meilan_firaga | End of 2024 Life Update

I've been basically gone from DW and fandom in general for a while, so I thought a life update might be a good idea. Everything's under a cut so I don't take up too much Reading Page space. :)

Life Update

I have a long-term romantic partner now. His name is Andrew, and we got together in February of 2023. He is a part of my life that I definitely didn't see coming, but I am insanely happy with him. We were long distance for about a year and a half and now live together.
My dog, Loki, passed away on October 30, 2023. I knew it was coming, but it still completely devastated me. He went in the best possible way: in his sleep after a good morning of playing outside and eating all of his food. I still haven't gotten up the courage to get another pet, but I can feel the itch coming on. Might be trying to talk Andrew into that sooner rather than later.
I left my corporate job after just shy of ten years. In October of 2023, True Dungeon offered me full time employment. I accepted the position with the caveat that I wanted to finish out 2023 at the corporate gig just to make sure my replacement was trained. I started with TD on January 1, 2024, and am now the showrunner for our virtual event offerings and one of the on-site Directors when we take events to conventions. Everything about this job is a dream come true, and I still have a hard time believing that this is my life.
On top of that, being full time with TD means I'm no longer spending a large portion of my free time doing contract work for TD. It's taken a lot of stress out of my life to no longer have to spend most of my energy on a job where I was definitely not happy for 40 to 50 hours of my week and then to follow that up with 15 to 20 hours of contract work. I can actually rest and recuperate in a way I haven't been able to for years.
My tabletop gaming group only meets once a month now instead of weekly. I supplement that by playing in groups I found on StartPlaying.Games. I'm currently in a weekly Curse of Strahd campaign (we're heading into Castle Ravenloft tomorrow night to start the final confrontation) and two play-by-post campaigns. All of those are D&D, which is wild for me because I typically play more of indie RPGs than the big one.
I travel SO MUCH MORE than I used to, and I've been traveling quite a lot for years. Andrew and I both have friends and family scattered across the country, and it's now fairly normal for us to take a couple trips a year to go visiting. On top of that, there's all the travel we do for conventions with True Dungeon. In 2024 alone we've been to:
- Bozeman, Montana
- Chicago, Illinois (in fairness, Andrew lived there the first half of this year, but it was a trip for me getting there then and a trip we made together in the fall)
- Carbondale, Illinois (TD's workshop is there)
- Columbus, Ohio
- Indianapolis, Indiana
- San Antonio, Texas
- Portland, Oregon
- Madison, Wisconsin and surrounding area (specifically Spring Green for The House on the Rock)
- Kentucky a few times to visit my family
- Michigan a couple times to visit Andrew's family
At the end of June 2024, my landlord informed me that he would not be renewing my lease on the cabin in the woods. This left me with just 30 days to find a place, pack all my shit, and get moved while prepping for the largest convention True Dungeon does each year--Gen Con. There was much panic on my end, but it was also a great opportunity. Andrew and I had been discussing living together, but hadn't done a whole lot on it yet. Within a week of getting the news we signed a lease on a fabulous new place in Kent, Ohio. Living in Kent has been my goal for years and getting to live here with him is just icing on the cake. The worst part of it was honestly the month of July while I was packing to get moved. Several friends helped where they could, but I did a lot of the packing and moving work alone since Andrew was still so far away. I got the last of my stuff into the new place literally on the day I had to drive to Indiana for Gen Con. It was a wild ride.