And... So... We're back. (20/07/22)

I'm going to be honest, I held off for like a week on publishing this post mostly out of embarrassment over how long it had been since the last one. I understand how that may sound contradictory. I don't deny it is contradictory. I can only resort to that beloved old saying, that sometimes, "them's the breaks" (I have never in my life said 'them's the breaks' in conversation, but I guess Writing Jack is in charge right now).

To get the headline out of the way; I can officially announce there are videos on the way and they are going to start arriving shortly. I can also announce that, perhaps as a channel first, I will actually be releasing them both early to the Patreon. Years back I was often so late in getting the video to sponsors that I basically just went live as soon as there was an approval notice, but I think this is the least I owe those who've been so dedicated to the Patreon (and who have absolutely been lifesavers through this exhausting career burnout/third-life-crisis phase).

Info on the videos? Well one is a relatively short, improvised lookback at 2004 gaming classic Half-Life 2, and one is a more extensive, mostly scripted essay project probably closer to what you'd have expected from this channel based on previous posts. You can expect the shorter video first, releasing sometime at the end of July - it's really an extended skit, and mainly exists to reintroduce people to the channel and as an announcement for the larger project. I also felt like it was important to 'set the tone' for the channel going forward....

2021 was a year I placed a high degree of scrutiny on my old work in the hopes of figuring out what had left me feeling so cold about them - I found myself agreeing with many of my harshest critics, that a lot of it felt too stiff, repetitive, almost sermon-like in many of the more uninspired wrap-ups. Is this a harsh way to look at my own work? Probably, especially given the tight deadlines I was giving myself to solo produce over an hour of material every month, and also the fact that a lot of my 'harshest critics' had clearly never actually watched anything I'd made. But I can't deny the experience has been helpful, at least in separating the bad faith stuff from takes I likely would've agreed with had I been able to remove my ego from the equation. A prime example of this is the relationship between my work and scripts. I really relied on heavily scripted content in my early videos, in a way that on the one hand made sense given my inexperience on-camera and the standards of the 'video essay' scene, but also came with limitations I tried my best to ignore. Writing Jack is a more coherent, structured Jack, and that's helpful to express certain things to an audience - but no matter how I write, Writing Jack will never be Unscripted Jack, who can be more loose, more intuitive, and more in line with the type of inner monologue that actually takes place in my mind. Unscripted Jack may struggle to maintain a train of thought for more than 30 seconds, but it's a territory I spent so much time avoiding both out of convention but also insecurity about seeming like an intellectual fraud or something, and I really wish I hadn't. We can all feel like frauds sometimes and we can all blurt things out that we know could sound unhinged - the person I am in my writing isn't 'not me', but it's a part of me I was very much curating at the expense of other, less edited parts (it did not escape my notice that 'Unscripted Jack' is oftentimes 'Overt ADHD Symptoms Jack'). The next video is really just a fun experiment based on those musings, but I hope you'll look forward to seeing more experimentation like this over the next year of production.

The second video is not something I want to over-explain quite yet - what I will say ahead of time is that if you're expecting some kind of 6-hour deep dive behemoth... please don't! I can confirm that almost every day for the past year has involved some kind of planning or drafting for the next video, but a lot of this has been made up of writing pages of notes, a paragraph here or there, and then finding something fundamental to the project that I just wasn't happy with or losing motivation and starting from square one. I'd like to give a brief moment of silence to the following unfinished 2021 projects (possibly to be picked up later?? Who knows);

* Unfinished Cyberpunk Philosophy Essay

* Unfinished Youth Subcultures/Meaning of 'Punk' Essay

* Penda's Fen Analysis

* Video Essay on The Who

* Highly Overindulgent Autobiographical Thing Also Southwest Travelogue

* Unfinished Essay on Aldous Huxley and New Age Philosophy (I heard We're In Hell did a pretty good video on the latter topic!)

* Unfinished Essay on Robert Pirsig's 'Quality' Concept

* Unfinished Essay on Gilles Deleuze

* Unfinished Dune Series Analysis

* Unfinished Dark Souls Analysis

* Unfinished Elden Ring Analysis

* Just Me Pitching A Soulslike Game Set In The American Midwest?

* Video Essay on Bad I Am Legend Adaptations

I also very seriously considered a critical reading of hit streaming series Is It Cake? This, sadly, is also on the backburner.

So what's left? Well, what I'll say for now is that many of the things I've listed above will be small pieces of the overall project you'll be seeing, which will likely end up being a relatively small-scale 30-40 minute piece. I hope to use it to close the book on this especially frustrating period, a retrospective similar to this post but also with the intention of expressing something more broad - how a lot of our personal problems can become interconnected with political or philosophical problems, and the difficulty of drawing those lines especially in times that seem to demand such direct action (and Christ, they really do). YouTuber burnout and mental health more generally have, obviously, been pretty common themes in a lot of what I've been writing, and that will certainly come up plenty as well. You can expect to see the video's release around the middle of August.

I think that's all for now. I will update you all again alongside the early access release of the shorter video I mentioned - I really do hope it puts a smile on your faces. I'm not going to get overly sentimental, but I really am so appreciative of how so many of you have continued to show your support, even if it's just a dollar or two. You're all incredible, generous people, and I'm praying you'll enjoy what's in store ahead.

Love you all,

Jack