Reviewing the Situation

Alex pointed this out on Tuesday, but egad, have we done a lot of reviews in the past two weeks. By my count, we've had five formal book/DVD reviews, a Month in Review, and the normal assortment of preview-reviews you can count on from Waiting for Wednesday. You know what all this reviewing means?

It means we're doing something with our free time, doing something for ourselves. I've written before about the need for geek input to keep us going, and it's good to know that Alex, at least, is creatively recharging. I, on the other hand, have been trying all week to get caught up on recording my Mega Man videos and finish up a review of Gemini Rue for GameCola so as not to let down the fine people who offered us a free review copy.

I've been getting ample geek input the past week or two, between watching a few movies and a healthy dose of Star Trek, along with picking up Dragon Warrior IV once more and starting Mega Man ZX, plus reading a bit of Frank Herbert's Dune here and there. Yet, any project I embark on seems to go nowhere, no matter how much effort I put into it.

I've been working on my review of Gemini Rue for almost a week, and I've been working on what should have been a solid weekend blog post for the better part of two weeks. I spent an entire evening re-recording the 40 seconds of Mega Man commentary I had just been satisfied with the previous night. I keep writing paragraphs and paragraphs, only to come back the next day and delete everything, distilling my thoughts into something that takes up less space and gets to the point more quickly. I'm more satisfied with my geek output this way, but the amount of time it's been taking is unacceptable to me.

That's why I've taken to reading and playing and watching things rather than focusing exclusively on the two big creative projects I want to be finishing up. If I'm truly driven to write or record, and I've got the time and ideas to make things happen the way I want them to happen, then I'll drop what I'm doing and go for it. I've spent too many nights staring at a blank blog post when I could have been doing anything else, and came back to writing just in time to drop a quick video link before bed. Creatively, this new process feels very healthy, but it's not incredibly satisfying.

So, if nothing else, it's good to know that we're doing enough outside of our big creative projects to have so many things to review. And hey, we get to share something with you, and that's part of why we started this blog in the first place. It's tough to focus on so many different activities at once, but maybe, just maybe, if we take some time to ourselves and get back to the big stuff when the time is right...the waiting might just be worth it.