Creativity Update

I've written about this a few times, the previous two posts can be seen here.

And because it makes my soul feel good to see a current list of everything in one place, I thought it was time to revisit the list.

To this point in my life, I've created:

• three books (one choose your own adventure, one novel and one personal essay collection)
• five short films (VQ1, VQ2, Interview, Glen Undercover, Behind the Startup)
• three blogs: (one personal, one family, and one dedicated to writerly pieces)
• a tabletop game
• a cookbook
• a youtube series
• a photography collection
• two podcasts
• two albums in a high school band
• a twitter account where I pretend to be a comedian
• a restaurant concept with full menu
• two web riddles
• a side business designing book covers

In the last two years, I haven't added a ton to the list. There have been periods where I've focused on Hoagie Central, particularly around Super Bowl LIV. There have been periods where I've put all my attention on trying to be the best dad I can be. But like everything in life, it's all about trying to keep everything in balance. 

One thing I've noticed is that all the video games I've played in the last few years have a creative component to them. 

• The golf game where I built my own course, Hitman where I created my own contracts. 
• I bought Dreams thinking I could build my own game from scratch, but the tools have quite the learning curve. 
• So instead this year I've created over 30 levels in Mario Maker 2. It's really scratched my itch of wanting to develop a video game. 
• And I'm super excited about the Tony Hawk remaster, especially for the chance to build my own skate parks again. 

- - -

Last year, I teased that I was writing a new book. That was a bit premature. I will be writing new fiction content at some point, but instead of turning it into an ebook, I will be publishing it on Medium. That might be six months away. But plenty of non-fiction content will be going up in the meantime. 

In the last month, I've been very excited about getting back into Medium. I've found that when I'm writing pieces specifically for others to read, I find myself thinking about things differently. As I'm processing news, instead of stifling my opinions as something just to keep to myself, they end up growing and forming and begging to be let out of my head until I can finally get it on to the page.