#oneaday Day 270: Remembering

I won't lie, I've had a bit of a rough weekend mental health-wise.

The reason for this is the news I mentioned yesterday: the untimely death of independent game developer Alec Holowka after unproven accusations of sexual misconduct.

The reason this bothers me so much is that I feel like it could easily have been me. Not because of the sexual assault allegations, I hasten to add, but because I've been through a similar case of being abandoned by people I thought were my friends.

I've talked about the story of the end of my career in the professional games press numerous times at this point, but it still hurts five years later, as it had such a huge impact on my life and overall wellbeing that it's hard to let go of it, particularly when things remind me of what happened.

Before I continue, I hasten to add that I am by no means attempting to equate my experiences to that of Alec Holowka over the past few days. I am simply saying that in another timeline, I could see myself having been driven to despair just as he was.

For those unfamiliar, the end of my time in the games press occurred on my birthday in 2014. I received an email out of the blue from Rupert Loman, head honcho of Gamer Network, the parent company of USgamer, where I was working at the time, and their more well known, well established cousin Eurogamer.

The email was simple and to the point. It informed me that the decision had been made (without me) to proceed with USgamer with an all-American staff. I had originally been brought on board to populate the site with content during my daytime, meaning that Americans would have something new to read on USgamer by the time they woke up, thanks to me.

I did a good job. I covered a wide variety of topics, not just those of personal interest to me, but I also made a point of having a unique voice and perspective — and over time, my contributions resulted in USgamer being regarded as both a reputable, reliable news source and a site that was friendly to games that often found themselves treated unfairly by other sites out there.

But all that was thrown out of the window that day. I was cast out of my dream job for reasons that I still believe were spurious; I'm all but certain it was because I didn't participate in modern "progressive" culture — or, as we now know it, that side of the media that is perpetually offended about one thing or another.

The reason I believe this is that before I'd even left the site completely, editor Jeremy Parish brought on board two of his sycophantic cronies, both of whom played a part in undoing a lot of the goodwill I'd generated with parts of the community often not well represented by the press.

But this side of things isn't why Holowka's passing reminds me of bad times; it's what happened alongside all this.

To put it simply, I lost a lot of friends pretty much overnight. None of them were publicly distancing themselves from me as Holowka's friends did over the last few days, but I was still abandoned by people that I once spoke to on a daily basis, and had even met in person a few times.

People I used to podcast with. People I started out working alongside. People I just liked. So many of them turned their backs on me, and have not, to date, ever reached out to see how I'm doing. Not one of them has stopped by MoeGamer or YouTube and said "good job" or even attempted to start a discussion.

I've made a lot of new online friends since, thankfully, but sometimes it's hard not to feel very alone, particularly at times like this. I'm thankful that I was just "ghosted" rather than "cancelled" as Holowka was, but it's still not a pleasant experience to have gone through, and I freely admit that even my experiences led my mind to dark places on occasion.

I'm not going to preach to anyone here about how to live their lives or anything; I just wanted to take a moment to express how the events of the last few days have made me feel, and what they've reminded me of.

Thanks for listening, and may tomorrow be a better day for everyone.