2026-01-11 16:02:00
Today marks seven whole days off social media. I don’t think it will surprise anyone when I say I’ve experienced only positive things… and I have, unfortunately, become one of those incredibly annoying people who now wants to convert everyone else.
I did this purely because I knew I was wasting a disgusting amount of time on my phone, aimlessly scrolling and consuming content that either infuriated me or actively made me dumber. I love a good meme, but four hours on a Monday night watching raccoons and cats can only bring so much joy before you start to wonder whether the payoff of a loud nose exhale is worth the wasted potential of actually bettering your brain… and, by extension, your life (wow, profound).
I am addicted to my phone. In the same way I was addicted to binge eating or smoking. Those habits were kicked, so I knew I had a fire in my gut and the very real capacity to shift this one too.
My first step, without really realising it, was getting rid of my iPhone.
I’ve had Apple phones since I was fourteen. Trust me, I was in the cult. I understand the disdain for Androids. I was one of those “I don’t understand Androids, they’re confusing” people. The turning point came when iOS 26 dropped. The liquid glass bullshit made me physically recoil. That, and the fact that for the last decade I’ve had zero agency over how long my alarm snoozes for. Nine minutes is fucking stupid.
Another thing quietly enraging me was how massive my phone was, so I opted for the Motorola Razr. Partly because I was never allowed to have the OG Razr in primary school, but mostly because it folds in half and becomes smaller than women’s pockets… an astonishing engineering feat.
While my Android phone is objectively way cooler than my iPhone, I don’t reach for it as much. I do what I need to do and then put it down. Sure, there’s still some boredom doom-scrolling, but nowhere near the levels I hit under the Apple vice.
Finishing work for the year and spending time with the love of my life in Adelaide had me feeling a certain type of way. The birds were chirping. I was actually looking at the world around me. I realised that working from home, as good as it’s been, has stopped me from smelling the roses a bit.
Being outdoors, going to museums, picking strawberries, and sitting in circles with intellectually stellar humans (no TVs in the way) genuinely altered my brain chemistry. So much so that I felt almost scared to go home and get sucked back into technological sludge. I decided that when I landed back in Brisbane, I’d make a farewell post, delete the apps, and block the web browsers.
I cannot thank my one-week-ago self enough.
I feel calmer. My eyes don’t hurt. I’m happier. For the first time in a long while, I feel whimsy. I feel like I could open my window, sing, and birds would land on my finger… all because I’m no longer reading what a white male boomer thinks about feminism.
I’m conscious that a lot of news lives on social media, and I don’t want to be ignorant of what’s happening in the world. But I also no longer have the energy to read what other people think about what’s happening. I simply do not care.
Instead, I read my Daily Aus email every morning, absorb the terror, and move on. It’s been genuinely life-altering. I recommend this to literally anyone who has ever lived. Please, try it.
So what am I doing with all this spare time? (Because, yes… when you’re not glued to your phone, you do actually have time.)
I’ve been writing, crafting, and studying. Me. Self-studying. Me!
I watched a few videos about giving yourself a personal curriculum and thought, absolutely yes. The one subject I was never taught in high school, and the one that has made me feel embarrassingly dense in social settings, is Geography. I didn’t have it at school (what the actual fuck), and because I chose music and drama, I also never did senior history.
For decades, I’ve been clueless about the world and what it contains. I don’t want to feel that way anymore.
So I started by compiling a list of every country in the world which was not an easy feat, given there are… opinions… and I’m writing mini reports on each one. In the past week I’ve covered Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, and Antigua & Barbuda.
And yes, before that last country, I used an Oxford comma.
I didn’t know what that was either, so I researched it and wrote a two-page report on that. And when I say “write,” I mean write… pen and paper. Everything I learn, I write down. It turns out people were right: that’s how retention works. My hand hurts a little, but my soul does not. Plus, it was the perfect excuse to finally buy a fountain pen.
My brain genuinely feels larger. My curiosity is growing at an alarming rate. I don’t see myself returning to Facebook or Instagram any time soon… maybe ever. I’ll probably log in, post about Open Terp Night, and log the fuck back out.
I realised I don’t really care what other people are up to. And I don’t think that’s rude. The people who matter are around me, or a phone call away. And I can just… ask?
I woke up this morning genuinely excited to sit at my desk and learn about the next country. I’m wringing my hands with glee over how smart, cool, and alive I feel.
Turns out, my brain just needed some air.
And the funniest part of all this is that I don’t even feel a flicker of anxiety about not posting this blog entries link on Facebook. There was a time when that would’ve felt unthinkable… like if I didn’t broadcast it, did it even exist? But I genuinely don’t care who reads this. There are 22 people subscribed; they’ll see it, and that’s enough. This wasn’t written for engagement, algorithms, or strangers with opinions. It was written because I wanted to write it. And that feels like the most quietly radical thing I’ve done all week.
Wishing you all an exceptional week, or perhaps just an average one. Average is perfectly fine.
Song recommendation of the week: 'Second Hand News' by Fleetwood Mac
🎵CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO MY SONG OF THE WEEK🎵
2026-01-11 04:03:02
Look--I get that people have their opinions about how things ought to work, yeah? Especially here in the OSR/NSR/POSR space, people like their fancy interior covers with maps and tables. They like their two page spreads that are easy to use at the table. They like their Necrotic Gnomesque bold-text hierarchy. I should know, I'm one of them!
But when I watched Ben Milton's most recent video--which essentially amounted to a call out post about Dungeon Crawl Classic's layout style, I...
Felt wronged? It didn't sit right with me. It rubbed me the wrong way.
This is not usually how I respond to RPG Criticism. But I felt a thought well up in me that I could not ignore: Ben Milton was fundamentally misunderstanding how DCC Modules are intended to be used.
"A bold claim," I thought to myself.
Immediately I knew I had to write out my thoughts about this. But, before we get to my own counter argument:
I recently ran Winter's Daughter for the first time a couple of weeks ago with a group of children for an educational program I'm a part of. And you know what? It was fucking magical, just like everyone said it would be. Christ. It ripped. It ran. It basically ran itself. I was just an awe-struck passive observer, letting this seminal piece of art speak through me, like the ancient Delphic oracle telling the Greeks how to defeat Xerxes, or St. John of Patmos writing the book of Revelation. It was, in short, a transcendent experience, and maybe the best session of an RPG I have ever ran.
But, quasi-religious experience aside, I have a confession: privately, I've always been a bit of a Winter's Daughter hater.
In contrast with my first experience running it, I cannot remember the first time I read Winter's Daughter, but it was probably around the time that I first got into OSE. I read it, sure, but it didn't leave an impression on me in the way that I typically expect masterworks to do. When you watch a great film you know it, yeah? Even if you don't like it? Well, not always, but probably often enough. And Winter's Daughter just didn't hit with me the way I expect game modules to--and certainly not in the ways that the things which got me into the OSR in the first place did--things such as Veins in the Earth or The God the Crawls or Broodmother Skyfortress did.
So I wrote it off. Sure, it might be recognized as great, but for my tastes? A bit basic isn't it? A bit quaint, eh? A spooky little crypt, some fun encounters, and a cute romantic ending. A nice one shot, finished in three hours with plenty of time for banter with the lads, right?
On first reading, it just wasn't memorable. In retrospect, I wonder if this underwhelming impression could be because the module was written not for the reader, but for the active GM. Until I experienced Winter's Daughter actively, I didn't know what I was looking at. You don't run Winter's Daughter, Winter's Daughter runs itself, with you as a middleman between the book and the table.
But you know what genre of game do have incredibly memorable modules? Trad games.
As readers of this blog know, a frequent topic of discussion here is Impossible Landscapes by Dennis Detwiller, published in 2021 for the Delta Green roleplaying system. My table is currently facing down the prospect of Year Two of this campaign. It will probably be the last Trad campaign I run for a very long time (hopefully). The trad-gamer life is behind me, as I have learned to stop worrying about combat balance and learned to love the random encounter table.
But, once upon a time, I loved trad gaming. Or, at least, I loved reading trad game modules, especially ones of investigation and cosmic horror such as those published for Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green. Here's the thing about Call of Cthulhu modules if you haven't spent a lot of time with them: they are readable in the same way that a novel is readable. With a CoC module (and Delta Green, which I consider a bit of an heir to CoC) read the module from front to back and you get an honest-to-god Story. There is an initial incident. There is suspense. There is a climax. There is a resolution. It contains a complete narrative, just like you learned in High School English class.
And then (here's the magic), now that you know the story you can tell it to your friends! Isn't that great! This novel-like approach isn't unique to Call of Cthulhu, of course. The power of Ravenloft, for example, has never been its gameplay or its level design, but in the promise of its plot: you get to do a Dracula! Who wouldn't want that?
And Impossible Landscapes has maybe the best plot of any RPG module I have ever read. From the moment I started reading that PDF, I have been unable to get that plot out of my head. The characters--particularly Abigail Wright, Agent Marcus, and Asa Darabondi--have lived rent free in this dome of mine since the February of 2021.
You see--I ate the book.
Impossible Landscapes opens with a warning from the author. It is an expression of intent, and one which I think about often when it comes to my own adventure writing. Detwiller writes:
This Book Has Teeth... ...but one of you must eat it. Chew it and swallow it, and then act as the book might act. This is no small trick. Then there is the dance. Once the dance begins, others arrive. It is their job to pretend to be someone else but to feel real fear. As they act, they dance. They dance with the person who has become the book, they dance with their real fear, and they dance around a table, and a story is told in the tracks of their steps.
Detwiller is describing the process of how a GM needs to intact with this book--or any trad module, for that matter. I have written at length here on this blog about how I've struggled with actually using Impossible Landscapes at the table. Heck, I converted a section into a depth crawl because the book was just not suitable for at-the-table reference even a little bit. But what this doesn't mean is that I struggle to run Impossible Landscapes--far from it. Recently, I haven't even needed to have the book with me at the table. I have not really had to do a lot of session-by-session prep either.
How is this possible? Impossible Landscapes doesn't need things like easy to read bullet points, or maps in the endpapers of the hardback because the content of the book was so memorable that I actually remember it. The story it tells is good! I have read the whole thing, from cover to cover, at least half a dozen times by now. Having "eaten the book", I don't need to look at it anymore. It's as much a part of me as a treasured novel, or a favourite film. Or, if you want to continue the metaphor, as my breakfast this morning is a part of me.
I think the way I feel about Impossible Landscapes is the same way that many people feel about Goodman Games' modules.
Here's a thought experiment--imagine running a module after reading it exactly one time. What would you rather have read--something like Winter's Daughter, or something like Sailors on the Starless Sea?
I think a lot of people would instinctively say Winter's Daughter, but hear me out. So much of what makes Winter's Daughter wonderful is the minute micro-level interactivity. This high amount of interactivity is the reason why the Necrotic Gnome style has taken off so much. The GM, at a glance, can let this immaculate world speak through them.
But would that work if you didn't have the book in front of you?
Let's compare two passages: one from Winter's Daughter and another from Sailors on the Starless Sea. These sections both have similar functions--they move the player from the mundane into the fantastical.
Let's start with Winter's Daughter. Here is the moment that the PCs step through the wards. Note that this is from the BX version, not the Dolmenwood version.
At the Bottom of the Stairs Ghostly candles (dozens, floating in mid-air). Warding the way (it is not possible to pass the bottom step without passing through the candles).
- Fairy PCs: Feel the presence of the ageless realm pressing against the ward, from the other side.
- Passing through the candle ward: (From area 6 or 7.) Characters feel a wave of religious awe. The perceived scene of the vaulted chamber dissolves and reforms into an outdoor scene with a white tower upon an island in a frozen lake—PCs appear in area 15.
- Returning: Characters who came from the tomb can pass back through the ward, but it is impassable to others.
- Dispelling: The ward is immune to fairy magic, but can be dispelled by oth rs. Treat as if cast by a 10th level cleric.
And here is the moment from Sailors where the players discover the titular Starless Sea.
Area 1-4 – The Starless Sea: The wide stone steps run down to the dark-sand beach of a vast underground sea. Far out across the water, you can make out a golden glow through the gloom. An enormous menhir stands at the water’s edge, dark waves lapping at its intricately carved faces. Past the towering standing stone, a dragon-prowed longship emerges from the darkness, its hull scrawled with forbidding sigils and runes that glow a sickly green in the dim light. The ship draws to a stop some 50 feet offshore. The beat of distant drums and far-off wails of terror mixes with the quiet lapping of the waves.
So, keeping with our metaphors which of these is easier to eat? These are both moments of liminal discovery--of the players crossing from one world (more metaphorically in Sailors' case) into another. In play, both of these moments create a sense of awe and wonder in the players, at least they have when I have ran them. Regardless of your opinions and preferences, everyone can see at a glance that Sailors is written to be literary. There is drama as the longship emerges from the darkness. Meanwhile, Winter's Daughter is more objective. While the text itself has no drama, any GM can use it to create drama.
For me, however, I have to think about my own experience. I read both of these modules for the first time around the same time. I remembered finding the Starless Sea much more vividly than I remembered entering Frigia. While I may not want to use this text as-written at my table, I did eat the book when I first read it, and I do have faith that, were I forced to speak as the book were to speak, I would have a much easier time remembering Sailors than I would Winter's Daughter.
More traditionally written modules, such as those published by Goodman Games, are written so that the GM will remember the module's contents by making the writing itself engaging to read. Evocative descriptions, dramatic moments, and vivid atmosphere allow the GM to more easily eat the book, so that they may better "act as the book might act" when they run the adventure at the table. As such, there is less need for the book itself to be a helpful at-the-table resource.
In contrast, newer OSR modules, such as those published by Necrotic Gnome, are written so that the GM will not have to remember the module's contents even a little bit to run an effective adventure. Instead, a more objective approach is taken so that the book might speak for itself. As such, there is a higher need for the book itself to be a helpful at-the-table resource.
I don't think we have to make this decision.
In fact, I would say that it was a mistake to frame this discussion as an argument--to debate about "which is better."
Some people want to eat the book. They would rather read through it, take notes, and then leave the book on the shelf and "speak as the book would speak". Others want to pick a book off the shelf, open it, and allow the book to "speak through them."
After spending some time getting these thoughts on paper, I think it is the decision to frame Goodman Games' style as a failing and not as a difference which ultimately rubbed me the wrong way about Questing Beast's video. I feel like it betrays a certain lack of...intellectual curiosity?
Especially for a critic.
Shouldn't a critic want to interrogate why a text does things that they didn't expect? Shouldn't they want to understand why some people like a thing, while they like another? Why the thing they like is special?
This doesn't mean that everyone has to like everything. But there is room in this space for different approaches. Different approaches and perspectives intersecting is when magic happens--in all art forms, not just in RPGs.
Good criticism fosters dialogue. There is no need to advocate for uniformity.
2026-01-11 02:54:59
Starting a YouTube channel was the worst decision I’ve ever made.
In 2019, I left my job as Executive Editor and Lead Video Producer at a gaming website called Cliqist. I wasn’t happy with how it ended, and I was tired of working for other people. So, using my experience as a video creator, I started my own YouTube channel. At the time I called it Triple Eye, a nod to the so-called “Triple-I” level indie game#III), which would be my focus.
What followed was six years of struggle. Six years of trying and failing to make YouTube my full-time job. Six years of spending money on Google Adsense to inflate my view counts. Six years of chasing trends. Six years of long days and nights doing something I didn’t like. Six years of my life wasted.
The channel changed a lot over those years. Different logos, different thumbnail styles, different names even. I changed the focus of the channel from indie games to all video games, then to whatever I felt like, then back to indie games. Dozens of videos were uploaded and later deleted on a whim. Each time I thought I was doing the right thing. In hindsight, it’s obvious I had no idea what I was doing, or even what I wanted.
In the meantime, my writing career (which I went to college for and what I always wanted to do) evaporated. I wrote my last piece of fiction in 2017. My last article in 2020. My last freelance gig was in 2021. All I was writing anymore were video scripts, and I was putting less effort into them with each passing year.
It all came to a head in 2025. In January, the name changed again after hearing from an indie game studio with the same name. In April, I first thought about quitting. In June I put out a series of no effort videos that were my most successful in years. By July, I had quit.
I’m not arrogant enough to think that anyone cares about my 8,000 subscriber YouTube channel. This is about getting my feelings out there, for my own sake, to make sense of all this.
In late 2024, I noticed my writing was slipping. That shouldn’t have come as a surprise, as I long dreaded the script writing process. I never had a problem with writer’s block before, yet there I was, so often staring at a blank page. It used to come to me so easily. I could write thousands of words breathlessly talking about a game I loved or hated, or delve into the history of some developer. That became harder as the years went on and by this point, I realized I had nothing left to say.
I would spend hours on the outline alone. Moving talking points around that, despite their length, didn’t say anything at all. After hours playing a game, I’d look at my notes and see nothing more than a variation of “this thing happened and I liked it” or “this is how this gameplay mechanic works.” How do you write a script out of that? You don’t. You write soulless drivel.
Take my review of Promise Mascot Agency, my favorite game of 2025. Most of its 16 minute runtime is explaining what the game is and how it plays. When I venture beyond mechanical descriptions, there’s little more than platitudes. “I love this aspect” or “it inspires me.” It’s filler, it’s boring, and its not helpful to anyone trying to decide if they should play the game or not. I knew when I was writing the script it was bad. I had no way of fixing it though, and a schedule to stick to. This is a game I love, my favorite of the year, and I can’t bring myself to articulate why?
I tried something different with my next two videos. Something I wasn’t proud of even then. One was a video about indie games on the Switch 2, made purely to capitalize on the system’s launch. The other was hidden indie gems in the Steam Summer Sale. With both videos, I effectively gave up. I put no effort into them. The Switch 2 video was a couple of hours of research on what indie games were on the console, a sentence or two describing them, and the first trailer I could get my hands on for each game. The Steam Summer Sale video was even worse. I assembled that script from past Summer Sale videos I had made, videos I had taken down years prior because I wasn’t happy with the quality of them. I stitched those scripts together, lazily recorded new voice over, and again slapped some trailers on them. Many of the trailers I had used in the Switch 2 video. It took about two days to make both videos.
The Switch 2 video got about 10,000 views, which was great for me. The Steam Summer Sale video got over 30,000 views in a few days, eventually becoming my sixth most-viewed video. I deleted them both two months later out of embarrassment.
Meanwhile, I spent five months working on a review for Our Adventurer Guild, another game I loved. I tried to push past this writers block and deliver something I could be proud of. It got 60 views in a week. A few months later it had climbed to about 1,000 views, but the damage was done. Its script wasn’t great either, it was too long and was also too mechanical, spending too much time explaining mechanics and story beats. But it still sucked to put that much time in a video about a game I love and realizing nobody cares, while this other video I crapped out in two days was so successful.
Re-watching the videos after, reading over the scripts again, I realized I was done. I didn’t want to make videos anymore, and I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I had nothing to say, and nobody was watching.
I didn’t have anything to say because I fell out of love with video games. I was sick of them. I spent so much of my time playing them, writing about them, editing videos about them, researching them that it consumed me. I played more video games in the last ten years than I have watched movies or read books combined in my entire life.
I was having a hard time finding games I loved, too. The quality of new releases was dropping, there’s no doubt about that. I could, can, have, and will talk until I’m blue in the face about how bad the AAA industry is. However, I was finding more and more bad indie games as well. I grew tired of seeing awful asset flips, zero effort first-person horror games, generic 2D pixel-art platformers, and so, so many “simulators.” Now with the advent of AI generated slop, it’s only getting worse. I didn’t want to be that YouTuber that only makes negative videos, constantly complaining about everything.
There was another problem. I have very specific tastes. There are a lot of highly praised indie games that I don’t enjoy. Undertale, Stardew Valley, Mouthwashing, Pizza Tower, and Dredge are but a handful of games I don’t like. The list grows longer each year, and more potent. I hated Clair Obscur, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Blue Prince from last year. I mean, I really did not enjoy them in the slightest. That left me in a difficult position. I wondered if I should speak up and say I don’t like these beloved games. I chose not to, because I was afraid I’d be called a provocateur, somebody making negative videos about popular games for the sake of attention.
I was so afraid of negative reactions to my opinions that I decided I’d only make positive videos. Nobody gets mad when you like a game. Usually. That only made the problem worse, though. I went out of my way to be positive, to say nice things. I only covered games I liked, which made the channel one-note and dull. Nobody likes a critic who’s too nice or too mean, it comes across as disingenuous.
By 2023, I was no longer playing video games for fun, or even to make entertaining or informative videos out of. I was playing games on autopilot, plowing through a ton of them hoping to find something I liked and would make a popular video. I forced myself into the stupidest position imaginable.
Early in 2025, before I quit, I discovered two YouTube channels that talk about films – Bad Movie Bible and Accented Cinema. They opened up a whole new world to me, recommending films that I’d go on to love. It was so liberating to be able to sit down and watch a movie and not feel the need to make a video about it, to fit into some template you’ve created and put all these expectations on yourself as you watch it. I could sit back and enjoy the show. Or not, if I didn’t like it. It was like I was able to breathe again. I was so enamored with movies – and even picked up reading again – that between September and December, I didn’t play a single video game, the longest I’d gone in over a decade. I didn’t look up video games news, I didn’t watch video game channels on YouTube.
When I finally picked up a game again (Metal Gear Solid Delta, which my niece got me for Christmas) I was able to treat it like a film or book. I kicked back and enjoyed myself without worrying about the need to make a video. I didn’t have to worry about sounding too nice, or whether or not anyone would watch yet another Metal Gear video, or if my script would be too boring. I could simply play the game. It was nice.
What convinced me to give it up once and for all was a YouTube video. I stumbled on the channel Gosforth Handyman somehow. In this video, he talks about how he ripped up the floorboards in his house and found a ton of trash underneath. He had harsh words for the workers who came before him, treating his home like a trash can. That’s when he said this:
“Have pride in your work. The moment you stop having pride, find something else to do that's more enjoyable where you do have pride.”
I thought back to those Switch 2 and Steam Summer Sale videos. They weren’t made with pride. I made a lot of videos without pride, without care or effort, purely in the hopes that they’d take off. Did I really care about the work I was doing? I thought I was at least doing a service to the games I was talking about, recommending them to people. Is that really what I was doing? Or did I want views?
I came to realize I didn’t really care about making good videos. I enjoyed recommending great indie games, that was genuine. But I cared even more about getting views. I wanted YouTube to be my job, and while I had some lines I wasn’t willing to cross like sponsorships or paid reviews, I was willing to do just about anything if it got me more views. Anything to be able to do this for a living. I never stopped to think if this was actually something I wanted to do, that should be done.
Those words got me thinking about what I could take pride in, what I did find enjoyable. That’s when I remembered my writing career. I loved writing, it was what I always wanted to do, yet I somehow found myself making videos instead. I was never a great writer, but I did my best and I thought I was good at it, better than I ever was at YouTube. That’s where I found pride, not making videos.
The other big reason I quit was YouTube itself. I’ve already written about all the terrible things YouTube/Google have done in 2025 that turned me off, so I won’t regurgitate that whole thing here.
YouTube was never great, problems have plagued the site for years. 2025 was the year it got untenable. They introduced a new ad system which automatically placed ads in videos after the creator put manual ad points in. I made one 13 minute video that got seven ads inserted into it. That sadly became the norm, and I had to go back into each video hours after uploading to remove them all, only to find them reinserted again later. Each time I did this, my view count plummeted, Google obvious upset at me for remove the ads so they’d stop recommending the video.
Videos would sometimes get copyright claims, and then suddenly those claims disappeared. I didn’t do anything, they suddenly claimed themselves and then… unclaimed themselves. They’d also sometimes get demonetized, meaning that not only did I not make any money off of them, they also weren’t being recommended on other videos or showing up in subscription feeds. They’d also sometimes get age-restricted for seemingly no reason, only to again un-restrict themselves at random.
This seems to be driven by YouTube’s new AI system. I made a short about a game called The Plucky Squire in which you play as a young boy. I mentioned the protagonist’s age, and the video was shadow-banned, only receiving two views in 24 hours. I took the short down, re-edited to remove mention of the child, and this version got 3,000 views in a day. All the while I was bombarded emails and notifications telling me to use YouTube’s “Inspiration” feature which gives you AI generated video ideas, thumbnails, whole scripts, and voice overs.
There are several more reasons to be mad at YouTube. Last year, I reached the point where even if I hadn’t quit making videos, I would have left YouTube anyway. And I briefly did, posting videos to Peertube instead before my computer died and I realized I was happier not making videos at all.
This blog took a long time to write. I started it in April 2025 when I was first thinking about quitting. This whole thing may sound silly, and it is. I was so wrapped up in my YouTube channel that I let it consume me. No matter how bad things were going in my day job, in my personal life, or in the world, I always had this channel to go to. It was like a blanket. An itchy blanket that was too hot. It took too long to realize it was actually a prison.
I’m in a better place now, professionally, creatively, and mentally. This blog has helped me immeasurably. One of the few things I enjoyed about Triple Iris was the structure it provided. Working on one or two videos at a time, even if the work itself wasn’t enjoyable, provided stability. I knew what I had to do and when to do it. That’s something this blog has helped me maintain. I have a schedule that I’ve kept up since I started this block late last year, writing every day. Plus having an outlet to share my thoughts and feelings is only a good thing.
I don’t care about the stats here. Bear Blog has a feature that lets you see how many views your posts get. I’ve never looked at it. I’ve never felt the urge. Not knowing has taken taken the pressure off, I don’t ever feel like I have to chase trends or do any attention seeking nonsense. I write what I want to write and when, no matter how weird, uninteresting, or controversial it may be. That flexibility to write about whatever I want, not limiting myself to indie games, has also been a boon.
I’m also writing fiction again for the first time in almost a decade. I wrote a short story in October 2025, and am in the process of trying to sell it (these lit magazines take months to get back to you). In the meantime, I started another short that ended up being novella-length. I’m editing it in between blogs and time off from my day job, with the hope of finishing it by the end of February.
And if you’ve read my blogs recently, you’ll know I’m writing a book. It’s an epic science fiction story that so far has taken me eight months of planning. I’m excited about it, but also nervous. I don’t know what I’m going to do if I can’t finish it and find a publisher. I guess I’ll cross that bridge if/when it comes. My hope is that I can sell some short stories, and coupled with this blog I can establish enough of a name for myself to get an agent. But I’m not thinking about all that too much right now.
It’s hard to keep things in perspective. The world is crumbling around us, and that often colors our view of everything. How can it not? All things considered though, I’m in a good place right now. I’m happier now than I was one year ago. I have a clear idea of what I want out of life, and how to achieve it. I cut out a lot of the crap that was making me miserable over the last six or seven months, and things are looking good.
This is the point in a movie where I step outside and immediately get hit by a bus.
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2026-01-11 02:40:00
I'm currently employed full-time working with pharmaceutical databases, but I'm looking to shift into job roles centered around ==Data Protection Law==, like Compliance and Privacy, or Data Governance, preferably in the 📍Nuremberg/Erlangen/Fürth area 🇩🇪, where I am relocating to from NRW.
My current role in drug regulatory has already given me hands-on experience with highly regulated environments and sensitive data, which is a strong foundation that I'm bringing into the new role.
This could be...
... or similar roles! :)
In October 2025, I finished a 1.5 year advanced studies program in 6 months to be a ==certified consultant in data protection law==.
Aside from that, I'm a part-time student pursuing a ==Bachelor of Laws (LL.B)== at a distanced-learning university since 2022 and I'm over halfway done. I'm looking to add a Master's in Data Protection Law in the future.
In my free time, I write this blog, particularly about data protection law and tech.
I also volunteer as a ==Country Reporter== for noyb.eu on their GDPRhub project, translating and summarizing court cases pertaining to national and European data protection law, specifically German and Austrian cases. You can see my current list of contributions here, and there are more to come.
When possible, I also attend events and conferences, like the 2nd Beschäftigtendatenschutztag 2025 in Munich.
I'm very passionate about the work and love to self-teach and research. I'm particularly interested in ==working within a team== in a hybrid working setup, with a regular in-office presence to collaborate and learn. That said, I remain open to fully remote roles if the role and organization are a good match.
Looking ahead, I would be very open to pursuing additional professional certifications where they are relevant to the role, such as the AIGP or ISO 27001 Lead Implementer.
This is a snapshot of what I’m currently working toward and excited about! If you think my profile could be a good fit, or if you’re working in this space and feel like exchanging notes, or just know people who do, I’m always happy to hear from you.
Published {{ post_published_date }}, last updated {{ post_last_modified }} ago.
2026-01-10 12:59:00
I used to write my daily post earlier in the day, or at least over the course of the day. Then I started a new job and that changed things. And then we had to drop everything and we had to fly across the country and so I started posting before I went to bed, Pacific time. And then we came back to Toronto and it stayed just before bed. And then we flew back to Victoria for Christmas and it was still just before bed. Then we came back to Toronto, and, you guessed it: just before bed.
That paragraph was written like ten hours ago. Now it is later, just before bed ——
==He said it! He said the name of the movie in the movie!==
—— and I am finishing this thing up as has become my wont.
It's been a hard week. For a lot of reasons. I haven't been sleeping and my anxiety has been off the charts. Is it the season? Maybe. Is it the the unrelenting torrent of psychological warfare being enacted on every human with an internet-connected media device (or, like, eyes) at all times of the day every day without fail or mercy? Also maybe.
But, like, for real real we are drooooowwwwwnnning in media. We scroll. We doomscroll. Then we hit a crack pipe filled with brainrot (and I mean that in a good way) to forget the central horrible truth of reality which is that the worst, ugliest, most fundamentally evil people have all the power and the money and the influence and because they are the worst people they delight in only one thing: bringing that power and money and influence to bear by systematically choking us... right to the edge of death... then letting go for long enough that we come to before choking us right to the edge of death et cetera ad infinitum.
Yeah guy, it got despondent for a while there.
But then there was a hot shower. And then there were burritos and very good hot sauce. And some two buck edibles. And my dumb Marimekko robe and some big dumb grey socks. Reader I walked out of the still soundless void that the bad news media onslaught becomes after a while as if I were breaking the fourth wall and I sat on my awesome couch with my awesome partner and we scrolled League Pass and yelled at the TV and then we talked vaguely and warmly about what a joy and privilege it is to grow older alongside a person you are endlessly delighted by and then everything got really slow and sepia toned and it felt like discovering fire.
T
G
I
F
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch
🌳 grass sleep
🌷 now
Be good to yourself.
==If you enjoyed this post, click the little up arrow chevron thinger below the tags to help it rank in Bear's Discovery feed and maybe consider sharing it with a friend or on your socials.==
2026-01-09 23:44:23
How much stuff have you got?
How much crap do you own?
Probably more than you realise. It’s probably got out of hand, but, in a sense, it doesn’t matter, right? because there is a place to put the stuff, so all’s well and good. And, even though you might tell yourself that you’re not your possessions, it’s a bit hazy as to just what your life would look like without them, even though you can’t really put your finger on why you have so many.
Let me pose a thought experiment (I trust you won’t nitpick, focusing on the forest for the trees, etc.).
Let’s say, you wake up tomorrow and find you own nothing but what is consumable and mandatory, that is, connected to keeping you alive. What would you do? Where would you go?
Over the last two years or so, I’ve slowly—the process is so slow—been removing excess physical items from my life one-by-one. I’ve become quite merciless, in fact, at getting rid of things. I’ve come to feel their gravitational pull on my very being. This feeling is often so heavy that I often get the sense of wanting to strike a match and start over. In fact, I’ve known two separate people who lost everything in a house fire, and both said it was an immensely cathartic experience.
The physical and mental toll this process of shedding takes on one is both revealing and draining. The felt tether between you and something you forgot you even owned is frightening, and I speak as someone who is thoroughly unsentimental.
The more you get rid of, the more you realise you have. The more you realise you have, the more various constructs come to light with regard to your own priorities.
A single thing is a node in a discursive chain that runs all the way down to the root of most modern action—fear! Or: possessions bolster the illusion of security, the illusion that you’re the main character, and the illusion that you’re in control, but I repeat myself.
You purchase bed sheets, for instance, that connect to a chain that roughly looks like the following:
Bed sheets Bedding (duvet, pillows) Bed (mattress, topper) Bed frame Bedroom Shelter Security
The chain moves from real (I have a sheet over my body) to ideal (There is such a thing as ‘security’). This might appear like a rather radical or even mad way to look at possession ownership, but I would state that such a projection arises from the possessive mindset. Each incremental addition is not just one more in kind (quantity), but a further deepening of one’s own possession by a conceptual framework that revolves around such signifiers as: Security, safety, ownership, ‘Mine!’, and permanence.
This seemingly small matter of individual items has, then, an implicit relationship to the largest of all matters that is Life! Life is flux. Life is living, is becoming, is growing and dying, is starting and ending, is the season change of that great, grand, beautiful, and delicate ineffability we call the ‘Just passed by’.
There is, then, as far as I’m concerned, something rather cringeworthy, tacky, and downright sad about the modern masses’ relationship to, and possession by, stuff.
Possibly the worst offender is people and their cars (sheet metal over an engine), the obsession toward which has its own term in Bavarian, das heilige Blechle—the holy tin can. The expanded implication—that possessions are somehow sacred—makes sense with respect to what I have already mentioned, that possessions, and the act of possessing, are downstream of a default understanding of how life should be, and, as such, the very substance of what makes up most people’s personal identity. Watch, for instance, when the car worshipper gets a ding or scratch on his new vehicle, does he not act like it is he or she who is being attacked? Mention that you don’t like X film, Y product, or Z brand, and prepare for an onslaught of emotionality. Think about the fact that for so long, and still today, the very idea of one’s house burning down was understood as one of the worst things that could happen, despite the fact that for most moderns, everything would be absolutely fine, it’s insured, after all! The conclusion derived from all this can only be that such people are their possessions. That life has come to be understood as a game of acquisition on all fronts, the purpose of which is to acquire for its own sake, which makes complete sense when life itself is mistaken for acquisition.
Possessions, and collections of possessions especially, are materially assumptive statements. The bed sheets assume a bed, assume a house, assume security, assume a secure neighbourhood, assume a stable nation, assume good health, assume that all of this will just keep on going.
Yet, each act of thing-possession is simultaneously a grasping out from the very life they seek to bolster, caress, and apparently wish to engage in. Life as flux laughs in the face of things for the fact that they rely upon an idea of stasis for their existence.
It is evident in my immediate relationships to those whose lives are possessions-heavy, that there is a correlation between increased ownership of things and a general sense of unsettled dread. Each addition, then, isn’t just a desire fulfilled, status signal procured, or Kodak-moment secured, but a delusional attempt at keeping death at bay!
Which brings me back to the initial thought experiment—Without possessions, what would you do?
The answer for many people will be simply to draw a blank, because not only does their existence primarily (in terms of time) center around washing, folding, sorting, checking, tweaking, cleaning, improving, revamping, refurbishing, and generally maintaining their already ‘owned’ possessions, but secondarily derides a large part of its purpose from the acquisition of further items, because that very act has become synonymous with living itself.
The case for so many is that to live is to acquire. Yet, as mentioned, living is flux, and so the act of acquisition as a life purpose is inherently tragic, whereby the masses’ unconscious reasoning is to try somehow halt life. As if, at some point of acquisition, there will be enough to have sculpted the perfect, ever-lasting physical place and forevermore live from that stasis. We know, of course, that this isn’t the case, and that thing-possession knows no bounds. The foundational ideals and concepts it relies upon are infinite in their abusive scope.
You will never be secure enough. You will never be pretty enough. Rich enough. Cosy enough. Efficient enough. Happy enough. Enough enough. Because these are states, flag poles rammed into the ground, they’re against life.
Life that is moving, fluxing, growing, blossoming, dying, decaying, singing, fleeting, and generally just going on by without a care for you or that which you are trying—with all your might!—to hold onto.
Possessions, as per the name, possess in the sense that they attempt to hold something in a constant state, a state that doesn’t exist in reality.
Ownership is fear of intrusion, of turbulence, and ultimately, of death, as everything is.
Your crap doesn’t go with you when you die, which you will.
No one wants all your junk.
Give it up.
Give up.