I can’t believe that the year is almost over. There have been several times when the year felt like it would never end and yet here we are, it’s December 1 and in thirty days we welcome 2018. That – is – NUTS.
Some of the things I really wanted to do this year was to blog more, create more crafts / art, and explore more. I didn’t really do any of those things. This year it definitely felt like I was spending more time working on things for the day job than I was experiencing life. Couple that with the craziness of the political atmosphere and life just felt super overwhelming a majority of the time.
That said, I did want to talk about some of the things that have kept me busy. Over the course of the year I have helped launch 6 PC products, a console product, and helped soft launch a mobile product. I’ve also attended 3 events and I got to be on a panel for the first time ever (it was also extremely frightening and I wanted to throw up lol.) This time of year is especially difficult as it is the busiest time of the year within the video game industry as holiday releases are a big deal.
Now that all that exciting stuff is out of the way, what else have I been up to? Well, recently I’ve been getting more into researching personal branding. I’ve been wanting to re-focus myself, figure out what is my “brand”, and start taking action to get stuff done. You will notice some of the changes already based on the aesthetics of the blog and all of my social profiles. I spent time during the Thanksgiving break to give my profiles an overhaul and to create a space for my blog that was a bit separate from my portfolio, but was still part of my overall brand – thus Alola Mana (a nice mixture of my love for Pokemon and magic.)
Adding onto the “personal branding” research “bragging” was a big part of that discussion. Now, I am a huge believer in not building my personal brand off of the companies that I work for but I have also completely lost the ability to “brag” about myself. Not in the “I’m so amazeballs” kind of way but more of a “here is what I have been doing” focused way. I’m going to spend some time sharing cool things that I get to do because of work, like cool campaigns, travel for events, and fun projects I’ve been apart of.
With all of this year’s craziness, and looking forward to 2018, I am looking to kick myself into high gear now rather than the usual “It’s January 1 let’s do this!” This all starts with this blog; I’ll be writing a blog every other day throughout December for “Blog-mas” but also to just get into the groove of writing and planning out content for this space again. I’m also going to be mapping out a schedule for my live-streams, art videos, and general vlogs. I am really excited to get back into the groove of creating stuff for myself and share that with all of you.
