Where ya been, Gundobad???

 Still here! 

I had hoped that this might be a fairly active year for the blog. As it turned out, however, it's been a really challenging, draining year on the personal front. This mostly involves a lot of overlapping chronic health issues in the household, which have required an enormous amount of time and energy to address on top of the rest of life. Oh, and I'm also writing a passion-project book as part of my 'real world' profession at the same time, so ... all around, it's been a corker of a year. On the flip side, some really good and beautiful things are happening because of all that work and energy-investiture, so I'm paradoxically very grateful for much of what we're experiencing, while also chronically exhausted in my emotional reserves. Recent world events have not diminished the stress levels, either.

With all that in play, I've had to adapt my hobby activities. Running my main campaign got too mentally draining, so it's on hold. Instead, I've transitioned to playing or running the occasional one-shot. However, I've found great comfort in doubling down on the crafting side of the wargaming/minis hobby. Putting down the  scholar's pen and picking up a bunch of material things to work with my hands has proven vitally refreshing this year. I've set myself a goal of "upping my crafting game" this year, and so far I'm really pleased with the results. I've picked up and learned how to use more specialized materials, like Milliput and Green Stuff. I've become far more adventurous, creative, and unorthodox in my approach to kitbashing character minis, vehicles, and terrain. All this has been a source of real comfort during a season that isn't quite so much "bad" as "really hard." 

So: I am still here - and I do NOT consider the blog to be 'on hiatus' - I do have a variety of thoughts about things to share, related both to RPGs and to wargaming. I'm redesigning an old dungeoncrawl of mine for a local community one-shot later this month, on the one hand, and doing some weird things to 40k armies that I absolutely love on the other. :-)  But some of what I hope to share soon will reflect the quirky directions I've been taking things lately. I sometimes hesitate to share my wargaming stuff here, since my sense (possibly inaccurate?) is that my 'readership' are more invested in the RPG side. But anyway, please bear with what I do have to share for a while. :-) 

I'm grateful to all who've kept up an interest in this blog over the years. Cheers, and happy gaming!