New blog year, new blog plans

A stat for you: I have published 72 newsletters since I started Side Quest, way back in 2022. 72! That is a lot of words, probably. I would add them up but I don't want to. I'm not that good at estimation but I'm gonna go with, like, a million words. I also have 44 draft newsletters that range from full posts to titles and vague ideas.

That represents so many hours of my life. I don't call it work because it isn't. It's a hobby. It's fun! My newsletter not only allows me to point people in the direction of games and books and music that I love; it also gives me space to consolidate my thoughts. (Nothing makes you focus like having to write an essay.) It also represents hours of thinking, of gathering ideas, of writing and cutting and rewriting, of excitement and resentment and frustration and optimism. Of all the things I work on, creatively, this is the thing that means the most. It shouldn't have to be said, but I write every single word myself. And I am deeply grateful to be able to do it.

Side Quest has evolved a little bit over the years. The core message right back at the beginning was 'searching for meaning in games + pop culture', because at the time, I was feeling lost and anxious about my place in the world. Now, the tagline is 'searching for stories in games + pop culture'. Nothing about human life makes sense without storytellers.

I've written my way through one of the hugest technological shifts we've ever seen; I don't really want to focus on the fallout from that here, but I will say that I have felt deep grief, emptiness, and existential despair over the emergence of generative AI, and watching people I care about scramble to find work in the creative industries has been a constant heartache over the last couple of years.

But ultimately, my goal with this (and with my writing in general) is to look back on my body of work and feel proud of it. Nothing about that has changed. I have principles in life, and those, too, have not shifted. I believe in human creativity, I believe in the arts as a vital part of healthy, whole societies, I believe in championing marginalised voices, I believe in uplifting small creators, I believe in the ability of people to make stuff that matters. Nothing about those values has changed. If anything, I feel even more passionately about it than I ever have.

Recently I watched they want you to stop, a video about creation and how modern life squashes our sense of purpose and community. I came away feeling energised. And with a new respect for people who make anything and have the courage to be vulnerable by sharing it.

A few weeks back I wrote about the final of Strictly Come Dancing and how overwhelmingly, hugely negative people were being. About the internet, as a whole, how it encourages misery, how it is actively making us all shittier human beings. It's sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. I'm reading books, I'm watching lectures from tech experts, I'm trying to understand how we've got here. I'm currently 5,000 words into a newsletter about it. It'll probably be a long work in progress. I don't want to publish it before I've allowed the stuff I'm reading to sit with me, so it'll probably be later this year when I finally finish it.

I hate that things have gone this way. Because I love the internet! It's given me so much. It fills my life with good things. Art and music and stories and friends. I'm down a 'internet bad' research hole, but I don't want to forget the good bits. There are so many of them.

So I've decided to switch things up a bit over here. Once a month, I'm going to recommend something good I've found on the internet. An essay, a YouTube video, whatever. And a few thoughts about it. The problem with online content is that you end up consuming it without thinking in an unstoppable stream of noise. Sometime I just wanna let something marinate. And respond to it. And allow it to change me, in some way. So from next month, the Good Internet series will start. I'm hoping you enjoy it.

I have more plans too, especially with videos and stuff, but that might have to wait until my degree is done and dusted in May. Really, I wanted to come online and say hello. Happy new year! I love you all. And I'm excited to keep writing stuff that people enjoy reading. <3