#oneaday Day 60: Not everything has to be “CONTENT”

I’ve gone on the record numerous times about how much I hate the word “content” to describe individuals’ hard creative work online, but that’s not what I want to talk about today. Instead, I want to talk about a somewhat related matter that has arisen as self-publishing your own writing, videos and all manner of other creative material online has become more and more straightforward.

And that is: not everything you enjoy has to become “content”. Not everything you do has to turn into a video or an article or a blog post or even something on social media.

I am saying this primarily to myself, because I’ve definitely felt myself veering in that direction at times. Indeed, a significant portion of my game collection consists of stuff I picked up because I thought it would be fun and/or interesting to write about at some point — though this was back when I was working an incredibly boring job pre-COVID and had both the time and mental energy to be able to post something substantial about video games nearly every day.

The trouble with thinking that “everything has to be content” (and I’m using that phrase as a shorthand, not as approval of the term) is that it gradually makes it more and more difficult to just enjoy yourself — to such a degree that it can lead to a form of analysis paralysis where you end up discarding certain experiences on the grounds that they won’t be “meaningful” enough. And by “you” in that sentence, I mean “I”.

I am proud of what I have created online: there’s this blog, which might be of interest to someone; there’s MoeGamer, which features a wealth of in-depth articles about games that don’t get much attention anywhere else; and there’s my YouTube channel, which focuses primarily on retro platforms that don’t get as much love as others.

But my brain is always going. It’s always thinking “oh, yeah, wouldn’t it be cool to make an in-depth video about Disco Elysium?” or “go for it! You absolutely can write one article for every single game on Evercade!” or “don’t start playing something else until you’ve finished what you’re playing, because you might not be able to write about it otherwise”.

These of the words of someone who is at risk of turning his hobby into work, and I have become increasingly conscious of it over the last few years. The trouble is, I am increasingly aware of how I’m growing older, and thinking about what sort of “legacy” I want to leave behind. My wife and I aren’t having children — by choice, I should probably add — but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to leave anything behind. I would love it if some of my writing and videos were useful to someone down the road, even if they only have something of a niche interest audience now.

But that doesn’t mean I should spread myself too thin and try to cover everything. That’s simply unrealistic. So I think I should probably try and impose some restrictions on myself to keep my “ambitions” under control, because otherwise I risk 1) overwhelming and burning myself out, and 2) never being able to “just enjoy” something ever again.

So for now I think what I’m going to do is I’m going to keep my YouTube channel focused near-exclusively on Atari stuff: primarily 8-bit and ST, perhaps with some 2600 stuff thrown in here and there if I can be bothered. MoeGamer I’d like to get back to doing some stuff a little more regularly with, so I think I will continue to use that as a means of posting in-depth thoughts on games I’ve actually finished in the case of narrative-heavy games, or spent enough time with to be able to comment on in the case of gameplay-centric titles. That may mean updates are sporadic, but there’s nowt wrong with that. It’s not a professional site, and I’m not in a position where I need or want to use it as a “portfolio” of sorts right now.

Evercade stuff is my day job, so any time I’m tempted to write something or make a video about Evercade stuff in my free time, I should instead channel that energy into doing something about it during working hours, particularly if I hit a period of “downtime” between major time-sensitive jobs. Of course, there are things I can’t do or say when doing things from a “professional” perspective, but honestly it doesn’t really matter too much; if I was doing Evercade stuff privately, I’d be wanting to explain why each and every game (yes, even the “bad” ones) is interesting and worth exploring rather than tearing it apart, and that’s not much different from taking a slightly more “marketing” approach. (Incidentally, if you want to see some of the stuff I’ve done professionally for Evercade, check out the official Evercade blog, and particularly the Evercade Game Spotlight, Evercade Cartridge Preview and Top 5s sections.)

Everything else? I should just enjoy it. Sit back, enjoy without guilt. Write about it or make a video if I feel like it, but don’t place undue pressure on myself to make everything into a video or an article. Sometimes a good time is just a good time and doesn’t need writing about. Sometimes a good time is something best kept to yourself. Sometimes it’s nice to try and forget that the Internet exists, and get yourself back into the ’80s mindset of just enjoying things because.

Anyway, that’s my ramble for today. I’m off to go put it into practice.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

2227: Filling the Days

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Anyone who has been out of work will know how frustrating it is to be in that “waiting” period while you have some applications out and no idea whether or not you’re going to hear back from any of them. It seems that most companies these days use the catch-all get-out clause of there being a “very high volume of applications”, thus absolving themselves of any responsibility for actually delivering an answer to unsuccessful applicants — or even acknowledging them at all, in some cases. (I know that rationally speaking there probably is a very high volume of applications and it would be very difficult to respond to all of them, but it’s still fucking rude.)

As I noted a while ago, I’ve been trying my best to fill my days while this waiting is going on. I’ve been looking for jobs in various fields — preferably those I can perform a bit more flexibly and/or from home — and applying to a few as well as continuing with the trickle of regular-ish freelance work I’ve been undertaking, but doing that all day every day is a sure-fire recipe for wanting to fall asleep and not wake up again.

So there have been a number of ways I’ve been keeping occupied. There’s video games, of course, but those aren’t especially “productive”, though they do provide useful fodder for writing about various topics, which is handy, as well as something I can talk about with people. That’s something that’s actually quite important, particularly when you’re stuck at home: it’s a tremendously awkward position to find yourself in when you’re at a social occasion and you realise you have literally nothing of note to contribute to any conversation. (As a socially anxious person, I feel like this most of the time, so it’s best not to give myself any actual ammunition to back this up.)

I’ve been continuing to work on my book. I figured out that my writing software Scrivener has a “target” option with exciting progress bars that fill up for both your complete project and your session target, so you can have that RPG-like experience of filling bars and feeling all happy and satisfied when they’re full. I’m not yet sure what a reasonable target for each session is — I can knock out 1,500 words in one sitting without too much difficulty, but that doesn’t feel like very much and I kind of want to try and keep my momentum going without burning myself out. I’m sure I’ll pin down a suitable target; perhaps I’ll increase it little by little from 1,500 with each session and see what feels comfortable. As for the book itself, recommendations online seem to suggest a length of 80-100k words is a suitable length, so I’m aiming at the lower end of that spectrum as a minimum target; since I’m a verbose sort of chap, that leaves me some leeway to go over, whereas if I aimed specifically for 100k as a minimum, I’d have to excise big chunks to get the word count down, which is something I don’t like doing; every word is sacred, or something.

Currently, the project is at 21,000 words or so, which is quite good going — or about a quarter of the way through, if you want to look at it another way. I’m enjoying getting back into the swing of things; while I write on this blog every day and have even indulged in some creative writing on here on several occasions, simply sitting down and writing a story for the sake of writing a story rather than “because oh shit I need a blog post for today” is an enjoyable experience that stimulates my already rather overactive imagination; I’ll probably write more about how I feel while I’m writing on another occasion, as I think it’s an interesting discussion.

Aside from this, I have some other things to be getting on with, too: there’s a second edition of the Digitally Downloaded magazine in the works, and I have Japanese studies to be getting on with. Or indeed restarting to refresh my memory, since it’s been a little while since I last engaged with them. I am pleasantly surprised how much hiragana have stayed with me since my last dedicated effort to learn, though; my next hurdle — and the one that tends to stall me each time — is katakana, but I’m sure with a bit of effort I’ll be able to conquer it. Then I can get depressed at knowing I’ll never, ever know all the kanji.

Anyway. That’s how I’m filling my days at the moment. While none of this is making me any money, sadly, a few of these things do at least have the potential to lead somewhere in the future. Perhaps my book will sell. Perhaps I’ll learn enough Japanese to be able to do something with it. Perhaps the magazine will take off and we’ll be able to start charging for it. Who knows? While I have this time, it’s worth exploring these things rather than getting depressed about the fact that jobs in the traditional sense seem to be extremely, frustratingly, infuriatingly difficult to come by these days, particularly when you yourself aren’t really sure what you’re qualified and/or skilled enough to do…

1900: 20th Century

Post 1900. Feels like a significant number. I feel I should do something significant, but I’m not sure what.

Perhaps a reintroduction for those who are just joining me, and an explanation of what that “1900” is all about.

Hello. I’m Pete. I’ve been writing on this blog every day for the past 1900 days. It initially started as a Twitter-based challenge called #oneaday in which the participants were challenged to write absolutely anything every day for a year. I joined a little late, only hearing about it midway through January of 2010, but I decided it was something I wanted to be a part of, so I jumped in. Not everyone who started made it to the end of the year — hell, some people didn’t make it to the end of January — but I did. So I carried on. And on.

And now here I am, over five years later, still doing this for my own amusement more than anything else, but also as a means of self-expression, catharsis, stress-relief or simply a place to enthuse about things I’m excited about when no-one else wants to listen. I do that last one a lot.

The last five years have been a rocky road, and not in the pleasant chocolatey way. I’m still in the midst of a fairly unpleasant time of my life thanks to not currently having a regular source of income after a series of unfortunate and horrible episodes of being screwed over, though hopefully the income situation will change soon following some recent events.

I live in a house that I own with my fiancee Andie; we’re getting married in June of this year. We have two rats called Clover and Socks. We would like either a cat or a dog, but haven’t decided which yet, and figure the former in particular might be an unwise choice while the rats are still around — which hopefully they will be for at least a little while yet.

I’m a musician. Piano is my first instrument, and recently I actually bought my first real (albeit cheap and slightly battered) piano, having been getting by on an electric piano for the last few years — it’s just not the same. I also play the clarinet and saxophone; just recently, I’ve been doing some clarinet teaching for the first time in years in some local primary schools. While sort of fun, it’s also been reminding me why I don’t want to go back to classroom teaching ever — oh, yes, I’m a qualified classroom teacher with a specialism in music.

I play a lot of Final Fantasy XIV. My character’s name is Amarysse Jerhynsson, and you can find her on the Ultros server. To my surprise, Andie started playing a little while back and now possibly plays even more than I do, even coming raiding with me on Sunday nights.

I love Japanese games. I often celebrate them on this blog, but also write about them in more detail on my other site MoeGamer. I set up MoeGamer after being laid off from Eurogamer offshoot USgamer last year. I don’t get to update it as often as I’d like to — at least partly because lots of Japanese games are pretty long and I like to have beaten them before I write about them in detail! — but it provides a means of continuing the thing I enjoyed best about my time at USgamer: my weekly JPgamer column, in which I regularly enthused about the Japanese games that other publications ignored at best, ridiculed at worst.

Aside from Final Fantasy XIV, I am currently playing Hyperdevotion Noire and Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus on Vita. I am absolutely loving both. Noire is a surprisingly competent strategy RPG (or unsurprisingly, if you’re more familiar with developer Sting than I am) featuring characters who have become firm favourites over the last couple of years. Senran Kagura, meanwhile, continues the series’ tradition of blending enjoyably cheeky fanservice with genuinely good stories about the nature of good and evil, what it means to be a shinobi and how you go about finding your place in the world.

I am fat. I have recently started attending Slimming World sessions and have so far lost over 2 stone in 10 weeks, so that’s going quite well. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up that pace, but if I can get even vaguely close to my self-imposed target I’ll be happy.

I am depressed, and have lost at least one job as an indirect result of this. Recently, I finally plucked up the courage to go to the doctor and talk about it. The doctor complimented me on my thoughtful, philosophical attitude towards it — she caught me on a good day — and prescribed me some anti-anxiety meds. I can’t say whether or not they’re actually doing anything yet, but, well, baby steps and all that.

To the person who came to this blog by searching for “video games with a lot of pantyshots”, may I recommend the Dead or Alive series, Rival Schools on the PSone, Senran Kagura, and any visual novel that errs on the side of “eroge” without getting into weird shit.

To the person who came to this blog by searching for “huniepop kyu”, this is for you.

To the people who have been following along for the last 1900 days, thanks for indulging me for so long. To the people who have joined me recently, hello, welcome, and perhaps you understand me a little better now.

#oneaday Day 106: A Wealth of Useless Knowledge

The above comic isn’t actually that far from the truth. (I remembered the code from Another World but had to look up the Ultima Underworld II spell. I at least remembered that “ylem” was one of the runes, however.) All this leads me to the conclusion that our brains are clearly wired up all wrong, and we need some sort of GMail Labs-style multiple inbox feature in order to appropriately prioritise the things that enter our brain and the things that we can safely delete when there’s something very important to remember, such as girlfriends’ birthdays. (November 19. I sacrificed the cheat code for Sonic 2 to make way for this information.)

I’m not sure if everyone else’s brain works in this way or if it’s just a side-effect of being a massive nerd. But most people have something that they’re extremely interested in, and will remember all sorts of useless facts about to bore their friends with down the pub. If you’re lucky, you’ll be friends with people who also know useless facts. If you’re unlucky, you’ll have all this knowledge squirrelled away with no-one to share it with—which is why the Internet exists, of course. And if you’re particularly unlucky, you’ll be friends with someone who’s an even bigger nerd than you and is fond of correcting you every time you slightly misquote Ghostbusters. (Seriously. Fuck that guy.)

But I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. Imagine how dull life would be if the only things wedged into your long term memory were your unique taxpayer reference number, your national insurance number, every password you’ve ever used and the sites they work for, and those arbitrary user IDs online banks insist on you using rather than allowing you to pick your own ID that you might be able to remember. And, of course, your car’s MOT expiration date. (Sometime in August. I think.)

No. I’d much rather have cool stuff lodged in my brain that I can surprise and delight people with. (I have nerdy friends who find the fact I can remember Lester Chaykin’s keycode from Another World immensely amusing… possibly at my expense, but I don’t care at this point. Embrace who you are, I say.) Cool stuff in your brain allows you to become An Authority on a subject. And being An Authority is fun, because it means people come and ask you stuff about things you’re interested in. It’s like having people respect you and your opinions.

And sure, not everyone necessarily understands why you’re so obsessive about Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Final Fantasy/Dungeons and Dragons/the collected interactive works of Jane Jensen/Minecraft/Twilight/Formula 1/porn stars of the 1980s/the board game Agricola. But it’s important to you, and it gives you something to explore when you haven’t got anything better to do—and something with which to bond with like-minded people via the Internet (or even real life if you’re very, very lucky.)

It must be kind of sad to not have anything to obsess over. Do those people have any fun?