To me, the real new year always began on September 1. There were a few reasons for this: the school calendar, the fact that the Toronto International Film Festival (which I used to attend religiously), was held in early September, the general sense that January was a lousy time to start anything, let alone a year. But most significantly, because today, September 1, is my birthday.

It has been a really interesting, and in some ways, very trying year, but I find myself feeling optimistic, and dare I say buoyed, by the strength and love of the family and community around me.

Earlier this summer I learned that in the maelstrom of changes and layoffs occurring at Xbox, my job—my beloved job—as Narrative Director at Compulsion Games was not going to continue. This was difficult news for me to take, and I went through some challenging week, emotionally and cerebrally. I cared, and still care a lot about the team I had the pleasure of working with. For the last few years my brain had been deeply saturated with the (still un-announced) title we had been working on, my thoughts and dreams full of this game and its stories. So to deal with all this, I had to un-pick both my head and my heart.

In the end, Compulsion spun off from Microsoft to go independent, in what will have to be an entity different from what it was when it was an appendage of the biggest company in the world. To be clear, I’m very, very happy about this outcome, and optimistic for what this means for the studio and all the wonderful work, now back in independent hands, past and future. It is, I think, the “best worst case” scenario.

But for now, I do need to think about my own future, now that I personally have spun out of Microsoft. What does this mean?

Frankly, I have no darn clue. But while this was cause for panic some months ago, I’ve mellowed to a sort of surfer-guru detachment about the future.

I’m working on another movie with Sarah; I’m creating a Something Good-adjacent multimedia project; I have back-burners full of ideas I haven’t been able to get to for years. I’m thinking about turning monetization on here at the newsletter, but in a sort of low-key, “tip jar,” nothing really paywalled way. This was, and will always be, a money-losing enterprise, but there are hard costs to not affiliating yourself with a free, name-brand, newsletter provider which I will not name.¹

No decisions have been made in this matter yet, so please let me know your thoughts, objections, ideas.

This is my update. Thanks to everyone who reached out with Japan advice and suggestions last week! I am increasingly excited for our visit in November, and still accepting recommendations. I was going to write a guide to what I’ve been reading lately, but I’m gonna kick that can down the road again and keep this short, sweet, and personal. But I do expect you’ll be hearing from me more often from now on. I hope that’s OK.

Oh and you can, you know, tell a friend or subscribe below if you want to support me for now.