DON’T DIE
This is thing number one if you want to survive the year. Breathing is good, some might say essential. Food and water in and out of the right holes. Coffee is pretty good, too. Don’t get run over by a car, don’t get stabbed with any sharp objects, don’t taunt a robber. Don’t go on fire… I’m sure there are several more. Not dying is pretty good, I recommend it.

DON’T BE A MAYFLY
The common mayfly has a lifespan of 24 hours, the chumps. If you want to survive for a whole year, don’t be a mayfly. They’re such idiots they probably don’t even know how doomed they are. Idiots.

GIRLFRIEND
As it turns out, asking out a woman you’re infatuated with is not going to kill you. My dating life has been sporadic enough that it’s good to be reminded of this. Admittedly my asking out Emma was akin to the awkwardness of Kingpin asking out Vanessa Marianna in Daredevil. Fortunately Emma quite liked the Wilson/Vanessa romance.
I met Emma in NaNoWriMo 2014 (as I said in previous posts, NaNoWriMo has been very good for me) and when she helped me out with running events in 2015 we were texting every day about that, then not just about that, then it reached a point where I was on one of my late evening anxiety walks around the neighbourhood and told myself that I had to actually ask her out by the time I reached a windmill I often use as a landmark. By the time I reached somewhere in Hove I had a response and on that date was where my mumbling, Kingpin-esque attempt at properly making sure this was a date and that there would be more happened.
I admit, I’m not the best person at emotions outside of the popular culture, so our relationship has been a great time and a bit of a learning experience. Fortunately she is patient, funny, just morbid enough and a fellow writer so events like NaNoWriMo mean that I don’t just vanish from her life like I do my flatmates and family. Emma has been a great way to not just survive 2015 but to make it the best year.

PLANS
Well, they didn’t all come to fruition but much like the, ‘asking out the woman you love doesn’t kill you’, neither does commissioning someone you respect to do something. I was paralysed by the prospect of not having a cover artist for Lightning and the demoralising nature of not knowing how/where to go for this caused me to freeze up and has now delayed things. The great part of this is that I now have a cover artist. I have modified my plans for Lightning and continue to do so. I also have several other plans from role-playing campaigns with the In-Fighters, reviews and articles, the possible resurrection of D+Pad Magazine. I always like to plan a million things as I feel it gives you reasons to continue, reasons to keep fighting and pushing. Even if you get only half a million things done, that’s still half a million things.

FRIENDS
Looking back at the year, I know too many people. People are great and as much as I’m an introvert, I’m also really quite socially dependent. Balancing those two things is generally quite interesting as it means getting cave time and trying to organise the aforementioned million things. Friends are a lifeline, whether depressed, angry, in need of inspiration, help or just warm bodies to play games, they’re a definite must for survival, including:

The In-Fighters

The Huddlemen

My colleagues

My wonderful, horrendous family

The Who Dares Rolls crew

And the brilliant Brighton Wrimos, both the mainstays and the newcomers

WRITING
I wrote 301,233 words in the last year. That includes writing prose, articles, reviews, too few blog posts, edits. There are too many orphans in my writing. My comic reviews really fell behind but that’s part of this one. Write loads, but don’t write unnecessarily if it’s not doing enough for you. I’m skipping ahead with my G+ comic reviews and will be catching up with what I had before. I allowed myself the occasional day off, especially once I started dating. I’m sporadically prolific with Who Dares Rolls and busily working on Lightning. The NaNoWriMo project will need to be shelved, reviewed and rewritten, I feel.
I’ve tried life without writing when I was a teenager and that can’t happen. It just can’t. I didn’t stop and I didn’t die, so this is another essential one.

SPREADSHEETS
Ah, spreadsheets. My loves in order are Emma, coffee and then spreadsheets. I have been called strange for suggesting that if man and software could marry then I would make Excel my wife. This was before I was dating, which I’m sure makes that kind of statement fine. The vast amounts of popular culture I ingest are recorded on a spreadsheet to remind me where I’m at when there could be months between me watching episodes of Fargo or trying to pick which novel to read next on my Kindle. I also have the spreadsheet I open most days, which is my word count spreadsheet. Without it I wouldn’t know how much I’ve been doing, what I’ve been writing lately and probably should keep writing. Organisation isn’t necessarily survival, but for me I go so far the other way without these kind of tools that I’d probably be lost and eaten by wolves without a touchstone like this.

You are spared a picture of spreadsheets, even I can’t make them look awesome.

NO OWLS
Owls are literally the worst. I have not encountered an owl and therefore am still alive.