Blog/writing practice 091223
Why am I incapable of deciding to do something without that decision requiring me to do some other task first? On this occasion, it's simply that I want to improve my writing. I believe that certain core communicative skills can overwhelmingly aid creativity, not just in terms of conveying ideas but also in developing the inner monologue to become better at formulating observations.
Before I stood here and wrote that, I wanted to sneak off-site and buy myself some kind of foldable Bluetooth keyboard. At any point, pulling it out of my pocket, unfolding it, and typing an essay on the fly. I've never been close to a "master" in communication, but it was around 10 years ago when I believe I peaked. I was working at the Royal Bank of Scotland, starting with general banking inquiries, checking balances, and moving money around. It wasn't long until I switched to online banking and, from there, to webchat, where written communication became dominant.
The trade-off didn't exactly make me better at writing either. I knew answers to all possible questions, so my responses became quick, condensed sentences triggered by a three-letter combination. This would prompt the webchat client's automatic mistype corrector. I noticed the feature and that you could input your own mistypes, allowing you to output entire sentences with this tool.
After that job's abrupt end, I honestly let the plates around me fall. I stopped paying bills, told collectors I'm a stone, and you won't get blood from me — a mantra. Following this was two years of effectively living alone in a room in a four-bedroom house in what I'd later learn was the rough part of Harpurhey. During this period, filling my time with YouTube rekindled my interest in video games, starting with playing them, then making videos about them.
Before making my first video, I stressed about technical expectations. I managed to get a USB podcast mic and a cheap 720p webcam from Maplins, vowing to release one video on my YouTube channel per day. Through this routine, I'd develop and improve. At that time, I was still unable to capture game footage, not that I was in the habit of playing games to capture.
After some research, I decided on a GeForce card to use ShadowPlay for recording, which worked great for a time. ShadowPlay's updates caused annoyance until recent years when I committed to using OBS. Camera ready, mic checked, screen recording, I started playing games from a two-day development game jam. I released about three videos, then went off track and started playing Outlast 1. Technical errors came thick and fast; I lost the recording of finishing that game, prompting me to set up a Twitch account and play through the entire game in one sitting, and then the Whistleblower DLC too. That stream went well until I discovered it wasn't saved because I didn't tick a box.
This didn't help my motivation. I felt I'd lost by failing to have the recording, missing the reality that it doesn't matter; just keep creating. To be fair, I did keep creating, making videos playing 7 Days to Die with friends, setting up a server for a persistent world. That kept me going for a bit until I got bored and branched out to whatever game I felt like booting up. At my peak during this short phase, I was outputting multiple 30-minute-long Let's Play videos a day of different games.
Somewhere along the line, I got a job, enabling me to move into a better flat. However, I never really got back into the swing of daily video making. At this job as a pinsetter technician at a five-lane city center bowling alley, I met one guy who directed me further into photography and finally back to video making.
We've covered years, so don't take it as an exhaustive list of activities. I'll take us back to around RBS time when I realized I didn't have anything I was pursuing. I had been playing World of Warcraft and dabbling in the stock market. I attended a term of a business studies and economics degree with the Open University, but I quit and forgot about it. While working online banking calls, I decided to pursue web design. I approached a friend at RBS, offered to make a website to promote his drum and bass night, Murder, at a basement nightclub in Fallowfield called Redrum. We arranged to meet at my flat to discuss it, but my friend never got that website. However, I ended up learning enough HTML, CSS, and web structure overall.
This experience had a lasting impact, even though I never pursued it enough to develop actual proficiency. For the longest time, I stressed over this "wasted" time. Back to the present day, I've written all this in the Samsung default note app on a vertical touch keyboard during mini-breaks at work. Despite how many threads I want to expand on, I'll close this session with a thought that ties this all together.
The time spent learning each of these new things no longer feels without value. As the technical barriers to entry of mediums grow thinner, the power to render increasingly falls back on plain written, descriptive language. In our future, not very far into it, if you can describe it, you can make it. I'll put this into ChatGPT 3.5 and ask it to fix grammar, followed by a final proof