Expanding the Conversation
So this week isn’t about any life event or thoughts about mental health. This week, I wanna talk about some changes coming to the content I make, including my Mental Health content; Specifically, how I’m expanding that Mental Health content.
For the last year, I’ve been taking a bit of a shotgun approach to content creation: Wildly throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. It’s created some successes (this blog and my gaming work), and some failures (all audio content I’ve ever created). So we’re going to be cutting some things and expanding others.
The most relevant thing I’m going to be doing is sending my Mental Health works into overdrive, and blending a bit with my gaming work. Obviously I’ll continue to maintain this blog as it’s been incredibly helpful for me, and I’ve gotten more than a few messages telling me that it’s been helpful for others (thanks to every single one of you that has messaged me, you’re all wonderful and I hope you’re doing ok). But I’m also going to start streaming video games that deal with mental health. Some of them will get a little… intense, but I think it’s important to explore these games and talk about what they’re trying to portray. Games have a very powerful way of encouraging understanding, especially for difficult to understand or explain topics, so I hope with these streams can help with that.
To make sure I’m not making an ass of myself when I try to talk about these things on stream, I’m going to be running a lot of what I’ll be talking about by a friend of mine, Chris Ceary (@themythofpsyche on Twitter), who is a Professor of Psychology at Johns Hopkins University. I have a lot of personal experience with Mental Health given my condition, but I the most actual study I’ve done on these topics has come from discussions with my psychologist, some research about my own condition, and listening to the lived experiences of people who have dealt with other conditions. I’ve had no formal education in this field, so if I end up saying something incorrect or unintentionally able-ist or insensitive, it will probably be because I didn’t run it by her first.
I’ve got a full post about what’s being cut and what’s being expanded upon on my Patreon, but the Mental Health work has been pretty near and dear to me, so I wanted to make sure that the people who regularly read these posts knew that this was going on. I think it will be something that you’d be interested in. I’ll be posting the scheduling to my Patreon, as well as the current list of games we’ll be doing and why we’ll be doing them, within the next week. So if this is something that interests you, please keep an eye out. I’m also doing a poll over there right now to determine the best time and days to do it, so if you could take a look and cast a vote that would be very appreciated.
As always, I want to thank my Patrons for helping me make these articles and the other things I make for them over at Patreon.com/BardsGambit
Special Thanks to:
AJ
John Beckelhymer
Katie Coker
Tyler Litton
Sara White
Thaddius Goldner
William Moton
Serenity Tomala
Brett Schoonover
Elliot Chapple
