2025

Another year has gone by. It’s been a long December but we’re finally here, the last couple days of the year. Christmas break has been much more pleasant for me than last year, where I had very, very bad covid. By the time the new year started the worst of it was over, but I kept staying exhausted for quite a while afterwards. As you may have read in a previous update, I had a chat with my boss before the break about my progress and he was very positive this time around. Part of me interpreted the things he said in a way that made it seem like my autism and pretty poor mental health a year ago was a big part of his decision to not immediately offer me a contract. Since I’m much more “stable” now, that didn’t seem to be in the way. My confidence has now improved quite a lot and I’m going into 2025 with a lot of big goals hoping to end it in a great place. I want to finish my degree, get a permanent contract at my job and do a lot of writing. Let’s have a look ahead at 2025. 

First, what do I want to do? Well, a few things. I have a big list of single player games that I paid good money for but never touched. I compiled the list out of the numerous games I own and only picked the ones that are still any good – or at least I think they are – and will try to complete some of them. I want the list to get smaller each year so that I don’t have to feel as bad about buying new games. Besides the big life goals, I mostly want to spend 2025 focusing on reading and writing. I’ve been improving over the years but I’m still not quite where I want to be. There are entire stories I have yet to tell and there’s much editing and proofreading that I’ve been avoiding. It’s time to face the music and do those things too. I’m committing to reading at least 30 books next year and writing 500.000 words. This year’s goal was also 500.000 but I stopped a little bit short at 450.000. That’s already a nice amount so I won’t feel bad about it. I have a tendency of setting goals too high.

So with that out of the way, let’s talk about the blog, shall we? My main goal for 2025 is consistency. I like my current schedule of doing three posts a week, but I’ve been very inconsistent at it. I want to write a post about a random topic – be that anime/manga, mental health, short stories or something else – every Monday. I want to continue One Piece Wednesday and once I’m caught up on all the volumes I have a ton of specific topics I want to dive into, so expect more of that. Lastly, the Hesitant Hero will enter its fourth volume. Can you believe that??? What is in store for the Hesitant Hero in 2025 exactly?

Firstly, I’m going to write recaps for the first three volumes and post those on the 3rd, 10th and 17th of January. After that the fourth volume will start its weekly release. A little bit of honesty here, I haven’t written the ending yet. I know what’ll happen, but I haven’t quite figured out how to get there. No worries though as I have a solid 30+ chapters fully written already. On the side, I want to put in a lot of time and effort into finalizing the earlier volumes. Before the end of 2025, I want to finish the final drafts of volumes 1, 2 and 3. I’m recognizing immediately that this is a tough ask, considering how badly I failed at doing so last year, but I really need to get my shit together. I’ll probably just treat it as work and spend a few hours a week on it. If I can finish the first two volumes and get started on the third I’ll already be satisfied though, but I want to get on top of things and hopefully actually publish a book one day. Besides that I want to start a first draft of the 5th volume, which sounds crazy to me already but that’s where we are. Things will change a lot during volume 4 and we’ll go to some fun places in volume 5, but I won’t get too much into that.

Now some of you might be wondering if I’ve forgotten about the Necromancer’s Daughter. I have not. I’ve been working on it for a while now, not writing any proper story, but mostly planning out the plotline in general. I like the epigraphs – the little sidestories at the start of each chapter – but I got too stuck in the concept to the point that it started to feel incredibly forceful. Instead, I’ll do those more sparingly now. I’m keeping most of Liari’s and Charlotte’s storylines the same, but I’m adding to them, as it felt rushed. I think part of why the story felt wrong to me was because I wanted to get to the school arc quickly. I’m changing that. The amount of chapters it’ll take to get there won’t change too much I think, but I’ll spend more time with Liari and Charlotte. I cannot figure out a great way to write Danae’s story no matter what I try, so I’m changing up that entire part. Assuming I don’t change my mind again, Danae will not show up until we’re already at the Astrianara Academy. Some of the things that happen in her story will still be relevant, but we won’t spend five chapters on it. It felt boring to me and if I find it boring then those of you who don’t know the characters as well as I do by now will probably be even more bored.

So yeah, big plans, I’ll probably not deliver on half of them. There likely won’t be Necromancer’s Daughter updates anytime soon, but I’m hoping to share some of it in 2025. The Hesitant Hero will stay on schedule and I will avoid talking about some of my other plans because I know I’m just making false promises. I know posts have been scarce in December and November, but I appreciate all of your patience and I’ll make it up to you with some proper high quality chapters coming up. Thanks for reading and an early Happy New Year.

Oh and before I forget, I just passed 5000 views for the year on my blog. I know even an okay Youtube video gets 100x that, but it still feels like a cool milestone to reach. 10.000 views next year? Probably not, I’m not putting in the effort required to actually grow this blog and I’m well aware of that. But as I’ve said many times, I still appreciate the people who stick with me or just come by to read a post of two!