I used to be a creator.

To an extent I still am. While I’m in the shower or walking on the treadmill I often find myself running through ideas and concepts in my head, crafting or refining story ideas, even composing songs within my mind. This is nothing new. I’m sure everyone does this sort of thing in their day-to-day life. Everyone has a story they long to tell or a song they wish to sing.

Once upon a time I used to act on these ideas. When I sat down at a computer the first time I opened up Microsoft Word and started writing my own book (that, naturally, never went past five or six pages). Pages and pages of sketch paper were spent creating little comic books and characters, while pages of notebooks would be detailed with concepts for video games I’d like to make.

When I was a freshman in high school I used a program called RPG Toolkit to try and craft my own games (and dear God I cannot believe it is still around). As I left high school and entered College I was making my own online comics (part of the reason I nearly failed out my first year) as well as filling up Word docs with more game ideas, flooded with newly found knowledge gained reading Gamasutra articles.

Then I graduated from College.

I find it curious that a lot of people label critics, bloggers and vloggers as “creative types”. Expressive? Perhaps, but that’s not necessarily what creation is. You don’t have to be capable of creating something worthwhile in order to discuss its flaws, merits, and quality. See MovieBob as an example, whose efforts to make The Game Overthinker more than a games criticism and analysis show resulted in a product that was not entertaining sincerely nor bad enough to be enjoyed ironically. It was simply bad, and not because it was done at a low budget (if you could even call it such a thing).

An analytical mind can observe and start to figure out just what makes something good and what makes it bad. However, this does not mean it can easily be replicated. So while a critic or analyst may have the potential to be a creative type, simply organizing their critiques into an essay or video does not make them creative.

Perhaps there’s something about the changing of the seasons that gets to me, but lately I’ve been feeling tired of just criticizing things. I enjoy putting videos together and I enjoy writing, but I don’t like producing nothing of my own. I like to think of myself as a creative type, though nothing I made ever really found much of an audience (so whether I’m creating or critiquing, nothing seems to change). That doesn’t mean I’ve been a failure, however, as I’ve always found enough encouragement to believe I don’t suck at what I attempt to do.

Unfortunately, I’m stuck with not only inspiration, but the unending feeling that it will be for nothing. The advantage to RamblePak, blogging, and articles on GamersWithJobs is that they are faster to produce and easier to get out the door. At this point in time, they also do not rely on a schedule from me.

But I’m not satisfied. I always wanted to be a creator growing up. I wanted to make my own comic strip like Jim Davis, or to make my own video games like Shigeru Miyamoto, or to write my own novels like J.R.R. Tolkien. Critiquing is something that came out of further study of game design, and has since only grown.

I love being a games critic. I may not be a professional, but I love taking my favorite hobby in life and turning it into something even marginally valuable. Yet it will always make me feel like a failure if all I can do is criticize without producing anything of my own.

I wish I could use this post as a declaration of intent, to announce some creative project I plan on developing. Yet I am at a loss as to what to do with GameLandEtc., or if I have the time or energy to proceed with Hero One, or if perhaps I want to try my hand at a different project. I’ve recently tossed the notion around in my head of starting another series on my RamblePak channel called “Design Book”, where I sketch out and narrate a number of game design ideas I’ve had growing up but just do not have the time or patience to develop a prototype for. Yet the issue there is, well, what happens if someone goes ahead to use some of those ideas? It’s a silly notion, an unlikely one, and even a bit conceited, but it’s not impossible.

All I know is that I want to do more than pick out the flaws or point out the positives in someone else’s work. I want to create something that is definitively my own. Yet as things are, the odds are unlikely.

It has me wondering if, yet again, I’ve made the wrong decisions in my life.