As part of my never ending quest to actually have time off, I will not be posting for the rest of the year. I promised myself that I wouldn’t worry about writing the final week of December. Knowing me though, that will be the week I insist on starting a new and overly ambitious idea. Oh well, at least I won’t worry about blogging.

It has been a weird semi-COVID year. The wife is still working from home, we’re still wearing masks but also eating out, and we no longer have three months supply of paper towels but thinking maybe we should? Omicron is lurking out there and now I’m scheduling a booster shot for the vaccine. It is all part of the new normal and yet I still struggle with it sometimes.

One thing I am happy for is 99% less news about the orange shitstain that took over our country for four years.

But what I am most happy for you is you, reader. You come by to read the sexy nonsense I keep putting out. You buy my ebooks. You continue to surprise me every month with your acceptance of my particular kind of weirdness. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and my libido reader. Without you, life would be so much harder.

Take care of yourself, reader. Drink water. Treat yourself kindly.

Well, that was a hell of a year. Between the pandemic, the lockdowns and politics, I am spent most of the year oscillating between anxiety and despair. All of the normal routines I had for exercise, writing and dealing with depression flew out the window. It has been one hell of a fight.

But I have managed a few achievements. I put out two interactive erotica books this year and they both sold well. I put out one stand-alone, Mutant Marauders, and while it did not sell big numbers, it was nice to get it done and out into the world.

I also put out an erotic journal game, Your Demon Lover. It sold three copies. Ouch. It has been a while since I had something flop that badly, but it is more amusing than disheartening. I enjoy journal games and I am proud of what I did and how I did it. Still, it put a kibosh on the other game ideas I had.

Somehow, in the worse year ever, I managed to get out 11 Vaquel Di stories. They weren’t always on time, but I got them out. In addition, I put out two collections of her adventures on Amazon. In a weird way, this might be Vaquel’s best year.

Another plus is that I think I finally cracked my personal code on how to do “sketches” in written form. I have always been jealous of artists being able to evoke strong sexual feelings with a static image like a sketch and I wanted to be able to replicate that for my own work. Fiction Bites has been my attempt at that kind of work and I think I have been mostly successful with it. These tiny bits of erotica help me feel productive and I hope have created some nice sexual imagery for my readers.

So what about next year? Vaquel Di continues of course. I need to decide what my next interactive erotica book will be about. Sales don’t really support non-interative erotica books but I would like to do at least two this year to stay in practice.

Most of all, I think I just want to be happier in 2021. Let’s see how we can make that happen.

Yesterday I finished the first draft on my next interactive erotica book. I should have finished it on Monday, but I decided that it needed one more choice before ending. These kinds of last minute changes can be annoying, but they are also impossible to plan for. There is a rhythm in an interactive story where you as the reader just feel like there is a choice coming. When that choice doesn’t appear, well you feel cheated.

With the first draft done, I won’t look at it again until next week when I begin my edits. That gives me five glorious days to myself where I can do anything. The sky is the limit! I don’t have to worry about writing and I can just chill.

So of course, my brain is thinking about what I want to write next. The brain is an asshole.

I have been reading a book about different famous chefs. Often, they got started by getting interested in cooking and enrolling in local classes. A lot of these classes were just one hour a day.

I got jealous reading this and wished I could go to cooking school as well. Then it hit me. I have YouTube. I have a ton of cookbooks. Why not make my own cooking school and teach my ass some things?

Since I will not be traveling this year thanks to COVID, I have decided to go to self-taught cooking school. There are a dozen things I have been too intimidated to try, or just flat out suck at that I want to improve on. This year I will make a roux on a reliable basis! This is the year I poach an egg! I am going to figure out how to make that crispy mojo half-chicken that I used to get all the time at that Caribbean place in Atlanta. My time is now!

Cooking is also a nice distraction from the election. I have voted and there is nothing left for me to do, but my anxiety feels different. Deep down, I feel like if I let my guard down then somehow that Orange Shit Stain of a President will get elected again. It is completely irrational but that is where I am. I doubt I will be able to relax until that motherfucker gets tossed out of the White House.

So that is my advice to you. Pick up some sort of hobby for the next month or two. It doesn’t have to be something grand. Write some porn. Study that weird subject you don’t have time for. Just give your brain something to do during this pandemic except worry and fret.

Alpha Centauri is one of my favorite games of all time. Created in 1999, it is a spinoff of Sid Meir’s Civilization games. In Alpha, you play factions of colonists on a distant planet. Before the even land, the colonists have broken into different factions based on opposing ideologies. The game deals with themes of transhumanism, environmental responsibility and the ethics of exterminating that shithead who keeps invading your lands.

I had the itch to play it again but I held off. Like all Civilization games, Alpha Centauri can be really addictive. There is always something more to do. You can sit down and plan to play for only an hour, but then “one more turn” kicks in and the next thing you know, it is 3am.

So I decided to try something really stupid. I would play Alpha, but I would only play ONE turn a day. That’s it. One turn and shut it down. That way, I won’t get suckered into it.

The whole idea is stupid. I am not sure how many turns it takes to play an average game of Alpha, but I know it is in the hundreds. The early game especially goes by fast as it can take you six turns to build a single unit. That is six days of looking at a progress meter grown and doing nothing else.

So of course, I had to try it.

It has been twelve days and I have to say, it is delightful. As a porn writer, I know all about delaying gratification but this takes it to a new level. Every turn I play is the most thoughtful experience. I don’t want to rush my turn, so I think about everything. Is my resources properly placed? Do I still plan to explore west when I get a unit? What does this button do?

Now granted, things took a turn when I made a colony unit, sent it forth and had it destroyed by my first contact with another faction. The white hot rage I felt demanded instant revenge. In a normal game, I would have built a bunch of units and sent them out to crush my enemy, and I would not have stopped playing until revenge was satisfied or thwarted.

But this isn’t a regular game. I gave the order for a scout unit to pursue the attacker and then I logged off for the day. The next day, still pissy, I set up orders to make another scout. The first scout was still en route to the last known location of the enemy. The day after that, units are still in production while one unit is moving. My rage has dulled to a bitter calm. The day after that, my bitterness has turned to skepticism that I can really fight a war with just scouts. Now I am considering just setting up a border and resuming colonization. It all depends on how soon I meet the enemy.

If I ever do have the fight, win or lose, the feelings that accompany it are going to be intense.

I wonder what other recreational activities might benefit from a little slowing down?