Silence Fatigue

The Unnecessary Backstory, Probably

Thirty years ago, I had a million things to say and no way to say them. Now, I have a million ways to say something but nothing to say. The internet is an irony machine, perfectly tuned into the frequency of human discouragement.

That's what I believed anyway until around the year 2015. That was the year I decided to start writing again after many years of living under the thumb of that belief. By my own choice, admittedly. And it was difficult getting to the point where I could admit that, let me tell you.

Rather than go into my entire history as a would-be writer, I'll just say that when I was younger, I wrote a lot. Like a lot. I got pretty good at a certain point and I thought I had things lined up to have a writing career. I even got a couple things published. Which was kind of cool in hindsight.

The problem is, I've always been prone to discouragement. There's a part of me that is tempted to place blame onto others and say that I'd had a lot of discouragers in my life around that time. Whether I had or I hadn't isn't really the point. For every discourager I had that made me feel limited, I had an encourager who made me feel like I could anything I wanted.

No, the discouragement only prevented me from seeking after my dreams because I chose to allow it to happen. The long and short of it is that, at a certain point in time, I stopped writing completely. I went through some difficult times that led to a many years-long state of feeling like I had lost control of my life and couldn't write. Or do much of anything.

But as my life began to get better over time, the desire to write would eventually return. And it absolutely would not leave me alone. The problem was that whenever I felt like I should start writing again, the thought would occur to me that I no longer had anything to say really. I was in a state of defeat and felt like I didn't really have a voice that deserved to be heard.

But the itch to write kept coming back and each time I would say to myself but what do I write about? Until one day I was playing a game that made such an impact on me that I felt like I needed to write about it and tell other people how awesome it was. That game was Mega Man Zero. I wrote about that previously, if you want to subject yourself.

It dawned on me at that moment that I could simply start writing about stuff that I really like. Nerdy stuff, you know? I didn't have to write anything life-changing. I could just have fun. Because of course I could. Why didn't I already know this? I think to myself. Now. All these years later.

And so that was the birth of Cyberpunkery, my blog about cyberpunk media. By the time I had developed the idea for it in 2015, my skills as a writer had diminished a lot. But I saw writing about my life-long special interest in the cyberpunk genre as a good opportunity to practice and to get back into the groove of writing. And with a lot of encouragement from my wife, who strongly believed in the idea, I eventually did.

I'm still not a very good writer. And I may not ever be as good as I once was. But man oh man, do I love to write. It's one of the things that gives my life meaning beyond the mundane. I have so much joy when I write and I often feel tempted to kick myself for stopping for so long. But instead of kicking myself, which can lead to painful bruising, I'm just going to write and enjoy every minute of it.

In any case, this kind of brings us up to speed here. Now I can talk about what this Hard Reset newsletter/blog thing is exactly. Especially considering that not only am I still actively working on Cyberpunkery, I'm actually in the process of rebranding it. It's going to be coming back soon with a new name and lots of regular content. I meant to have that done a long time ago but it turned into a much bigger project than I was expecting.

Just What Is Being Reset, Exactly? What is this for?

What's being reset is me, basically. I'm kind of tired of having nothing to say. There is a lot to say about a lot of things, actually. A lot has changed in our world since the days I used to write. In the intervening years, the media landscape has changed, art has changed, people have changed, and politics have changed. And dammit, there's a lot of stuff out there I like and I want to write about it all. Cyberpunk remains my number one passion but there is a lot of media outside that genre that I want to write about.

I also want to write about things that impact me, my family, and the communities that I am a part of. Whether that be about entertainment, politics, digital culture, religion, or whatever else. I am going to say something about it when I have something to say. I feel like I can no longer sit back and be silent as the world passes by. I feel like I need to be a part of it again. I'm tired of being silent.

This sudden reawakening in my spirit is the hard reset. A hard reset of course is one that is done forcibly, when the normal methods of resetting don't work. You perform a hard reset to force something out of the state that it's in and into a state where action can start taking place.

So to answer the question about what Hard Reset is about. . .it's about whatever I feel like writing about that doesn't fit in with Cyberpunkery. Games, movies, books, music, religion, politics, culture. Whatever I happen to be experiencing or thinking about on that particular week.

But mostly it's about retro things. My retro things in particular. Things I experienced growing up that helped shape me into the person I am today, for better or worse.

And yes, I know a million other blogs do this. But for years that is exactly what inhibited me from doing it. And the thing is, while there are many (and so many are really wonderful), none of them are mine. And I really want to do my version of it because no one else besides me is capable of doing my version of it. Whether it's widely read or not doesn't matter so much. It's more about me proving to myself that I can do this by doing it.

Why Now? What Changed? Also, Some Shoutouts!

I've been inspired by other people, mainly. I've made some friends over the last couple of years. Really good people who have encouraged me. And some people who have made things online that have inspired me. So here's where I'm going to do a few shoutouts to some of those people who are doing really excellent, independent work out there right now. And I highly recommend checking them out.

First and foremost is Side Quest, a newsletter from freelance writer Megan Bidmead. On Side Quest, Megan covers all sorts of topics including games, books, music, TV/movies, and culture. She puts a lot of heart and soul into her words and pulls from personal experiences making her writing extraordinarily relatable and thought-provoking. Side Quest is my biggest inspiration for doing Hard Reset and I can't recommend it enough. If you haven't subscribed, you should do so right now.

Kimimi the Game Eating She-Monster is a wonderfully entertaining foray into retro/classic games with expert-level insight into their impact on the gaming community. Kimimi is freelance games writer Kerry Brunskill and she really knows her stuff. Even if it's a game I've never heard of, it's always a fascinating read.

Games from the Black Hole is a unique retro game blog from Ashley Day that talks about obscure or relatively unknown (but not always) classic games. A wonderful blog from someone who knows their gaming history and is able to talk about it in an entertaining way while offering plenty of personal insight into the history of each game.

Lunatic Obscurity is a blog that's been around a long time. Like Games from the Black Hole, it covers highly obscure (thus the name) old games in expert fashion. Really good stuff here. I've been reading this one for years.

Astrolabe is the newsletter of journalist Aidan Moher in which he talks about gaming and game culture, books, science fiction/fantasy, etc. Aidan is a great writer who has written about a wide swath of topics. His newsletter is always interesting.

Final Fantasy VIII Is the Best is the newest site in this list but I'd be remiss not to mention it since it has been a recent inspiration for me. It's a comedic blog from gaming historian Phil Salvador all about Final Fantasy VIII. Phil has said that he started this blog on a whim to help him overcome writers block. And within a day or two it seemed to get insanely popular. While the blog is comedic, the writing is actually pretty damn good!

There are many others of course, but these are by far some of the most inspiring works for me personally that have contributed to my decision to put Hard Reset together. I really think that, as social media inevitably declines, and as mainstream journalism continues to collapse under the weight of corporate greed and ignorance, personal blogs and independent journalism are going to continue to gain relevance.

That about does it for now, I think. I rewrote this four times before it ended up being what it is. I had debated whether I should do an introductory post at all or just start talking about the topics at hand. It will serve as a test to make sure I set this all up properly, if nothing else. But starting next week, I'm going to be talking about something far more interesting!

I'm going to leave you with some words of wisdom that I found extraordinarily profound, from none other than the Final Fantasy VIII Is the Best blog I talked about above:

You can just make a website and nobody can stop you