I don’t write about myself too often, I suppose it feels a little self-indulgent. You could argue that this entire blog is built on me being self-indulgent. You’d probably be correct too which is why I’m breaking a whole bunch of my self-imposed soft rules and trying something a little different in 2019.
The second of those rules (after not writing about myself) is that I don’t make new year’s resolutions. This has been something that has been with me since I can remember. Waiting for a new year to roll around in order to make some change about yourself seems like you’re setting yourself up to fail.
Because if it were important enough, you wouldn’t need to wait till an arbitrary date on a calendar.
Like when I decided to look after myself better and start losing weight, I did it because something snapped inside me and I decided to start doing it right there and right then.
That being said, I can see why the tradition came about. There really is something of a feeling of a fresh start that comes with the start of a new year. It does feel like a time where you can turn things around and leave the past in the past.
Which brings me to nicely to the main point of this article. This year, I want to make an effort to be a brighter, happier and more optimistic person. I feel like my life has been in something of a rut these past five years. Not really going forward, just stewing in my own cynicism.
Not helped by the websites and social media pages I frequent. Comments on web pages like Kotaku and Gamefaqs were consistently full of people like me; cynical, negative and embittered.
Maybe I’m being a little dramatic. My point is, there was not enough positivity in my life. It’s not hard to see why, with the state of the world being what it is and the never ending streams of people bickering with one another on Twitter of seemingly anything and everything.
There came a point where I decided enough was enough and I was doing myself no favours by being the sarcastic guy in the corner who doesn’t allow themselves to enjoy things. This breaking point came as a result of two factors. The first of which was me getting a new job, one that put me in a far more chilled out atmosphere, one that took a lot of the day to day stress out of my life and gave me more time away from the dreaded general public.
The other was this very site.
While I have been keeping blogs and writing for a long time now, it was only at the beginning of 2018 that I decided to start taking it more seriously. Blogging started out as a way of keeping myself sharp, of practising the skills I’d need if I ever made it into the world of Journalism. Obviously, things changed since then, both for me and the industry as a whole.
After that, it became more of a hobby, something to break up the time between movies and video games. This past year though, it became my outlet, something for me to really invest myself into. And through my time on this blog, I’ve come in contact with other bloggers, people who better embody the kind of writer and person I aspire to be: optimistic, bright and welcoming.
I definitely still have a ways to go to get to where I want to be. I oftentimes need to tell myself off for falling into old habits.
Which is where I get to the third of my own unwritten rules I am going to start breaking. I am going to start posting on weekends. Historically, I only ever posted on weekends during my game of the year blogs or during something like E3. Now I might start using the weekends to write posts like this, where I check in on my progress, see how I’m getting on week to week and give myself something to look back on in the future.
Sure, it probably is very self-indulgent. But at the end of this day, this is my personal blog, and might as well make the best use of it as I can. I don’t know if I’ll be writing anything on here every weekend, but for now, it’s try and get 2019 started with a much happier and upbeat bang.
A Richard Wood Text Adventure 