To all of the readers who’ve ever been on my site, whether avid friends and fans, or curious passersby from the World Wide Web, thank you for sharing this journey with me.
As some of you may have noticed, my posts here have been incredibly sporadic and unpredictable. Some days, I’ll have a post up out of the blue. Others, I may have posts up every week or two. And others still may be months in the making.
I know I’ve been alienating you with my distinct lack of predictability. I’ve been alienating even myself with it. And something needs to change. I owe it to all of you who visit the site to explain…
For the past few several years, I’ve been going through my own doubts and difficulties in sustaining the site. There’s a practical reason, sure, one I’ve communicated to my email subscribers, and yet, it isn’t the whole story.
Let’s just dig into the reasons why.
The Practical Reason
As those of you who’ve subscribed to my email list may recall, I’ve told you that the reason my posts take so long is because I’m really just a one man band.
And that much is true. I really am a one-man band. I do literally everything on the site.
Between moderating the site, maintaining the backend and front-end design, single-handedly writing and gathering pictures for the site’s posts, and making an unshakeable commitment to quality, I’m honestly barely able to do it all alone.
There’s no editorial team of writers, no team working on the bleeding edge of any new announcements, and no squad of people pooling together their time and information to get these posts up. It’s all on me.
That’s what I’ve been telling myself, at least. And what I’ve been telling all of you as well.
And while the above is all undoubtedly fact, there’s a part of it that’s fictitious — A lie by omission. And I need to live up to the site’s name to address the cause: I need to be honest, especially with myself.
The Painful Truth
The REAL reason my posts take so long to publish? It’s because my self-confidence is in tatters. (Double-take as many times as you need, that sentence isn’t changing at all; My self-esteem and confidence are seriously in the toilet.)
Yes, I’m doing all the site work and posts alone. No, I don’t have any help, but none of that really matters. While it does slow things down, it’s just a convenient excuse.
I love working on my site. It’s the perfect blend of almost all of my skills, and it covers a topic near and dear to me in gaming. I’m constantly taking notes for new posts, too.
And while a lot of my posts are incredibly detailed, I’ll be honest, the process would be a far bit quicker if I wasn’t constantly doubting its worth, or if I felt that my work had an impact.
Of the posts I make, I need to feel as though my content hasn’t been done by anyone else, and if it isn’t fact-based, it just doesn’t feel worthwhile to write about.
I don’t trust my own words and personal experiences to mean anything to anyone. I don’t trust that my work will stand out if other people are already doing something similar. And worst of all: if anything is even remotely associated with me personally, I can’t bring myself to finish it. And I can’t explain why.
It’s why I haven’t been able to do any proper blog updates, and why you haven’t seen any “May I?” posts about me or the site.
I’ve come to realize I’m suffering from a mental block. For better or worse, there’s a part of me that just does not believe my work has any true impact, and that even personal posts are a complete waste of time.
That nagging thought has only grown louder and louder recently, to the point I’ve almost stopped blogging entirely.
I know how this looks and sounds. I worry it ruins the credibility and reliability I’ve established in the past few years. But I don’t mention this out of some sly attempt to gain pity. I’m mentioning it because I’ve had enough, and by shining a spotlight on the issue, maybe I can try to combat it.
The Imposter at Work
You see, I had a grand vision for my site. I would post about games, use my web design skills to try to help make everything nice and sleek, write the types of guides and other material I myself would want to read, and follow up with things that are of interest to me. Maybe even post my gameplay clips and matches. Should I be able to monetize the site, it would be an amazing way to make a living doing what I would love.
In essence, it all sounds so simple. But in actuality, I really don’t know what I’m doing!
I mean, fundamentally, yes, I do know how to type words, upload images, and structure everything with HTML tags. But some of the more advanced elements, like hosting, and other technical languages behind the scenes, are still an unknown to me, and it deflates my confidence.
I’m pretty sure my email subscriber list is currently broken, too, at least as far as sending notifications.
I’ve also never been great with self-promotion. I don’t do social media, and I prefer not to really be in the center of attention. I’m not really hip, or in the know with pop culture.
And lastly, despite my tagline being “Honest reviews, no fluff,” the actual art of making a proper review is a mystery to me. I haven’t made a single one yet. How do reviewers come up with scoring anyway? And how does one format a review? It’s all so abstract and vague.
I had hoped to sidestep these inconvenient roadblocks with informative posts, but yet, the resistance to working on my site has only grown.
When I look around and see other sites, I feel small. Every time someone innocently references a review or shares a link to one, I feel a twist of the knife. And by the time I play through a game and feel confident to write supplementary guides about it, it seems like everyone else has already beaten me to it. And don’t get me started with news announcements. That race is over before it begins.
I started my blog with such excitement at its potential, and yet, the hours it takes just to churn out a post that can be read in 10 mins or less has me feeling… inefficient. Out of my league even. And people can keep this pace every day? Would my knowledge or opinions even matter by the time I publish them?
So I can’t help but wonder: what exactly do I have to offer? How exactly do I fit into all of this? I know I love games, but is it even enough? Did I start up too late? These are the questions that give me pause.
I feel like I’m merely an imposter. I feel like I can’t compete. And I’m doubting if what I’m doing is even viable anymore.
Point of No Return
Which leaves me with where things stand now. I don’t want to give up on my site. I still feel like it has potential, and that I do have a unique voice and perspective all my own.
Being “Candid” feels more natural to me than my own name. But as things are now, I simply cannot continue the site. Not without confronting these issues head on.
Right here, right now, there’s no turning back. I’m not making progress staying where I am, and I can’t continue things with all the mental resistance I carry. Something has to give, and I have to make a change.
As promised, over the coming weeks, I will be releasing posts digging further into this mental block. While these entries have been drafted years ago, (some previously unfinished), I’ve never published them due to fears of judgment, and of being seen. But I’m ready to release those fears and be myself.
I hope you will join me then.
– The Candid Gamer
