It might finally be time for me to stomach any costs and find a counselor to talk to. I don’t know if I have depression in any sort of medical sense. I simply know that I seem to keep on experiencing it. The epidemic of depressed and anxious “Millennials”, if such a label were to be accurate at all, I’ve theorized to be the result of several decades of deceitful promises and expectations. Prior generations that had grown up in the good times created standards far more difficult to reach as the economy, job, and housing markets changed. Advertisements for decades lied to the populace about the happiness commercialism would bring to one’s soul. My entire childhood was filled with children’s television programming and little plastic trophies dedicated to making every individual feel special.

This is a shared truth, but certainly does not explain every individual’s own struggles with self-worth and the treacherous journey towards contentment.

Last August I suffered an existential crisis brought upon by a few, simple sentences. I had been meaning to call an old roommate of mine, now living in California working for Blizzard. For whatever reason I had never been able to find a good time that I could just dial him up. “Oh, he’s probably busy with friends right now,” or other thoughts would cross my mind. One evening I was feeling particularly awful, sitting at my laptop trying to evacuate the harsh thoughts from my mind and welcome distractions. I opened a Facebook chat window, sending him an apology for being unable to reach out to him like I said I would.

“It’s fine,” he replied. “You were the one who wanted to chat with me in the first place. I don’t feel neglected or ignored.”

Whatever the intention behind his phrasing, this very statement struck me like a sack of bricks being wielded by a twenty-foot tall gorilla. Instead of distracting myself the noxious cloud of existential doubt ignited. My entire soul became a blistering furnace of self-doubt and a certainty of my own worthlessness.

As painful the scorching burn was, I believed myself to be reborn anew as the phoenix this past year. I came to terms with the fact that anyone I might apologize to for wronging them has long since moved on. Friends I had wanted to be close to were busy with their own lives. I am an insignificant memory, just some irrelevant NPC that maybe provided a bit of color to their lives… or pain and frustration. In truth, those apologies I yearned to give and that phone call I wanted to make wasn’t for the other people. It was a desperate desire to feel as if I held some important place in their lives.

Such a revelation can be freedom. Facing your own motivations honestly for the first time allows you to finally accept your status in life, and to refocus your desires and definition of contentment towards goals within reach. I thought I had finally found some real confidence, a real baseline that would feed my approach to RamblePak64 and this blog.

Like many, I am a liar and the majority of my lies told are to myself.

I have shed many delusions of grandeur and flights of fancy, no longer dreaming of glory days of rockstar games journalist or YouTube celebrity. I recognize that I am a nobody in the grand scheme of things, and to strive to be happy for what things I do have rather than be upset at what it is I lack. After all, big subscriber and view counts are the electronic generation’s new two-story house with a pool and white picket fence. A dream promised to everyone, achievable by a percentage, and delivering little in the way of happiness.

I am still lying to myself about what I want, though, and that is to be loved, accepted, and vindicated. Universal pursuits that can sometimes ruin us. Perhaps one of the reasons Citizen Kane is one of my favorite films is because it encourages me to try and be self-aware about my desires for the acceptance of the crowd. To sincerely try and be a better person rather than manipulate circumstances to buy love.

Not that I have any cash to buy love anyway.

Charles Foster Kane would do anything for love, up to and including hurting those closest to him

Nevertheless, the accomplishment of releasing three videos in the span of five months is overwritten by my irritation at the lack of growth. Some of this is the fog of memory, as any dive into analytics can reveal that, say, my Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Season One video only managed 126 views in its first 90 days. Almost four years later it has reached 2,802 views. Of course, according to lifetime analytics the average watch time is 4:45, and the video itself is 22:39. While I cannot seem to find an actual percentage of viewers that watched in its entirety – probably because I’m awful at analytics – it is likely a very small percentage watched the video to completion.

I try to ignore the numbers and latch onto the handful of positive comments – and for the most part I only receive positive comments, which alone is something I know any YouTuber wishes for – but the amount of work and headaches put into every script, every audio recording, editing and cutting the entire project together, it feels almost fruitless. I am the hamster on the wheel putting so much work into what seems to be nothing.

I’ve never been able to quit writing about games, but at some point I cannot help but feel that I’m the same deluded young man throwing opinions into the vortex of binary network data insistent that others hear my opinion. Thrusting my thoughts out and demanding the ignorant masses gaze unto the words and adore my greater consideration of mechanics and narrative themes in game.

I suppose now is as good a time as any to mention I’ve been struck by the sudden question of “who even wants to read this indulgent, naval-gazy trash?”

Which, I think, is the inevitable downside to that existential crisis. Now that I’ve worked hard on three videos with little progress and see little improvement for pushing my YouTube channel onward, I’m losing steam to continue trying. The only thing I feel enthused to continue is Eh! Steve!, a pillar for my continued friendship with one of the best guys I know. Without Eh! Steve! I don’t know how often I’d be able to keep in contact with one of the greatest friends of my adult life. His kids are pretty great, too!

I suppose that’s why I felt so depressed sitting down to log into work this morning. At first I had been flabbergasted at the cold chill of loneliness cutting into me like freezing rain. Had I not just spent a weekend with friends and family? Did I not feel love of all kinds? I can understand feeling as if it’s all fruitless being shackled to a day job I feel no emotional attachment to, but to feel so isolated?

During the week, however, I largely only have my projects and social media, and all of these are increasingly feeling fruitless. I’ve effectively given up writing about games as a profession because I have no clue who would even want to read what I write about. The world seems to be telling me that the things I find fascinating about games are irrelevant. No one else cares. That, or someone like Mark Brown releases a new video, crushing me as so many bugs are unwittingly stepped on each day. He has a better computer that can run better software with a superior updating schedule with better presentation. What am I to that but an insect?

I suppose to actually bring this all somewhere, I have two links to offer that have impacted my mood of late. The first is a Twitter post that has been making the rounds as of late.

It’s a feeling I’ve been struggling with ever since I started working full-time. I’ve always tried to bite off so many substantial and fulfilling projects that I couldn’t even begin to chew on. I merely gagged and coughed it all up, catching my breath and trying to figure out how to try again. Even now I feel unable to update the blog, continue RamblePak64, and redesign the blog in any conceivable way. It’s too much of a push and pull of mental energy, social obligation, and the ever-scarce reserves of time. The only project that doesn’t seem to be a problem is Eh! Steve! for many of the reasons noted above. It is, perhaps, the only project I work on 100% for the enjoyment of rather than any desire to be noticed or discovered.

Which is the lie I have finally needed to confront. While I do enjoy writing about games and making RamblePak64, I still want to be discovered. Unfortunately, that existential crisis grabbed any real sense of ambition and crushed it between Thanos sized Infinity Gauntlets. In an alternate universe I’d see Russ Pitts’ announcement of Escapist Magazine returning and leap forward to my contacts at GamersWithJobs, trying to scramble to get some contact or good word in.

That I even type the idea means the idea has, in fact, crossed my mind. That very thought tried to leap the gate into action, but the guardsman at post struck the thought with a taser. Suddenly that thought is being cited all the reasons I stopped writing for GamersWithJobs or never pitched to Unwinnable again despite their eager acceptance of past work.

No one cares about what I have to say. Readers don’t want in-depth writing on game mechanics. Audiences want culture pieces about people – that is, the ones that yearn for something more substantial than hate-bait headlines clamoring for clicks or silly top-tens designed to be argued and debated in the comments. No one cares about what Lost Sphear gets write and wrong as a follow-up to I Am Setsuna. They want to know why Far Cry 5 isn’t incendiary enough against the American Religious Right, or why Ubisoft should be buried alive for their obvious SJW bias.

Which is likely why I’ve tried desperately to lunge with full-force into YouTube, only to find disappointment in the absolutely tiny numbers. I’ve tried to fight it. I’ve tried to deny it by commenting on friends’ own Tweets that it’s about those few that speak the positive. It’s just one big lie to myself, though. YouTube is where I began to find the kind of content I love, and thus I desperately began to hope – and continue to hope – I could find a place there.

All those excuses I made, my honest perception of games writing these days, is likely a lie. A false perception based upon my own biases. Yet the very thought of trying to write about games professionally seems… unlikely. I’m a critic, not a journalist. I cannot imagine who would want to hire me at this stage of my life. Moreso, I cannot imagine who could hire me full-time, allowing me to quit my day job and fulfill all the things that I am passionate about.

Or perhaps all of those words about dreams and satisfaction and all is just trash. Perhaps all I really want to do is sit on a couch and play video games all my life, and this crap about writing and critiquing is just how I try to justify it. I don’t even know.

All I know is that it’s that time of year that I suddenly get quiet. I stop updating the blog. I stop updating the YouTube channel. I feel as if everything is pointless and struggle to find the motivation to keep going.

The only option is to give in or fight it, and I’m going to try my damnedest to make sure there’s a RamblePak out in September or October. No matter how depressed or upset I am at my channel’s lack of growth, I have a handful of people – strangers – that let me know how glad they are when I upload a new video. The people giving me precisely what I want: acceptance. What kind of jerk would I be to claim it’s not enough for me to keep going?