2013 has been an interesting year, to say the least. A lot has been going on, both good and bad. We bought our first house and a female Welsh Pembroke Corgi puppy (Eryn). We’ve had stresses with health and money (new house!). Our puppy is also headstrong and a bit ADD, more than any dog I’ve ever owned before (and I’ve had 8 throughout my life so far!). But, things look to be settling down and I can hopefully begin to focus some on, well, the purpose of this blog – my love for gaming and my desire to reignite my creativity.

Don’t be fooled…this is #TheFaceOfEvil.

Games

I was going to try to keep my game purchases down to a minimum because I already have so much to go through! But that sort of fell apart…I’m mostly concentrating on PC gaming, as the keyboard+mouse controls are best for me – plus, the monitor is better for my terrible eyesight. I’ve found myself squinting painstakingly at the TV for console games and it just removes the fun.

Skyrim is still at the forefront for solo, offline play. For online, it has been Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I’ve just recently purchased The Secret World (finally), as well as a few other games I thought sounded interesting.

Outside of those, I still have to finish my final playthrough of Dragon Age II (Blood Mage, mixed responses, lesbian Merrill), play Saints Row the Third AND Saints Row IV, start The Witcher 2 & 3, get through Mass Effect 2 & 3 (forget 1!), try Guild Wars 2 again (if I can find the will)…so much to do! But I’m not going to force myself on these ones, really.

My big upcoming releases are Elder Scrolls Online and Dragon Age III: Inquisition – and whenever Bayonetta 2 decides to come out (time is making it slip further down the priority list, unfortunately). I thnk the nee Final Fantasy looks interesting, but that will have to wait until I have a PS4. I’m hoping for a good SciFi or urban-setting to pique my interest as well – I’m worried I’ll be fantasy-ied out before too long!

All in all, a lot to work through! It will be tough to decide what to play…

Writing

I said I’d do NaNoWriMo this year, but even I knew I didn’t really mean it. I did start two story ideas from it – just not sure where to go with them at the moment. I’m having trouble deciding whether to plan or pants them. One of them is a reboot of Saint and Sinner, with a major setting point changed that really affects the whole story. The other is an original idea, but I’m not sure how I feel about it at this point. I’ll see how it develops.

Art

I’ve not really drawn at all in the last year. It’s…just not happened. For one, I didn’t like my art style when I stopped, so picking it up again has been discouraging because I knew I wouldn’t like it before I started. But I’ve got recently looked into stock images for poses and I’m going to try using the grid method for a bit to get myself going – I can at least get down decent poses and faces that way. Besides that, I now also have a light box (LED LightPad), so I can start experimenting more without worrying about ruining the original now. Yay!

While a lot happened in 2013, I was still very much stuck in terms of creativity. I still suffer from anhedonia often, which makes it difficult to want to do anything but stare at the wall. You don’t want to do anything, because you know you won’t enjoy it, won’t feel anything from it. And NOT feeling anything feels terrible when you realise it – it hurts badly. But the only way to start to feel anything is to do it – it’s a bit of a vicious cycle, but it has to be done. 2013, I wasn’t ready to do it. There was too much stress going on to then try overcoming anhedonia. 2014? Let’s see what we can do about that this year.