We’re roughly about 3 weeks into 2020 and I’ve been doing lots of thinking and planning for some projects I want to work on this year. I feel like I do this at the start of every year and things don’t often go exactly as planned. It’s honestly a bit annoying since my interests can change great over the span of a few months to a whole year. Things I’m really into working on right now might not be what I’m working on anymore or have any interest in by the end of the year.

I’ve learned over the years that this is exactly how my brain is wired and have come to accept it. The upside is I’m always on the hunt to fulfill myself creatively and seek out to obtain knowledge if what I’m interested in calls for it. The downside is I feel like I can never make an immense amount of progress on any one project since I either get bored or lose motivation to work on a project and start feeling inspired to work on something else.

Which is why I’m aiming to minimize the amount of projects I’m working this year to only three. The first being another Daily 365 project. The one I completed in 2018 was so much fun and I look back fondly at that year and remember how creatively fulfilled I was at the end. Last year I obviously needed a break after going hard all year long, but as a result I feel that I didn’t accomplish much compared to the year prior. And since I’ve successfully completed a Daily 365 project, I now know exactly what it entails. I know what its like to make something every single day and what the outcome of it is and how amazing it feels to finish a project like that and then make a book out of it. So this time around, I felt like I could use another challenge like that in order to give me the chance to level up my skills and have another years worth of work to look back on next year.

The second project I’m focusing on this year is Eagle & Bison Design Company. I feel like I started out pretty strong last year with making regular content for this site. I was writing pretty often and taking photos and recording and editing short videos. But then somewhere after March I just stopped for some reason. I decided that I wanted to get back into that flow so I spent a good portion of last week doing some much needed site changes and updating code for the home page and inner blog pages. I still have a bit more work to do but I have a newly renewed vision for what I want to do with the EBDC brand as a whole. And that includes making a lot more content that I feel will be sustainable for me.

The third project I’m focusing on this year is something I haven’t really talked too much about online lately but have hinted at about a year ago. I won’t name drop exactly what it is because I haven’t exactly figured out what it will ultimately be but in its current state it is a fictional story that I will either develop into a novel, graphic novel, video game or in the future, a movie of some sort. Obviously I don’t have the means or skillset to make any of those things happen right now, but those are things I will actively research and learn when the time comes. But for now I’m in the early writing and planning stages for the actual story and narrative elements. My hope is that I can develop it and write a compelling story that it can potentially become a massive franchise. But I’m obviously more focused on actually writing a good story right now. This project will take some time and will definitely not be done this year. But I am going to make a conscious effort to work on it throughout the year and beyond.

So that’s pretty much it! Two of those three things, Eagle & Bison and the graphic novel story, I feel will be sustainable in the long-run. The Daily 365 project is obviously only a project for the duration of the year. But regardless, blogging, writing, and making content is something I’ve always found enjoyable. One thing to note is that after realizing that I had two blogs that I wasn’t really producing much content for all of last year made me feel kind of lame.

I had my main personal brand website where I posted design stuff and vlogs and then I had Eagle & Bison which I was only limiting to short videos and life documentation. I figured that I should just consolidate and get rid of the Raulativity site and post the same content on the Eagle & Bison site. And that is what I intend to do from now on. I love how the E&B website looks and functions and want to develop it more. I don’t necessarily want to stop making vlogs when I go to conventions so I figured that content would fit right in on this site.

Regardless of all these changes, none of it really matters. It’s not like I have to force any one thing to be anything else. That’s why I love being a designer so much. I can do or make whatever content I feel like because I have the skills to do it. Plus challenging myself is one of my favorite things to do. And that’s exactly what I intend to do this year.