1647: Good News at Last

Those of you following my personal life will know that I’ve been out of work for a little while now after unceremoniously being made redundant from my position at USgamer a while back. As you may recall from previous posts, I’ve been looking outside the games press for new opportunities, since although I once considered writing for video game publications to be my dream job, the reality was, as it tends to go with dreams, rather different: there was no progression, no stability and on more than one occasion, I’d woken up expecting to just do a normal day at work only to discover that either the site I was working on had closed, the entire rest of the staff had walked out due to the new management being… difficult, or that I was simply considered surplus to requirements. That is, I’m sure you’ll appreciate, no way to live.

So I started trawling the job sites — always a soul-destroying experience, but this time around I felt like I was having a little more success and bit more of a clearer idea of what I might be able to do. I made use of a neat site called Indeed, which effectively acts as a sort of “Google for jobs” and began searching for things directly relevant to what I’ve been doing — writing and editing. This eventually led me to related fields like communications and digital content editing, and ultimately to the job that I today secured.

Yes, that’s right; I have a new job. Technically I don’t start until the end of August, but I’m counting today as the day I “won”. It was a hard-fought victory — primarily against my own lack of self-confidence when it comes to this sort of things since, as I’ve noted in previous posts, I’ve actually had relatively few formal job interviews over the years — but a satisfying one nonetheless. It’s also a huge weight off my mind; although I have another month or so to get through without any income, I have at least got a bit of “rainy day” money stashed away for just this sort of situation, so I won’t be broke.

It is, in short, a good feeling, not only for the relief of my immediate problems, but for future prospects, too. I’m not going to talk about specifics of the position here and now, but suffice to say that although it’s outside of the field where I’ve hung my hat for the last few years, it’s a lot more likely to be a stable position that presents opportunities to learn new things, develop my skills and — hopefully — let me build a bit more of a coherent “career” than I have had to date. I’m looking forward to getting started, but in the meantime I’m going to enjoy the month or so of summer quasi-holiday I have right now. (Although with the current heat and humidity, I predict I’ll be spending most of it indoors with the curtains shut at this rate.)

Anyway. Thanks to those who have offered words of support in the past; it seems that good things do eventually come, even when you’re not necessarily expecting them. Here’s hoping things continue on an upward trajectory from here onwards.