Hindsight is 2020

My latest Kickstarter project is now live, & this is the 7th one I've done so far. It's called POSTCARD BOARD GAMES - Round 4. As we near the halfway point in the campaign, I stopped today with gratitide to look back at where it all started.

I recently found myself looking back, also, to the start of this whole blog. As I did so, I had the phrase "hindsight is 20/20" in the back of my mind. I then realized that, ironically (or more correctly "coincidentally"), the launch year for the blog & 1st Kickstarter project was in 2020. So I guess you could say for this specific entry, hindsight is 2020.

This blog was born during a global pandemic. I thought about everyone around the world sitting at home restricted from movement, & had an idea to create board games to send to anyone on Earth at the lowest price possible. "Could I squeeze an entire game onto a postcard?" I wondered. I was certainly up to the challenge.

After a cursory internet search, I found that the idea of postcard board games was not new. "Dammit," I thought. I emailed a gentleman who had just made a series of small games on postcards. I told him my idea, & how at first I thought it was original, only to find that others had beat me to it. He was gracious & he said there's plenty of room in the genre for more games.

So off I went, creating my 1st Kickstarter project called POSTCARD BOARD GAMES. I wanted to include digital PNP ("print & play") copies to backers so they can print out the games at home. I also wanted to include things like flash fiction stories, soundrack theme songs, 3D figures, & an intro video, all made from scratch. So I set out familiarizing myself with Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Blender, Cubase, Audacy, Vegas Pro, etc. "This was going to be a fun ride," I hoped. And fun it was indeed.

The project was well received, gaining hundreds of pledges from backers in many nations. The project was mentioned in a Kickstarter roundup video by the crew over at The Dice Tower, & I recieved countless messages & comments of support from people. After successful funding, I was able to mail these games to countries far and wide. That being 2020, I imagine that these tiny cards were perfect at the time for reaching out to others during a massive international lockdown.

I'm always nervous when creating something new. I really want people to get their money's worth, so to speak. That's my main motivation, to "give them a show." I don't want to let them down, & I often doubt my talent & therefore my ability to succeed in this manner. Because of this, honest feedback is awesome to me. A backer from Germany told me they played my postcard games with co-workers on lunch breaks at work. Another said they sent them to neices & nephews they were unable to visit. Others mentioned sending & receiving them via Postcrossing. So many cool stories. I smile everytime I receive a message like this. That's why I did this, for people to enjoy & connect with others. To have fun.

In the spirit of this newest postcard project, this week I've been reading a book called Postal Paths by Alan Cleaver. It tells the true story of far flung routes that mail carriers used to trek long ago to deliver handwritten letters around the UK. Some of these wooded paths are still walkable today as public lands. In my related social media search of philately (interest in postal stamps), I came across the news that Denmark's postal service PostNord would cease delivering mail this year. Even the old mailboxes (red colored in Denmark, as opposed to blue in the USA) will be dismantled. "How sad," I lamented. "Perhaps someday all physical mail in the world will go the way of the dinosaur." With the advent of email, apps, & smartphones, this could be a reality. Sounds crazy, but other long-held aspects of culture have faded in the past few decades.

Some countries have already become essentially cashless societies. Even here in the US, the penny will be discontinued forever within a few months. What began in the 1700s will be minted for the last time in 2025. Hundreds of years of service, suddenly gone for good in just a brief moment. At one time essential, now burdensoms & obsolete.

Life is dynamic. Things change & evolve. Out with the old to make room for the new. You can find remnants of some bygone items at flea markets, thrift stores, eBay, & yard sales. But other than a few comments regarding them on online forums, there's often little trace of them.

99 percent of everything has gone extinct. 99% of all species, too. Things analog disappear into digital realms, & so do we - people staring at screens instead of ceilings, down instead of up, desks now empty (save for a tablet, device, or can of soda).  

Turnover is necessary in our world. 300 million years ago, during the Carboniferous Period, trees did not decay. They just died, fell over, & piled up - for millions of years! It wasn't until certain fungi & other hungry organisms came along that there was a process of renewal for these forests.

But it's tough to think of an upside for individual people's inevitable end when we consider those we loved who passed away. We miss them so much. Some say, logically, that if human turnover wasn't a fact of life, overcrowding might be unsustainable. It also would mean that bad people would just continue being around. And who wants to live in a world where douchebags live forever? So there's a necessity, perhaps, in it all. But in her rush to standardize the birth & death cycle of homo sapiens across the board, fate included a stipulation that everyone has to leave the party at some point. Good people, too. Grandparents, parents, friends, neighbors, lovers, strangers, and eventually us. And subsequently, even our home. Earth itself.

Dwelling on things past can be downright depressing. But a rationally optimistic way of looking at it is thus: If you are sad because you have to leave a place, it means you achieved victory in a certain right. You enjoyed your moments there. You succeeded in having an awesome time, & that is not always easy or guaranteed. You won. As they say in gambling terms, you left the casino "up." Think about a time when you had an awful experience. Maybe a foul meal, a shitty party, whatever. Were you sad to leave? Nope. You were glad to be rid of it. So the next time you must wave goodbye with a heavy sigh to something you look upon with fondness, remember that at least you made the most of it that you could. You're leaving "up."

What excites me about all this is that many of the things we loved and lost at one point had a joyous & serendipitous beginning. That kind of beginning liekly came from a happenstance so strangely unique & fortuitous that its difficult to calculate the odds of it even coming into existence. A mysterious confluence of events. A confluence that has a habit of creating such beautiful things - things we couldn't predict with precision even if we were given a hundred years of guesses. Just look at a simple, standard deck of playing cards. If you lay them out in any order, you truly created something special. For the odds of anyone else ever being able to also randomly come across that same configuration is mind boggling. Wanna know the exact number? It's called 52 factorial, or 52!, or 8.0658x10^67, or literally 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000. 🤯 In other words, there's more combinations in that deck of cards than there are atoms on the Earth.

That means there’s tons more possibilities of things strange & wornderful out there in the future that have yet to be born. Perhaps future people, places, & events more fascinating than we can dream of while in a current state of loss-inspired apathy.

Call me crazy, but i think the future will be bright. Then again, maybe I'm in the end generation of our species & nuts for even thinking that. But I do. I'm optimistic. And when the horizon looks bleak, theres one damn good reason for still carrying hope in your pocket: It's free.

So here we are. 5 years removed from the pandemic birthing this tiny blog that not many people read (lol).

But if you are reading this, I just wanted to say thanks. Thanks for humoring me & my odd ideas. Thanks for being you. Thanks for being here on the planet, if only just for a moment.

This moment.

You rock. Take care.

-T

POSTCARD BOARD GAMES - Round 4