June Nineteenth, Two Thousand and Thirteen

I honestly can’t think of any reason I want to be alive right now.

Not that I want (or intend) to kill myself: This isn’t about that. I’m not ridiculous. I know how many people that would hurt, and I would never do it.

And there are still a lot of things I enjoy. I still like to see people, I still like to help people, I still like to drink, I still like to get asked to do some work and to do it well. I still like music and movies and games, and art still means something to me.

I guess I just feel so completely without any real purpose that I always detect a striking amount of dissonance between the hedonistic type of joy that I take in doing things I like and the way that I actually feel about who and what I am.

Which is: Empty.

Which is: Crashing.

And yet, I can’t think of any really good reason to pull back on the yoke.

Whatever happens, why not just let it happen? What is it in my life that I should interrupt the downward course of events that I find myself mired in?

I think I gave regular life a pretty good shake. It didn’t want me to be a part of it – probably, it wasn’t really meant to be. That’s OK.

I guess now I can freelance, do a thing here or there. I’ve been alone for long enough now that I can probably keep being alone indefinitely. I can’t even really remember what it’s like to be with someone. Sure, I’ll keep being an artist, making games, though it makes me laugh to think about creative people putting the best work of their life into the universe in the hope of making a few thousand dollars while some sociopathic real estate agent can clock that sucking off a few people over lunch.

We live in a dark, vile world that is entrenched in backward nonsense.

But still, I’m 32 now, I can probably make it to 40 like this. I can make it until my parents get sick, or need me, or whatever the fuck is going to happen.

Hell, it could be me first.

I feel like everything has been a bit of an accident, really. I wouldn’t have been this way if I could have been any other, you know. If I could’ve just been some guy, found a girl, got married, had a job, got promoted, had kids, saved up for retirement, whatever, I would’ve done it.

That isn’t to say it couldn’t be a lot worse than it turned out, but I’m just saying: The gaps ache.

It’s funny how you somehow know you’re missing things you never even really had.

Anyways, I hope I figure it all out, but whether I do or don’t, don’t worry: I’ll take it all as far as it goes, wherever it goes.

It’s just too bad. I just wish – like I said at the beginning – that I could think of some reason that I really wanted to actually be here, staying alive. Putting all this work in to pay this mortgage, buy food, do laundry, whatever.

I don’t want to be on drugs. I was on those and I just felt like an alien.

You just gotta play your hand out.

You just gotta play your hand out.

I’m fine.

I’m always fine.


Analyzing Sunlight III

This is my third entry about promoting Actual Sunlight, but it might as well be taking place on another planet compared to the first two. There’s no need for an in-depth analysis of the chart above – the game received a writeup on Kotaku and was instantly blasted into the stratosphere. Writeups from other major


“Be Reasonable” – A VN For #CRAjam

This weekend, I decided to take part in the #CRAjam to recognize the termination of indie game designer David S. Gallant from the CRA. Here’s a better recap of that than I could ever attempt here: http://storify.com/cbccommunity/gaming-communities-rallies-around-dev-fired-from-r-1 … And here’s a download link to my game: https://www.dropbox.com/s/60i0qb1gz9lzs07/BeReasonable.zip What can I say about it? Well, it’s


Analyzing Sunlight II

Support for Actual Sunlight has been great in the past few weeks, with a lot of encouraging words and some more interviews and articles about the game. Sadly, none of it seems to be translating into much traction. There’s been a decent uptick in the overall download rates for the game, which leads me to


Analyzing Sunlight

The first full week of trying to promote Actual Sunlight has passed, and I already feel I’ve learned a lot of interesting things. I’ll break it down into some recognizable categories. The Good: Great Feedback By far, the most fantastic thing about promoting the game has been the positive reception people on message boards and


Actual Sunlight

The game has its own website now, which is located at: http://www.actualsunlight.com The feedback I’ve received from those who have played it has been really positive, but I’m finding that it’s not easy to get people to give it a shot. Part of the problem, I think, is its indefinite genre, as well as how


START: Writing About Something Else

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STOP: Sending Depressing, Unfunny Garbage to McSweeneys

Having been on McSweeney’s is one of my proudest accomplishments. After my first piece was accepted by them, though, I saw nothing but rejection. I’ve stopped walking a fine line, and it’s the price to be paid. There is no reason that anybody except me would think that the following is funny: For Whom The


What To Expect From The Pitch

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START: Cooking

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“I am a normal person. I wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night. I come to work and I read the paper. I know what’s going on in the world and I clean my house. But this is not really me. This is my new life. Synthetic normality is where I