This article series is one of my most personal yet. While I originally drafted these individual posts during my hiatus as purely personal, self-reflection essays, I found that making them public finally alleviated the mental barrier that kept me from being myself, both on, and off the blog.
The Backstory
When I started The Candid Gamer, I was nervous, but ultimately excited to begin this brave new undertaking: I wanted to share my experiences with gaming, write the types of guides I couldn’t find anywhere else, and have a place of my own to share my unique interests and expertise.
For the first few years, I published posts with relative ease and excitement, though I noticed I never felt comfortable expressing myself and my opinions. I proudly branded my site with the tagline “Honest Game Reviews – No Fluff”, but ironically, I hadn’t even written a single review, nor had I figured out how to write one.
I also started to feel like an imposter fairly quickly. Even if I did make great written material, I couldn’t keep up with the pace set by more seasoned sites and its teams. I managed my site entirely solo, and carving out a spot of my own felt like an impossible task.
Soon after, I felt like maintaining the blog became harder, and that a mental block had been keeping me from progressing. Even when I wanted to work on the site, I felt like I couldn’t. This slowed down the blogging process dramatically. First, by weeks. Then months. Then years. Eventually, I stopped working on the site entirely; My little passion project became a secret source of shame, and returning to it felt like a chore. For three whole years, my site was abandoned, and that mental block had evolved into a full-fledged barrier.
I wanted to work on the site, and still felt that I am Candid at my core, but I literally felt like I couldn’t. And not for a lack of trying: Over 100 posts sat as drafts on the backend, and not one of them felt manageable enough to post. It had been an ongoing turmoil I suffered through in silence for years, until one day, I decided to make those struggles public and hold myself accountable to address them.
That’s why I made my site’s 2026 anniversary post all about this struggle; To shine a spotlight on my issue. And since May is also Mental Health Month, why not share the self-reflection pieces I had written in the slience? I knew that I owed my audience an explanation, and having shared these pieces with friends prior, they knew my words would resonate with others.
The Article Series
This series consists of 5 main entries, as well a 6th bonus post, all published within the month of May.
The first post, The REAL Reason My Posts Take So Long, serves as admittance of a problem, and discusses imposter syndrome.
The second entry, Diagnostic Report #2 – Specimen C4ND1D takes a more personal exploration into longstanding feelings of alienation and isolation, all wrapped up into an enjoyable, Sci-Fi inspired reporter’s log.
Entry #3, The 1-Ply and The Positivity Paradox, explores another angle of anguish, showing how less-than-paper-thin my self esteem and confidence was, and how my outward positivity only goes one way.
Number four in the list, Unravelling the Knot – The Power of “Why”, finally gets to the root cause of my multi-faceted suffering, digging layer by layer through asking just one simple question at every turn.
The intended final post, The Breakdown and the Breakthrough, is another deeply personal exploration of a low point in life, showing how I pushed myself into a job-induced nervous breakdown, and how this breakdown revealed to me the origin point of when I internalized I was never enough.
And lastly, the bonus entry, simply titled Who I Am, concludes the saga by saying farewell to the fractured, low self-esteem persona I presented to everyone, and embracing the self-assured, fully embodied version of myself that I always was, finally free to express myself to the fullest. This is the voice that you’ll find in my writing going forward, and if you’re savvy, you might even spot a few obscure gaming references sprinkled throughout this post!
I sincerely hope that in sharing these posts, it helps other people break free from the same feeling of stuckness I had, and learn to embody the version of themselves they were always meant to be.
– The Candid Gamer