RJ Rambles About the New Year

Hey everybody! It's 2024! I'm doing another one of these yearly reflection posts. 

I was talking to my wife last night (we call her Mango) about the year. We both decided that 2023 was both the worst year and the best year that we've been together. It felt like SUCH a long year. Between her losing her job, her aunt passing away suddenly, us moving, and us getting married, our year was completely packed with events and all of them were pretty stressful. 

But though we went through a lot of stress and pain in 2023, the high points were really high and I'm overall very happy. 

Let's look back at the goals I made last year for 2023. 

2023 Goals

Here's the post if you want to read the whole thing. 

• Release Four Updates - I really wanted to release four updates in 2023 and I tried really hard for the first half of the year. But there came a point where I knew that it was going to be impossible. Part of this because I've started moving a little slower and taking a little more time for myself. And part of it because we had the death in the family and the move and all these things happening in my life that were out of my control. So, I did not succeed on this goal, but I'm okay with it for the most part. I still would like to speed up production a little, but I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I'm doing the best I can. 
• Release the Premium Edition - This happened! And it was huge. I was hoping to make enough money to make a living off of this game, and this release was an enormous part of it. The release went very well, and I was able to make enough to move out and do a lot of things that I really wanted to do and sort of change my life around completely. It has been amazing. 
• Move - My biggest goal for last year. I had to get out of the living situation I was stuck in. And thanks to the Premium Edition, I did. I moved into a new house with Mango and the dogs and we love it. Our landlady is incredible and the house is comfortable and I love having the place to ourselves and not having to share with a roommate that was asking for more and more from us constantly. It's been an enormous weight off my shoulders this year and I'm extremely happy for it. 
• Go on an overnight hike - I didn't do this! Dang it. I still want to, and I have some places in mind, but I didn't actually take the plunge and do it. We did go on some longer hikes though. And some more difficult ones than we have in the past. I'd definitely like to do more though. 
• Go on another vacation - We did this! Only one this year, but we went to the Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Cavern for our honeymoon. That was really fun and a true highlight of the year. I would have liked to go somewhere else earlier in the year, but we were saving all our money to move. Next year, I have a few places in mind that I'd love to go. 

Goals for 2024

Okay, on to my new goals for the year. I will say, with the move, my priorities have shifted a little from last year. 

Game Goals

• Release 3 Updates - I'm lowering my expectations a little this year. I don't think four updates is going to be possible, but three should be very doable. The plan is for Update 17 to release in March, Update 18 to release in July and Update 19 to release in November. Update 19 is going to be a tough one, so it may take a little longer, but I have some padding there as well and can push it to December, if necessary. I don't see why I wouldn't be able to hit these release dates. 
• Look for people to work with - I've been talking about this since the beginning, pretty much, but I do want to find people to work with, both for this game and for future games. I'd love to find a 3D artist, or a 2D artist who I can make games with. I currently have 3 other games that I've written large amounts for, but I don't have time to do the art for. I'd love to bring somebody else in to work on those while I continue to work on Come Home. I made a post looking for help in my Discord. If anybody's interested, give me a shout. I'll continue to look this year and see if I connect with anybody. 
• Expand script for the next game - I've always been a writer, so even when I'm not working on Come Home, I'm frequently using my free time to write other stories. Come Home is basically written at this point. There's just little dialogue things and conversations and some sex scenes that have to be written and the whole thing will pretty much be complete. So to scratch my storytelling bug, I often work on stories for future games.
  
  I keep swapping around in my mind which game I'm going to do next. I had in mind one for a while that would be a very straightforward visual novel with a few love interests and a story to tell, but over the last few months, I've felt like that story might need a little more time to bake and get a few rewrites. If I make a story-focused game, I want the story to be great, and there's a few spots on this one that don't quite connect the way I want them to.
  
  And my passion has sort of switched to this other idea that I've been working on for the last six months or so. This one would be a more game-like game, with visual novel elements in it. But there would be actual gameplay involved. Not like Dark Souls or anything, but choices to be made, random elements and such. I don't want to talk too much about what kind of game it is, because as far as I know a game like this has not been made, and I'd love to be the first. The game does need some work on the story. I have the bare bones down, but it needs to be expanded upon. That's the goal this year, while I'm still working on Come Home as my primary focus. 

Personal Goals

• Reduce Clutter - Between moving houses, and dealing with my Mom's hoarding this year, and having a newfound interest in vanlife and car camping, and all of that, I've found that I don't want most of the things that I have in my house.
  
  Lego doesn't bring me the same joy that it used to a couple of years ago. I still love building everything, but once it's built and just sitting there on my shelf, I'm kind of over it? I think I bought two Lego buildings this year, earlier in the year, and I haven't bought any since. And it's going to take something amazing to get me to buy another. I want to try to get rid of a lot of my older Lego stuff as well.
  
  Along with many other things. I have a big vintage video game collection that I'm probably going to reduce a lot. I have tons of other little things as well. I'd like to get rid of basically everything and reduce down to the absolute minimum that makes me happy. I've discovered over the last year that I really don't need that much to be happy and everything else is just creating more stress and more work as I have to clean it and move it and take care of it. Or it sits in boxes and isn't doing anything at all except taking up space and getting in the way. 
• More hiking - I want to go to new places. I want to take longer hikes. The longest one I did this year was 9 miles. It was hard, but I really enjoyed it. I want to go on an overnight hike. I bought a backpack for it this year, and a new sleeping bag and mat. I think I have all the gear I need. Just need to actually get out there and do it. 
• Take another vacation (or two) - I have two places I'd love to go this year, and I want to try to go to both of them. I want to go to Broadway and see a few shows and spend a week or so in New York. And I want to go to Yosemite and maybe some other places in the Northwest.
• Make new friends - I don't have very many friends offline. It's hard to make friends as an adult. I've made some attempts this year though. I've started playing D&D with new groups when I get the chance to, and I've attempted to join some hiking groups as well. I haven't really made any new friends though. Some new acquaintances, and maybe something will happen there eventually. I want to keep trying though. 
• Improve my (mental) health - Over the last couple years, I've talked in these goals posts about wanting to improve my health. I have lost a little weight and feel generally more healthy than I did before. I'm eating better, I'm able to go on long hikes, I have more stamina and more energy. I just generally feel better.
  
  But there's also the mental side of things and while I think I've improved there a bit too, it could still use a bit of work. I've talked before about my anxiety and for a while, I basically just didn't go anywhere. I was too anxious to go to the grocery store or the movie theater. I have a big fear of gun violence. That's still there, but I have made some strides this year.
  
  I think hiking has helped a lot, honestly. And I've pulled away from reading the news and watching/reading true crime stuff. I just can't handle it anymore. Better to just keep myself informed about the important things and then live my life in ignorance of the rest. Hiking has helped my anxiety by showing me that I can go out by myself into the woods and it's very unlikely that I'm going to get attacked. I can sleep in a tent in the woods without fear of other people. I mean, the fear is still there. I still take pepper spray with me and have it ready at any time. I still look over my shoulder and am leery of any man I meet out there. But in general, I feel pretty safe. I even went to the movie theater three times in the last couple of months.
  
  So for improving my health this year, there's a few things I want to do.
  
  - Meditation - I need to take just a little bit of time every day to just be quiet with myself and clear my head.
  - Go outside - Whether hiking, meditating, going to the park, or just going to the store, I need to get outside every single day for a little while.
  - Get off your damn phone - I need to make a whole other big goal about this actually. 
• Get off your damn phone, RJ! - This is something I've been struggling with for a while and I've tried to improve on over the last couple months. When I'm watching TV or working on things, or waiting on things, or sitting on the toilet, or basically doing anything, I have my phone next to me and it's hard for me not to pick it up and browse through reddit, see what's going on in my Discord, check my Steam message boards, check Steam reviews, check F95, check Itch, check Patreon... yadda yadda yadda.
  
  I have to stop this. I've started leaving my phone in another room frequently. I've also started using Duolingo to fill those times where I want to get on my phone for one reason or another. I'll talk more about this in the next part, but Duolingo has helped a ton, honestly. I've also deleted my Twitter this year and I deleted my F95 account as well.
  
  That part is hard. The things that have to do with my job are the ones that I convince myself it's okay, I have to check these things, it's my job. But I don't really. I don't need to know what every single person on Steam thinks about my game. I don't need to know what every person on a pirating website thinks about my game. None of that stuff truly matters.
  
  What matters is that my game continues to improve and that I like the game that I make and that people in general like it as well. There's a way to do feedback without it becoming a constant thing, and I have to do better at that. I don't need the constant feedback in my head. It slows me down and makes me doubt myself more. That doesn't help anything.
  
  I'm working on this already, but next year I want to make it a focus. I don't need to be as active as I have been in message boards, or on Discord. I like talking to people, but I don't need to respond to every bug report or help request. I should take a step back and let other people do those things. In the long run, I think that makes a better game, because I can focus more on things that need to be done instead of trying to fix every person's individual problem.
  
  I could probably talk about this for another few pages, because it's something I truly struggle with. I know that people sign up for Patreon and people support the game, not just because of the game itself, but because of me. And I know that people like how much I interact with the community. I'm not going to stop that. I just may reduce it a bit, when it comes to things like the help-and-bugs and the feedback channels, because it's not healthy for me to put myself in a situation where I'm constantly being told all the things wrong with my game. 
• Last one - Learn more Spanish - I'm half Mexican, but I grew up in an English-speaking household. Mango is full Mexican, but she grew up in an English-speaking household. Neither one of us speak Spanish very well. But this year, with the death of her aunt, a lot of her family from Mexico came down and I realized that I couldn't speak to some of them, and I really wanted to. That, added to the fact that I needed something else to do while I was on the toilet aside from flipping through social media, made me download Duolingo and start learning Spanish.
  
  I have a 97 day streak on there right now and I feel like I've learned quite a bit already. I want to continue that through the year though and hopefully become more fluent and start speaking it a little better.
  
  Also, I'd love to travel more, so learning another language would be good for that. I've never been to Mexico. I've never been out of the US. I'd love to go to Mexico, or Spain, or a hundred other countries. I also have this tickling in the back of my head to walk the Camino de Santiago. Would be nice to know some Spanish for that.
  
  Anyways, there's a lot of reasons to learn another language and Spanish makes the most sense for me right now, with my heritage. So I'm going to work on that. 

Conclusion

Okay, that's it. Dang, now that's a rambling. I've been typing this for like an hour and a half or so. It helps me just to type these things out though, and I hope at least a few of you will enjoy the read. 

Lastly, I want to thank all of you for your support. This game and this community have been the best thing that has ever happened to me and I am grateful for you all for everything you've given me and allowed me to do. I was talking to family during the holidays about how lucky I feel right now to get to do this job. 

Before Come Home, I was right on a precipice and I didn't know what I was going to do next. I had been writing novels for some time and hadn't made any money on it. I was reaching the end of my breaking point with my roommate and I wanted to move so badly. I didn't have a reliable vehicle, I didn't have a good place to live, and I didn't have any money at all. 

Come Home was sort of a last ditch effort to make something happened, before I either went out and found a job at a factory or something, or I don't know what else I would have done. My thoughts were pretty dark back then. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that this game and this community saved my life. 

So thank you. You're all wonderful and I love you. I hope you achieve all of your goals in 2024 and have an amazing year!