Dawn of a New Year (Patreon)

Well, it’s a new year and I’ve been struggling to decide what to say here. I think it’s best if I try to keep this as brief as possible.

To put it simply, I’m not happy with how last year went. There were some nice accomplishments like the renderer, extrinsic motivation video and a couple of other things you haven’t seen yet. I just re-read the quicksays and they’re better than I remember which is a relief. Overall it felt like a year of chores, nuisances and petty frustrations for me though. We’re both in good health so it could’ve been worse but with so many distractions I didn’t accomplish nearly as much as I wanted. Some of those problems were of my own making, some not. I suppose I deserve some sympathy but not too much, I’m often my own worst enemy after all.

I have reason to believe that next year will be better (now that I’ve dealt with a fair share of real-life problems) but rather than feeling optimistic, I’m feeling determined to make it so. It strikes me now that optimism is a somewhat passive point of view. I intend to be active instead.

If I have a New Year’s Resolution, it’s to be more like my old self. Perhaps I’m misremembering but back when I made the Dark Souls commentary I think I went radio silent for about six months. Some people seemed to lose faith in me but I just forged on and eventually all was forgiven when the video released. I need to be more like that again.

There’s a lot that could be said here, I’ve started to think of it as a kind of “crowdfunding curse” which makes you more self-conscious and bogs you down over time. I don’t think I’m the only person to have been afflicted by it. Maybe I’ll write more on the topic some day but for now I just want you to know that despite any drawbacks to the crowdfunding approach, Youtube is such a shithole that I wouldn’t still be active if it weren’t for you all.

For me, the tension about crowdfunding comes from two conflicting desires: the desire to be transparent and the desire to surprise. I never want to mislead but the joy of dropping something out of the blue is one of those things that keeps me going. As such, I’m now conflicted about what to tell you.

My partner is currently working on Regulus but I’m not. I think art is the bottleneck on that project anyway so I wouldn’t exactly say I’m falling behind on it yet. For the foreseeable future I’m not doing any blog posts or streams. I’m not even going to do end-of-month update posts. I only make two things now: main channel videos or games. The videos will be theories or recommendations. The games may not be what you’re expecting. Hopefully that’s all the info you need.

There’s always more to say but I’m going to take my own advice and crack on. I want to start the new year by working on my projects. I’ll be back when I have something worthwhile to show you, which will be a few months at least.

Before I go, I’d like to wish you all a Happy New Year and the best of luck with whatever you hope to achieve. Thanks for reading, thanks for sticking around and thanks for everything over the years. I’ll do what I can to make 2024 better.