The Madriguera Origins

A cliché title in order to rekindle the fires of writing and post regularly from now on. This is just a little story about how this project came to life.

The Madriguera is an idea I had in my mind for decades. It's been there all this time. Looking back, I can see how everything fell into place leading to this very moment.

A Key Moment

My early days of streaming, when I started to play Hearthstone seriously, was probably a defining moment. I've never been a good Hearthstone player, but being involved with the Fireside Gatherings (local tournaments) made me lean into the community, streaming and even casting. This put content creation in the top of my thoughts for a while, however I never thought it could be a viable form of income. In my mind, content creation was something reserved for Youtubers or those early influencers, and "common" people could not realistically think about it. Such a fool. I never made the connection with writing, and all the content countless of writers and artists put out there. A few years passed and the flame of content creation diminished. My job was very demanding, I earned well, and thought that would be it for me. 9 to 5, devoted to a corporation that allowed me to do whatever I wanted, within the context of the job. A privileged mindless position. But things changed...

One evening, while working extra hours on an assignment that someone else had to do (but did wrong), it came to me: I was bored beyond belief. The frustration by the amount of bureaucracy and incompetence within the organization bothered me to the point I despised and judged people based on their performance on the job. I see now how that was bad, but it just shows how immersed I was in that silly fictitious world. I was also tired of being the only one knowing how to do the right things every time. My thoughts went back to that moment I decided (perhaps without being entirely conscious of it) to give up on my writing, give up on streaming, give up on content creation (even though I was actually creating content for the organization I was working for). Sank in impossible amounts of work, trying to perform in 2 roles at once, in charge of 2 teams, I reached my limits. Performance wasn't great and eventually the corporation did what corporations do. I was left without a job.

Blessing in Disguise

Initially, the timing for losing my job seemed really bad. We've just moved in to a new house and we were expecting our first son. However, in retrospect, the timing was great. Dealing with my exit from the organization was rough, mentally draining, but on the other hand I had lots of time to focus on the house and eventually on the baby. I see now how privileged I was to get to enjoy the early months of development of  the baby fully, while other parents usually miss that due to work. In between all that, after finishing all the work in the house, there was a professional vaccuum to fill. It was when setting up my 'home office' (gaming room) I realized it was time to do something new. I was scared, as I had lots of ideas but no idea what to do with them, but had to find meaning and purpose somewhere. So, I set up my PC, all my writing stuff, and I was relieved to finally have MY place in the house up and running again. Sent a picture to my friends (the group of friends I have since highschool) and one of them said: "woah, that's a nice den you have there!" Inadvertedly, giving name to this whole endeavour. (My friend obviously used the Spanish word for den: 'madriguera' , as that is our native language. Keeping that original expression unchanged makes all of this a bit more special.)

What followed were months of trying to develop a business around content creation, and make content creation my actual job somehow - particularly writing. I was determined to make my blogs work, to provide short stories, work on novels, editing, proof reading. However, soon enough I found some conflicts between how the industry works and my own values. For example, probably the biggest one, the dependency on ads as the main form of income for content. Another big let down, now in the freelancing world, was the great amount of scams going around - people stating would do a job and then didn't, and on the other hand, people confirming would pay for a job and then didn't. This, together with writer's block, and an increased amount of stress due to lack of income, crippled my motivation and creativity.

What's Changed Now?

Well, to be honest, I'm still trying to figure out my way through what I want to do, what this project should be about, but now I want to take all of you (reading this) through my journey. I'm trying to reach out, make friends, find inspiration in like-minded people, in successful people that are trying to do similar things. It's helped me a LOT. There's so many amazing people out there, some doing amazingly well, others struggling as me. And I want every cool human being out there to keep being successful and for people to do what they want to do, whatever is nurturing their souls and bringing happiness to themselves and others. I guess ideally I want to be a source of playful and happy entertainment myself. In any case, this won't be a perfect journey but worst case we can continue to learn a thing or two about ourselves, together.

What's Next?

What to expect from The Madriguera? What to expect from Martin/Blackthorne?

Stories, really. For now at least. I want to put myself out there as a freelancer, but realize I lack understanding and knowledge of the craft of writing to feel comfortable enough to offer it as a service. That being said, if anyone likes my content and would like to have a chat about collaborating, I'm all in for that.
What I envisioned as a project for this space, having different branches of content (namely: writing, streaming, music, game design), still stands and is something I'll work towards, surely. I'll do it one step at a time, as I find myself ACTUALLY writing, perhaps I'll find myself actually doing other things.

Hope this origins story was somewhat enjoyable! There are obviously more details and stories within the recount of events, perhaps some of those will come out in future blog posts, but for now I just want to thank everyone that has interacted with me now and over the past couple of years (lots of streamer names come in mind). Thanks for reading, and thanks for being there. And if you're here from the future, please tell me everything turned out alright.