Auld Lang Syne: Taking Stock in the New Year

I’m writing from a strange position: I’m here in a new state in a new house sitting at a new desk from a new chair, about to start my new job.

T-minus 3 days until I no longer work for the company that’s kept me and my family afloat financially for almost 15 years.

It’s time to move on, yet I keep looking behind; I didn’t enjoy where I lived before, but I miss the company of friends. I didn’t enjoy the upper management of the company I worked for, but I was tight-knit with my immediate team and managers, and quite comfortable with my job.

So while my friends were busy shouting, “Happy New Year,” I found myself saying, “Auld Lang Syne.”

On the writing front, I thought last year was going to be The Year. I mean, it wasn’t bad, but the plan was to get something published in a magazine, then try launching a book.

I revealed more of my hand in 2023, showcasing some of my artistic talent. I submitted two stories to two different publications. I attended my first convention as a writer. I met an editor who works for a major publishing house. I created a presence on Twitter right before it changed to “X”, purchased my website domain, and did a lot of reading while putting in a good amount of writing as well. I walked the walk and talked the talk as best I knew how.

I fell in love with pulp fantasy, especially Sword and Sorcery, and the #IronAge movement. I did more behind-the-scenes work on big projects and got an article published on a well-known website. I even got artwork published in a book that’s buyable on Amazon.

It seemed like a big year, yet the needle didn’t move.

The editor never bothered getting back to me. (I hope he one day regrets that.)

I threw down the gauntlet and published articles here almost every day for many consecutive months. And even at the end of all that, I barely averaged more than 1 reader per article. You’d laugh at the stats on this website. I got maybe one or two new subscribers this year, and that’s about it.

So either I’m being throttled, I don’t understand SEO, or I genuinely don’t have anything interesting to say.

Not to mention this stupid website stopped displaying images on my home page out of nowhere a few weeks back, and I can’t figure out what went wrong. I didn’t change a thing on the backend, but it’s killing the presentation of my site’s landing page. Not that I get many visitors.

Bright side: I started cross-publishing over at Substack, and there I’m getting a steady inflow of subscribers. And that’s from starting fresh; I didn’t import my mailing list from here and started from 0. So maybe WordPress is just a dead platform and I do have something interesting to say, after all.

I thought for certain the secret project TCG I spent two years working on would finally go live. In fact, I was promised it would launch in the fourth quarter of 2023.

But the only person involved who won’t sign his contract is MIA. I did get a “verbal agreement” from him via Email. He even promised to snail-mail me a check along with the signed document. Never arrived. He popped up one other time apologizing for his absence to myself and other team members. But that’s it. 

He’s gummed up the works for years now, squandering several perfect launch window opportunities. And the biggest kick in the pants is that I had the opportunity to sign a contract and own the entire project myself. But we decided to trust the guy who inspired us to start the project in the first place, and now we’re paying for it.

I guess he’s giving us the long “no” and leaving money on the table.

Unfortunately, do-overs are a rare commodity when it comes to signing contracts. One horrible reality about this line of work is you can pump thousands of hours into a project only to see it all go up in flames due to red tape and legal technicalities.

Not a big deal for the other guys involved, but a huge deal for me. I’m sure it would’ve been a career-launcher. Since I at least have a verbal agreement, maybe one day I can share some of the artwork and designs I created for this project, or repurpose some of it for a project of my own. I even created ads and box mock-ups. It was no small task.

There’s still the faintest chance something could happen in 2024. But frankly, it’s already too late. 2023 was the last year for something to happen with the TCG. That ship has sailed, so I must move on.

In the publishing world, it’s both bittersweet and humbling to get my first two form rejection letters. I’m supposed to frame these on a wall or something, right?

But the first rejection letter got the title of the story completely wrong, and the second was a generic form rejection that didn’t even mention the title or my name. Somehow, the second one stung even more.

It was the same excuse, that there were too many submissions to find room for mine. And that’s it. There’s a surplus of writers out there thirsty for publication, it pays diddly-squat, and I’m not writing at a competitive enough skill level to make the cut.

I thought I was a good writer. Like, really good. But maybe I’m not. Maybe I haven’t practiced enough. Or maybe I just don’t have the gift.

But then again, there are a few people on Twitter who told me they do love my writing.

Thank goodness for them. And thank goodness I joined Twitter and Substack this year, or I’d be feeling a lot more depressed right now. Maybe there’s hope for me yet.

So I’ll say both: Auld lang syne AND Happy New Year.