I often find it hard to comprehend discussions from older generations on their work habits. Many older people I know had or are currently working at the same job for 10 or more years. A few people I know have worked at the same company over 30 years across a handful of job titles.

For me, in the last 15 years of my life, I’ve had at least as many jobs, worked at three different institutions in three different states, and, in the last five years, done three 500+ mile moves. Trying to plan for the longer-term, generally beyond six months to a year, has proven frustrating, as I often do not know what job I will be doing, what my work hours may look like, or even where I might be living next until it happens.

This instability in my life has meant trying to do any recurring events across multiple years can prove difficult if not impossible for me. Even things like family traditions have slipped away at times as I find myself hundreds of miles away for a job or an academic conference places me on the other side of the country at the same time. This has remained true for nearly everything, it seems, except making Twine content.

During the writing of my dissertation early this year, I discovered something I had forgotten: this year, 2023, marks a full decade of making pedagogical content on the authoring tool Twine. My first video was in January 2013. My first attempts at writing longer guides on Gamasutra (now Game Developer) followed soon after, in February 2013. Following a #TwineTuesday series on this blog, I began to create longer video series on versions of Twine including 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3.

As I type this, I am in the middle of a new series on Twine 2.6. It is most comprehensive and, within the next few days, will be the longest video series I have ever made with at least 45 videos planned with a possibility of over 50, depending on how this month works out and if I receive more suggestions for videos.

During the finishing of my dissertation, and now into working on this video series on Twine 2.6, I have been reflecting on the fact my legacy, if there can be said to be one, is heavily tied to Twine and its community. My dissertation was on Snowman, a story format packaged with Twine, and I have hundreds of videos potentially thousands of people have watched to learn authoring tools like Twine over the last decade.

In the same way older generations have affected companies and other institutions over years into decades of service and labor, my tiny slice of history may very well be the Twine videos and resources I have created. There may come a point, like the lifecycle of many other authoring tools, where all that remains of Twine are resources and videos like the ones I have created. It is funny, in a dark way, perhaps, to consider I may be cited much more in the future as a creator of learning resources for an outdated tool than in the present as the one creating the videos in real-time. My impact might very well be larger looking back than it is in the present trying to look forward into my own — and Twine’s — future.