Preemptive Retaliation

It has taken me twenty-three days to write a post this month. I try to get in at least one a month, to keep the tradition going and all, but it’s been a struggle for February. I can’t say why, but I can speculate, and that’s probably good enough to count as ‘content’.

One of the things I tried to write about was Ghosts of Tsushima, which is a game I started back in 2025 but only finished at the beginning of the month – and I was glad to finish it. It’s a great game. I spent a lot of time in it, admiring its scenery and world, I spent a lot of time talking to a friend about it, about its themes and story. But I was happy it ended. The game overstayed its welcome, partly down to me having a completionist attitude and getting distracted by everything, and partly because the game encourages that by getting you distracted all the time. And then there’s this whole thing where the game is a Sony game, and has a lot of trappings of other Sony games I’ve played – etc, etc, and so on.

In the end I couldn’t deal with the negativity of it. Here is a game I played and enjoyed, and then I didn’t enjoy, and then I did enjoy again, here are some bad things to say about it.

So I tried writing about something else. The end of Ghost of Tsushima is practically a giant Ice Level in a videogame, and I have historically hated Ice Levels. To frame this idea I began talking about the different tropes of level types in games (Grass, Lava, Underground, Rocky, Desert, Forest, Ice, etc) and when they come, and what they mean, and the clichés involved in each – and then I realised that I was just trying to parrot a Jacob Geller essay and my enthusiasm went out the window. And, again, it was just so negative. It had a list of Ice Levels in videogames I love, and how I hate them. So negative.

So then I thought about my tendency to keep with a piece of media, whether that’s a game, tv series, or book, and keep at it even if I’m no totally enjoying it – and trying to pin down whether it’s down to some sort of loyalty to the media, or hope it’ll improve, or fear that someone might feel the same about my work, and what’s wrong with me and-

Negativity, negativity, negativity.

Part of my resolution this year is to do things with intent. I still haven’t figured out quite what that really means yet. Maybe it’s to think about things before doing, or think about them while I’m doing them. I definitely know it means that I should stop shitting on things. I don’t need to be negative. I don’t have to be falsely positive, but I can focus on the good things.

I am making good progress with my novel. There were a few chapters that were difficult. They were blockers, slow pieces that I had to trudge through, that I had to fight through. But I rounded them off, and I’m back to redrafting what I’ve already written, and the words are flowing. They’re coming easily, the corrections are being made without effort, they’re just slotting together. It’s a great feeling to sit down of a morning or an evening and write out four or five chunky paragraphs, and not hate what you’ve written.

Here’s another nice feeling – Jack turns five soon. He recently had a birthday party and walked away with a party bag for himself. Amongst the packet of sweets, the rubbery squish toy, the napkined slice of cake, and the space pencil – amongst all of that was a small silvery rainbow notebook. He flicked through the lined pages and his eyes lit up. “I can be like Dad!” he yelled, holding the pencil in one hand and notebook in the other. He gave me a big smile.

If that isn’t a nice feeling, I don’t know what is.