Hi friends,

I’ll be honest: I didn’t prepare a grand article for you this week.

I spent most of this week handling life stuff. But I did keep my little experiment online.

I’m now on day 19 of my short-form challenge. I publish a one-minute video every day without cuts until I eliminate my Ums and Uhhs.

It’s been a lot of fun, too. Most videos flopped. Some got a few hundred views. It feels safe to experiment. If I had gotten thousands of views on each video, I'd be less inclined to do it.

So, for now, I’ll keep talking about nerdy things. And I’m publishing them on all my socials, so I’m getting different reactions from each platform depending on the topic. I guess that when I publish on day 30, I’ll have some concrete data points to work with.

One lesson I already learned is to talk fast and get to the point earlier. Seems pretty reasonable, no? But you’d be surprised how hard it is to talk to the camera without a script.

That’s all I have for you today, friends! I hope you enjoy your weekend :)

Talk soon,
Oren

I have never felt so alone as I have these last couple of weeks since EA shut down BioWare and canceled the next Mass Effect.

It just dawned on me that I had nobody to share it with in real life. I don’t have a lot of real-life friends. My two best friends are married with children. When we’re together, it’s the best time, but those meetings happen once or twice a year. I miss them.

I have work friends, and those are genuinely good people, but they come with work baggage. In my experience, work friends only became real-life friends when I was no longer working with them. And yet, those are not close friendships.

When I do my walks multiple times a week, I see people walking and talking on the phone. Some are venting to someone, while others are walking together with friends. And all I do is walk in silence while I listen to music or a podcast.

So why am I telling you all this? I’m not looking for pity or consolation. I understand very clearly that what I’m going through as a nerdy adult is not the same experience other people are going through. Some of you have families, some of you have meaningful friendships to rely on.

And some of you don’t. Just like me.

Perhaps I can do something to change that. Creating another Discord server, Facebook group, WhatsApp group or anything else is easy, but it’s just another place to share messages. Just like your favorite subreddit. We need something more meaningful, like a video call where people can meet each other and get to know one another.

I’m 100% sure I can host a video meeting where people can talk face-to-face in a group and decide how often we want to meet. Perhaps some real-life friendships can develop from that meeting.

What do you think? Would that be something you’d enjoy being a part of? I’ll make it easy to express interest - just reply Yes to this email or in the comments and that will let me know you’re interested.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Talk soon,
Oren

Recently I started dating again. I’m looking for a nice religious, nerdy Jewish girl. And as I started updating my profiles on the various dating apps, or sending my details to friends and family, it dawned on me that I wasn’t advertising myself correctly nor was I saying what I was actually looking for.

This article is the result of that “research” within myself.

Let’s see which one resonates with you the most.

1. Your partner is also nerdy, or you encourage your kids to be nerdy

It’s very important to me that my future wife enjoys video games, board games, or any other nerdy hobbies I might have. As a nerdy single adult, I have come to the realization that it’s important to me to keep those interests alive and not bury them and become a whole different person when I enter a relationship with a woman who isn’t interested in any of those things.

When I was younger I was more willing to do that. But as I age I simply don’t care. Either we enjoy something together or we don’t match. I’m not gonna cancel my whole personality for you.

And for those of you who have kids, you might find yourself letting them enjoy Pokémon cards, or maybe even play with them in D&D sessions that fit their age. When they grow up they might lose interest, but at least you opened the door instead of waiting for them to discover these interests on their own.

2. You buy more books than you actually read

My TBR list is huge. Sometimes it’s overwhelming, but I totally keep buying books. I dream that someday in a house I’ll own I’ll have my own library with all the books I accumulated over the years.

Some of those books are signed, too.

The same goes for video games, by the way. If your Steam library is filled with games you bought and haven’t actually played, that’s the same rationale as those books.

3. You actually learn from video games as an adult

One of the games I love to play is the Anno series. It’s a city-building game and you have to keep a budget of all the income and expenses that your city generates. These games work on the principle that spending more than you earn is bad. We all know this.

Anno gives you an entire economy where that basic rule can be disrupted in multiple ways. Your income might look healthy, but suddenly one production chain collapses, your population stops getting what it needs, and everything starts spiraling.

It was the same with SimCity back in the day. I love a game that allows you to manage an economy.

4. Your inner compass has been influenced by video games

Have you ever found yourself deciding whether to do something or not and thinking in moral terms from your favorite video games? Paragon / Renegade from Mass Effect. Alignment charts from D&D. The list goes on.

Sometimes I’ll find myself in a situation and ask: What would Commander Shepard do here? Is this a Paragon or Renegade action? We don’t have a save file on life that we can load when we don’t get what we want, but at least I know what kind of player I want to be.

Being a nerdy adult is about embracing the lessons behind the gameplay.

5. When you find people like you, you make them your best friends

It is very hard to find people who like video games or fantasy books the same way we do. Not to mention a partner to date.

And when I finally find someone who knows what Mass Effect or Dragon Age are, or they love The Witcher or some other series I know, I instantly click with them. It’s like being the only nerd in a room full of gym bros and then finding another nerd among them. We gravitate towards each other.

BTW, not that a gym bro can’t also be a nerd. I am essentially turning into one after spending the last couple of years in the gym lifting weights.

Thanks for reading!

I hope this fun little listicle has brightened your day. Growing older made me choose what kind of nerd I want to become. I don’t have unlimited time anymore, so the things I keep coming back to, video games, fantasy books, worlds like Mass Effect and Stargate, feel much more deliberate than they did when I was younger.

Thank you for spending time with me and I’ll see you in the next one.

Take care,
Oren

P.S. Remember that we’re still fighting for Mass Effect and Stargate: #SaveMassEffect #SaveStargate

BioWare is dead. The next Mass Effect is canceled. Let me be clear: I’m not celebrating this. Especially after watching the leaked trailer for the next game. That trailer was shot in-engine. Not made with CGI. Mass Effect has been a part of my life for 16 years.

It’s a sad day for the video game industry.

That said, after the shock of the announcement wore off, a different thought has crept into my mind: perhaps it’s a good thing. The BioWare that made Veilguard and Anthem is not the same BioWare that made the original trilogies for Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

And it starts with understanding what this studio shutting down actually means.

The Separation of IP and Studio

EA shut down BioWare and canceled the next Mass Effect as part of a massive layoff wave that cut about 400 people. EA was recently acquired in a $55 billion leveraged buyout led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners, putting around $18 billion of debt on EA’s books.

That puts the shutdown in a different perspective: EA will keep cutting costs and finding opportunities to pay off this debt. And while BioWare has closed, EA still owns the Mass Effect IP. And that’s a property they can theoretically sell, too.

Other RPG studios with proven track records can take care of the Mass Effect IP and give it the love and respect it deserves. Studios like Larian, Owlcat, and CD Projekt RED. Those studios made games with love, and nobody is perfect, but they show that great RPGs can still be made outside BioWare's relationship with EA.

I’m not saying one of these studios is about to buy Mass Effect. But BioWare closing does break an assumption we’ve had for years: that Mass Effect and BioWare have to remain inseparable.

The Relationship Wasn’t Working Anymore

If we look back objectively on any of the games BioWare has put out over the last decade, we can see a trend with their reception: slight suspicion. And we have come to accept that as fact. But that’s not how it should be.

Andromeda in 2017 technically spent five years in development, but post-release reporting found that most of the game we actually played was built in roughly the final 18 months. There were re-scopes, leadership changes, technological problems, and brutal crunch. Remember the whole “my face is tired” meme? Andromeda was mocked for not being ready.

I am not going to say EA is the only one responsible for this outcome. BioWare clearly had its own internal problems, but something there didn’t work.

Anthem was a disaster. We all agree. I don’t even need to talk about it.

And then we reach Mass Effect Legendary Edition in 2021. It modernized the original trilogy. It included almost all the DLC and remastered the game's assets, so it looked better. I liked it, and I still play it. It was the one thing that went pretty well for BioWare in the last decade.

And think about that for a second: BioWare’s biggest unambiguous win of the last decade was repackaging the games made by the old BioWare.

And then we reach The Veilguard. We can all agree Veilguard had a troubled release. I played it to 100% completion, and while I didn’t hate it, I had many questions. For example, why can’t I go to the south? It’s clear it was possible when Harding tells you she takes Emmrich to visit Ferelden. What? I want to visit Ferelden too!

Or there was the entire debacle with Taash and their nonbinary questline. I didn’t mind it too much, and Taash being nonbinary itself wasn’t really my issue. But I still think it’s a little weird that so much of an entire companion questline in a massive fantasy RPG was dedicated to a companion discovering and discussing their gender identity.

Video games often cut to black during romantic scenes, but somehow going so deeply into something this personal and specific was considered perfectly fine as a major companion storyline. Maybe visibility would have been better served through side quests or as part of a broader companion story, rather than becoming such a large part of Taash’s arc. Those companion quests and conversations were clipped and widely mocked online. Was it worth it to reach a relatively small subset of gamers who felt seen by those quests? I didn’t mind it, but if I were in BioWare’s shoes, I would have chosen a different path to show that visibility.

Regardless of how anyone feels about that storyline, Veilguard had a much bigger problem: EA later reported that the game reached around 1.5 million players during the quarter, nearly 50% below the company’s expectations.

All of that puts us in a position where BioWare has not published a new RPG that became an undisputed hit with its audience in over a decade. Legendary Edition was the exception, and that was a remaster of the games that made us love BioWare in the first place.

The Writing Was On The Wall

Ever since the EA acquisition deal was finalized, I had a feeling this was coming. But now that it’s here, I feel like I lost a friend.

Mass Effect games were my most-played games ever. The leaked trailer just made it hit so much worse.

While BioWare had its own problems over the years, I do still think a new Mass Effect game under a new owner could be a great resolution. If you work at a game studio and you’re reading this, imagine gaining the most loyal fandom you’ll ever get. We love these characters and that world so deeply that we will follow them anywhere.

And maybe that’s what I’ve actually been mourning. Not the BioWare that existed yesterday, but the BioWare that existed when I first stepped onto the Normandy sixteen years ago. Those aren’t necessarily the same thing anymore.

Closing the studio doesn’t erase those games. But it might finally separate the worlds BioWare created from a company that no longer knew what to do with them.

Thanks For Reading

If you’re a nerdy adult like me, this probably hit you too. I know many nerds like me who grew up with Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Please, feel free to comment or hit reply and tell me how you’re feeling right now. We need to be there for each other.

BioWare is dead, but Mass Effect doesn’t have to die with it.

Keelah Se’lai,
Oren

Yesterday we came back from Greece.

It was a good trip. It ended well, and I came home with fond memories and lots of pictures from the many places we visited. Greece was very welcoming.

Now I’m back home, facing the fact that the trip is over and my vacation is ending. Next week, I’m back to work.

This is one of those issues where I’m still processing everything, so I don’t have much to say yet. But my mind is working overtime, and I’ll probably share some of what’s been on it in future articles.

So this weekend, I’m going to take it easy. Rest a lot. And next week, we’re back to the grind.

Are you also going through a life change at the moment? Hit reply and let me know.

Readers of this newsletter know I usually write this one on Fridays in my favorite bookstore in Tel Aviv. The title of this newsletter suggests that’s not the case today. If you assumed I wrote this from Greece, you’d be right.

I’m on a bus, typing this issue on my phone between stops for pictures. My parents are with me on this eight-day trip.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a proper vacation. I’m getting to know some new people as part of this organized trip, and there is a lot to tell about Greece. I think I’ll dedicate a whole blog post to it because I’ve been journaling the experience as we go.

For right now, though, I want to mention how much Greece has opened my eyes to things I saw in The Blood of Dawnwalker.

For example, there are little shrines along the roads marking places where someone died in an accident—or sometimes survived one, and the shrine was built in gratitude to the saint they believe protected them.

And I immediately recognized them from Dawnwalker.

As a Jew, I find the way faith shows up here very interesting. Greek Orthodox Christianity seems to have a much more visible presence in everyday life than what I’m used to back home, especially in the little personal ways people display their beliefs.

It’s funny realizing that something I first encountered as part of the visual language of a fantasy game is just… a real thing I’m now seeing outside the bus window.

I’ll keep it short this time. But expect a trip blog post sometime next week after I’m back :)

Thank you for being here!
Oren

Over the last several weeks, I’ve been replaying the Mass Effect trilogy through Mass Effect Legendary Edition, the remastered collection of all three games.

And I’m an adult in my late 30s with a full-time job that sometimes takes me through some pretty long workdays.

How did I manage that? Here are some of the things that worked for me, and might work for you too.

I Compromised on Session Length

Gone are the days when I regularly started playing at 7 PM and finished at 2 AM. Technically, I can still do that, and sometimes I even find myself ending a session at 1 AM because I really wanted to finish one more mission. The difference is that now I have to get up and work the next morning, and I usually pay for it in energy.

Most of my gaming sessions start somewhere between 8 and 9 PM and end between 11 PM and midnight. That may not sound like much compared with the marathon sessions I remember from when I was younger, but even three two-hour sessions a week add up to 48 hours over eight weeks.

That’s enough time to finish a lot of games.

So, I needed to let go of my outdated idea of how gaming sessions looked. And session length wasn’t the only thing I had to change about how I play.

I Don’t Commit to a Schedule

When you’re a teenager or a student, there’s some consistency to your schedule. You know when your classes are, or you know when school is, and besides time for homework and social engagements you have most of your evenings free.

As a grown adult with a full-time job, my personal life usually begins sometime after 6 PM with me going to sleep at around midnight. That’s roughly six hours where I have to cram gaming and anything else I have going on. And for those of you who have a family, that’s probably also the only time you have with your kids during the work week.

Because of that, I don’t really commit to playing every Sunday or playing exactly twice a week anymore. Something will eventually come up and disrupt that schedule, and I don’t want gaming to become another appointment I failed to keep.

What works better for me is making room for it when I can. If I have a free evening, great. But if plans change I won’t stress about it. Gaming should be guilt-free.

So now that we know what session length and frequency can look like for me as a nerdy adult, let’s talk about the gameplay itself.

I Use the Game’s Natural Stopping Points

Mass Effect in particular is great for the way I play now. Most of the time I’ll be on the Normandy and launch a mission from the galaxy map. A lot of those missions fit comfortably into an hour or so, which means I can usually finish one or two in a session.

Once I finish a mission, I’m back on the Normandy, I can talk to my crew, save the game and finish my session for the day. I also have some time to digest what I just played instead of cramming multiple hours of gameplay into one sitting just to finish the game faster.

What are we playing for? Finishing the game, or enjoying it?

Most games have some kind of natural rhythm to them. It can be a quest, a chapter, a dungeon, a mission, a boss. Being aware of those stopping points makes a long game feel less like one enormous commitment and more like a series of evenings.

I Know What “Finished” Means to Me

Just so we’re clear: when I say I want to “finish” a game, I don’t mean I need to complete everything it has to offer.

For me, “finishing” a game means experiencing everything story-wise.

In Mass Effect 2, I completed the main story, the loyalty missions, and all story DLC the game has to offer. I didn’t scan every planet until there was nothing left to harvest, and I didn’t complete every little Hammerhead mission Cerberus throws at me just because it’s marked on the map.

Once the stories I care about were finished, I was ready to import the save to Mass Effect 3.

If you focus on getting every achievement or earning a Platinum trophy, your definition of “finishing a game” might be completely different. That’s fine. It’s important to be clear about that from the start.

I’m Okay With Skipping Things

One recent game that made this sacrifice crystal clear for me was The Blood of Dawnwalker. You only have 30 days and nights to save your family, and every significant quest or action you complete has a specific time cost.

The only way to see everything Dawnwalker has to offer in one playthrough is to give up on saving your family. Which I didn’t do.

And that maps to our adult life as well. There is a time currency. By the time I get to gaming, I have already spent some of it on work, the gym, family, writing and everything else I have going on.

So I’ve had to learn that it’s okay not doing everything a game puts in front of me. I don’t need every icon on the map just because it exists. If there is a story involved, I’ll probably play the mission. If it’s just another part of the grind like resource gathering, I’m willing to skip it. And that’s coming from a past completionist.

The one time I invested in resource gathering in Mass Effect 2 was before importing the save to ME3. If you had harvested over 100k of each resource, it meant another 100 points for war assets.

I’m at that age where I decide what I want to experience when playing a game in my limited time. I won’t rush through it, I’ll just be picky.

I Stop While I Still Know What Comes Next

When I finish a session on the Normandy, I usually already know which mission I’m going to do the next time I play. Mass Effect is really good about letting you know what the next quest is about when a mission ends. That way, when I load the game again, I’m not spending the first twenty minutes staring at the galaxy map trying to remember what I was doing.

It reminds me a little of Ernest Hemingway’s writing strategy. He talked about stopping his writing sessions before he finished writing what was going to happen next, which made it easier to start again the following morning.

Apparently, that works pretty well for 50-hour RPGs too.

When I started this newsletter 17 weeks ago, I didn't know what kind of material I would publish. I knew it needed to be nerdy. Because that’s what I am - a huge nerd.

But things happened along the way that steered this newsletter toward a different kind of writing. I started writing about how the nerdy things in our lives affect us. And perhaps, most of all, what it means to still be a nerd in my late 30s.

Life could have easily steered me toward the boring cycle: watch a movie, talk about it with a friend over the phone or at a meetup, and move on with my life. It would have been very easy to decide I don’t have time to play video games, let alone stream them.

But then, what do we become?

We become old. Boring. Too serious to play. That version of adulthood terrifies me.

I will proudly walk outside with an N7 T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Dress shoes and buttoned shirts only for “serious” events. I will proudly adorn my walls with manga posters and my shelves with hardcover fantasy books. Preferably signed, if I can help it.

I will gladly make TikToks, Reels, and YouTube videos discussing my favorite parts of games, shows, and books because I want to talk about them with people who care. I don’t want to give up on that.

And I know there are so many of you out there doing the same thing. Growing older without giving up the games, movies, shows, and stories that made us who we are.

That’s why Nerdy Adulthood exists.

It’s where I’ll write about what it means to live as a nerdy adult and, hopefully, build a place where the rest of us can find each other.

So, what changes?

1. The Friday issue isn’t going anywhere. Nerdy Adulthood will continue every Friday.

2. My essays about specific games, books, movies, and shows will live on theorencohen.com. Nerdy Adulthood is for the bigger questions about living as a nerdy adult.

3. Oren’s Nerdy Letter is retiring. From now on, this is Nerdy Adulthood.

And I’m still me. My website, YouTube channel, and everything else will continue under my name. And yes, I’ll still try to reply when you email me. :)

That’s all I have to say today. Thank you for being here :)

Welcome to Nerdy Adulthood!

Take care,
Oren

This week I lost my Aunt to lung cancer and COPD.

Over the last year, she had been struggling with breathing and surviving in general. She was dependent on oxygen and CPAP to breathe. On Yom Kippur eve, she exhaled for the last time in the hospital, surrounded by her close family.

Her death broke me. Other people in our family died before, but nobody this close to me since my grandmother passed nine years ago. I miss her so much.

So, to honor her, I want to tell you a bit about her and how much she meant to me. Later, we will talk about the beginning I alluded to in the title, I promise.

Farewell, Aunt Ilana

My first memories of Aunt Ilana are all set in her old home - a house I spent my childhood in. Her home stood next to the elementary school her daughter and I attended. So, naturally, I spent a lot of time there after school and in the summertime.

Aunt Ilana made amazing schnitzel. It was so thin, salty, and you just didn’t want it to end. She served it with her famous spaghetti.

In the last seven years, Aunt Ilana was also our neighbor so I saw her weekly. We would give her food for the weekend. Especially in the last year when she struggled with cancer. In a matter of months, we saw her transform from the once confident, head-held-high woman she was into someone so frail she couldn’t stand on her own and had to use a wheelchair. My brothers and cousins all cried at one point or another. We all loved her.

About a month ago, she was hospitalized for the same breathing problems that ultimately took her life. She survived it that time. I wrote about this in issue #12. She asked each of us to promise her something. That promise is always on my mind now that she’s gone.

Farewell, Aunt Ilana. I love you so much, and will never forget you and what I promised you.

When I learned she had passed, I wrote a post on Facebook that came from the heart. It wasn’t outlined or planned. Apparently, that post reached farther than anything I’d posted this year. People who didn’t even know Ilana shared our pain. Almost 800 people reacted to it, which was pretty insane to me.

What stayed with me wasn’t the number itself. It was that something I wrote without outlining, optimizing, or overthinking reached people more deeply than almost anything else I’d made this year.

I think there’s something in that.

A new era of content begins

One final update for this issue is a change I’m making to my videos. I’m losing the teleprompter and “sort of” rebooting the channel.

I feel like I’m in a position in my life where I want to be more expressive and less robotic. Writing down a few pointers makes that easier for me. I created an introduction video on YouTube that you can watch here. Let me know if you vibe with the new delivery or not:

That’s all I have for you this Friday.

Thanks for reading! Take care,
Oren

It’s Sunday morning. I’d usually be at the office at this time (because in Israel Sunday is a regular workday), writing code and debating designs with my co-workers. Today is different.

There are a lot of people around me. Going up and down the escalator towards the food court I’m sitting in. Some of them are here for food, others are just running errands. It’s the shortest “business day” in the whole year. Even shorter than Fridays.

In under two hours, this entire mall will close. We will all go home. It will be so very quiet. For 25 hours, imagine no cars on the road and kids on bikes in the middle of a highway.

It’s the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year.

I want to ask forgiveness

It’s customary to ask people you interacted with over the year for forgiveness. Yom Kippur only forgives what’s between you and God, but for anything between you and another person, you have to ask them directly. So, if I wrote something that hurt you, didn’t reply to an email, or didn’t deliver what I promised, I want to ask for your forgiveness.

I also wish to thank you for being part of this newsletter journey I started. There’s still a lot to write on this website, and I’m excited for the next pieces.

Take care,
Oren

P.S. If you’re curious about the Jewish Holidays, I’ve included a list of the holidays of Tishrei and their meaning below.

What are the holidays of Tishrei?

Every year around September, we celebrate these four back-to-back holidays in Tishrei, the first month of the Jewish year:

1. Rosh Ha’Shana - marks the beginning of the year. Two days of observance. It’s also called Judgment Day, when God writes our fates for the new year based on how we behaved toward each other and toward Him.

2. Yom Kippur - on the tenth day of the year, we observe Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is a 25-hour fast where we pray to sway God towards good outcomes this year. The belief is that Rosh Ha’Shana was when God wrote our fates, and Yom Kippur is when He signs them. It becomes final.

3. Sukkot - a seven-day celebration of the time when the Israelites lived in Sukkot, which were temporary huts. The last day of this celebration is called Hosha’na Raba. This ties back to the Judgment on Rosh Ha’Shana and Yom Kippur. The belief is that God delivers the judgment to the angels after He makes it. And during Hosha’na Raba, that judgment is being carried out.

4. Simchat Torah - This is the last holiday in Tishrei. This celebrates finishing the Torah and starting over. This is a fun celebration with lots of food and dancing with Torah scrolls.

Once upon a time, there was a younger Oren, in his early twenties, who had so many dreams. Over the last twenty years, he killed all of them.

Except one.

That dream exists within the words you’re reading right now. A newsletter. A consistent one.

So, to celebrate four months of newslettering, I want to reflect on the three steps I took to kill every big dream I had.

Step 1: Doubt the dream

Step 1 begins after you’ve had the dream. Doubting your dream introduces little cracks in that perfect image you have in your head.

One of my biggest dreams was to become self-employed from my own creative work. I dreamt of that multiple times throughout my adult life. Every few years I want to try it out, and every time I kill it. This dream coming back in new forms should have taught me something, but I’ll save that for a different post.

Doubting the dream means raising questions about it that usually get answered if you trust the process. A good example was my first “serious” nerd publishing site, Alive2Play. Through that site, I brought together a few writers who wanted to write about games and nerd culture news. And we did write for a while. We even got some free Steam keys to review indie games.

Over time, we published more articles but got no engagement from readers. And when growth wasn’t happening, my writers started to leave. They had school or jobs. I wasn’t paying them, so they owed me nothing. It was all volunteer work in the hope of making money once we grew enough. As plans shifted, more and more questions bubbled up. Can we even do this? What if we give a bad review? What if other sites decide to band together against us? What if I bring on someone who’s only there for the games but won’t actually write for the site?

Asking these questions during the low points sowed doubt in my ability to follow through. Eventually, Alive2Play fizzled out when I started my Computer Science degree and lost faith that this site would become what I hoped. I stopped following through, which is the next step in the journey all my dead dreams followed.

Step 2: Fail to follow through

Every big dream requires hard work. You can’t become self-employed from your online work if you don’t have online work.

In September 2020, I started Geek Peek, my nerd podcast. It hit 10k subscribers and a cumulative view count of over 3 million on YouTube. Before many of our videos actually got traction, I was publishing to no one. If I’d stopped publishing based on those early results, none of the 50 interviews Geek Peek hosted would have happened.

In a way, I’m following through with this newsletter right now. Four months in and I’m not trying to sell anything. In the past, I would give up pretty easily on other projects. One to two weeks in, I would decide it’s not working. It was even easier to give up when I had money problems. Then I would see the creative project as the “thing” that would save me. That is probably the worst mistake I made in some of my early projects.

When you’re in survival mode, you don’t care about anyone but yourself and your loved ones. It’s a bad place to be when making something for others because then all you can think about is the sale, and people smell that from a mile away.

Then Step 3 comes in and acts as the decisive blow to the dream.

Step 3: Move on to the next big thing

They call it Shiny Object Syndrome. Is your blog not getting traffic after you posted five blog posts in the last three months? No worries! Just start a new one. See how excited you feel. Have you started a NaNoWriMo draft to write the fantasy book you’ve been dreaming about, and your word count is falling behind? Just give up! Try next year. Let the calm wash over you.

There’s a behavior in our brains that I can’t quite name. It’s like this relief that washes over you when you decide to give up on doing something hard. But why? Why do we feel like this? Because doing something hard might lower your chances of survival. That would be our lizard brain’s answer. So when something like this happens, it tries to get you off of doing the activity.

Our built-in behaviors are not a cop-out. We are still responsible for our actions. Nobody can fulfill your dreams for you. And I know it firsthand after celebrating 39 earlier this month. And yet, slowly but surely, I’m turning things around.

What changed with this newsletter?

I recognized a simple pattern in myself: I tend to overthink things.

So I took productivity advice you’ve all heard before and made it literal: Make it dead simple.

My habit for this newsletter is simple. I told myself a 300-word issue is acceptable. I don’t try to reach a word count. The process of creating it is very forgiving too. I usually write these at a local book shop because I like the atmosphere. But what if I arrive late? What if I don’t have enough time? I still tell myself: Write the title. Write the subtitle. The worst that can happen is you’ll finish it at home.

And that’s what I did for 16 weeks. This newsletter’s streak is growing and slowly becoming important to me. It’s like Duolingo. Sometimes you’ll do a lesson just to keep your streak. Not because you’re genuinely interested in learning more Japanese or chess.

Thank you for reading! What dream did you kill, and at what step? Hit reply and tell me about it.

Take care,
Oren

Last Monday, I celebrated my 39th birthday playing video games. It’s not that I didn’t want to go out or celebrate with friends; it just didn’t pan out. It doesn’t pan out. Every year. I’m not here to make you feel sorry for me, or anything. I’m just describing a feeling many millennials, especially male ones, will resonate with: Loneliness.

I’m sitting in a mall right now. I had chicken nuggets for dinner, and I’m sipping on Coke Zero while I write you this letter. My regular readers will notice I’m not in the book shop writing you this letter this time. And the reason is simple: Tomorrow is the Jewish New Year’s Eve. There will be simply no time to sit down in a coffee shop and write. So I’m writing this letter a day early, on Thursday evening, to be sent on Friday while I help prepare for the holiday and to meet family at my brother’s house.

That is the height of my loneliness because both of my older brothers are married with children, and I’m not. And you know how family gatherings are - “How are you doing? Are you in a relationship? Are you even looking? At your age, I did so and so...”

I’m just so tired of it all.

I guess I’m telling you all this not just to vent, but to show you that you’re not alone if you feel like me.

I’m looking for a relationship, as I’m sure some of you do too. But people around us don’t experience the multiple rejections a week on dating apps. Those stay on your phone. Our family members just see us at home on our computer or our phone, and think we aren’t doing anything.

This week was rough, and the weekend will be the climax, but over the past few days, a little gem has been keeping me sane before bed. A little gem called Blood of Dawnwalker.

Blood of Dawnwalker is my new favorite game

Blood of Dawnwalker has surprised me on so many levels.

I’m playing at the Fair difficulty. Even so, the combat system has been challenging to learn. I spent the better part of one of my streams fighting against soldiers in a camp, and they kept killing me over and over until I defeated them. I was bad. I didn’t even try to suck blood out of one of them during the fight.

The game also didn’t make it too difficult for me on that difficulty. But I still failed. Tonight I’m returning to fight a boss that has already defeated me multiple times. I just stopped because it was 1 AM.

The story itself also reminds me a little bit of Mass Effect 3‘s War assets. If you’re not familiar with them, it’s a sum of everything you did for people around the galaxy, each one scored by how much it helps in the final battle to save Earth. You have 30 days to defeat Brencis - a vampire playing at being a ruler - before he drains your family. You can disrupt his court by doing quests directly tied to his vassals. And you can gain allies to defeat him, both humans and vampires around the world. I’m close to finishing some quests for one of his vassals, and I’m only on day 3 or 4.

The game world itself is vast, too, but the game gives you tools to traverse it quickly. I can become a wolf during the night and run very fast between locations.

(Editing Oren here on Friday: I can tell you I have defeated not only that boss, but also a very challenging one that was one of Brencis’s three vassals in a stream that went for almost four hours last night)

Playing Dawnwalker also helped me understand something fundamental about my publishing strategy.

Publish the experience, not the aftermath

I was stuck in the old publishing strategy: play something, review it, and share it around. These days, old-school reviews are way too common. And I’m not much of a reviewer anyway. When I play, read, or watch a thing, I don’t look at it holistically, like a reviewer should. I usually focus on one or two things I took away from the experience.

For example, if I had to sum up The Witcher 3 in a single sentence, it’s “Geralt of Rivia finds his daughter and learns to be a father to her.”

But The Witcher 3 is a huge game. A “proper” reviewer would have so much more to say than to talk about one single thing.

Now that I’m playing Blood of Dawnwalker, I want to document the experience. I don’t want to finish the game and then talk about it afterward as a singular experience. I’m playing the game almost every day these last few days, and every time there’s something new to talk about.

I’m still refining my updated strategy, but one thing I’m certain of: I’ll give myself permission to publish shorter, more concise thoughts. Not every essay needs to be thousands of words.

I used to think nobody reads my random thoughts about a game. “What good does it do?” Today, when much of what you see around the web is not written by a human, that kind of writing resonates. I’m done self-censoring. The worst that will happen is people won’t read the piece. I wanted to write it anyway.

Thank you so much for being here!

That’s all I have for you today. I can’t believe this is issue 15. I have been writing these letters for 15 weeks straight.

Soon you’ll start seeing more content pop up in these letters and even on other days of the week.

I hope you enjoy your weekend, and Shana Tova from me to you.

Take care,
Oren

I still go to my day job on the days I don't want to. So why does content get a free pass but my day job doesn't?

For years I've been trying to build a community, and I realized I'm not putting in the right amount of effort. A podcast I listened to recently made that painfully clear.

There are two things I'm doing wrong right now:

1. Not treating this like a job.

2. Not batching content on social media.

Before we dive in to talk about each separately, let me explain what this means for you.

The Ghost site stays up. Both will have the same content. The only new things are Substack Notes which is a bit like Twitter, and the Subscriber chat. Those two elements are exclusive to Substack. Subscribers on Ghost will receive the email from Ghost. Subscribers on Substack will receive the email from Substack.

Content-wise, everything will remain the same.

Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about those two points.

Not Treating This Like a Job

I have a full time job. It's not like I procrastinate. But I do create content mostly when inspiration strikes, or when I'm not burned out about previous content that didn't do well.

I need to put in at least more effort than the casual reader. And I need to make my life easier by starting where people already are, not on my personal website that currently receives hardly any visitors.

This is where Substack comes in. The average Substack reader is on the platform to read. So I'm going to import all of my work from my Ghost site into Substack and start being more active on Substack Notes. Perhaps I'll make some friends in the process, too.

Substack has also implemented new features that make connection with your subscribers more fun and interactive. A chat, a podcast, videos - those are all cool features that make a publication more than a simple newsletter.

Not Batching Content on Social Media

In the podcast I listened to, the guest said his co-founder has written ahead about 100 posts a week for social media.

That's SO much work.

But it pays off. Their Threads presence is 302k followers. They have over 36k subscribers on Substack, too, and they get paid from it.

I want to invest more time into short-form content on social media. I already have ideas for short-form posts I can share about the nerdy topics I love.

I have a Typefully subscription that I haven't been using that much and considered cancelling. Instead, I'll spend some time scheduling posts ahead of time. It's a grind and I think I mostly avoided it because it feels like unrewarded work, but I need to find signal and see my voice develop online.

We'll See How It Goes

That's all I have for you today, and if you're reading this letter on Substack itself, say hi in the comments! I'm a really nice nerd.

Thank you for reading.

Oren

When I was in my early twenties, I was a part of an online community called BlizzForums. I was a heavy StarCraft player at the time. I wasn't competing or playing with people online. My love was the campaign and the stories this game managed to tell through strategy missions that mostly focus on volume. I fell in love with this community so much that I wanted to build one myself. That was the beginning of content creation for me.

It didn't go the way I wanted.

Ever since that day, I tried again and again. For twenty years, I tried to build a community that would become my employer. I craved the connection with other nerds and I wanted to build things they would find valuable for them. Along the way I built many communities. Some failed, some still live on. None of them were the community I envisioned back then.

It's time to face the reality and admit that I would probably never build the community I wanted. This letter is a eulogy to that dream.

The Dream I Lost

I wake up in my own bed, in my own house, and start a chill morning. No commuting to work or working from home. I start my day with a coffee and a writing session to get some ideas off my chest that accumulated during the night.

Later that day, I go to the gym and lift something heavy. Weights will never not be a part of my future. They weren't in my original dream, but I realize after two years, I don't want to give my progress up.

After a shower and lunch, I go into my private study in my home. There are rows of books ordered by series on my shelves. The Stormlight Archive is prominently sitting on its own shelf. The same for all the Dune books. My private collection is vast. Some of them are signed, some aren't. I haven't read them all, but I love them all the same.

A few of those books are mine. They have my name on them. Something I never thought would happen but it did. I finally materialized the fantasy world that's been on my mind since my late teens.

I open my computer and put on some chill lofi beats music and start looking at analytics. Behind me there's a gold play button on the wall to indicate I got a million subscribers on YouTube just by talking about the nerdy things I read, watch, and play.

On the blog, I see much less activity than my YouTube and socials, but those people convert to email subscribers, and I keep writing them this nerdy letter. Every week on a Friday.

What a nice dream to have right? I wanted to believe it was possible. Or maybe I've been making the wrong thing all along.

My Idea of Content is Different

Have you ever read an episode-by-episode review of a TV show you've been watching? That's what I've been trying to create. The problem is nobody searches or watches that type of content on YouTube. People are more interested in specific moments than episode recaps that AI can generate in seconds.

For Google, it's a lost cause. Most sites today are either visited by AI bots to use them for answers, or they are lost between all the slop that's generated and uploaded daily.

And yet, I still want to keep writing thanks to a lesson I learned from my late grandmother.

Today is My Grandmother's Memorial

Nine years ago, my Grandmother Yona, or Hama'me in her Yemeni name (which means pigeon in both languages) left us at the age of 105.

I loved her so much.

Grandma Yona always said to give to other people without expecting anything in return. After her death we discovered from numerous people who came to her funeral how much she gave in secret. My grandma was by no means rich. But she was living alone and she didn't need much for herself.

I tried to keep this dream of making money from writing afloat. But the world has moved on while I stayed behind. I do still want to write because I enjoy it and I know someone else will too, but it's time to grieve this dream.

In a way, thanks to her, something in me wants to keep writing this thing even though I know it would only reach a handful of people. If those people enjoyed it, I succeeded.

Thank You For Reading!

This is all I have for you today. Thanks for sticking around with me. What's one dream you have that you think won't happen? Let me know by either replying to this email, or commenting below if you read this online.

My aunt almost died this week. I didn't think I'd "celebrate" the three-month milestone of this newsletter with such somber news, but here we are.

So today, I want to reflect on Life and Death, and tell you a little bit about my aunt. By the end, I'll also share a few nerdy things, don't worry, this is still called my nerdy letter.

Let's dive in.

My Aunt Was a Prominent Part of My Life

I remember her old house, the one before she moved closer to us, very well. It was almost my second home. There was an entry way into the row of building entrances covered with bushes. It was like you almost entered a secluded secret area of the neighborhood. Her house was in the third entrance and I had to climb three floors by foot. There was no elevator.

My Aunt's house always had a faint smell of cigarettes. Both she and her late husband were smokers. And not like once in a while or even daily. They smoked whole packs. I remember the schnitzel that she used to make me and my cousin when we would come back from school. I often stayed at her house. My cousin and I would watch movies, or just play board games and do homework. These memories are from my elementary school days. It's been over 25-30 years since.

My uncle died almost three years ago. She wasn't the same since.

Diabetes was hard on my uncle. It got complicated even further when he didn't really follow the advice he was given about his diet. They wanted to amputate his foot that became gangrenous, but he refused. Without this amputation, his system was overloaded with the septic shock that the gangrene caused, and he died a painful death.

Since that day, my aunt was deeply depressed. For months she was grieving his loss, but she was healthy, even though she's celebrating 79 next week.

Earlier this week, after months of battling lung cancer, presumably from the cigarettes she smoked for decades, her COPD seems to have gotten worse. That prompted a visit to the hospital. The news I got from my parents and cousin about her was that things were getting worse. On Monday, I came over to help with a BPAP machine. It was probably the only time in my adult life that I was ok with someone treating me like I'm a technician. If it helped my aunt, I was all in.

On Tuesday, my father called me at 13:30, the middle of my workday, and told me to come to the hospital. We all came. We all said our goodbyes. She whispered things in my ear that I would never tell anybody. I promised to do what she asked. We went home thinking that she wasn't going to survive the night. But she did. She stayed up all the time, because she was anxious and delusional from the oxygen deprivation.

Now, she's at home. Last I heard she had a mostly good night's sleep with an oxygen mask on her face.

This is the thing that infuriates me the most. We are dying every day from car crashes, terrorism, wars, and medical complications. Many of these deaths could be prevented.

My maternal grandmother died about 20 years ago when doctors made a mistake and gave her two medications that shouldn't go together and it crashed her system. Her death was preventable too.

I don't know what the future holds for my aunt. I hope her COPD symptoms could be managed in the same way her lung cancer is.

With my aunt in the hospital, I announced I was stopping streaming, but two days later, when I came back to it, I realized it's relieving my stress.

I'm Half Way Through Mass Effect 2

The Mass Effect Series is really important to me. I started replaying it on my YouTube channel a few months ago, and it's been so fun to come back to these games, and relive all of the moments that made me fall in love with this series all over again.

This week, I got to do the Collector's Ship mission which is halfway through the game. I still have a lot of loyalty missions to go through until I can do the suicide mission. And even then I still have some DLC to finish like Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival before I import the save to ME3.

My ulterior motive is to capture just gameplay on my PC itself. I want to create essays about Mass Effect at some point so capturing just the gameplay helps with clean b-roll.

Outside of video games, I also bought a few new books today.

New Fantasy Series Acquired

Not much to say about this but there are six new books in my backpack now waiting for me to take them home to my packed shelf: The Poppy War trilogy and the Jade City trilogy.

I heard good things on both but I won't judge them until I read them.

And finally, I took some time to republish one of my popular guides.

I Published My Dropout Beginner's Guide

It's a guide I wrote about the service as a veteran viewer. I hope it helps anybody wanting to start with series like Dimension 20 and Game Changer.

You can read it here:

Beginner’s Guide to Dropout.TV

That's All For Today!

Thanks for reading! What nerdy thing you did this week that you're proud of? Hit reply and let me know, or comment below if you're reading this online.

See you soon,
Oren

Yesterday I was walking on the beach when I noticed a father taking pictures of his baby sitting on the grass. This father did not have any other family with him. I don't know what came over me in that moment, but I stopped my walk and my podcast and came over to him.

"Do you want a picture of you both?" I asked him. In that moment I knew I was trying to do a good thing but my brain was filled with a million negative scenarios racing. "leave me alone" was the least of the horrors my brain produced in that moment.

And yet, reality was way different. "wow, yes" the man said. I took three pictures. And when I was done I showed them to him, he was genuinely happy when he thanked me and we both left on our separate ways.

It was such a small moment but it stayed with me. I kept thinking about it and smiling long after that walk ended.

The thing is, that small blip in time wasn't a fluke. A once in a lifetime bravery. It's one instance of a pattern I started noticing in myself lately.

Small changes have been compounding in me. Like offering a picture or adding an extra workout. This issue is about that.

I've Been Talking to Strangers Lately

Every time I go to this Tel Aviv mall on a Friday, I always eat a slice of Pizza with mushrooms. Today I took a lightly different pizza because they didn't have my regular and I didn't want to wait. Today's pizza had thin slices of purple onion, extra mozzarella and sprinkles of parsley on top of the usual cheese and tomato sauce they put on every pizza as a base.

This pizza was delicious.

Anyway, as I'm munching on it while doom scrolling on my phone, I was approached by a french dad and his son asking me if the kid can sit. I said yes. There's no reason for me to hold up three extra seats when I'm alone.

The father was grateful, the son ate his pizza, and I kept scrolling on my phone while munching on this heavenly doughy triangle I held in my hand.

It's only after they left that I realized how silly I must be to immediately allow someone to sit at my table while also never asking to sit at tables that had open seats in previous times I've been here.

I should try to do that the next time I'm waiting for a table to clear.

I think the reason I've been more open to strangers lately is directly tied to my self esteem which has been rising slowly but surely with my gym progress.

I'm At My Lowest Weight in the Last Decade

I weight 105.0 this morning. This is the lowest I weighed in the last ten years.

I also started noticing that I'm slimming a bit more. It's been rough to keep to my diet but I'm not hungry, I'm just giving up on some treats and going on walks. I do still need to reach my macros for the gym which means I have a specific intake of protein and such.

But lately it's been easier to see progress. One change I made lately was that I raised my workouts to three times a week instead of just two. This morning I finished the second week on this new schedule and I guess it compounds.

Keeping it to just two workouts a week has been draining since my body would be in this twilight zone where one workout would benefit from a rest of a few days, and the next one would be after only one rest day. I would arrive to that workout completely drained and sore, and usually fail my PRs.

For now at least, it seems I'm on the right track. And progress in the gym has spilled into something I thought I had given up on.

I'm Back Streaming The Mass Effect Trilogy

Over the last few days, I've been feeling more energetic. I used to feel so worn out by the end of the day, and something has changed over the last week or so. I was ready to give up on streaming yet another time and something in me said, we'll do one mission. That was on 22.30. And I did one. I played until midnight and recruited another companion. The next stream, I recruited Two more.

I don't have a lot of people joining these but I also record them separately without my voice over and camera just so I can have b-roll for when I do essay videos on Mass Effect. I plan to play The Witcher 3 next after the trilogy.

The shorts I've been sharing from these streams also got a decent amount of views. Like a thousand each. They don't go viral or something, but I enjoy making them.

At this pace, I have a dozen or so streams before I finish Mass Effect 2.

That's All For Today

Thanks for reading. What's one small thing you did recently that surprised you? Hit reply and let me know, or comment if you're reading this online.

Talk soon,
Oren

The best cure for burnout is the satisfaction of a completed project. I learned this lesson thanks to four videos and 130 total views.

The Clock I've Been Racing Isn't Mine

All my life, I've tried to achieve more with less. Be more productive, don't waste time, realize your dreams fast. I felt burned out more times than I can count, because I tried to do so much all the time. I hustled because I feared it would be too late.

Too late? For who?

One random Tuesday, on my way to work, a realization dawned on me: I have time. I have lots of it. I'm not even forty yet, and I'm lucky to be healthy and active. So why does this notion haunt me that I don't have time? Because some people around me don't. Namely my parents. And it's important to me to cross off the goals they care about. Family, kids, house, etc.

So I hustle. But the imaginary clock is not mine.

Burnout Leaves a Stamp

A state of burnout, for me, feels like I want to lounge and not do anything. It feels like resistance when I want to edit a video or a blog post, or work on my favorite things.

Every time burnout passes, it leaves something with me. A little caution stamp. It makes me less likely to start working on something, and it extends my recovery.

I Said Focus Then Sprinted Anyway

Last week, I decided to focus on one thing instead of chasing my entire list at once. One such thing is talking about Neon Genesis Evangelion.

The focus was good, but I did the thing again. Instead of publishing once a week, I cranked four episodes in one week to start the series with a bang.

My Best Work Got 62 Views

It's a little discouraging seeing your best work getting ignored. The highest amount of views any of these videos got was 62. I know I can't be picky. My YouTube channel has only 268 subscribers as of writing these words, but still.

Here's the series so far:

The EVA Chose Shinji Before He Ever Piloted It | Evangelion Episode 1

Shinji Didn’t Win His First Fight | Evangelion Episode 2

Shinji Has No Reason to Pilot | Evangelion Episode 3

Shinji Finally Has a Reason to Stay | Evangelion Episode 4

So I'm Finishing It

This series will be weekly from now on. And I will finish it no matter the amount of views, because the best cure for burnout is the satisfaction of a completed project. Who knows, it's YouTube. Evangelion is evergreen, so maybe over time this series will find its audience.

I've recently started coming back to Pat Flynn, and in one of his recent episodes, I got reminded that the only thing I can control is my uploads. So I'll keep uploading.

That's All For Today

Thanks for reading and being part of the journey. What's one obstacle you just overcame? Hit reply and let me know.

Enjoy your weekend,
Oren

So I’m re-reading The Well of Ascension, slowly but surely, and I came across a funny tidbit somewhere in the early chapters in a conversation between Vin and Elend where she says Kelsier was ancient. Elend says 38 is not ancient, but Elend is only a couple of years older than Vin herself. Vin turned 17 in book 1.

And it struck me that I didn’t even think about this line when I read this book for the first time over ten years ago. But now I’m reading it at… 38. In fact, I turn 39 next month.

As I age and re-read books from my younger years, I realize that books are good or bad to the person I am while reading them. And that person is changing.

Vin would say this is ancient people's thoughts, and I own that. So let’s prove to her that even an ancient like me can still get shit done.

I Went to the Gym Despite My Millennial Aches

I spent this entire week with aches in my right foot. It’s like a pulled muscle right in the middle of my heel. So I skipped the gym most of the week. I assumed that doing deadlifts and squats while my foot hurts would just make it worse.

Today my foot felt better, so I figured it’s time to go. I also didn’t do my usual weights, so I didn't advance my PRs, but at least I’m not regressing.

In the same way I didn’t give up on my body, I also didn’t give up on my environment.

I Can See My Floor for the First Time in Months

For the longest time, I had a plastic box and some bags on my floor. Like constantly. These are items I procrastinated sorting. It was kind of embarrassing when, on one WFH day, I was double-checking that my Teams settings blurred my background. It was a genuine mess.

This week I cleared it all. I even got rid of a stack of drawers that I cleaned up months ago and had only a few items remaining. Now there’s only a small desk where my laptop rests. I may turn this into a writing desk or use it to film shorts.

And if we’re already talking about writing, let’s talk about some blog news.

I Gave the Blog a New Face and a Lead Magnet

One of the things I wanted to do for a while was to change how the blog looks. I know it’s probably the least useful investment of time because what brings people to my doorstep is the content, not how it looks. But it didn’t take much time to upload a new theme.

In addition, I finished writing a list of 10 foundational Science Fiction and Fantasy books that shaped my taste and will do the same for you. This will be given as a gift to anyone subscribing to my blog, and I’m also attaching it here for you. Enjoy and let me know what you think about it!

Thank You for Reading

This is all I have for you this Friday. Thanks for being with me on this journey and listening to me prove to Vin that old people are still useful. What have you been up to this week? Hit reply and let me know.

Thanks,
Oren

Here's the PDF:

Download PDF

My first thought starting this newsletter today was that I failed. This week I had no progress in my reading at all. I'm only a few pages into The Well of Ascension. I also worked out only one time this week.

And yet.

I did publish two YouTube videos this week. And a blog post.

It's so easy to let ourselves slip into negativity. If I had not taken the time to think a bit more on what I did this week, I would only remember what I didn't do.

Take your wins. Here's mine.

I Wrote an Open Letter to Felicia Day

This week I supported The Guild's Kickstarter. Felicia Day is one of my inspirations, and backing the project got me thinking about everything her work has meant to my creative journey. So I wrote an open letter to her. You can read it here:

The Power of Making Something

In the same way I supported Felicia, I also supported Worlds Beyond Number. They are doing an amazing thing right now with their Kickstarter. I didn't write an article for them, but I intend to import all my episode reviews from Geek Peek sometime in the near future.

The next topic is just as close to my heart as Felicia's influence on my creative journey: physical media and its inevitable death.

I Made An Ode to The Dying Publishing Industry

I still remember Shonen Jump and how I would wait for it every month. Sometimes it would contain an Ultra Rare Yu-Gi-Oh! card, which I still have today somewhere.

This came to mind after I watched The Devil Wears Prada 2 on Apple TV and realized how sad the state of publishing is. Most of us consume our content on the internet now, and because of that shift, many of those old magazines simply vanished. The ones strong enough to digitize did, and in so doing lost their soul.

I especially love how Miranda frames it by the end of the movie to Andy: "Runway is just one of the last wood pieces floating next to the Titanic." And it's true. Magazines are vanishing or going online where they are so easy to miss or forget. You don't stack emails like you stacked old magazines and saved them like a small intellectual treasure.

So I made a video about it. A bit spontaneous and different than what I usually make. Here it is:

So now that we're done with the sour stuff, let's finish this issue with some fun news. I'm back to reviewing Min-Maxed episodes!

I'm Continuing My Min-Maxed Review Series!

So Min-Maxed came out to say that Season 2 has wrapped up filming and confirmed that Season 3 will be filmed too.

I lost track of the season's schedule somewhere along the way and thought Episode 10 was the last one, but apparently Episode 12, which hasn't aired as I write this, will be the last one.

When the episodes just started publishing, I reviewed each one and made it to episode 4 until I took a break. Now that I know there's more coming, I want to finish what I started. I published episode 5's review on Sunday and Episode 6's review on Tuesday. More to come this upcoming week.

And finally, I have some news about this very blog. The home of the newsletter you're reading right now.

I'm Documenting The Growth of This Blog

Later today, I'm publishing on YouTube the first episode in a new weekly series, also published on Fridays, where I document my journey to grow this blog into a real home for a community. I am not trying to monetize right now, but I am trying to grow a place where nerds feel comfortable talking to each other about the things we all love.

It would be my absolute pleasure to witness a conversation between two strangers about Mass Effect grow into a friendship. Or maybe theorizing about the Cosmere. Doesn't have to be video games. I also crave human connection. What is an online community without making new friends, right?

It could be a failure. Maybe all the big names have taken all the community growing opportunities. Maybe I'm wasting my time. That said, I want to find out for myself instead of assuming.

Thank You For Reading

That's all I have for you today. What have you been up to this week? Hit reply and let me know, or comment below if you're reading this on the web.

Talk soon,
Oren

Felicia Day doesn't know me. She probably never will. This blog and the content I make online exist largely thanks to her.

I always had an entrepreneur's spirit. In my early twenties (almost twenty years ago), when everyone around me was playing StarCraft, I was making maps for it. When everyone wrote on forums, I wanted to start a forum.

And then, one day, Felicia came into my life through Dragon Age II. As a whole, I wasn't in love with that game as much as I loved Inquisition or Dragon Age: Origins, but I still played all of it and the DLCs that came out for it.

One of those DLCs was Mark of the Assassin, which introduced Tallis, Felicia's character.

Out of curiosity, I started Googling Felicia and discovered a lot of essays she wrote about building community locally. I don't really have citations for those anymore. But I do remember one where she wrote about renting space in a local community to create real-life events. She spoke about their importance. About the human element of making something instead of just being online.

Not that online is bad; it's just that real-life events have more impact.

That inspired me so much, and I carried that with me for years. Not because I had some grand plans to start a community, but because I wanted those human connections. Felicia talked about physical spaces, but a digital community is better than no community, so that's what I chose to build. Life is way more fun when you have someone to talk to about your latest mission in Mass Effect, or the latest book in the Cosmere. Or how shitty PlayStation is behaving now that they want to get rid of physical discs.

I kept going. First I started other blogs. Those never paid off. Then, in 2019, I started writing on Medium, which taught me a lot about publishing, but never gave me the community I wanted. I did build a community of writers called Medium Dreamers on Facebook, which is still active today. That group has 2700 members now.

In 2020, when the pandemic hit, I started a YouTube channel, which grew into a nerdy podcast that carried on without me. And now we're here, on this blog. This is my personal space where I write things like this that someone may find one day. Something in me that sounds a lot like Felicia says Keep going. So I do.

So, thank you, Felicia! You'll probably never read this, but I want you to know there are many of us you inspired over the years. You've always been such a positive light everywhere you go, and I'm sure you'll keep going so much further.

Sending love from the other side of the globe ❤️