#oneaday Day 754: Hindsight

Every so often, I like to look back over my old blog entries and ruminate on everything that’s come to pass in the time since writing them. Since starting this site back in 2009, and particularly since starting daily posting early in 2010, I think it’s fair to say that a lot has changed. And, pleasingly, mostly for the better.

My early #oneaday posts largely focused on how miserable I was working as a teacher. I had a feeling before I even started that position at that primary school that it was going to be a difficult time — my previous stint as a secondary school teacher had ended with me suffering a nervous breakdown, after all, and I wasn’t keen to return to that place in my mind.

I had thought I should give primary teaching a shot, however, as several family members and friends had said they thought I’d make a good primary school teacher. (I have since forgiven them for saying these things.) Given the amount of unnecessary fighting and workplace bullying I had to put up with to get a foot in the door of primary teaching, I also wasn’t about to give up easily.

But give up I did. Not for lack of trying, but because I recognised the signs of my own decline from last time and wanted to escape before my brain collapsed again. That and I had the opportunity to go to PAX East in Boston, which was something I desperately wanted to do and proved to be, to date, probably the happiest, most fun time of my life.

Subsequently came the chaos that was the end of my marriage. This, in stark contrast to PAX East, was the most difficult, unpleasant experience I have ever been through. The way I felt after breaking down at school that first time was absolutely nothing compared to the sense of guilt, rejection, anger, stupidity, frustration, sadness, regret and all manner of other feels I felt during this dark period of my life. I felt like I was going under, and that this time I’d never make it back up again.

Ironically, I think some of my best writing was done during this period. I guess it’s true what they say: inner pain fuels art.

Make it back I did, though, thanks to support from family and friends. I moved away from the city I’d called home for nearly ten years (even during the periods when I didn’t actually live there) and moved back in to my childhood home.

I was in two minds about this. On the one hand, to be pushing thirty and back living with my parents felt kind of pathetic, like I’d failed at life. On the other hand, I was and am grateful to them for supporting me at that difficult time. I felt hugely depressed for much of the time I lived there as I desperately tried to rebuild my life, struggling to find a job when the only thing I was really qualified was teaching — the career that had nearly killed me.

By a stroke of good fortune, I eventually found myself working for GamePro, initially on a fairly casual basis, then gradually building up my contributions until I was effectively a remote full-time employee, responsible for the majority of the site’s news output. I had a noticeable impact, too — the traffic figures showed that my work was attracting lots of new visitors to the site, and I was developing a good reputation as the face of GamePro’s news posts.

By a further stroke of good luck, I found myself in a new relationship with someone who understood me and my likes a whole lot better than my wife ever did. This developed quickly and eventually gave me the means and the opportunity to fly the nest once again. This, coupled with my work for GamePro, made me feel my life was finally getting back on track.

To date, I think GamePro was my favourite job I’ve ever had. Which is what made it all the more upsetting when GamePro met its unceremonious demise late last year. I saw a variety of panicked-looking emails from other members of staff but since I wasn’t physically present in the office, I’d obviously missed out on some sort of important news. I hoped against hope that it wasn’t what I thought it was, but it was.

I thought for a horrible moment that it was all over again, that things had come to a disastrous close thanks to my reliance on a volatile industry for my career. It had been going so well, though, and right up until the plug was pulled, GamePro’s traffic figures were skyrocketing. But it wasn’t enough.

Now I find myself writing regularly for specialist business sites Inside Social Games and Inside Mobile Apps. I find myself using terms like “monetization” (a word for whom I have expressed considerable disdain in the past) and “user acquisition”. I compile reviews and a weekly business-to-business report on trends in the social and mobile gaming industries.

And y’know what, I’m enjoying it. It’s satisfying work of a different kind to that which I did on GamePro, and not as high profile to the public, but that’s okay — it means less likelihood of being denounced as a paedophile by psychotic commenters simply because I posted a news story about an academic institute’s game exploring LGBT issues, after all. (Yes, that really happened.)

Life is pretty good right now. I’m in an awesome relationship, I have a job I enjoy where I learn new stuff regularly, I live in a nice place and for the first time in quite a long while I’m reasonably financially stable.

It’s been a long road to this point, and there’s plenty more steps on my life’s journey (unless I get hit by a bus tomorrow, obviously, and even then I might survive), but things are looking pretty sort of kind of okay right now. Long may it continue.

If you’ve been following this nonsense for years, another hearty thank you for sticking by me through all the past angst. I hope my catalogue of misfortunes, my fall and rise has been entertaining, enlightening and/or helpful to at least some of you.

And if you’re a new follower, uh, welcome. You caught me at a good time.

#oneaday, Day 300!

Other people may have made it to this milestone before me, but here I am: day 300. I am going to resist any “This Is Sparta”-type quotes here, largely because I haven’t seen 300 and also because that whole meme is kind of played out, really.

So, here we are. This day arrived with little in the way of fanfare and, in fact, a bunch of tweets and posts ranting about things which happened to other people. But I think today of all days I’ve earned the right to be a bit selfish, to say things about me. So that’s what I’m going to do.

This is very much the home stretch now, of course, with just 65 days remaining until I’ve completed a full year of non-stop blogging. Well, not non-stop, but daily. You know what I mean.

It’s been one hell of a journey, as those who have been following from the start (and prior to that) will be able to attest. And it’s not, naturally, the course I would have chosen this year to take had I the opportunity to decide my own destiny on a moment-to-moment basis. But, unfortunately, sometimes the consequences of the things you do and the choices you make aren’t immediately apparent, and it’s not until months or years later that you realise you were heading down one road when you thought you were heading down another. A big step in life’s journey is accepting that sometimes things don’t go the way you expect them to, and thus you will have to learn to deal with them, for better or worse. Most of the time, you do have choices, although they might not be clear at the time. And, decisions to murder, rape and pillage notwithstanding, there are no “wrong” choices per se, so long as you’re just willing to deal with the knock-on effects that your choices have.

Back on January 19 of this year, I made the decision to take on the #oneaday challenge. It’s a decision I’m glad I took, as it’s a habitual process now; it’s something I enjoy doing every day and if nothing else, it’ll provide an interesting record of a particularly difficult year in my life. It got me to thinking, though; does every year contain as many “events” as this one has? In my 29-and-a-bit years on this planet, is every year so filled with things that are “interesting” and affecting? Quite possibly; it’s just that most of the time, things happen, they pass by and you forget about them. And making a note of them may make some things seem bigger than they actually are. But on the flip-side, looking back at things that happened with the benefit of hindsight can make you feel better about them.

I’m not saying this is how I’d have chosen 2010 to go for myself. If I had completely free choice, I’d have won the lottery, bought an exciting car, be living in a nice (but not excessive house) with at least one cat and maybe be doing a bit of freelancing. Or possibly I might have invented faster-than-light travel and gone into space. I couldn’t say. I didn’t have completely free choice, sadly.

But here I am, 300 days later, and I’m at a stage where I can look back in a contemplative manner, stroke my beard and go “Hmm”. This is a better state to be in than I have been in the past. So here’s hoping that over the next 65 days that things only continue to get better.

And to all of you who have been following this blog, however long you’ve been reading it for, thanks for coming along for the ride. Your thoughts, comments and support have been very much appreciated. Here’s to that final push.

#oneaday, Day 207: Up ‘n’ Down

I think I might be bipolar.

Granted, my only justification for that is a cursory glance at Wikipedia and the observation that yesterday I was a depressive mess barely able to function, while today I’ve been not exactly what I’d call “enthusiastic”, but have at least got some things done and felt relatively “normal”.

There are, of course, extenuating circumstances to the way I’m feeling so it may not be a chronic condition after all, and naturally I wouldn’t want to publicly declare myself a manic-depressive without consulting an actually-qualified professional. Rather than, you know, a website where you can look up the details of a Frijj milkshake immediately after consulting it for psychiatric symptoms. (Consulting the site. Not the milkshake.)

The mind’s a funny thing. I often wonder if my mind and imagination work the same way as those of other people. I have a very visual imagination. I can picture things very clearly. I can imagine situations actually happening and unfolding. I can empathise with people because I can picture myself in their situation. And if there’s something I’m anxious or nervous about, I generally make it worse for myself by “replaying” the potential situation in my head before it’s even happened, and when it might not even happen at all.

This kind of mind is great for creativity, of course. It’s great for writing, too. When I want to write a cool description of something, all I have to do is imagine the thing in question being right there in front of me. In my mind, I can look at it from all angles, pick it up, touch it, smell it, taste it or punch it in the face. Where appropriate, of course. And then I just have to summon up the words to describe those sensations. It’s an interesting skill to have, and it’s one thing about myself that I wouldn’t want to change for anything, as inconvenient as it can be at times.

Inconvenient? Yes. As I said, this kind of imagination sometimes leads to anticipating things before they happen. I’m not talking having “visions” or premonitions or anything. I’m talking picturing what “might” happen, and “planning” the event in my head. Inevitably, things never quite go the way I expect them to. Sometimes this is a good thing. Sometimes this is a bad thing. It goes to show the pointlessness of the whole exercise. But still I do it.

Sometimes I do it in reverse. I picture a situation that has already happened and I “plan” what might happen should I suddenly and magically get the ability to reverse time and do something again. Or indeed, to load a quicksave. (I swear, being able to “quicksave” would be the best superpower ever.) This is an even more pointless exercise. There’s no way I can change the fact that, when unexpectedly confronted with Don Woods, father of the adventure game, I didn’t really know what to say and ended up babbling like a schoolgirl confronted with Justin Bieber. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. At least it would be if you could do anything about it.

Oh well.