🍂 November Letter — A vision for the future

November is here — and with it, that cozy sense of renewal I love so much!
At the start of every month, I ask myself: "How can I add value this time?"
But before answering that, I want to share a little about everything we went through last month.

October: From Illness to Clarity

With everything that happened — especially health-wise — I feared I wouldn’t be able to deliver the quality and consistency you all deserve for supporting me. But over time, that fear proved unfounded. Because it doesn’t matter if I’m bleeding or breaking down — everything I live and attract has a purpose.

The creator I am today wouldn’t exist without the challenges I faced before. Pain made me stronger. Doubt made me sharper. And insecurity became fuel for my journey and decisions.

After a long time, I finally decided to seek help last month.
I heard several possible diagnoses — Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, fissures, hemorrhoids… and I’ll admit, it scared me at first. I’m still in the process — this month, I’ll undergo a biopsy to learn more. Blood tests came back mostly fine, with slight inflammation markers.

But I also realized that even these possibilities were manifested by me.
They symbolized all the emotional weight I carried in September — anger, insecurity, bottled-up feelings. And in October, I made a commitment to let those emotions flow and return to their origin.

I sought help not only physically — through medicine — but also mentally and spiritually.
And I found the best guidance anyone can have in life, completely free: mothers!

I was lucky to choose an incredible woman to bring me into this world.
She’s not just an inspiring woman to me — she’s an extraordinary human being.

At 62 (turning 63 this month!), she’s a Pilates instructor, massage therapist, therapeutic facilitator, writer (we co-authored a book together), and runs a healthy food business from home — waking up every day around 4 or 5 a.m. to get everything ready.

Every Saturday, she welcomes people into her home to share her story, listen to theirs, and show how she prepares and sells her products — all to help others thrive and care for their health. And she does it all for free! She serves her dishes while teaching.

(My mother is the woman in the blue dress on the left.)

I see in her a living example of how love + purpose + planning + focus + execution can take us far.

But that’s not even all.
She participates in running events almost every weekend, works out daily, answers (no exaggeration) over 70 messages a day, and offers personal support to clients in a way that, honestly, would drive me crazy.

And she does it all within the same 24 hours you and I have.
I could say I envy her for that — but the truth is, I deeply admire her.
Even on her worst days, I’ve never seen her stop.
And today, I understand where my strength and persistence come from.

She helped me face my emotions, treated me — and that alone healed many of my physical struggles. I became lighter. More conscious about where I place my energy and focus.

Even what I went through in September taught me valuable lessons. All the emotions I felt transformed into compassion — not for others’ decisions, but for my own. It sounds strange, but I hadn’t truly looked into my own eyes in the mirror for a long time. Hadn’t thanked my organs for functioning so well under so much daily pressure.

And if I learned one thing, it’s this:
You can’t give love to everyone else if you can’t first give it to yourself.

Finding Focus Again

October’s events helped me make more organized and efficient decisions.
I decided to focus fully on Patreon — offering even more value to everyone who supports me.

And, not by coincidence, we reached our highest supporter peak in 5 years! (THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH!!)

I created a survey about the ideal The Sims 3 experience, and your responses were incredible! Oh — and thank you to everyone who voted for our story in the inZOI server event: we won the contest with the most votes in every category!

That makes me immensely proud.
A creator without a community is just a lonely traveler — and you all remind me daily of the power we have when we build together.

What’s Ahead

After reviewing your survey responses, I realized that a project I first imagined in January fits perfectly with what players want.
I brought it back and thought:

“There’s so much potential here. It’ll be long, repetitive, exhausting... but the results will match the effort.”

So, I revisited all my previous work and started updating my mods to align with this new vision.

During my time in hospitals and clinics, notebook and pen in hand, observing people and their interactions, I found — curiously — the inspiration I needed to bring this mod to life.

I also published two Patreon posts discussing solutions to major in-game issues.
Many of those problems already had answers — they just needed to be gathered in one place.
I hope these posts (Here and Here) helped you enjoy The Sims 3 with more fluidity and joy.

And in October, I released our Modular Pillars set, along with a full English translation of Social Classes — an insane but necessary task to make the mod accessible worldwide.

A huge thank-you to my friend Madi (@accotonsock), who tested the mod, pointed out adjustments, and helped me polish the final details.

What November Holds 🌟

With all that said, and circling back to that first question — How can I add value this time? — here’s a glimpse of what’s coming:

🏛️ Social Classes Mod — public release on the blog by the 15th.
📻 New mod inspired by The Sims 1 and 2 — Sims will now wake up if someone nearby turns on the radio or TV.
🚗 New project suggested by my wife — a Driver’s License Mod! The goal is to make the process more challenging and let young adults, adults, and elders ask other Sims to teach them how to drive.
🌍 New TinyWorld! — a project that represents the pinnacle of The Sims 3 simulation. Tiny Worlds allow me to deliver what the game’s first trailer once promised: an open, optimized, and vibrant world.

Yesterday I publish a post titled “Design Philosophy: The Worlds of Tomorrow”, detailing everything I’ve learned about world design — and how those insights are shaping the future of our projects. (It also made me realize that I had been neglecting some of the ticket rewards, so I plan to make a greater effort to share more posts like this — ones that reflect on the process, decision-making, and technical approaches — to support interested people, curious minds, and other creators who are also developing mods or have an interest in the topic)

🎨 I also plan to release the custom filters I use in The Sims 3 through Nvidia’s Ansel filters as ready-to-use presets (that way, you won’t have to manually adjust each parameter as I show in my optimization tutorial: one preset for CAS and another for Live Mode).

Infinite Gratitude 💛

Thank you for continuing this journey with me.
Every comment, every message, every bit of support — it all fuels me to keep building.

You’re more than a community for me — you’re family. None of this would exist without you. It’s thanks to your support that I have the time to research, test, iterate, edit, build, share, and bring all these creations to life.

November is the month to light small fires — to prepare for something I might’ve been meant to do long ago:

Letting Sims choose for themselves what to do with their lives.

Every mod, world, and project I create serves one purpose: to expand the player’s ability to tell stories through emergent decisions. Modular architectures, districts with unique identities, worlds that reflect the search for meaning — all of it is part of this living, breathing experience we’re building together.

The stories we’ll tell with everything we’ve made (and everything still to come) are just the beginning of this incredible journey.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT — and for your relentless creative energy and ambition on this journey to make the game we love so much better, bigger, and more cohesive!