Last year, I kept track of how far I ran (miles), how much I wrote for fun/free (words), how much time I spent playing RPGs with friends (hours), and how many books I read.

The very first thing I wrote for this site back in 2022 was a post about the creative fulfillment I get from playing roleplaying games. I’m fortunate to have three (mostly) regular game groups, and to have had the opportunity to run a Dungeons & Dragons game at work that wrapped up in early 2024. Below is a list of the dozen different game systems I played, adding up to about 130 total hours of collaborative storytelling and fun.

• Monster of the Week – I’d played this a few times before and love the system. This year I sat in the Keeper’s chair for the first time and ran the intro adventure, “Dream Away the Time.” (Lesson learned: I underappreciated the quick thinking and improvisation of the Keeper who introduced me to MotW – the game mechanics are easy, but reacting and shaping the story on the fly was quite an adjustment from other gamemastering, and my players were understanding and patient and said they’d like to return to the world we built together.)
• Rocket Age – Our Monday night crew takes turns running different systems. This adventure took us from Mars to Earth to Venus, clashing with Nazis, rescuing a queen, and dodging thunder lizards.
• Mörk Borg – A one-shot, one-night intro to the system run by my friend Alex, founder of Forge of Ice and contributor to the Förk Borg book. (He also created his own Lost World setting game, which I’ll get to in a bit.)
• Alien – Surprise, we all died in space. Funny, because the game is atmospheric as hell.
• Pathfinder – I played more hours of this than anything else, because this is a semi-monthly campaign that’s well into its fourth year. It’s easily the longest campaign I’ve been a part of, and we’ve seen our characters go from levels 1-11 so far. (I’m playing a Brawler named Skunk. I kickpunch and grapple things and have recently learned that I’ve got a strange flavor of lycanthropy that didn’t come from a bite, but has been undiscovered until now.)
• Dungeons & Dragons (Fifth Edition) – At work, I’m co-founder of a Tabletop and Roleplaying Games affinity group, which we started in part because some of us had started an after-hours game, and other co-workers were interested in learning or re-discovering what D&D is all about. Last March, we wrapped up “The Sunless Citadel,” and we’re currently figuring out what to do this year.
• Advanced Dungeons & Dragons – The 1977-81 game Gen X nerds grew up on. I play several sessions of this every year at Gary Con.
• Dungeons & Dragons (1974 Edition) – A serious throwback and a hell of an adventure, also played at Gary Con.
• Something is Wrong with the Chickens – I have no idea where Brian found this “one-page, rules-lite TTRPG of Chickens, Eldritch Horror, and Revenge,” but it made for a hilarious Monday night.
• Cy-Borg – Brian ran this one, too, and here’s the highlight: Casino heist, yeah? So our party learns that the casino shuts down from 7-10am every day; we find the half-hidden rear entrance that the cleaning crew uses; and we obtain a device to unscramble the coded lock. Naturally our plan becomes “We should go in the front door during peak business hours so we blend in.”
• Star Trek Adventures – I played this during my first trip to Origins and signed up purely on the adventure’s premise: While the rules were Star Trek, the adventure was a sequel to Galaxy Quest. By Grabthar’s Hammer, we had a blast.
• Azor – Alex Bates’ sword-and-sorcery lost-world game and setting. The Monday night crew playtested an upcoming adventure.
• Pulp Cthulhu – Our current Monday night game. Shit goes sideways in alternate history 1930s New York City.

One system I missed last year? Numenera. I’ve run it for a couple groups and love the Ninth World. Hopefully I can get back there in 2025.

Last year, I kept track of how far I ran (miles), how much I wrote for fun/free (words), how much time I spent playing RPGs with friends (hours), and how many books I read.

I am lucky to have a full-time job that involves a lot of writing, but sometimes that means it’s difficult to sit down at another keyboard for personal projects after spending the work day wrestling words into the right order. What I tracked last year on my own time was completely unpaid writing or editing done either for myself or for friends.

My writing included:

• Travel journaling
• Writing for a progressive political campaign (something I’d never done before, but will again)
• A collection of a friend’s memories from the late 1970s
• Role playing game content (I’ve been working on a couple short adventures and other stuff)
• Posts for this site
• Short fiction
• Revisions to an existing book

I’m happy with the variety, if not the quantity: In total, I wrote or edited about 17,400 non-work words in 2024 – which isn’t a lot, taken together. But I did put together some things I’m proud of, and I hope to create significantly more in 2025.

Alphaville’s “Forever Young” album is 40 years old this fall.

I don’t remember hearing the iconic title song until fall 1989, when I was a freshman at Bowling Green State University and it grabbed my guts and heartand squished them to a wrenching pulp while still filling me with wonder and hope and possibility every time Marian Gold’s voice reached up for that final yearning verse about adventures missed and songs forgotten.

My roommate had the Alphaville Singles Collection from 1988, I put the original “Forever Young” on a mixtape so I could listen to it back home after the school year, and then at some point I bought the full album on cassette. I honestly can’t remember if it was before or after I spent July of 1990 in Germany, which made “Summer in Berlin” hit much differently. (Also, yes, it’s a different feel, but I do also love the Special Extended Mix from the Singles Collection, with its energy and danceability, and I’m listening to that version right now and it is a delight I haven’t listened to in too, too long.)

When I went back to BGSU as a sophomore that fall, I had a bit of a rough start to the year: Two of my closest friends weren’t there any more, I had a lousy randomly-assigned roommate, and I often felt alone. One mopey afternoon I walked four miles round-trip to the K-Mart on the south end of town and spent a good chunk of my saved money on a boom box with a CD player and lugged it back to my dorm along with two CDs – “Forever Young” and “Pink Floyd: The Wall.” (Yeah, mood. I know. Funny postscript – I mentioned this purchase to my parents and they said they’d been planning on getting me a CD player for Christmas, so I took the boom box back a couple days later. I feel like I bummed a ride from someone that trip.)

Anyway, I love the whole “Forever Young” album, but the title track remains one of my all-time favorite songs. I kept listening to it through college, through a terrible relationship, through a move to Florida while in said relationship, and then, a little bit after that unfortunate episode had come to its end, I met this girl Jenn and played it for her, and we kissed for the first time, and then a couple years later we got married and stayed that way. (I mean, that alone would be an excellent reason for this to be my favorite song, right?)

Why do I love this song so much? I mean, it’s ’80s synthpop. It’s melancholic and dreamy and its swells run deep and it’s everything I’ve always loved about a particular style and sound of music. But also, while “Forever Young” has never changed, I have.

I was 18 when I first fell in love with this song. I’m 53 now. That’s 35 years of listening to “Forever Young” on countless warm-night drives with the windows down, and close nights with rain on the windows, and mornings on the way to work at Walt Disney World, and after second-shift jobs when most of the world was silent. I listened on visits home from college, when Hartville, Ohio’s roads seemed suddenly small and narrow but still mapped in my DNA; and out between the vast cornfields of Northwest Ohio; during dark times in Florida when I was far away from everyone who knew me best; and on the interstates when Jenn & Kelsey slept during overnight road trips; and driving home from visits to Kelsey when she was in college.

I listen and sing (badly) because even when I was a teenager, I recognized the beautiful impossibility of the song’s chorus. I listen because while I’m singing “Forever Young” I think how I really do hope to actually get to be old. I sing it thinking of people who did in fact, die young – and the perception of that has changed, too. I think of my friend Tobi, who died when she was four years younger than my daughter is now; and my dad, who died seven younger than I am now; and my grandfather, who died several years younger than my mom is now.

“Forever Young” still strikes resonant chords, and it never hits the same as the years pass – but the me of this moment loves it just as much as the me of all those other moments, and at this point, I’m pretty sure the me of the moments to come will still be listening to it and feeling the echoes of all of us who sang along the way.

When I was a kid, I had a subscription to an astronomy magazine called “Odyssey,” and I loved it: Articles about NASA; pictures of other planets, moons, nebulae; do-it-yourself science experiments; monthly guides on stargazing with cool charts introducing me to the constellations. (True story: “Odyssey” was the home of my first published work of fiction – a couple paragraphs entered as part of a contest to create legends based on the features of the moon. No, I will not be sharing it.) This is where I learned to spot Orion – and it’s been my favorite constellation ever since.

I know, it’s an easy pick: Neat name, jeweled sword with a naked-eye nebula, brightest in the cold clear Ohio winters. Orion’s always been my sky calendar and reminder of the constant motion of the stars and time. When I used to do a lot of pre-dawn running, the first sign that summer was ending were those mornings I’d get up and catch Orion just over the horizon. How huge it seems when it’s low in the sky, and how unfailingly wondrous to view M-42 through binoculars or a telescope.

Three of the best star names are in Orion, too: Betelgeuse, Rigel, and Bellatrix.

Anyway, I’m 53 years old now, and here’s my first tattoo:

It was hot and sunny, and there was a scrabbling in the downspout.

I’m sure over the years, more than one small creature has met its unfortunate fate in any one of the gutters on our house and garage, washed down into the buried sewer pipes. But this one I heard.

Okay, then. Let’s see what we have: I go over to the downspout at the front corner of the garage and give it a couple firm taps.

::rustlerustleskrrrriiik: (A small struggling noise and then the sound of toenails on metal.)

I can’t tell exactly where it is in the pipe, but it’s easy enough to separate the vertical downspout from the s-shaped connector at the bottom which feeds into the sealed pipe below. I figure if it’s in the former, whatever critter is in there will welcome a safe drop into the leafy hostas, and if it’s in the latter, it’ll be a brief scramble upward to daylight and freedom.

The downspout is now open to the plants. There is no sound.

The only visible curve inside the s-pipe is bare, and there’s no noise coming from there, either.

I triple-tap on the vertical pipe again.

:skribbleskritchrattleskreeeee: Still in there, eh? Look down, goofball: That’s freedom and cool shady territory for hiding and fleeing to safety.

Nothing.

Ugh, fine. I get the ladder and a long, thin wooden stake from the garage, and climb up to look down.

Whatever’s in the darkness, it’s far enough down that I can’t see it – but I know it’s there because I don’t see the opening at the bottom of the downspout. Here we go.

With one hand, I steady myself against the roof, and with the other, I gently lower the stake into the downspout, thinking I’ll just loose the critter’s grip and it’ll drop softly into those waiting plants, and we’ll both go about our day.

I am utterly unprepared for the thing which turns out to be a chipmunk to use the stake as a ladder and freaking launch itself out out the pipe with such velocity that it’s just a rocketing brown blur and then for half a heartbeat it’s frozen against a heat-wavering summer blue sky at the peak of a steep parabola, above the gutter and the ladder and the roof line and me and all this is happening as I am yelping in surprise and clutching the roof to keep from tipping backward.

Motion resumes as the chipmunk soundlessly drops, then softly breaks the low canopy of the hostas. There is a muffled thump and receding tiny footfalls toward the patch of mint at the garage’s back corner.

My heart begins to slow again, and I hope the chipmunk’s does, too.

I first heard Depeche Mode around 1986-87, close on the heels of secretly embracing the Pet Shop Boys and New Order. The girl I was dating at the time introduced me to songs from Some Great Reward – Blasphemous Rumours, People Are People, Master and Servant – and I enjoyed them well enough.

My freshman year of college at Bowling Green, though? Depeche Mode was a core part of the fall 1989-spring 1990 soundtrack in our bloodstream, me and my newest, closest friends hanging out long hours, cold days, dizzy nights in close quarters, heading to Alternative Nights at Uptown, playing rummy, sitting on the edge of bunks or desks eating cafeteria sandwiches – good lord, what did we do with all that free time and can I have some of it back please? Yeah: Lots of Depeche Mode and The Cure and Cocteau Twins and Alphaville – and holy fuck, was it a big deal when Violator came out that March, most of the way through the year when there was what seemed then like a lot of emotionally churned water under our bridges.

A few years later, I moved to Florida, where I met Jenn. She was also an alternative music kid, and made me a mixtape including James and Voice of the Beehive and Blake Babies, and sometimes we’d go dancing at Visage, an alt-club where Jenn once memorably threw her black-booted feet around at a particularly elevated level when an unknown young woman was apparently dancing too close to me.

Jenn & I got married, moved to Ohio, raised a wonderful human, and I kind of stopped paying attention to Depeche Mode very much for awhile, except for the nostalgia trips from time to time and then their presence in many of my synthpop streaming music collections when those became a thing.

Over the past few years, Jenn and I started really making an effort to see musicians whose work we enjoy, particularly those we’ve missed out on over the years – bands like Duran Duran, The Cure, and They Might Be Giants. And then last year Andy Fletcher died, and this year Memento Mori came out, and Jenn and I nabbed Depeche Mode tickets for Cleveland as soon as we could.

Depeche Mode live was everything I wanted: Incredible stage energy, vocals that still deliver a punch to the heart, a wide-ranging set that mixed what I think are the best parts of Memento Mori with 15 songs from their 1981 (Speak & Spell) to 1993 (Songs of Faith and Devotion) catalog.

Best surprise?  Martin Gore’s acoustic “Strangelove.” (Pictured above.) It’s my favorite Depeche Mode song, and they’re rotating it in and out of the set, so I didn’t want to get my hopes up. But when I heard the familiar keyboard intro plinking gorgeously from the synthesizer – I don’t know how else to describe it when you program an electronic keyboard to sound like a traditional piano – well, things got a little dusty in my locality of the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse for those three minutes. Second best? “Black Celebration.” Again, one that isn’t being performed at every show, but which nestles darkly and cozily against my insides.

There’s also something incredibly Depeche Mode about seeing this band at this moment in time, decades into a career spent creating music known for its appeal to a joyfully melancholy twilit crowd of goths and new wavers and synthpulsers and weird kids. I’m not saying that sad music created in your twenties isn’t valid and true and real – I’m just saying that stuff hits different coming from a couple sixty-year old guys who have (like all of us of A Certain Age) seen some shit in the past 40+ years. It seems likely this is a final go-round for them – and if it’s not, that’s totally OK, too – but if it is, then wow, guys: Thanks for a hell of a goodbye.