“I would rather be in end-game writing than in end-game Stardew Valley.”
Another month, another snippet from my journal. This one comes from almost falling hopelessly addicted to the farming sim Stardew Valley. I absolutely loved Harvest Moon on the PS1, so Stardew slotted right into my grind-obsessed, build-an-empire psyche perfectly. Thankfully, I was able to break out of it. When I saw the type of stuff people were building in Stardew’s end-game, slime farms and whatnot, I knew had to get out. As much as I would love to farm some pixelated slimes in my Stardew career, there’s another end-game I would much rather invest my time into: writing. Choose your end-games wisely.
And so… here’s another edition of my monthly retrospective!
First, you will have to forgive me for the rambly, haphazard nature of these "retrospectives". For one, I am still experimenting with the format and length of these things. And perhaps more importantly, what am I trying to achieve exactly with these monthly posts? I'm still grasping at answers, and even at the risk of losing interest from my (few) readers, I must nevertheless continue writing. Naval's tweet about iteration sums this point up nicely:
Finally, if I can't even commit myself to a meager monthly post, then how could I possibly ever live up to some of my favourite newsletter-style/Substack writers? Sid Jha, one of my favourite finds from Twitter, does weekly Sunday Snapshots. Even more impressively, David Perell, otherwise known as "the Writing Guy" on Twitter, commits to weekly Friday Findings and Monday Musings posts. And neither of the aforementioned "newsletters" are weak, pay-walled blabber. They can be full out essays.
I subscribe to this Jack Butcher heuristic, with a David Perell modification:
"To learn fast, fail in public." - Jack Butcher
"Learning in public is the business card of the future." David Perell