The right time for a new era

When is the right time to do ‘the new thing’? Whatever that may be?

I’m a big fan of using the New Year as a launching pad for new ideas, new goals, new efforts. It’s arbitrary, but our brains still really like latching onto milestones as starting or end points.

Something I’ve been talking to with the Byteside team is deleting all the old ideas for stories they’ve had but hadn’t gotten around to yet.

If there’s an idea that’s been sitting there for a few months but you never quite got to it, were you really that excited about doing it?

It can often be more liberating to forgive yourself for the things you didn’t quite get to. Archive those 1,000+ emails in your inbox. Donate that pile of things you keep meaning to eBay. Or just clear out the story ideas slush pile so you get to start over.

Imperfect beginnings are better than chasing the idealised version, too. Did you miss NaNoWriMo this year? What if you just let yourself write 100 words a day for a month starting today instead of trying to chase 1,000 words a day specifically in November?

Start things and see where they take you one step at a time.

So that leads me to the launch of Byteside Membership! No paywalls, no rules, just the ‘soft launch’ of the way for people who like what we’re trying to do to support the site, the podcasts and the newsletter to grow in 2021.

Our one big offer apart from the warm fuzzy feeling of supporting our effort to build a new outlet for Australian fans of tech, games and digital culture? Prizes!

Thanks to SteelSeries we have a pack with some top shelf PC gaming gear. A headset, keyboard, and mouse, plus a hoodie, mosuepad and cap designed in a collab with WA artist Dune Haggar. Really cool stuff.

Every month we’ll have a prize of some kind and everyone who has supported us through the member program will be in the draw. Huge thanks to SteelSeries ANZ for supporting us right out of the gate.

Yes, I’ve got plans for more ways to ensure we give great value to every supporter through this system. But right now it felt like a positive step to just open the door to people who like what we’ve been doing to show us they care.

Already I feel energised by the first wave of supporters we’ve had come on board. I can’t say it covers the bills just yet, but every single person who has joined so far has made my heart sing at the idea that people care enough to get on board.

And with that, I can’t wait to hit the new year with a fresh outlook and a whole lot of new ideas for giving them more and more to show them it was worth their trust in us.

Please, if you can, support Byteside. I’m proud of the work our great team is doing in just the first few months of the new site, and I love that we’re paying everyone for their effort. But that’s only viable in the long run with the support of the community and hopefully a few choice sponsors along the way.

We’re not closing down for the holidays just yet. We have a bunch of gift guides and best lists still to come to close out the year strong, and I’ll keep the newsletters coming too. But after 2020 being Quite A Year, we’re all excited to draw that line in the sand on January 1, 2021, and shoot for fresh new horizons.

Podcast

Spams, scams and monolithic weirdness

This week we cover all our bases, with technology, games and weird digital culture debates all popping up in the final show for 2020.

BytesideSeamus Byrne and Nic Healey

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