Monday, October 10, 2016

The State of Girl Sideward [Personal Update #4]


            So far 2016 has been a bad year for a lot of reasons, but it has been especially bad for this blog. Honestly, I wish I had a good explanation for why this blog has been more or less dead for nearly all of 2016, but I don’t. I’ve had quite a few plans for things to write that never panned out. Some as stupidly ambitious as a Tales of Abyss review along with weekly follow up pieces on all the individual party members, and some as small as a No Man’s Sky review or Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain anniversary retrospective. Almost nothing panned out for no good reason other than it’s just hard for me to write when I’m both depressed out of my mind with my current living condition as well as just out of confidence in my own work. Whenever I get an idea for something to write either I think its trash and scrap it, or someone writes something I wanted to say better than I ever could.

            It also doesn’t help that I’ve been agonizing over my previous work lately. For example, my NieR piece from over a year ago is dreadful in hindsight. Time and watching and talking with other people as they play through the game gave me a new perspective that is WAY different than anything I wrote. What I wrote is just a complete stream of conscientiousness that’s completely unreadable. I’m not even sure what the hell I was even thinking to be honest other than I really wanted to write something fast right after I finished the game with fresh tears on my keyboard. I could break down all my previous work and why it’s awful but it’s not really important. I could beat myself over past mistakes all night (it’s already 1:30 AM) but it won’t make a difference. I guess on the bright side, less content this year means a lot less of it is trash.

            However… Girl Sideward is not going away. I started this blog primarily to improve my own writing so messing up so much and all this self-doubt is part of a learning process. Trying to work out how to be productive with your work is also a big part of the learning process. I currently don’t have any plans and I am not trying to make too many ambition plans so I don’t disappoint myself. I am currently playing Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, Yokai Watch 2 Fleshy Souls, Touhou: Scarlet Curiousity, AND Tales of Zestiria and I have no idea if I’ll write about any of them, but if I do come up with anything I think is interesting to say I’ll probably at least give it a draft. Of course there are the big upcoming releases such as World of Final Fantasy, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Pokemon Sun and Moon, Final Fantasy XV, Tales of Berseria, Persona 5, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and a WHOLE LOT MORE. I am real excited to play a lot of these games in this BUSY BUSY season. Hopefully, I will have SOMETHING interesting to say about at least ONE of these. I’ll probably be unable to keep myself from screaming about Pokemon or giving my two cents on FFXV and P5, but I’m done making promises.


            I am somewhat bummed about not pitching or opening up a Patreon to get paid for writing yet. Not that I even made anything this year worth money and I wouldn’t want to force myself to write just to get paid, however I just need something to get myself into a better living condition. Still I don’t believe I am ready to write for a living, especially not after this year.

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