherman’s Friends – ‘Sailor Ain’t A Sailor’

Tuesday

Whitesnake – ‘Here I Go Again ’87’

Wednesday

Fisherman’s Friends – ‘Haul Away Joe’

Thursday

Pet Shop Boys – ‘Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots Of Money)’
Duran Duran – ‘Tel Aviv’

Friday

Michael Land and Clint Bajakian – ‘Crete’
Duran Duran – ‘Save A Prayer’
Talking Heads – ‘Once In A Lifetime’
Ed Sheeran – ‘Lego House’

*RIP Tawny Kitaen.