When I started this blog, I had just found work at a new job that I hated. Despite this, it was one of the first callbacks I'd received since returning from Indianapolis for best forgotten reasons--so I jumped on the opportunity. The shifts were long and grueling, even though the work itself was quite inactive. Standing up for 10 hours at a time was a huge adjustment for me to make after lazing around the house for months prior to that. My feet were in constant pain and although I did my best to put on a brave face, I was fairly miserable.
Honestly, what prompted me to start the blog in the first place was the desire to reach out and talk about the things I was passionate about. I needed an outlet for that kind of thing and I felt I had a lot to say. The first few entries of this blog might suggest otherwise as I vainly struggled to find things to say--but since then, it's generally gotten easier each day. It's no longer a painful or boring process to compose these entries. At least not usually. I won't lie that sometimes there are days when I feel blocked, but I am hesitant to use that dubious term "writer's block." I identify strongly with Jerry Seinfeld's assertion that it's a "phony made-up excuse for not doing your work."
I started this blog at a time I felt unfulfilled.
For years and years I've bemoaned the fact that I never write anymore. My last LiveJournal entry in December, 2011 stated that I was fed up with my lack of effort in the creative arena and that I was going to pledge to be creative in the future. I established this blog shortly after that, but updated it very infrequently with entries of dubious merit--before relegating it to a blog used for chronicling my ranked games in League of Legends, an exercise that required little to no effort for me. What purpose did that serve? Was it to make me feel better? I look back on these entries and they seem like little more than a waste of space.
Three or four months after I made that LiveJournal entry, I quit my job at Walmart, where I had worked for over four years. I was fed up and I had had enough. I quit without a plan, though, and that was a bad idea. It became obvious that I wasn't going to be able to support myself and no doubt played a large role in my partner's decision to leave me at the time. This was a very depressing part of my life--a time in which I felt no desire to be creative or even to exist, if I'm being honest. I drifted lazily from day to day with very little care of where I ended up, jobless, poor, and living with my mother--until a call from a longtime online friend came in out of the blue, asking if I'd like to move to Austin, Texas. I said yes.
Even though the months following that decision were not always the happiest, it was the start of a new beginning. It was a time for self improvement in a variety of ways. I walked to work just about every day while I was in Austin and gained an appreciation for exercise. When I eventually returned to Kentucky (under admittedly less than ideal circumstances,) I retained that appreciation for exercise and started jogging just about every other day. This is one practice I wished I'd continued until today!
It was this trend toward self improvement and this desire to become a better person that prompted me to start this blog. I had always regretted not being a more creative and expressive person--and I set out to change that. I started playing Baldur's Gate, a game that was very important to my childhood--and I saw that it definitely held up. I wanted to talk about that, to revel in my passion for gaming in general. And that started it. That started this whole thing, and I'm really glad it did, because that led to a total revival of my creative juices.
I have updated every day for 365 days.
Okay, so there were a few entries here and there that were a tad late--but I always made sure they were done even if I fell asleep or was out all night. Granted, this didn't happen often--but even when I made an impromptu trip to Florida for three days, I made sure to update every single day. It was important to me and still is. This exercise is responsible for making me feel better about myself and better about my trajectory in life, even if to this day, things aren't as great as I'd like.
Before I started this blog, I hadn't written any fiction in years. I trawled the logs of my LiveJournal and found a pitiful excerpt of a trope-laden fantasy story from 2007. FictionPress.com contains stories from 2003, when I was fifteen years old. No other significant records exist of stores I've written--until this year. I have written roughly 51877 words over the course of this year in contribution to my story Strands. It is a disjointed mess of a story that seems to be going nowhere--but it doesn't matter! I have written over 50 thousand words after writing nothing for years. That is something to be proud of, regardless of the content. Sure, NaNoWriMo contestants will write that amount in a month's time, but you have to take into account that I'm contributing to this story between entries about other things as well. I can't even imagine how many words I've written over the course of every entry on this blog!
I have completed and written about 26 games in the last year.
When I first returned from Austin, I had a really hard time finding a job. I wasn't feeling great about myself because I felt in many ways I'd failed at what I set out to do. I wanted to make a sort life for myself in Austin, because honestly, I really liked it there. The temperate climate, the lack of humidity, the liberal populace--I liked a lot about that place. Returning to Kentucky after that seemed like a punch in the face. As a result, I spent a lot of time not looking for a job and instead trying to find other ways to remain fulfilled. I was playing a lot of video games, so I decided maybe I should write about them!
I couldn't begin to tell you how I decided on what game to start with, but for some reason I thought it would be really cool to start out with retro NES games with very little exposure. I remembered playing Crystalis when I was a little kid and when I revisited it, I found that I really liked it and a had a lot to say about it, despite the game's relatively barebones structure. I wrote an extremely extensive review of it and then moved on to a game even I'd never heard of--Faria: A World of Mystery and Danger. This was another NES RPG that in all honesty was not very good. I decided to write an extremely detailed review of it regardless and I had a lot of fun doing it!
I realized all of a sudden that I loved writing about that stuff and I'd love to continue doing it. I experimented with the idea of setting up a review website but it didn't take long before I realized how oversaturated the internet is with that kind of thing, even if the topic of discussion is obscure titles. I eventually settled on the idea of a blog in which I'd discuss gaming--and anything else that came to mind. I haven't looked back since.
I have used 363 unique song titles as titles of blog entries.
On Day 3, I used the song "Heart of the Sunrise" by Yes as the name of the entry after being dissatisfied with the incredibly generic title of the entry preceding it. I didn't want there to be a series of generic and passionless titles on this blog so I decided instead to adorn every entry with a song I was really enjoying at the time. It was easy at first because at the time I was listening to a lot of music--and there were so many classics from my collection to draw upon that I'd been frequently listening to for years.
As time passed, it became more and more difficult to think of new song titles for these entries. I felt pressured to discover new music just so I'd have more song titles to draw on! In a way this was good because I really do enjoy discovering new music, but over the course of the past several months, I've resorted to using just about every song from every album I've been listening to, regardless of whether or not I cared for it all that much. It is a nice snapshot of what I was listening to at the time, but it doesn't give me any insight into what I was really enjoying.
As a result, I've decided I'm not going to be doing it anymore for Year Two. I may or may not think of a new theme for these titles, but it's just as likely every title will be unique and suited to the specific entry. I'm also considering omitting the parenthetical day from the title and included it in the entry itself instead. This will likely make my entries seem more interesting on RSS feeds. Although many of my entries are incredibly TL;DR (like this one), I feel I frequently write entries that would be interesting for certain audiences!
The experiment was a success.
Regardless of what's going on in my life right now or what happens from now on, I can say with all confidence that I am proud of what I've accomplished here. Not every entry is an example of excellent quality, but for the most part I have made a genuine effort to write genuinely about things that are on my mind--which frequently happens to be video games, mind you--and I feel I've become a better writer because of it. In this case, it's not about boning up on my fundamentals or perfecting the technical aspects of writing. It's about pulling the thoughts from my brain and committing them to word as effectively and clearly as possible. For my fictional writing, I still have a considerable way to go--but for articles such as these and for my many gaming-related entries, I think I've done a great job at communicating my thoughts.
I don't know what the future holds for this blog. There are a lot more things I'd like to try, especially when it comes to video and distribution. As much of a passion project and exercise in self-indulgence as this is, I certainly wouldn't mind if it had some kind of audience. It's crossed my mind on several occasions that I should be trying to get this out there somewhere. One of the selling points for LiveJournal for me back in the day was not only the writing aspect, but the social interaction. This blog has been good for me in many ways, but it has not sparked much in the way of social interaction. If I could make that happen somehow, that would be great.
As I have so frequently said nearing the end of these entries that it has become a personal cliche: "we'll see what happens."
No comments:
Post a Comment