New Years Aspirations '23

Zero resolutions, but many aspirations.

Resolutions, goals, aspirations...

by Nimin N

The word distinction may sound incredibly silly, but this simple alteration helped to change my perspective on these self-assigned goals and reinforce my intention to have them as "goals without strings attached".
Despite the fact that not keeping them won't affect anyone but me, my performance anxiety was savagely relentless in reminding me of how weak-willed I was, and what I failure I had been. It stressed me out immensely, to the point of never wanting to set anything resembling goals or milestones, and ending up getting very little done.
The end of 2021 very much marked a new chapter in my life and for New Year 2022 I decided to give it a try to set some modest aspirations. It helped more than I thought it would to calm my anxieties (overactive lizard brain, that is) and quiet their mean brain goblin friends. I won't go into details but 2022 has been a stormy and at the same time exciting year, and I've been doing better during this period than probably ever in my life.
It was the reason I decided I felt ready to get back to writing and WorldAnvil. This year I'll also dare expand on my aspirations list, and add some for a few real life achievements and some hobby/writing-related ones. Though, you'll only get to see the latter here.
2023's New Year Aspirations are, in no particular order:

• Finalize the base structure I want to use for my setting and my articles.
• Manage to post up all the drafts I have waiting in word documents and paper notes into finished articles.
• Finish my galaxy map, and create more detailed maps for its planned sectors.
• Finish my conlang alphabet.
• Finish my CSS Theme, including mobile adaptions & browser compability.
• At least start the planning stages of a short to medium length CYOA.
• Read one article from a fellow worldbuilder each week, and leave a comment.
• Take part in either of the yearly Summer Camp or World Ember events.
• Try to slowly re-engage in the discord community.

What have I learnt from my fellow worldbuilders?

One of the reasons I haven't gotten so much done yet on my own setting is that I've been so engrossed in browsing around the community section here on WorldAnvil, both to re-discover some people and worlds I followed before my hiatus and to see all the new amazing writing that's come about while I was gone.
This part of the challenge was absolutely the most difficult. Though I really want to engage more in the community, I still am a rather anxious person, unfortunately, and offering my thoughts to others has always been incredibly difficult - be it commenting on articles, writing a journal post on my profile wall, using social media, engaging these kinds of challenges, or chatting on discord. It's something I still actively need to train on doing by doing more.
Here's the curated list that I finally settled on:

Having recently returned to WorldAnvil after a long break, I found this article immensely helpful in trying to organize my thoughts and consider what it was I wanted to do with my new setting - and how much.

I wouldn't consider myself a new member, but I still found a lot of good insights and it gave me a couple of ideas on how to organize (categorize and tag) my articles.

Finding a good way to organize my setting that's understandable by both me and others have always felt like a challenge.

A very good guide for the aspiring visual novel creator, that as a side dish give some very nice advice on how to use flowcharts to plot a story with choices.

While not an aspiring visual novel creator myself, I do have several times fancied the thought of creating my own CYOA.

Speaking of CYOA, this little golden nugget together with the above article are guilty of re-igniting that fancied thought of creating my own CYOA.

While I probably won't go with TJ's (incredibly) smart use of anchors and spoilers, it still was fun and inspiring to see how a little ingenuity makes WA more than viable as a platform for this media form.

Plus, the adventure was great - go try it if you haven't yet!

Another of my aspirations while browsing around the depths of the community section of WA was to find examples of good introduction and primer articles that could give me help and inspiration on how to set up my own.

The one written by Catoblepon for his Shattered setting is one of the most eye-catching ones I've seen in a long time, and is such a great example of how less can be more.

I also ran upon many a world and articles, that while not being what I searched for, I stopped to check out and read about. One such is this nice little piece describing a planet in Mochimanoban's Yonderverse.

It's well organized, to the point, and relies on sending you onward to sub-articles in order to learn more about Dave and it's features.

While I probably won't be able to help myself from writing long pieces on a single subject, this gave me a practical example of how to break it up into smaller, more digestible pieces.

This article by Churchwarden caught my eye because of how well it describes the subject and its history. It's a very nice example of writing a concise yet evocative text about an item.

On a similar thread, another item article that caught my eye was one written by Kummer Wolfe albeit for entirely different reasons.

The article is a very good example of how good formatting can make a longer piece never feel tiring to read. And that you don't need pictures to do so - the quotes and story pieces all contribute a lot to the whole of the article, but also serves well in sectioning the more factual parts into bite-size pieces.

A lovely article demonstrating how important small considerations and thinking outside of the box can lead to a very wholesome and genuine-feeling result.

The status of being the common, most widely used language isn't just told to the reader through a statement but also organically demonstrated through its careful crafting - from choice of phonology to script to counting - in order to be fully usable for species of anatomies different to our own.

And as the final one, I decided to go for this species article written by mashd. It's another one that first caught my eye because of how well it was formatted, and I think it's an excellent example of how additions such as quotes, images and story snippets can help break the pace in otherwise fact-focused texts.

The friendly request down in the author's notes was also something I wanted to comment on: It's a good example of how to ask for feedback in a nice way, and I found it helpful to be let known what kind of feedback the author was looking for.