Hello, World,

This has been one roller-coaster of a year. It’s difficult to truly believe, to grasp to its core, all the things that have happened in my life, let alone to the world at large. At times 2013 seemed to be “just another year”. At others, it got low. But, for the most part, it was amazing.

And I have the pictures to prove it: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjDrP243

What started with a gathering with friends in the middle of the cold and the snow went on to see me write a ton of short stories and make my first sales on Smashwords. I continued my series, “Shadows of NeverEarth”, and self-published two tales for sale: “Nightlights” and “In the Shadow of Titans”. The former, a horror story, was mostly an experiment in seeing how online self-publishing could work in my favor while the latter was a celebration of “giant monsters stomping cities”.

It was a year of a landmarks.

The election of 2012 had been impressive: Minnesotans turned back, for the first time in the country, a ballot measure aimed at enshrining homophobia in our state constitution by denying gays and lesbians the right to marry. We beat that horrific law and, the year following, finally got what we’d been fighting for: marriage equality. In May, the Minnesota State House and Senate both passed laws allowing people to marry for love, regardless of gender. Our governor, Mark Dayton, signed the bill on the capitol steps. I was there to see it and celebrate with all the rest. It was amazing! Then, on August 1st, the law became official: Minnesota became the latest in the states finally recognizing that gay and lesbian folk should be accorded the same rights as everyone else. I haven’t been so happy in years! I’ve been fighting for this most of my adult life. You have no idea how good and hopeful it makes you feel … how it counters the depression of years-gone-by when you were a second-class citizen. And, now—despite moments when I’d nearly given up—the battle is won!

Back on August 5th, 1988, I began running a tabletop role-playing game called “Vanguards of the Future”. It was a setting inspired by Marvel Comics’ “New Universe” series about “realistic” people with superpowers. It was set, ostensibly, in a world very much like our own but after an event that gave a small percentage of the population strange abilities. My own creation was similar but, since I’m a gamer, manifested in role-playing. Over the years, I even wrote stories about the world. It became semi-famous in local circles. This year was the 25th anniversary and concluded a year-long campaign that consolidated everything I had done before: all the games, all the stories, all the creativity of the “Vanguard” universe. On August 5th, 2013, I took a photo with several of my players on the spot in Roseville where the idea for the game had occurred to me, near my childhood home.

During the year, I also continued to work on my weight. I have gone up a bit towards the end of 2013 but the net loss from last year has been about 80 pounds. It’s a stunning accomplishment made all the more amazing by the fact that it happened so gradually, that I hadn’t really noticed. My pants size went down but that was so slow that at times it felt as if my diet was accomplishing nothing. But on August 15th, I celebrated 1 year on my diet and vowed to continue.

There were changes at work: employees were laid off in two rounds of departures and I got promoted to Senior Web Developer. I am now, through hard work and attrition, the person on my team with the longest time at the company. We only have one other team member with my span of time at Digital River … and he joined the company only six months before me in 2005.

There were all sorts of things happening: my annual conventions CONvergence and Midwest FurFest, a trip up to the North Shore to decompress, family birthdays, growing a beard again, keeping my hair long, visiting a start-up Renaissance Festival in Wisconsin, gaming, playing in a tabletop RPG rather than refereeing it, seeing over 20 plays at the Fringe Festival, exploring the food truck scene in the Twin Cities, discovering “Welcome to Night Vale”, baking a pumpkin pie in a pumpkin shell … lots of stuff!

I started seeing a guy, long distance, and am not sure where it’ll go but am happy to find out. James lives in Copenhagen and our relationship began with us trading emails over one of the stories I wrote. He, too, is an artist and we became very close through our correspondences. It has been one of the true highlights of this past year.

Then, in November, I participated in National Novel Writing Month again, completing the fourth in a series of books I began writing in 2005 (and had first conceived-of back in 2000). The use of NaNoWriMo to spur my writing has been just what I needed. I don’t think I would have ever been forced to produce so many words, to produce so many mistakes, without it. By participating all these years, I’ve honed my skills to the point where I now feel rather proud of what I can create. I’ve started editing the four books and once that’s done I’ll see if I can sell them, professionally. We’ll see how that goes.

The spring came late, with snow covering everything until April 23rd and bitter cold temperatures and falling white showed up by November’s end. It was, by and large, a cold year but one full of the warmth of friends and family. Writing this, documenting all the things I’ve seen and done, has been revelatory.

You go through life, day by day, not really noticing all the things that have happened. You see them, sure, but you don’t really appreciate them. Visiting a military plane and vehicle museum in Wisconsin, celebrating my birthday in Des Moines with zombie-themed burgers, discovering “Epic Rap Battles of History”, catching an old-school ghost story as a play in October, cooking up new dishes and savoring the classics, reading “A Game of Thrones”, hosting a Mardi Gras party, watching the 50th anniversary of my favorite show “Doctor Who” with an entire world of fans, being a guest on a podcast—twice—as an amateur writer, growing a crop of heirloom tomatoes in my garden, having the bathroom tub re-tiled to fix a leak, migrating an entire array of gaming computers down a hallway during a busy convention after the air conditioning went out and made machines start to overheat, pickling my favorite roasted beets, boating on Lake Minnetonka for the first time: these things, as important or trivial as they can be, may slip by when you aren’t watching. You experience them but don’t really pay attention until you look back.

I’m glad I looked back. I had a lot of stress during the year, mostly stemming from my job and clients, but everything else was fantastic. Looking forward, I can’t help but wonder what the future holds. Whatever it is, I’m certain that I’ll take steps to sculpt it. And, once those events pass me by, I’m going to have to look back on them to remind myself just how amazing life can be.

Yours,
Sylvan Scott