Why Start A Blog?

Short answer: It's better than DM-ing random uncollected thoughts about Zero Time Dilemma to someone in between working my day job. Don't worry, I'll still do that.

Well, it's the reason anyone starts a blog isn't it? I have many thoughts as well as a desire for people to see those thoughts and judge them. Sometimes social media is good for that. But filming myself for no longer than a minute and finding some way to justify tagging it as asexual or trans isn't always ideal. Let's be honest, it's probably never ideal I just give into the voice craving attention a bit too often.

What's made it worse lately is working a job that leaves me a lot of time to be aware of my thoughts. I actually quite enjoy that aspect of my job, but as mentioned above, sending quips about a specific visual novel only lets so many ideas through. Having an actual blog allows me to not only collect my thoughts, but gives me a format to write about other things too. TikTok doesn't want me to joke about Simisear, it'd probably explode if I talked about Laika: Aged Through Blood at all.

Now, being who I am, and who I am being a fan of video essays, there is the question of why not give that a spin. Well, a few reasons. First, it doesn't solve that one problem of feeling like everything I say needs to focus on a specific theme. Even if a lot of my thoughts continue to be on video games, I don't want to feel like I need to always talk about them specifically. Especially if I was actually proud of whatever script I wrote about Zero Time Dilemma (seriously I think about that game far too much). Second, it would require just as much, if not more, writing than a blog would. So even if that was the plan, having a place to share scripts is something I'd be interested in. And third, editing. Audio editing alone is something I don't want to consume my free time with, never mind all the hoops that would have to be jumped through to do the "video" part of a video essay justice.

If you couldn't tell yet, I also do not want to worry about "the numbers." Getting an effectively arbitrary score on my thoughts is just not a great thing for me. Especially on platforms where I could compare myself to others. I've fallen into that behavior way too many times in the past, so anything I can do to try to avoid that will be for the best. Letting everything I send out into the world just exist on its own is perfectly fine, if you ask me.

And of course, how can we possibly forget about just how neat blogs are in concept. They're obviously not a new concept by any means, but their existence in the face of social media domination is something I'm interested in. But there's a catch - I'm really bad at following blogs. The number of times I have followed a few RSS feeds before clearing them all out a couple weeks later isn't high, but it's definitely not zero. I've been taking steps to read blogs more often outside of creating my own, but I couldn't shake the feeling that running one myself would make it all feel more tangible. Reading is slightly more fun if I can imagine how it influences me (social media has ruined that word a bit, huh?), if that makes sense.

So yeah, there are the biggest reasons. Honestly could do a lot worse when it comes to finding reasons to start a side project. Everything gets to be experimental and isn't that when being creative is the most fun? No honestly, is it? I haven't let myself be this creative in a little while.