I'll be settling back in to typing things more often here (or somewhere else) soon, but the mere idea of doing that causes me to remember all the time and effort I put into
Digital Quarters and how much I wasted it. All of it. There are days I look back at my time blogging about downloadable games and it hurts. Just straight up drives a railroad spike right through my nerdy heart. Today more than most, if not more than any other time I can remember.
Part of the reason for this is because I needed to decide if I'd make a new blog for the Michael vs Jeremy stuff I wanna do or if I'd just keep it under the Capacity To Geek blog (leaning toward the latter, but I still need to talk it over with Jeremy). The other part is that, upon signing in to blogger, I noticed the pageviews that Digital Quarters accumulated at various points in time over the last few years. A little over 21,000 views. Now, I know that many bloggers get that many pageviews before the week is finished and proceed to double that over the weekend. For someone who started it as part hobby, part effort to keep writing and never made a cent off of it, however, I was in a bit of shock about it. Especially since I started with literally zero experience and zero fame and had nothing other than a desire to write about a group of games (XBox Live Indie Games) that were near the bottom of the food chain as it was for public and professional support and, sadly, have since fallen further. In short, I was a random nobody writing about something comparatively few cared about.
During that time, I wrote reviews and random posts/articles/interviews for my blog (139 posts over a couple years, to be exact) and at least fifty reviews for XBLAratings.com, got invited to write for a few different blogs (one of which was indienerds.com, which I did write a few reviews for), and was part of the editor team at gone-but-not-forgotten ForceDisconnect.com, the latter of which entailed not only writing and interviewing but also joining them on their podcast and being a part of the community in their forums and gaming nights. The latter also introduced me to a few friends, one of whom I get to see once or twice a year and still occasionally game with a couple years after FDC ceased to exist. Somehow, this random nobody made his tiny mark on the internet, and it was one that was not only visible (if just barely) to others but also recognizable and interesting enough for them to stop and look. Because of this, when I think that the main reason I stopped was because I literally thought nobody was reading, I kick myself. Now more than before, especially since I'm trying to get back into writing (and now pod/videocasting) about XBLIG, but little things like seeing that people followed my DQ twitter account or that people still comment on my articles on occasion, well, it's always made me feel incredibly foolish.
The worst thing of all is that writing is definitely not like riding a bike. I sit down to type a review (I owe someone a review right now, speaking of which) and I don't even know where to begin. I used to be able to churn out a review within half an hour and actually feel somewhat confident about it. Confidence, if you don't know me, isn't one of my stronger points, and it's difficult to build up. Confidence in this particular area isn't an exception, and even when I do end up stringing some words together I sit there and look at them until I hate them and convince myself that they need to be changed. And then erased. It's a seriously vicious cycle.
So, if anyone's read this far, learn something from my example/mistake:
If you start something (aside from maybe cocaine or illegal cock fighting), don't let up. Don't stop. Don't tell yourself that no one's watching and that you're wasting your time. Because the moment you do, it's the beginning of the end, and every last bit of your effort will end up squandered. And I can't think of many things worse than to pour yourself into what you feel passionately about only to let it all be for nothing.
