The creator's quandary

Been thinking a bit of late, and this is doubtless something anyone who enjoys writing, making videos or simply talking about their hobbies has run into: it's good to make time for yourself occasionally.

I say this as someone who, both when writing about games as a hobby and doing it professionally as I do now, often finds himself thinking about what he "should" be doing in terms of simply enjoying gaming, rather than what he feels like at any given moment. For example, I often wonder if I "should" spend my weekends working through some substantial visual novels and RPGs so that I can write about them or make videos on them.

The thing is, I actually want to engage with these works at some point, but it's the feeling of "obligation" that sometimes holds me back. Or perhaps more accurately, the feeling that I "should" spend my time doing something that is more immediately "useful". The silly thing is that with the way my brain works, I end up completely overthinking the whole situation and wasting a whole lot of time, when I could simply be enjoying a video game that I feel like playing at any given moment.

I'm going to try and break that habit a bit. While yes, I do still want to play things so that I can write about them over on Rice Digital and make videos about them, I'm going to try and let go of the feelings of "guilt" I sometimes feel if I decide I'm simply in the mood for something else. Today, for example, I just felt like playing some more nail'd, even though that's not in any way "useful" for either Rice Digital or YouTube — I just wanted to play it. So I did. And I enjoyed it.

These feelings don't come out of resentment or anything like that; quite the contrary, in fact. Those who have been following me for a while — which is most of you reading this — will know that one thing I love doing more than anything with both my written and video work is highlighting things that don't get nearly enough attention from the mainstream. Trouble is, by the very nature of these things, there are so many of them that it's hard to pick and choose what to cover when!

I have games in my collection that I want to play through from start to finish that extend right back to the 8-bit era. And "analysis paralysis" quite often prevents me from diving into things that I know I'll enjoy — plus the desire not to have too many things on the go at once, because leaving things unfinished is a personal bugbear of mine. That's probably a slightly different matter though!

Anyway, I guess the main point of all this is that it's important to give yourself permission to simply enjoy yourself — for no other reason than rest, relaxation and the enjoyment of your hobby. Not everything needs to end up as an article, an essay, a video or a podcast; sometimes it's okay to just have fun with something and that be that.

I need to keep reminding myself of this!