Our Intent: Share our goals and dreams with you.

Here we go!

In the midst of a pandemic, one of the oddest years in our lived history, we thought it would be a perfect opportunity to start our own page and enter the virtual world, beginning a new venture where we can begin to share our thoughts, creative expressions and passions.

You’re probably wondering, start what? What are you doing here? What are you trying to accomplish?

Well it’s easy. There’s two of us here: Ilya Ushakov and Tylor Murray. We have always loved the idea that in each ending there is a new beginning, so the name for this chapter of our lives came out of that: kovray.

If you want to learn more about us and our journey, do check out our About Us page.

Now, we sure love accountability so we decided to create some goals for this new chapter of our lives. We want to come back to this October 2021 with a thorough reflection of the year, looking at how we adapted or achieved our goals.

Beyond goals we wanted to share some dreams, the vision for what we want to see and the purpose behind our goals and the beginning of this journey.

Let’s dive in shall we?

I’ll (Ilya) start off by sharing my excitement, nerves and ambition. It’s definitely a little bit scary putting this all out there, but I’m hoping you’ll stick around and see me work towards achieving my goals. I’ll jump right into it:

1. Refine my writing skills.

   When I was younger, books were my escape from reality. I would read a book a week; those Scholastic order forms (a catalogue of kids books that we would get in school, in which we can order books from) were some of the greatest memories of thrill and joy I remember. The debates I would have with my parents on why I needed these eight specific books rather than my usual one or two could have easily been a reality TV show. As much as I love reading, I have always struggled with putting my own thoughts on paper.

   Don’t get me wrong, I wrote quite a lot when I was younger (there’s a few chapters of my fantasy novel somewhere in my parents attic), but when going through university I lost the joy for both my reading and writing (not sure what caused this but I’m sure I will explore this in a later blog.) I want to reignite my passion and become more confident with my writing. It honestly takes me quite a long time to put my thoughts on paper and I get very nervous sharing what I wrote. This is my opportunity to step out of my comfort zone by writing 52 blogs by October 2021. (Minimum of one a week.)

2. Convince people to try and play board games.

   Funny enough, this one also stems from my childhood. I shamelessly had a collection of action figure ranging from Batman, Star Trek characters, Bionicles, Robocop and various other heroes and villains. Each time I would get a new action figure, they all would go on an adventure and this new character would be the heart of all the action, did they get themselves in a pickle and need to be rescued? were they indoctrinated by evil and do the heroes need to save them? The stories were endless, and my imagination would thrive in this environment I created for myself. My imagination was limitless when I was younger and when I was reading but starting near the end of high school I found myself less creative and struggling to enthrall myself in a world I once knew.

   About two years ago when Tylor and I got into board games my imagination felt as though it was reborn. Which world would I visit today? Was it the world in the medieval west kingdom where I would be a renowned architect, would I build a bird sanctuary to attract many corvids, or would I learn the migration patterns of the monarch butterflies. Saying I love board games is an understatement, but what I love even more is sharing my passion with other people. There’s nothing better than hearing “I think we will need to get this game” after introducing a board game to a friend. My goal is to dedicate blogs to various board games, review games and share my passion with the world through this website and other social media.

3. Store those memories.

   We’re lucky enough to live in a digital age where we have social media, so much of our lives are online; however, it’s hard to capture specific memories and preserve them from the masses. I love sentiments and nostalgia so I thought an organized way of preserving our memories, whether it be a trip we took, a decision we made, or a historic milestone in our lives on this website would be a fantastic idea. When I was younger I would write a significant amount, about current events, my surroundings and how I was feeling at the time. Reading my past thoughts (angsty teenager melodramas) has been a cringey, yet rewarding experience. It is incredible to see how far I have come, how much my thoughts and perspectives have matured and I would love to always have a reflection of how far I and my wonderful fiancé have come, how we’ve changed, matured and adapted. So storing and sharing those memories is part of my goals, welcome to our lives and this journey we are on, for this first year I want to focus and mark some of those big occasions, like our beginning to wedding planning, our decision to potentially move and buy a house, maybe another dog? I want to share those milestones, thoughts and decision making with you.

I often think about an overarching dream, what I want to do in life and the steps I need to take to get there, but to be honest I do not have that grandiose dream yet. Sure, I want to have kids one day and be super-dad, I want a variety of pets, to help people and communities around me, maybe own a board game store one day and inspire many people to have fun and play games and take themselves a bit less seriously?

One of my current dreams that, who knows, maybe I will achieve in the first year is to review a preview copy of a board game from a publisher either for a Kickstarter or a pre-order. That is definitely a milestone I want to work towards.

Now let’s hear from the other half, Tylor.

Hello! I’ll (Tylor) take it from here and dive right into my goals with this blog. Honestly, I can’t count the times I have found myself resisting chasing this creative passion of mine. Ever since I was a wee little lad, I knew it was always there and I never really let myself go for it because of a false sense of insecurities. It’s about time to break through those walls and just go for it!

1. Challenge and grow my photography skills.

   High school graduation, I was lucky enough to receive money towards buying something I have always wanted: a camera. Well, 7 years later and I’ll admit, I have not used it as much as I had hoped to.

   I made this one of my goals because I want to challenge myself to put out material and hold myself accountable for creating content more consistently. But the more important reason for this goal is that I want to push myself to connect with people with the same passions. Some people say I’m a personable and social butterfly but truth is I’m an extremely socially anxious human. I would much rather be the man behind the scenes or have something scheduled so I know what needs to be done and when it will end. Photography is my chance to utilize my hobby to create content for this blog, push myself to market my skills and reach out to fellow photographers for tips, tricks, collaborations or simply making a new friend.

2. Start selling and building my professional art portfolio.

   Photography is one side of my creative mind. But art is another thing I have always been pulled towards. Drawing was one of those things I could rely on to calm me down and pause everything that was going on. Let’s get this straight, I’ve never really considered myself that talented at art but that’s just my impatience and perfectionism coming out. Once I look past that, I think art is one of those skills that is constantly challenged. There is always ways to get better, whether that be through getting better at one style or learning a different style.

   Amidst the global pandemic, I re-ignited my passion towards art and decided to get more serious about learning instead of simply doing; “Practice with Purpose and Intention” as I like to put it. That’s where this goal stems from. I’m hoping to maintain accountability through selling pieces I am confident with while using this energy to push myself to learn and refine my skills as a digital artist.

3. Expand my skills and grow through challenges.

   This blog gives me a space to share my thoughts on the way I have been doing things. It also gives me a chance to hold myself accountable for growing more skills, picking up new habits or testing something out. This goal is a little uncanny and its not an idea I have fully thought through, but there have been a few ideas on my mind that I think might be good to cover on this website.

Essentially, my goals can be narrowed into this overarching theme: Tackle my creative side, step outside of my comfort zone and hold myself accountable for things to come. Creativity is something I value but like I said, I never really thought about pushing forward with it. I am excited to see where this goes!

Where do I see this going? Well, if you don’t start something, you will never know where it could go. That’s just another way of me saying; I have no clue BUT I am excited to find out.

Well that’s about all for now friends! Thanks for getting this far, and we hope you stick around to see what’s in store!