Malaise Era
Contrast is a real bitch of a thing.
At the beginning of the year, I’d just come off the back of the two most successful years of my career. Great contract, great game, I’d evolved greatly as a professional, all that jazz. I was optimistic that I’d be able to keep up that momentum.
But instead, there was mostly just silence, and I spent most of the year lowkey wishing I were dead, lol. I’m lucky and grateful to have had a couple of small things going on work-wise, and there were of course bright spots throughout the year, but having received income in just two out of twelve months really sucked ass!
That is not to mention an additional several extremely low points which I don’t need to go into here. This stuff happens to everyone sometimes. You can make a wild guess if you want, just don’t make it my problem.
But anyway - things were so arid that I genuinely got weeks away from jumping out of the games industry and committing to getting back into higher education. I’m (again) lucky and grateful to have picked up some work in the last month, which I’ll be able to speak about at a much later date. I’m still recovering, though, and unfortunately I think a lot of what’s happened this year has shaped me into someone who’s a bit less open, a bit less unconditionally giving. It is a hard thing to reckon with and I hope that in 2026 I can find it within myself to pull that back a bit.
Hope that for everyone, really.