An interesting thing happens to people who are very successful in their chosen line of work. Often, when they retire or just move on, they never want to talk about the field they worked in again. Maybe it bores them now. Maybe they were never truly interested in the first place. Either way, it’s stymied a fair amount of research for Dirty Feed: people who achieved great things, but are more interested in walking their dog these days.
Then there’s the other type. Those successful people who still clearly love what they did. People like Ed Fries, who writes an amazing blog about vintage arcade games… and was Vice President of Game Publishing at Microsoft for much of the initial XBox years. The kind of person who shatters any notions that huge success requires a destruction of your soul.
Ed’s pieces are fascinating; just read his brilliant pieces on the first arcade game easter egg, or fixing old games like Gran Trak 10. Each is a wonderful mix of research, history, and practical electronics. One of my favourite things about his writing is his acknowledgement of other people in the research process. It’s something I always try to do here on Dirty Feed; to point out that this kind of writing doesn’t always spring out of nowhere, but is often the result of people working together.1
But here’s the real reason I want to link to Ed’s work here. His blog currently consists of just six articles, written between 2015 and 2021. On average, one a year, although there was some concentrated work in 2017, and his writing has slowed recently. But each of those articles is wonderful, and each of them forges new ground in our understanding of its topic. You won’t find six better posts anywhere on the net.
And it’s a reminder that blogging – or just writing, or whatever you want to call it – can take many different forms. Despite my occasional sarcasm, it’s not something you need to show up every day to do, or even every month. One in-depth post a year, if that’s the best way you write, can result in something amazing.2
Owning a blog doesn’t need to take over your life. Nor does it need to be at the technical level that Ed Fries is working at. You can still contribute something worthwhile.
All you have to do is attempt to say something new. That’s all.
To read some people’s writing, you’d think they were the only people who ever did anything. This kind of self-aggrandising gets my goat. No, I’m not going to give examples. But it’s truly pathetic. ↩
Frankly, it’s how I’d prefer to write myself, but I come up with too many silly things I want to write about. ↩