Well, here we are, the last weekday in January.  At the start of this month, I wasn’t sure I’d get through it.

We’ve had a lot of local drama here, financial stuff with Tam and I, and Girl’s next-door-neighbor went off the freaking deep end.  She’s moving today, to a nicer duplex that also happens to be closer to my busstop, and still in walking distance of where I live.  This makes me happy.

Also, today, Tam and I make it through our own financial mess that had left us strapped for most of the month.   We’re not totally caught up on everything, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel well enough to know it’s not an oncoming train.  We’ve got our PAX East tickets, and that vacation is mostly planned for, and will be budgeted, etc, within a week or two.

I’ve spent some of my time this month — at least when I wasn’t furiously writing blog posts — learning Python, and working with pygame.  That’ll continue in the next month, although I may try to finish my AIF before I do that.  I have some thoughts about that, as you may have noticed.

Many years ago, I kept an online diary, I wrote about 1K words/day, usually about whatever I was doing that day, or had done. It was very personal, and maybe sometimes had some more thought to it — but not often. The writing I’ve done here in the past month has some of that personal flavor, but I feel like I’ve been able to apply it to the game thought that is largely what Cult of the Turtle has been about recently.

One nice aspect of having such an aggressive schedule is that it’s forced me to narrow my focus and accept some imperfection in what I have to say.  It makes this whole blog feel like a work in progress. I’m not writing essays, but developing ideas in a public and open way.  That may come back to bite me someday, but I’m human, and I’m still alive, so my ideas are still developing.  Just because I said something three weeks ago doesn’t mean I’ve not refined or moved on from it.  Still, it’s a good process.

Which is why, despite the original challenge now fulfilled, I’m going to continue it.  I need to work on other creative projects, particularly both games and my fiction writing, and I’m sure that’ll color what the posts here are about. Like my discussions of Amaranth, the posts here may be about my progress from a design or technical standpoint.

Certainly I’m not done with liminality or transgression, and these both inform what I want to do about games, and my goals there. I don’t know if I’ll be successful at implementing my ideas, but unless I try I won’t know.  And maybe my work will inspire others who can take it further.  As long as there’s life, there’s growth, right?

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed it — I know I’ve liked and enjoyed the feedback that I’ve gotten, and look forward to more.  That’s the primary way I’m “paid” for what I do.  So, as I go forward, I hope I’ll interest you enough to keep the feedback loop going.

Thanks to everyone for a good month in this new year, and hopes for more to come!