Project Samsara - A Year’s End
From the desk of the Shattered Scribe
You know how we do these things, so here we go.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a journalist. We didn’t watch a lot of TV growing up, and so newspapers were my glimpse into the world outside of the narrow cone of my awareness. I liked the crime sections the most; third-world societies are uniquely visceral in the handling of crime and punishment, and my child mind was immensely stimulated by the various depictions of human inhumanity to humans.
After crime though, I found myself a fan of ‘opinion pieces’. Letters from readers, submitted opinion pieces by invited writers, and pieces by the editors themselves. I liked the latter particularly, as the section heading, ‘From the Desk of the Editor’ had a uniquely hallowed ring to it, like some deific figure was pulling their head from where it was submerged in the clouds and taking a moment to share some nugget of divine providence with us. As I grew older I came to realize how much I had come to love the ‘theater of having authority’ as it were, and that my child-self - upon being informed the editor decided what got in to the newspaper and what didn’t - realized they were a uniquely powerful person in the same vein as my church pastor, or the president, or my dad who - in time - came to kill all aspirations I ever had of becoming a journalist.
Now, so many years later, I couldn’t tell you anything specifically I read in those papers, but they served uniquely in making me who I am as a writer today. And so, in an act of characteristic self-indulgence, I author the fourth installment of Project Samsara’s periodic updates as coming from the desk of the Shattered Scribe.
With that out of the way, lets discuss where we are.
We began the year with less than a hundred thousand words under our belt. In March we had a hundred and twenty five thousand - a mighty sum in all respects. Clearing the last day of 2023, we have three hundred thousand. It’s a nice, round figure, sitting nice on the tongue and ringing equally as pleasurable when dropped in a sentence or diffused into the air of a conversation. It has been a wild ride in short, and it makes me thoroughly regretful I don’t mildly impressive charts and completed checklists to show you all about how much we’ve done.
But regarding that - how much we’ve done - we’ve done a lot. Project Samsara has expanded in a manner that leaves me staring at the document stack time and time again when I compelled to reckon with it in its entirety. While fiddling with GitHub the other day, I was opportune to see just how big the project had grown in raw data and file count. It is a lot. I really have no other way to put it; it’s just a lot.
And so I must thank the parties that made it possible. For their support for the last year and before it. For their support from the very damn beginning, when we pulled curtains on SBL1 and launched out into the uncharted vast and deep. We’ve just kept going. It’s remarkable. We’ve just kept going, and we’re not stopping any time soon.
The plan then, for 2024, is simple. To go harder. To be more zealous, more fervent, more dedicated and committed. To wear passion on my face until it becomes undeniable that I am building something and that I am deeply convicted of both it and the workings of it. Samsara has always been built in a thoroughly simple manner; placing one’s head down, nose to the grindstone, and doing The Work. And I have always loved doing The Work, the past year renewing and burgeoning my love for it even further.
So we’ll keep going. Onwards and starwards.
This is my closing statement for 2023. Thank you all for everything.
See you all, on the other side.
- Cryogen, Shattered Scribe