8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions ䷀

A
BLOG
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NOWHERE

  • Proper Bookish

    You’ll need to excuse my excitement yet again. I’m going on holiday for most of the front half of July so I’ve been writing these posts nearly three weeks in advance to get a leg up on the schedule and timing… and I’ve just this morning (in early July) looked at the word count on this project.

    It’s now well over fifty thousand. A proper book.

    Fifty thousand words was always the novel-length goal set out at the beginning of November when that infamous[1] novel writing challenge took place and we all rushed to pen fifty thousand words in thirty days.

    I now only point to it as a milestone.

    Oh, and as a reminder about my biggest and most core bit of quasi-advice on this project: the power of iteration and incrementalism.  Again, and again, and probably again I will point to these very words and just say: twenty minutes a day and a couple hundred words. It adds up.

    Heck, I don’t know if some random book publisher is out there trolling around looking for the next project, but hey… this needs some more organization and polish, but I’ve got the guts of something serious here. Don’t you agree?

    Okay, fine. I’ll back off the self-aggrandizing and get back on topic.

    Fifty thousand words of something is definitely not nothing—nor is it everything—but it is worth noting, particularly as a point about putting in the work. 

    I did. I am. I will. You can, too. 

  • Professional Games 

    In early 2025 I founded a game studio.

    Sounds impressive, no? In a way it is like any other clever idea: you give an idea a name and send it off in a direction and it becomes important and meaningful. It becomes work.

    Why did I found a game studio?

    Because I write code.  My profession for two decades has involved technology and systems and building things on computers. The gaming industry may seem lighthearted and playful, but at the end of the day games are just more code (and art and music and databases and stories) built inside of a computer.

    I spent the next five months working on the soul and systems of a simulation-meets-cozy style game and pushing it through various iterations of functionality until I was actually able to load it onto one of those handheld gaming PCs and sit on the couch playing my buggy (but functional) game.

    It’s now mid-2026 as I write this and the game development has been stalled for about a year. I’ve poked at it. Prodded it. Added tiny nudges to the system. But stalled, really.

    I bring it up here because it comes to mind when I think of the idea I’m trying to get across in this chapter of the blog: creativity isn’t just a whim. It can be work and a product and an invention that may someday wind up in a store being sold to people who would pay for it.

    And on days that I’m being particularly honest I think I would tell you that the game development didn’t stall for lack of time or motivation or direction. It probably stalled because the profession that morphed in a newfound passion quietly transformed back into a profession when I wasn’t looking. And it took me a few months to get my head around that idea.

  • Past Present

    Over and over I stumble across advice for creativity.  Heck, it’s the basis of this blog, isn’t it? Here’s what has worked for me, for others, for everyone else in the past, present and certainly will do in the future, too.

    Right?

    And the smart money, the guy who wants this site to be successful and to captivate you and to hold your attention would tell you that there are answers buried inside if you read deeply enough.

    The honest guy would tell you that creativity is just like any other job. You get out what you put in, and the effort pays off when you do the work.

    The fuzzy spaces between, though, are filled with an endless doubting void that slurps up every bit of advice, superstition, ritual, inspiration, and randomness distilled from the universe as possible.

    I’m just the guy sitting here telling you to embrace that uncertainty.

    Look at the advice.

    But also find your own way.

    Do the work.

    But embrace the chaos.

    Dig into ideas that shift your mind, body, and soul to new perspectives.

    But ride the efforts of a billion people who have gone this way before you.

    Under the category of Past & Present, I’ll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Explain Yourself

    Anyone who is not a sociopath is probably, eventually going to discover the need to explain themselves to someone.  This isn’t a weakness. It’s a social legacy reality.

    We all make stuff. 

    Maybe you’re not an artist or a writer or a musician, as I write about those things here, but you might prepare food, manage money, build roads, fight for justice, heal the sick—or any of countless other jobs—and each of those things the pursuit against the entropy of the universe. It is making order out of the slide into chaos.

    And if you are doing any of this making, eventually, probably, likely someone will ask you why you have made the things you have made.

    Why? Why did you spend your time on this planet, in this life, doing this thing and making what you made? Why this?

    It would be easy to mistake this for a requisite justification of our lives, rather than for what I think it is: the realization by all of us on the side asking the question: that what makes us humans is looking into the heart of someone else’s passions and seeking to understand.

    So. If someone asks you don’t flinch and feel interrogated. Explain yourself. Share your soul. Spread your love of that thing you do.

  • Memory Waned

    If I ever need a better reminder that age plays nasty tricks on us all (oh, and that I should keep a notebook or my notes app with me at all times) is sitting here for five minutes trying to trigger the second half of a lost memory.

    I remember that last night I had a great idea for an article, but this morning sitting here to write said article I can’t remember a thing about it.

    Is that getting older, or just bad idea management overall?

    I think we all probably encounter empty places where we thought we left our creative car keys the night before, and maybe such as it was in my youth I’m just more frustrated by this thinking organ in my skull that I feel like I should have more control over as I approach fifty.

    Online analysts will tell you that technology has allowed us to offload our memories to external devices and this has made the tools in our brains dull and fragile. On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with leaning into a notebook to keep track of fleeting ideas when you don’t have time or inclination to open the laptop and immediately start working on them.