Autumn 2025 Newsletter

Content Warning: Reflections on illness and death of a loved one

I ended my Summer Newsletter (my first on this site) by writing, "... and I don't think I've ever felt more focused or ready for what is to come."

While everything I wrote was true—at least in regards to my creative life—it turned out that real life didn't care much about my feelings. A few days after sharing my reflection on where I've come from and plans for the future, I was in the hospital, staring at the ceiling, unable to breathe without a machine. Unexpectedly, a simple cold that I thought over turned into severe pneumonia in both my lungs. I was scared, and in a way that I've not experienced before.

Okay, I thought. I've not had many severe health challenges, and these things happen. I'll take it easy and bounce back quickly. Honestly, I'm a lucky guy.

So I spent a few days in the hospital, listened to the doctors, did everything they asked of me, and made some big (overdue) life changes while recovering. I fell behind in life—I'm not used to being unable to write, work, or walk a few steps without getting winded. It took long weeks after coming home to start feeling better, but the changes I enacted made me feel proud. Optimistic and excited, even.

And then, while I was still recovering but starting to return to writing and running games, my mom passed away. It was sudden, though not unexpected. My mom was still fairly young but had been very sick for a long time. Almost 20 years. There'd been many frantic flights across the country, lingering quiet moments that felt final, and long stretches where things seemed to get better for a while. I'd been in and out of processing her passing for most of my adult life.

Everyone faces the death of a loved one differently. When it finally happened, I put everything on hold: my new (good) recovery habits, writing, games, keeping up with friends, or even acknowledging that I was still not well. I'm the oldest in my family, and I knew my siblings and our families would need me.

Okay, I thought. I can do this and help the people I love get through it, too. I've got broad shoulders, an organized brain, and am a good listener. I'm lucky.

And so came the planning, choosing urns, flowers, wood grains—and a shady plot by a young tree, facing the old library nearby. Then came the distillation of a complicated human being's life into a series of faded pictures gathered into a slideshow, the selection of 60 minutes of music to honor a parent and try to help everyone saying goodbye feel open but at ease. Then came the strange hellos, the out-of-body experience of delivering a eulogy, and the even stranger goodbyes. And finally came embracing my siblings all together in the shadow of a young tree near an old library. It might have been the first time we'd ever done that.

And now comes more planning, the slow unraveling of the tangled knot left behind when we leave this world for whatever comes next, and the redefinition of what our family will become now. Throughout all of this, I've had a lot of help from my incredible partner, my siblings (and their partners), and my many friends who were patient with me when I uncharacteristically floated away. I wouldn't be okay without them—I've learned that my shoulders aren't quite as broad as I figured.

This fall has been unexpectedly exhausting, expensive, and at times, scary. But things are more normal today than they were yesterday. I want to live and love and create stories for a very long time to come, and the changes I'm making to my life are overdue. Some of those changes will start in the New Year, and others are already making my life better and healthier now.

On Gratitude and the New Year

I know this newsletter is unusual. Normally, it would be stuffed with my ramblings about what I'm working on, future ideas or plans, and how much I love the stories I get to share with the wonderful RPG community in our little corner of the internet. And it's true—there are a ton of cool new projects I'm excited about for next year! Maybe even too many, which probably isn't a surprise to folks who know me.

If you've read all of this, thank you so much for letting me share it with you. I began writing this with more than a bit of dread. How do you acknowledge and write about something so personal that you're still trying to make sense of? It's obviously something that I'm still processing while I try to make the best of things moving forward.

And somewhere along the way, maybe a few paragraphs ago, I felt some small bit of the heaviness from these past weeks lift. And that's how it's been every time I've sat down to play a game about imaginary characters raising dragons, or riding dinosaurs, or navigating courtly politics, or spinning up wizardly shenanigans, or blowing up space ships and bad guys in a galaxy far away, or facing grief, family, and unknowable cosmic horrors in small-town America.

So for the folks who play those games and tell those stories with me—and who have given me so much support—I can't say enough how grateful I am and how much it means to me.

I'm a lucky guy.