I don’t plan on being a different person in 2018. Sure, I’m changing as a person faster in college than I ever have in my life, but I’m not sure I can ever change enough to shake the same general sensation of me-ness that I’ve carried since forever. So the mantra isn’t “New year, new Nat.”

When I sat down to ask myself how I felt about 2017, I wasn’t able to say it had been a great year, or a good year, without reservation. 2017 might have lived up to the prophecy given in my most anticipated TV premiere:

Welcome to the darkest year of our adventures.

Still, it was another year of adventures, and maybe that’s all I really need. I’m going to memorialize 2017 as the year I came out, the year I fell in love with New York City, the year my wardrobe finally grew too large (and fabulous) to fit in a single load of laundry, and the year I left both a terrible living situation and a soul-sucking major, for replacements that are at the very least, better.

Here’s where I see myself going next:

  • I want to say that for a long time I’ve been gravitating away from the track I set out for myself: study computer science, make video games for life. To be honest, though, I’ve always known I was more than (just) that, and my renewed focus on writing outside the games sphere is nothing new at all.
  • I’m taking on the 100 rejection challenge. That means following the trend I’ve been on towards writing more traditional things like poetry and short fiction.
  • My gamedev work is going to keep looking more like multimedia art than games. It’s becoming painfully clear that there’s not much overlap between hardcore gamers with the right background to enjoy the more complicated mechanics-based stuff I admittedly still would enjoy making, and the audience of soulful, pretentious intellectuals that my work really thrives on.
  • I’ve got a script in the works for a psychological sci-fi radio play I plan to record with some of my very talented friends.
  • I’ve been writing sketch comedy with a small student group and two of my sketches are already cleared for filming and I might also act in them!
  • To compensate for the new lack of Computer Science classes in my life, I’ve been doing open-source coding work, and I love it.
  • This summer I’ll be living in New York while I attend the Recurse Center!!
  • To make that happen, I’ll probably be selling out massive amounts of my time in ways that will detract from all previous goals I’ve outlined. So it goes.

I’m the kind of person who values tools. The right tools can make incredible things happen. I run into problems, though, when I hold too tightly onto the same old tools. With all the ambition I have for being prolific in 2018, I’m going to need to earnestly grow and adapt my toolkit. Here’s a few new ones:

  • Fractive, an open-source hypertext generator I’m helping build so I can use it to make my dinky story games
  • Cortex, a program I’m writing to help me stay organized in ways that are hard to explain.
  • The Marriott Library: I’m sitting there right now! Before this semester I didn’t fully appreciate how lovely the library on campus is. I’m gonna make more visits to play around with the recording studios, do homework on the legendary treadmill desk, and enjoy the amazing collection of books here.
  • A single, crucial New Year’s resolution: Focus on one thing at a time.