Happy New Year

So at the beginning of every year I like to make a blog post covering a retrospective of the last year, or a target for the next year. First, though, I should probably address the fact that I’ve not written or published anything here since July. This is for a few reasons.

First of all, I’ll mention that I do run a gaming blog, where I’ve published four (and a half) posts between July and now, including a recent 3.5k post about my top 10 games of the year. So technically I have been blogging, but not in a fashion that’s relevant to this particular space. Gaming is easier to write about because it’s a hobby and it’s what I know. And I’ve actually done a lot of it in the past year. Unlike writing.

Additionally, I did write a blog post for this space at the beginning of the December. A very detailed, very pragmatically written account of grief that I put a lot of work into and was very proud of. After much consideration and reflection, however, I decided that this was ultimately too personal to publish as a public piece and sent it to some friends instead.

2017 also saw me pick up my second job. With the two jobs combined I work 29 hours a week, mostly as split shifts and at one point, often without a day off throughout the week. This is fine, but it’s not a lifestyle that encourages the pursuing of personal projects in my downtime. When I have free time, I want to be gaming. I still love writing, but it’s ultimately a difficult and productive activity which detracts further from any relaxation. (Suck it up, right? Sure.)

But the biggest contributor to the emptiness on this page is motivation. It’s probably also the most boring thing to read about, so I apologise, but I’ll be attempting to go into detail here.

Throughout the years my motivation to write and produce content has been running at an increasingly lower ebb. This isn’t because I don’t enjoy it, but because – as well as the reason of busyness above – a sort of pit of cynicism and disillusionment grows within me with each passing day. Actively I stray from it, guiding myself to continue believing in things and enjoying events like Christmas and so on. But passively, as a default, I find myself having a hard time bothering to produce content because of a combination of prior failures and the sheer amount of people like me making content and going unrecognised by the world. I tell myself that talent rises to the forefront of creative industries, but then I find low quality content dominating the mainstream while anything thought-provoking or legitimately engaging is buried under a sea of neglected media. In this day and age it’s impossible to tell whether you’re somebody with talent who’s work has never been acknowledged, or another of the mediocre millions who waste their time giving themselves to thin air before finally falling silent.

So why bother when I could find guaranteed gratification in hobbies instead?

Nothing really happened in 2017. I got a new job. I enjoyed my hobbies. I got angry at politicians. I met nobody life-changing. I don’t particularly feel like doing a reflective blog post due to the alarming stagnation of my life. I don’t have a resolution for 2018. I don’t really want to think about it.

Happy New Year.