site update

Hello everyone. I know that I said I was ready to come back and start writing on a consistent schedule again, but something came up. About a month ago, my mother had a sudden health problem that has since left her permanently disabled. Obviously, I haven’t really been up to writing about games, or about anything really. It’s been a pretty stressful time, to say the least.

I wanted to make this post as a way of trying to put down some thoughts I’ve been having since then. Before, when I was merely dealing with depression, I was asking myself, “what am I doing?” Now, with this sudden and massive life-changing thing happening, I’m asking myself, “no, really, what am I doing?” I’ve been having an extremely hard time trying to sit down and do things for fun. I didn’t want to write reviews or anything like that. Hell, honestly, I’ve been contemplating even keeping this site running anymore. It hasn’t felt rewarding. I don’t even know if anyone reads it anymore, if only to hate-read and find something to make me fun of me for. A source of creative frustration (among many, which I’ll get to) comes from people who ask me in conversation my thoughts on games I have already written extensively about, and fairly recent to the time of said conversation happening. Like, my thoughts are right there!

I’ve also been having a hard time doing other things. Making art. Trying to finally put a new game together. Write something that isn’t a game review for once. Like, when was the last time I wrote a short story, last year? And before that? At least eight years! Friends of mine do not know that I used to be a fiction writer. I’m not mad at them for that; I’m mad at myself, because I haven’t done something creative in so long that people who have known me for nearly a decade don’t know about skills I have/had. I’ve been trying to rediscover my roots. Find what made me want to become an artist in the first place, so I can maybe work on something and share it with the world, and nothing has happened.

Plus, my constant pleas for people to actually make their own site has gotten these ridiculous reactions. I mentioned the “emotional labor” thing before, and someone recently got so mad about my concept that they made some dopey schoolyard bullying comment to me. Now, because people like to assume I take fake threats at face value even though I don’t, no, I do not think I’m actually going to be given a swirlie for suggesting people learn HTML. That’s fucking ridiculous. But the visceral reaction to an idea I have, no matter how innocuous, is frustrating. I ask, please make something and give yourself personal fulfillment, and I am told to fuck myself and to instead present my ideas on a website for child pornography that’s currently blaming lost profits on “Jewish influence.”

One more thing about this place. The last comment I have received, and the only one that’s been posted this year, is from someone looking into the lesser known gamergate targets, and the post-Crash Override fallout. That say it all, doesn’t it? That no matter what happens, what I do, or how many years have gone by, I’m only known for being dragged into someone else’s cynical culture war. I cannot shake this idea that I waste my time writing about old games nobody gives a fuck about, I’m constantly missing my self-imposed deadlines on a site nobody reads or actively antagonizes the existence of, I can’t make anything cool anymore, and my lasting legacy to the world is being the garbage that Zoe Quinn threw away

This has not been a good time, nor has it been a good year. My hands got all fucked up. My brain won’t work right. There’s now a serious issue with someone in my life and now I have to become a caretaker, in addition to my other responsibilities. I would say that I’ve reached a crossroad in my life, but the signs don’t have any words on them. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t even know if this is all just brought on by stress, causing that negative voice in my head to become louder, or if I simply don’t have it anymore, or if I even had it in the first place. I have to try and figure it out pretty fucking quick.

Anyways. I did whip up some pixel art over the course of the month, just to try and keep myself from losing my mind. Take a look.