The Return of Shmuplations (and an apology)

Hello everyone,

After a long and difficult year, I've decided to return to my work on shmuplations. I would first like to offer a sincere apology to those who tried to contact me during that time. What follows is something of an explanation, but the short version is that I burned out hard from the workload--and combined with some rather typical but nonetheless debilitating personal problems, for a long time I wasn't sure if I would be able to resume working on the site at all. 

Many are unaware that shmuplations has basically always been a one-man show. I'm a very enthusiastic translator, but having to do everything myself: research, translation, editing, publishing, and PR finally took its toll. Slowly but surely, all my time was being taken up with the site, damaging my relationships and other interests. Weeknights, weekends... the "side hustle" had basically turned into more of a second job. A year earlier I had tried to cut back by eliminating some of the higher-reward tiers like vouchers, and while this helped, it didn't really solve the fundamental problem: I love translation, but really don't like all the other stuff.

The solution, which I am better able to see now, was to ask for help in the webmaster/publishing domain (something I will be doing soon, stay tuned!). But I've always had an aversion to working in groups, and was "twice-shy" after a few group endeavors had earlier failed in my life. Having the gumption to do everything by yourself is an admirable quality in some ways, and very effective in the short-term, but I can see now how long-term it wasn't sustainable. 

There was also a big economic component to the way I ran the site. This is hard to talk about because I know it sounds disrespectful to the patrons who have generously supported me, but the reality is that I never reached a point of financial viability with this work. Partly, it is again the fault of trying to do everything myself, and accordingly doing a poor job of PR and "marketing", as it were. But working with people means paying them, and dividing the small amount I recouped on my labor didn't seem feasible either. 

The inevitable burnout coincided with a trying personal period in my life, and I fell into one of those deep depressive periods where the door to all life closes. I preferred silence to any explanation, and I preferred silence because I didn't want to give any false hopes that I would come back to the work. Thankfully, things eventually stabilized in my personal life, and I realized I didn't want to see this work abandoned. I missed translating and having a (reasonable) portion of my headspace in the world of vg history. There's still so much amazing info and insights to be found in these interviews, and I have dearly missed being a conduit to share that with everyone.

Going forward, there will be a few changes to the site and patreon campaign. The biggest is that I'm temporarily removing voting as I work through the backlog of interviews that have already been selected by patrons. Once I've got some help on the publishing side and that is flowing smoothly, I'll probably be able to re-integrate voting into my workload. For the moment, however, things will be a bit more informal: I'll be soliciting feedback from patrons directly every couple months, and will use that to guide my translation efforts. I know this may be disappointing to some, but it's really the only way for me to manage the work in a sustainable way right now. 

Future expansion really depends on how much I can expand the patronage of the site; if I had, say, double the patrons, then paying guest translators would become a reality, as would simply doing more work. Maybe it's pride, maybe it's shyness, and maybe it's other beliefs, but I've always hated "shilling" and asking people for monetary support... but I am going to try to do better there so the site can thrive.

For those looking to get involved in the site, I'll be posting soon about an editor/publisher role. I would like to work on a site re-design too, but that's down the road. For now, I'm happy to be back, and hope to find the right balance that will allow me to continue doing this into my doddering old age. ;)