All Quiet on the Western Front

It’s been a little quiet around here, hasn’t it?

The funeral march of life sometimes demands you to put your attention elsewhere. I think I’ve been doing that for a little while.

There’s going to be changes around here. For the longest time, Digital Brain has been a place for me to write about nerd stuff and try to deep dive into things I love like Rock Paper Shotgun and Eurogamer. I also opened a YouTube channel so I could be like the excellent Mark Brown or Super Bunnyhop and all those lads doing wonderful video essays that I love so much but the problem with this is, I am a terrible YouTube presenter despite how much I enjoy editing videos and quite honestly, writing about nerdy stuff only fulfills me so much. So I tried to open the floodgates a little, maybe I write about politics or social issues, but that did the opposite of fulfill me – it filled me with dread, which I love, I’m not scared of a bit of nihilism or misery, but I do have to temper my interests before I lose myself to the swirling void of life’s complexities.

Sometimes you just want to write about what makes you tick, what scares you, what you love, what arouses you – sometimes you just want to look into the camera and talk to the audience. But it’s too easy to get tunnel vision when your head is filled with ambition so the idea of talking about what really makes you tick can feel like peeling away a layer of your hard-fought defenses and, you know what? Nobody will ever really appreciate any of that, anyway. But considering the fact that nobody is reading this as it is, maybe it it isn’t the first time I would be talking to myself? Is it crazy to rant into the void about why everything is so fucked and how powerless we all are to help? With how bad it is out there right now, maybe talking to myself like a lunatic isn’t such a crazy idea after all…

So the format might to be something less defined, hazy, weird or unexpected, just like me. In real life I’m a contrarian beyond belief and pinning me down on something is tough to do because I hate the idea of being like everybody else – It wouldn’t be too terrible if my blog was exactly the same. It won’t land me a writing job, but at this point I don’t even think it matters; I am unemployable in my current form as a writer. So why not just go off the deep end and do whatever I like? I probably won’t win any blogger of the year awards and I probably won’t get any more views than the clandestine, stray souls who wander on to this blog from google but recognizing that is, in itself, empowering. I can do whatever I want. So I think I’ll do just that.

Writing and the written word is mostly for my benefit. It’s my little selfish pursuit, my corner of life that I’ve pitched a tent in and made a home out of. I’m happy to have you along for the ride but really, this one’s for me. I’m over here in my best clothes, propping up the bar, pouring one out for myself this time. Because really? That’s something I haven’t done in a really, really long time.