Another six months have passed us by and it’s time to write my year end reflection post. My last post mortem had me brimming with optimism, but after writing that I’d be slowing things down I’ve not been tremendously enthused about much of anything. At all.

Anyway, let’s dive in.

Post Volume

I could have sworn I’d put write a review every month, but thanks to some generously broad wording I’ve managed to complete this goal. Not counting the status update, I put out a single content post this month about some stray thoughts I had regarding the latest Pokémon games. Thus I achieved my original goal.

If I take a look back at this year I kind of destroyed my original goal in terms of the volume I expected to write. The biggest factor for how much I’d write in previous years was dependent on how many games I ended up reviewing. However, in January I hadn’t anticipated that I’d switch my writing schedule to include a post every week. This ultimately led to me posting forty five times over the course of 2019. More than half the content on my blog was written in the last calendar year.

Though the post volume didn’t come without a cost. Writing almost half of my blog’s total content in a seven month period led to me burning out. The pace I was trying to keep wasn’t sustainable. There are posts and games that I wish I’d spent more time on, but I couldn’t at the speed I was going. At least I know that the speed I was going was not one I can maintain.

On the upside, forcing myself to come up with new post ideas in such rapid succession led to a handful of posts I struggled to write, but ultimately really liked. Fighting Games are Fucking Hard is my absolute favourite post of the year. Were it not for my deadlines constantly pushing me forward I’d have likely farted around trying to write the post for a few weeks before giving up entirely.

Feature/Editorial Writing

I spoke to this last time, but with my leaving viewport as a writer I was never going to end up publishing a feature post over there. Instead I wrote it on my own site. Since my last post mortem I’ve written a few more, all of which I’m reasonably pleased with.

As previously stated, my favourite post of the year is the one I wrote about my experience with Fighting games. Finding others had similar experiences to my own with the genre is a big part of what made that post stick out so much for me.

Oh, as an update of sorts to that post: I’m still playing Fantasy Strike. It is currently my fourth (soon to be third) most played game on Steam. I’ve gotten a lot better, but so have the people I’ve been playing against so I still lose a lot more than I win. That does make every win feels incredibly rewarding though, especially when I finally beat someone I’ve historically struggled against.

mea
This is Mir’s cat: Mea

Games Completed

I’ll keep this one short: I did manage to complete this goal. I finished twenty 2019 games back in September around when I played Children of Morta. I’m working on two posts presently that contain the full list of every game I played (and finished) this year so you can peruse that for the specifics if you’re so inclined.

Even though I tried to stay topical I still managed to miss some releases. Both Planet Zoo and Disco Elysium eluded me this year. I had them slotted in for review, but burnout happened. Hopefully I’ll get to them in 2020.

Also, I don’t think I’m going to impose something this ridiculous on myself again. While the goal kept me playing and reviewing things that were relevant I also found it kind of anxiety inducing to actually take my time with something instead of moving on to the next release. Plus it didn’t seem to matter how timely my reviews were. I posted Children of Morta almost a month late and it was one of my best performing reviews of the entire year. Go figure.

Swear Less

Ah hahahahahah!

I had little to no success on this one. It doesn’t come across in my writing, but I swear like a trucker. I can’t find suitable replacements, nor can I convince myself of there being a long term benefit to curbing my reliance on swearing. I’ll sound like less of an idiot while talking, but if someone is willing to peg you as entirely unintelligent based on your word choice they probably aren’t worth associating with.

So…that is what it is.

I don’t know what I’ll set my 2020 goals as, but I know none of my 2019 goals will be repeated. Trying to play current games didn’t necessarily keep my content more relevant and I don’t want to tie my content to random goals. Maybe that should be my goal: have fun. I already spend forty hours a week piss miserable at my day job, so making sure I’m actually enjoying my time outside of work should be imperative.

Oh, but one thing I do want to do next year is actually finish that collab post with Alex McHotStuff of McWriteStuff. If you haven’t checked out his stuff you should. It’s hilarious.

Thanks for reading.