#oneaday Day 746: Decompression

I know I said I'd write about something else on here, but after the late-night update on the situation, I feel inclined to bring this little saga to something of a "close" in a more conclusive manner. We are exhausted and emotional, but delighted beyond belief to have our precious Oliver back at home with us. There will be images of him peppered throughout this post.

It's hard to believe that this whole saga is over — and over in a way that is about the best possible way it could have resolved itself, outside of him coming home a little bit earlier. We took him to the vet today to get checked over, and outside of him having lost a bit of weight and muscle definition on his legs — unsurprising given his three weeks living rough — he has been given a completely clean bill of health. This is our last remaining worry put to rest: he is back, he is alive, he is safe, and he is healthy. Evidently he was a very lucky boy — and a clever boy for taking care of himself for so long; things could have been much worse, and I am grateful to anything that will listen that things did not end up that way.

Patti has not yet adjusted to his presence. She was very clearly missing him, because we caught her looking for him, she was acting incredibly clingy and occasionally letting out the most heartbreaking plaintive howls of an evening. But as soon as he came back, she was puffing up, growling and hissing, and she's spent all of today in the wardrobe. The wardrobe is a safe place. She is fine in there, she's just not quite ready to come out again yet. But she will get there.

As for Oliver himself, he is doing just fine. He's clearly very tired by his whole ordeal — and who can blame him? — but he's already settling back into his usual routines and behaviour. The one and only thing that has really changed about the way he behaves is that he is a lot more vocal now than he was before he escaped; he is spending a lot of time shouting at us, which is probably an aftereffect of him calling for us up the tree last night. He wants to know that we are nearby, and that he is safe.

The one thing we'll probably never know is where he went for most of those three weeks. Given that we found him a couple of hundred yards down the road, he probably didn't go all that far, but aside from him being stuck up a tree last night, we have no insight as to where he might have been. Was he locked in somewhere? Quite possibly. Was he taken in by somebody? Probably not, as otherwise he'd probably be a bit more well-fed than he is now. Did he just get lost? Entirely possible, as he's never been outside in this neighbourhood before, and thus even though we left him plenty of familiar scents outside, he was unable to find his way home by himself, even though he was so close. So very close.

The hardest thing about the whole situation was contemplating the possibility that we might never see him again. There are things everywhere in the house that remind us of him. There's some cat plushies on the shelves in the living room: a black one and a ginger one, for Patti and him. There's a little stained glass thing depicting a black cat and a ginger cat hanging out together on the shed. The wallpaper on my living room PC was Oliver. The avatar I used on Facebook and Nextdoor was Oliver. Days before he went away, I set my blog to automatically set a "Featured Image" on every single post that didn't already have one, and for the image in question to be one that showed Oliver and Patti napping together. I couldn't even contemplate booting up Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream for Switch, because I made anthropomorphised versions of Oliver and Patti in that game, and playing it while we didn't even know if Oliver was still alive or not would have absolutely broken my heart even more than it was already.

For me, one of the worst parts of dealing with some sort of loss is seeing all the remnants that are left behind, and deciding what you are going to do with them. Just little things that remind you of who or what you have lost; sometimes even the simplest, silliest little thing can bring you to tears. Back during a particularly bleak period in my life circa 2010 — the time I split from my first wife and was faced with essentially having to completely "reset" my post-graduate life and start over — I described these things as "crystallised memories", and it's a description I stand by. There they sit: a solid, tangible reminder of something that was once in your life and now is not. It can be difficult to let go of them, but sometimes that is the healthiest thing to do.

Thankfully, none of that was necessary this time around. And while there most certainly was a great deal of grief while Oliver was away from home, we can now thankfully set that grief aside and appreciate how lucky we are to have someone we love so much and that we feared we'd lost forever return to our lives, safe and well. Sometimes amazing things really do happen, seemingly against all odds.

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#oneaday Day 681.5: RIP GamePro

[Apologies for the interruption to the ongoing story — it will end tomorrow. This needed to be said today, though.]

Today, an era came to an end, as the announcement came that GamePro in its current form would be no more as of December 5, 2011. Both the website and the new quarterly magazine have been shuttered, and all of us on staff suddenly find ourselves without a job. The GamePro brand itself will be folded into PC World, where it will most likely die a quiet death, unnoticed.

This is, of course, suckitude of the highest magnitude, but it wasn't entirely unexpected. It is tough times in the super-competitive publishing industry, particularly in the overcrowded video games market. I shan't pretend to understand the business reasons behind the closure of GamePro when we were enjoying viewing figures the likes of which the site had never seen — but it seems to be something of a sad truth in today's games journalism industry that nothing lasts forever. If you want job security, it ain't the sector you should get yourself into.

What has been touching is the amount of support people have shown for GamePro on Twitter and various other social networks today. The magazine and site was a lot more widely-known than I thought — at times I'd wondered if UK journos and industry types were even aware of it — and everyone, it seems, was sorry to see the back of what had, after all, been a fixture in gamer culture for many, many years, particularly in the U.S.

GamePro, of course, has personal meaning to me, too. My brother spent ten months giving both the magazine and its web presence a much-needed shakeup (see his blog post today for more) and made it something that was interesting and relevant to the modern gamer. And once he left and I had the opportunity to jump in on news reporting duties, I know my contributions played a part in the site's growing success — growth that has been sadly cut short by today's news.

While I'd never met many of the GamePro team face to face, it was a close-knit bunch of people who got on well together, from what I could make out, anyway! I felt like a valuable member of the team despite being halfway across the world, and I always felt like my hard work was appreciated — which is why I continued to work so hard and contribute as much quality content as I could to the site. I made a distinct effort to not cover the same stories that all the big news blogs did — that's counter-productive. Rather, I took inspiration from sources such as GameSetWatch (which, coincidentally, also died today), Kill/Screen and numerous others to dig up interesting nuggets of information on fascinating indie titles, peculiar happenings in gamer culture and opportunities for discussion and debate. I was happy with the approach; I feel it gave GamePro a unique take on the news which wasn't just a case of rewriting press releases and rewording stories from other sites. And on the occasions where I did write stories based on press releases, I made a conscious effort to actually write a story rather than just reword the press release. I'd read up on the background of the companies involved, find out precedents for interesting events and throw in some interesting trivia if I had some to hand.

And now it's all over. I'm sorry to see GamePro go, but I'm hopeful that the staff will be able to find themselves suitably awesome positions to move on to. As for me? I couldn't say. Working for an American site has been a great deal of fun but it's had the side-effect that I'm known more in the States than I am in my own country. While I'd hope my experience and output would speak for itself regardless of the geographical location of the site on which it was published, I do wonder which side of the pond any future writing gigs might come from.

With that, then, ladies and gentlemen, please raise your glasses and toast the late GamePro. You'll be missed.

#oneaday Day 117: Justifiably Short Post

Hello. I'm not at home. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know exactly why I'm not at home right now. It's, shall we say, a difficult time, but I have been graciously put up for the night by the lovely Amy Walker and her family, who have helped distract me a bit from the unpleasantness rattling around my head. Said unpleasantness is largely due to the fact that the crystallised memories in my flat were exploding in my face and making my eyes leak almost constantly. I was so angry, then so upset, then upset and angry. It was impossible to focus. Having got away from that for a little while, though, it's marginally easier to face everything. So thank you, Amy, for being awesome and taking me out of a situation that was sending my mind down some dark alleyways.

Someone else I need to thank for being awesome is Allie Brosh, who left a really, really lovely comment on this post. I'll let you go read it (and my gushing, emotional response) at your leisure rather than recreating it here. I knew that today was going to be unpleasant (I underestimated quite how much, but that's beside the point) but Allie's heartfelt gratitude for my post (and a similarly gushing email I sent her) truly made my morning.

Difficult times come and go. Sometimes really, really difficult times come and feel like they're going to stick around forever. That's how I feel right now. But when the difficult times go away again, all you're left with is awesome.

So to everyone who said something nice to me on Twitter today, to everyone who sent me a text message or an email of support today, to Amy and her family putting up with me coming over, talking crap, drinking their booze and sleeping on their sofa, to Allie Brosh for making me smile, to anyone who comments on this post – to all of you I say one thing.

Thank you. You are the things that make it worth not giving up. You are the things that give me at least a little hope for the future, even as dark as the place I'm in right now is. And once all those crystals have finished shattering, once I'm reborn as someone new on a brand new path, you are the ones who are going to still be there for me.

Keep being awesome. Good night.

PS. Sorry this post is so disjointed and stream-of-consciousey and doesn't include any stickmen. (Yet.) But at least a few of you understand exactly how I'm feeling right now. Others of you are sympathetic, empathetic, whatever you want to call it. Whatever. You hopefully all understand that my brain's a mess right now.

So on that note, I'm going to stop talking. Good night.