A hell of a year…
Photo by Ian Stauffer on Unsplash.
2021 was a hell of a year and while the sense of existential dread was a bit higher than in many twelve month calendar cycles, it serves mostly as a reminder that life isn’t every particularly easy. Yet we weathered the hardest parts. I set out to find structure in both my writing and my life in general and found mixed results in doing so.
Still, I had accomplishments. The first was simply the dawn of this website. I have floated somewhat aimlessly around free blogs on the internet for over half a decade, but I set out to give myself a defined home online in 2021 and I found it with the aptly named NicholasAhlhelm.com. I’ve maintained a blog mostly weekly since I launched this site last March.
I published my first book in far too long a time in 2021 as well. Smoke and Ash hasn’t found the sales I hoped it might, but I’m proud of the final product. While only two stories in the book were wholly original, it brought a handful of other stories to people that might not have bought all my oddball shorts as I published them.
I also funded my next novel in the form of KITH. That title should launch in just a couple months after a successful Kickstarter. I’m over-joyed to bring the stories of the Morgan brothers to a larger audience both with that book and its planned follow-up.
Perhaps most importantly, I’ve been writing. I have several books I want to bring out into the world in the new year, but before that can happen I need to actual, you know, write them. Sometimes putting pen to paper (or more accurately, finger to keyboard) can be the hardest task in the world. 2021 wasn’t as productive a year as some before it, but it helped frame a schedule and a workload to maintain my sanity.
I hope to maintain that schedule in 2022, even as I seek to expand my plans. I’m hoping to publish at least four books in 2022, starting with the aforementioned KITH. I have this website and the newsletter to maintain alongside it. But I also have more plans for the new year.
I am aiming to write a new article for Wrestling Deep End every other week. (Right now you can check out the three parts of our Top 50 wrestlers of 2021.) I also have a tentative plan to launch a new podcast with my wife later in the year, one focused on subjects I don’t have a lot of time to go on about normally.
Of course, we can never predict what life will throw our ways in the months ahead, but I’m looking positively towards the new year. The first step to making the world better is for each and everyone of us to make ourselves just a little better. If I can accomplish that, I’ll consider the new year a win.
