As we end our month of daily articles, I wanted to take my last one to reflect on the good and bad and talk about what it means for the future.
Well, it’s the 30th. I’m honestly exhausted—the work I spent on this portfolio was consistent and taxing during a period of time that I struggled to balance between university. Even now, I wanted to somehow carve time out of today for this reflection but I was struggling to really bring myself to a place where I could write it. I think there’s a level of burnout I’m likely to experience if I was to keep going, so I’m glad to have it finally behind me even if it was something I had a lot of fun writing.
As I’ve noted before, the plan for this article writing is to create a portfolio in which I can push for a job in gaming journalism down the line. The plan is, of course, up in the air—I don’t know if it’ll work just yet, but I’m optimistic. The anxiety of that is quite worrying right now, but I’m actively avoiding thinking too much about it because I’d probably break down crying if this doesn’t work. The project is something I think stands on its own, but I definitely worked in this way in order to create a portfolio that could create an opening for a job in the future. It was also an experiment for myself based on whether or not I could handle this style of work. In that way, it was a success—while I have noted the burnout I’ve had working like this, the consistent writing wasn’t too taxing by itself and was mostly an issue because of working with my college assignments alongside it. Combined with working weekends and the standard I put myself to with some of these articles, I do think this is something I could feasibly accomplish in my life.
As for quality, I do think there’s some lower effort ones that I’m less proud of. Some earlier articles like the one on the “Deltarune” trailer (which I will not be linking here because I’m lazy for this reflection but you can find it pretty easily on the website) were particularly weak just based on me needing to learn my own style. My “Outlast Trials” article also felt weaker simply because of my lack of experience in some of the things I covered, and I think covering it after more time in the game before writing the article would have helped more also. However, a lot of the other articles are really hard to label as “bad” or “weak” considering their arguments and research. I’m fond of a lot of my articles covering “Marathon” considering how interested I was in it, especially being able to give a first impressions article immediately with some ideas that were truly my own. I enjoyed my meta writing that occurred later, especially my article on being “non-political” and analyzing discussion.
I think currently that I have a weakness in my style of writing filler, especially the kind of background and discussion of topics in order to onboard a reader that is unfamiliar with the media being covered. This filler is common as a way to pad article lengths, but also functions to introduce people with background knowledge that helps people understand what is going on. I want to focus on a lot of the meat of the discussions and speed on to the point in which I can add my own nuances, but I recognize that at times it is a weakness for some topics. I do believe I have a strength in argument and perspective that I can apply to things, something I’ve learned from writing English papers in university and can apply in a pretty convincing way.
There’s quite a few specifics that I also got into discussing these with my friends, but I think a lot of that reflection will occur over time as I move forwards and reflect further. I’ll keep working through some of this to be better as a creator, both in my prose as well as my news and article writing as I move towards proper work out of schooling.
I can’t thank you all enough for joining me on my writing journey, no matter if you’ve been joining me recently or since my first release of streams and writing back in 2020. Growing up and being able to document the ways I change and develop my writing is satisfying and fulfilling. I truly want to continue down this path to see where it leads me, and for once it feels like I might be approaching a period of stability in this when looking for a job using this website as a portfolio. I’m excited to see how this progresses, and I’m hopeful that my friends and family are also around cheering for me. I’m incredibly excited to use my skills in a place like journalism.
Until then, I’ll see you next year when I write 30 more things daily.