Seasons might be the way to go, with updates: a steady cadence, but one that doesn’t require the effort of justifying its existence every single month: especially when, during times like these, each given week seems to bleed into the other, forming a kind of temporal sludge.

Lots has happened, and yet at the same time, very little has happened. The company I worked at for the past year collapsed, seemingly as an act of spite from those who controlled it. I feel a lot of ways about it: on the one hand, I mourn the death of a really cool project and one of the best development teams I’ve ever worked with — on the other hand, of course it was going to go this way, because this is how every other job I’ve had for the past five years has gone.

It feels different this time. After a year and a half of record-breaking layoffs across the entire industry, there’s both fewer new positions - lots of companies and teams are tightening the belt - and a huge pool of candidates to choose from. I’m not a superstar developer by any means, but I’ve always prided myself on being able to get people to pick up the phone when I come calling. It’s different, this time.

The overwork of the first part of the year, the ennui of not having worked on anything that’s finished (or even been announced, in many cases!), and the collective trauma of what business owners are willing and capable of doing to creative professionals has led to the usual sort of existential dread. Should I be doing this? Should I have ever done it in the first place? What good am I putting back into the world by doing what I’m doing? Could I please re-do the past 17 years of my life, knowing what I know now? Pretty please?

No such luck. The search continues.

My siblings all flew out to treat me to dinner for my birthday. We partied in style: going to bookshops and petting dogs. It was a delightful, generous distraction. I turned 40, the first big number. I’ll think about that later, when I have time.

Pullo’s nose condition has been acting up again, in the same way that it did when his cancer first started to announce its presence. He’s back at the radiologist for a scan at the time I’m writing this. We’ll see what they say.

VERTEX was one of the first big projects I did when I was getting into publishing my own ttrpg work, and I’ve long wanted to give it a refresh: I’m a better writer, designer, and layout-er than I once was, and VERTEX has enough meat on the bones that it’s worth keeping … flavorful? Well-preserved? Hmm. Metaphor is rapidly losing coherency.

Anyway, it’s got new art (including a cover by the terrific Yuri), new layout, new details to help run the adventures - and wouldn’t you know it, there’s a whole new 4th adventure that wasn’t there before, all about trying to dig up a dead man’s details in the middle of his own wake.

OATHSWORN remains a weekly labor, and one that I love doing. It’s been going for almost exactly a year now and I’m grateful for every single person who’s given it a listen. Our audience is small, but very vocal, and that’s always nice. Tomorrow’s episode starts a brief break from the regular Band of Blades action as we dip into some political intrigues. Eagle-eared (?) listeners might have heard a hint about the game we’re playing at the end of last week’s episode.

📺 SCAVENGERS REIGN has hit Netflix and it’s just as good as I hoped it would be. Some of the best sci-fi I’ve seen in a long time: beautiful, intriguing, horrifying. Nature is wild.

📽️ CHALLENGERS was disappointing!! I needed it to be either a lot sexier or a lot more about tennis. It tries to have it both ways and I don’t think it works, but I’m in the minority on this, judging from the reviews.

🎮 The Elden Ring DLC is right around the corner, so I’ve been replaying the original game to get ready for it. It’s a deadly delight. Tomorrow, Destiny 2’s Final Shape takes … shape.

🎲 We had our every-five-years playthrough of Tales of the Arabian Nights, which has led me to the same thought I have every five years: “I should redesign Tales of the Arabian Nights so it’s good.”

📚 I finished a long-overdue reread of the original DUNE. It feels like YA fiction before YA was a thing, in a lot of ways. I’m balancing it out with BLOOD MERIDIAN, which is like Dune in that it’s about a teenager in the desert who’s going to have a great time with all his friends.

And that’s all for now! More updates either at the end of the summer, or sooner if something exciting happens before then.