I'm Still Here

My drafts folder has a dozen unfinished pieces of work in it.

There’s an impassioned defence of Ghostbusters II which I started over a year ago, in which I wondered if the sequel is as bad as we all think. (Yes. And no. Ghostbusters II normally gets heat for its tone but by the time it arrived in 1989, the Ghostbusters were already making their move to Saturday morning cartoon.)

There’s a lengthy piece about 90s music which doubles as a review of several books, including Kelefa Sanneh’s Major Labels and Dan Ozzi’s Sellout, two of my favourite ever books about music.

A piece titled ‘Duration’ has the bones of a listicle of my favourite songs with a length under two minutes. #1 was going to be Spiderbait’s “Buy Me A Pony”.

There’s a shortlist of albums and songs for a guest post on another substack.

I wrote out a plan of attack for how to interview with Tauranga'-based show band Kaosis, who claim album guest spots with stars like Slipknot’s Sid Wilson, Soulfly’s Logan Mader, and Sepultura’s Derrick Green.

I have the start of a piece titled ‘Gauche’ which currently consists of a definition and list of synonyms for the word ‘gauche’.

There’s a piece combining learnings I took from Naomi Klein’s book Doppelganger and Bo Burnham’s song “Welcome To The Internet”. They dovetail better than you might think.

An untitled piece contains a handful of links to stories about trans people playing sport, one of the dumbest talking points of the MAGA agenda that somehow made its way to New Zealand for a time.

‘Faster’ contains a few musings about how overwhelming the pace of the world and the pace of news is, written at the outset of 2026.

There’s a shortlist of stuff I also liked in 2025, aside from the albums I told you about. Pluribus, Murderbot, Smoke, Peacemaker and John Campbell’s Under His Command topped my TV list; Thunderbolts and Weapons were my favourite films. Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine, David Grann’s The Wager and Klein’s Doppel Ganger were my favourite books. And I made specific mention of the podcast Pipeline: Left To Die, which was fascinating and horrifying in equal measure.

More recently, I tried to write a piece about using AI to cook a rack of ribs (thanks, Claude!) which became an investigation into which AI is best. It turned out I had no idea what I was talking about.

Lastly, last week, I started a review of Project Hail Mary (the movie) and explored how cinema turned xenophobic about xenomorphs: Project Hail Mary made me feel all kinds of feels - not so much because of the story or the characters, but because it was so proudly optimistic about space exploration and had a sense of wonder about science, something missing in so much sci-fi.

Now this piece is in my drafts too.

For now.

Honestly, I didn’t intend to abandon my Substack. It just kind of happened.

I got massively burnt out at the end of 2025. My day job (I have one; Substack doesn’t pay a full time salary, shocking, I know) got incredibly busy and changes there made my anxiety flare up. It had been half a year of travelling up and down to the Ruapehu district to see my kids. Money was an issue; it always is.

I decided to abandon Substack and hide in a Minecraft world. I’m still hiding in Minecraft. Its become a shared activity for me and my partner Helen, and I play online with my kids too. As Boyzone might say: ‘we’ve got a little world of our own’. Or was that Westlife. Westzone. Boylife. Who gives a shit.

I’ve been playing Clone Hero as well - and, in fact, trying to chart out a few Kiwi tracks since I could find NONE. I’ve started with Elemeno P’s “Verona” and Kora’s “Flow”, which seem like they’d be a ton of fun.

I think I just don’t know what to say any more. Or why anyone would care.

Even this missive feels like Neo making the phone call at the end of The Matrix, not knowing what might come next. It felt full of promise at the time. We might have tempered our enthusiasm had we known The Matrix: Revolutions was the ultimate outcome. But we didn’t know that as we sat in our seats listening to the opening bar chords and ‘I think I heard a shot!’ of Rage Against The Machine’s “Wake Up” over the end credits of maybe, arguably the 90s greatest sci-fi film.

So maybe I’ll leave it there.

Just know that there is a desire to write more. I find myself coming up with ideas - not just for things to write about, but for podcasts, interviews, that sort of thing. They were always part of the long term plan.

I’m also going to turn off paid subscriptions. I don’t earn enough from this to make it a job. I don’t think I ever will. And I’d rather you just have access without parting you with any of your money. Especially in this economy. I can’t do that immediately, so feel free to switch down to free in the meantime.

And hopefully I’ll see you again soon.

Aroha nui kia koutou katoa,
Chris

(I think I heard a shot.)