Welcome to 2021. I think we can all agree that 2020 was something and that many of our resolutions for 2020 were wildly inaccurate. I am enjoying an extended holiday vacation with our daughters at home. I cherish the time spent with my daughters at home, as it won’t be long before they are moving out on their own, more below. Having them living in the same small town but unable to spend much time with them because of the pandemic really made this fall very challenging emotionally and make this holiday break even more special. Even with all the challenges of this pandemic, we all must keep moving forward.
We must stop regarding unpleasant or unexpected things as interruptions of real life. The truth is that interruptions are real life.
C. S. Lewis
Last year at this time, I was recovering from back surgery and navigating significant changes in my work at Taylor University. I thought those would be the big challenges for the year. Then this pandemic changed everything, and we all had to find new ways to live, new levels of normalcy, and new goals to keep us moving. 2020 was not what we expected, but we had to make it work each in our own way. Now, 2021 is upon us.
I have two resolutions for this year that I will use to pull me out of my mumble and grumble of this past year. First, I will reflect on this past year and what I can learn from it. Not nagging over the negatives but pondering the positives. My family had many trials that really challenged us, but we pulled together to work through them. We learned a lot about ourselves as a family and as individuals. What can we take from those experiences into the new year? Second, I will focus on what is to come in 2021. There are some significant things to come this year that have me really excited and I want to focus on the bright lights in the coming months to awaken my heart and soul.
What I know is coming in 2021…
For a while at least, more of the same. The COVID-19 pandemic continues but there is hope on the horizon for a return to more normalcy. Vaccines distribution has begun. Angie is a high risk and I am her caregiver so we have been informed by her doctors that we should expect the vaccine to be available to us in early February. That will significantly reduce our risk and thus ease up some on our restrictions. We will still need to remain cautious but can open up our lives more and more as the vaccine spreads to friends, family, and the community. What I look forward to most is seeing our daughters more, family gatherings, game nights in person, and worshiping in church again.
My freelance work with Red Scar Publishing will continue. We still have books in the Hellboy: The RPG line to complete and I’m discussing other possible projects with the creative team. There is also a passion project that just might get a greenlight that could see me doing more rpg writing and game development. Hopefully more to discuss in the coming months.
Currently in the planning stages to once again teach two game studies courses at Taylor University in the 2021/2022 school year. The Professional Writing department and I have decided to schedule my two courses, Writing & Editing for Gaming and Tabletop Game Writing Lab, across a single school year rather than the classes alternating years. This will allow a senior to be able to take both courses in the same school year. This spring I will begin prepping for the courses and announcing the courses to students to register for them. I am excited to once again be teaching both courses and fascinated to see what my next round of students design and publish.
A book proposal is on the horizon for me. Sorry I am still being rather vague about my writing, but I tend to do a lot of research and seek wise counsel before fully engaging in new endeavors. I have done a lot of preparatory and inspirational reading these past couple of months, researched and taken copious notes, outlined my story thoughts, worked on my official proposal, and reached out to mentors to guide me through this process. Hopefully in the early part of 2021 I can be more forthright with my creative project.
The two biggest things coming up for my family are college graduation and next steps for my twin daughters. Emily and Rachel will be graduating in May from Taylor University. For those who have been following the blog, can you believe they are college seniors?! Throughout this spring, Emily will be looking for high school science teaching positions and Rachel is awaiting responses from various library science graduate programs. This summer, we plan to be moving both daughters to their own apartments near their respective schools. So this fall, things will be very different in the Knight household.
What are you looking for in the New Year?
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