A Farewell from Creaking Shelves

I’m about to embark on an adventure. Sometime before the end of February my wife will give birth to our first child. We will be moving house before the end of 2020, and we will be looking to embrace the new lifestyle that these massive changes are going to bring. I think this is what they call a big year!

Such times of change are opportunities to take stock and evaluate priorities and so we have this post here, today.

If the title didn’t give things away, I’ve decided it is the perfect time to wind down Creaking Shelves. And rather than just petering out and going silent I wanted to put together a ‘final’ note to draw a line under things. It is always better to make an intentional decision.

I am incredibly proud of what I, with the help of various friends over the years, have managed to do with Creaking Shelves. 500 articles, 50 videos, a terrifying number of words and an obnoxious number of puns. I’m amazed what I’ve been able to do and who I’ve got to meet thanks to this crazy side project. Not to mention all the wonderful games I’ve been able to play over the last few years.

I will still be playing games! Probably not quite as often and probably not in such a focussed way but I don’t think I could stay away from board games if I tried. I will still be using the Creaking Shelves twitter account and keeping up with the news. I’ll just not be sharing so much of my own stuff from now on. 

But I also don’t think this is the last you’ll see of the blog or Youtube channel. Indeed, there’s at least 1 video still being edited! If I make anything new going forward it will be because I want to rather than because I need to. No more review copy guilt or content deadlines. I will have the space to be creative if I have the energy and desire to create something. No guarantees there with a newborn around!

But excitingly that creativity could be directed in any number of ways. Perhaps I will review a new game. Perhaps I’ll get a new Which is Greater written, or even one of the numerous other scripts I’ve wanted to write. Maybe I’ll finally have the chance to get back to doing a bit of game design. Or something totally new? Who knows. I think that is the most exciting thing!

So this isn’t a goodbye. This is not the last you’ll see of Creaking Shelves. But it is a farewell for the next little while. I can’t wait to tell you all about what comes next.