2018 was a weird year for me. I had started it at MAGFest with a declaration that I’d give up YouTube completely if I did not produce at least four videos that year. By time I was working on my fourth video I was beginning to question whether I wanted to keep going with the channel or not anyway. Each essay, each script, each product I worked on carried with it an anxiety that I’d say one stupid thing to warrant everyone’s rejection. A deeper connection to my religion had created a desire to speak about it publicly, yet simultaneously assaulted me with a hostile anxiety regarding people’s response to such open faith. Throughout the year I’ve worked to reinvent and rebrand all of my works to remain consistent, yet I’ve always struggled between being myself and wanting acceptance.

It was a pretty good year to start going to therapy.

I know it’s the hip trend to bid 2018 farewell as a truly awful year, but I actually look back on it with a strange fondness. Despite the suffering caused by my sciatic nerve, anxiety over my faith, and continued lack of growth in my YouTube channel, writing, or even career, I’ve managed to sort through a lot of my personal baggage. “No pain, no gain” as they say, and as a result I’ve entered 2019 with an even more optimistic perspective.

It sounds silly to say, but I’m comfortable doing the things I like doing again.

Over the years I’ve developed a lot of extraneous reasons for trying to share my opinions and thoughts on video games, film, anime, and other topics. Each of those reasons was a distraction of sorts, pulling my focus away from the original core desire and into something completely reliant upon the reception of others. I was pretentious, I was prideful, I was self-conscious, and I was anxious for years as I continued to put out content. It’s no wonder I began questioning doing any of it. The idea of just quitting everything was tempting, a sort of freedom from this self-generated obligation to put out content that, from a certain perspective, was reaching no one.

Only Eh! Steve! remains immune to these doubts and pessimistic considerations. The most pure thing I’m involved in as I continue to pursue it for no greater purpose than enjoying the time it gives me with my friend Steve. It’s an opportunity to just sit down and talk games or film with someone that shares my interests, and for a single night of the week I no longer feel so isolated in this vast, huge world. That I give Steve that same opportunity but in a busy life filled with obligations has no doubt helped its longevity. Keeping the podcast going is easy because we purely do it for ourselves.

It used to baffle me why I couldn’t just be as content with my blog or my YouTube channel. Part of my goal in seeking therapy was to try and figure out how I could create for the sake of creation rather than the approval of others, so that I could be just as happy with all of my works regardless of their popularity. After all, I don’t expect many people outside of my friends to listen to the podcast, yet I’m still happy with it.

A few weeks ago I finally began recording gameplay footage of Final Fantasy VI for my next video. After a couple of play sessions I found myself excitedly taking pen to paper, scribbling notes that I later tapped into a document in greater detail, pondering and formulating theories and observations about the game’s design and narrative. I became excited about what I was playing, and eagerly felt the desire to just talk about it. That desire became an eagerness to put my thoughts into a script, cutting everything together into a new video.

I’m really enjoying my time with FF6, and might focus on a lot more SNES games for the channel.

At the core of this, however, is still a desire reliant upon an external source. It is a desire to reach out and communicate with others. To take these thoughts that excite and invigorate me and share them with others. The reason Eh! Steve! is my most enjoyable creation is because communication is a core part of it. I’m not structuring the podcast for the sake of being liked, though we do currently have an unused episode we both agreed was just not fit for an audience. Nevertheless, despite meeting for a lesser product, neither one of us was too bothered by it. We got to have a conversation still, and we got a better perspective on one another’s thoughts on a game. We communicated.

These essays and my YouTube channel, on the other hand, are largely a one-way communication. I may occasionally get comments – and I am grateful for every one of them – but otherwise I put my work out there and… feel as if the rest of the world passes by, either oblivious or apathetic.

It’s a tough spot to be in. The whole reason I joined YouTube wasn’t just to share my thoughts, but to join in on the discussion I saw folks like MrBTongue, Noah-Caldwell Gervais, and Matthewmatosis having. Instead, I remain a fan, and being a fan is an incredibly painful place for me to be. Fans aren’t memorable as individuals. It’s possible to be appreciated as part of a larger whole, but there’s no relationship there.

If I sound entitled to you, understand that I largely agree. It is why I’m fighting to control these emotions, to focus on the things to be grateful for, and just find joy in the act of creation. Unfortunately, all my life creation has been tied with my personal value assessment, and thus I rely on it to get noticed.

One day I hope to break out of this cycle. Until then, I’m simply going to do my best to approach my creative projects in a manner that I can enjoy. That means there will be a few changes around here, though minor ones.

The first is that I’ll be discontinuing the RambleLog column. It served a purpose in trying to help me remain accountable, but it provides a pressure each month that I could probably do without. Self-imposed pressure is my greatest opponent right now, causing not only stress but depression. I will also likely be reorganizing the order in which I post updates, with GameLog and Ramblings being priority and Silver Screenings updating if I’ve watched something of interest. I am uncertain if I wish to discontinue Sunday Studies, as I would still like to have a space to discuss my faith that is clearly labeled. However, it causes me so much anxiety that, for the time being, it might be better to keep some of those thoughts to myself.

I have a lot I’d like to say about Darksiders 3, but you might not get to read it until February.

While I’ll try and get a few updates out over the course of the next week, I also might not update this blog again until the end of January – episodes of Eh! Steve! excepted. I would like to develop a sort of “padding” of things to write about, several weeks worth of content. This way I can regularly update without having to worry about rushing something together. I’ve already begun writing some thoughts on Darksiders II up, and will hopefully be able to continue with games I played towards the end of 2018 and into titles I’ve begun with in 2019.

I hope to add comments via Disqus, a simple platform that is secure and good for any website using it as a service. No creating an account on my site, no using your personal Facebook account, just something simple. I don’t know if that will actually increase the amount of comments I’ll receive or simply leave each essay with an empty box beneath it, but if I’m complaining about a lack of communication then I ought to put something in there to give people the opportunity.

I may close the Facebook Page since only my friends really seem to use it. I can always recreate it should an actual need for a Facebook page arise.

I always enter the new year with plans for providing new and better content, but I think it is better if I simply try to create what I wish to create. Write what I want to write. Where the only struggle is with the prose – something I enjoy struggling with – rather than the argument. I’ve been so concerned with sounding like a fool despite all the successful writers and YouTubers spilling basic facts and information, lacking proper insight and the most basely expressed opinions. There will always be someone that dislikes my opinion and reasoning. I need to accept that.

I need to be more concerned with my enjoyment rather than someone else’s. It’s as simple as that, and in 2019 I hope to at least get closer to that goal, if not achieve it altogether.