2019’s Unkind Kick-off and Rebirth

January 29, 2019 is a day that will always live in infamy for me. My first mistake that morning was to take a shower. While I was in said shower, I missed a call from my mother, who asked me to call her back soon. She said that “Dad is fine, but please call me.” Uh huh. Nothing good comes from those first three words. He had an aneurysm in his aorta that they need to remove. This means he gets the big chest crack. It’s not the most horrible news, but it’s not the best way to start the day either. It turns out, that was just the warm-up for the day.

Next, the Job

When I got into work, I was reveling in my Kingdom Hearts III review at PlayStation LifeStyle. I was still on a high from reviewing it and writing it up. My boss’s boss said he needed to talk to me, and I assumed (wrongly) that it was about the SEO manager position supposedly coming up in the corporate office. Instead, it was news that corporate was cutting my position. He said it was because of budget cuts, but I learned that afternoon that it wasn’t because of budget cuts at all. Because of the pageview performance of the site at the time, they laid blame on me, said what I was doing wasn’t working, and there’s no need for me to continue copy editing because there was already a copy editor on staff. Never mind the fact that I was this copy editor’s boss, and she uses the Style Guide I created from scratch. Corporate cares about none of these things.

The EIC offered me another position to keep me there, and I tried it for two weeks. On the last Friday, it dawned on me I was writing twice as much for half the pay I was making before. I was miserable, and I knew I couldn’t keep it up, stay sane, and keep my SEO clients happy. I do have my own business, and I have clients that actually pay me well. This may shock you, but writing about video games doesn’t pay well.

Next, the Kids

The 29th was not done with me yet. I had a parent-teacher meeting at my youngest’s school that afternoon, but I wasn’t prepared for what they had to say. While he is doing well there, they feel his speech is too far behind to do well at kindergarten there. I needed to look for a new school for him for next year. At that point, the dam broke, and I burst into tears.

I talked to one of the kindergarten teachers I knew really well to get a second opinion, and he concurred with the others. Evidently, this school expects the kids to be able to read by the time they leave kindergarten. Considering the youngest is still struggling with enunciation and recognizing letters of the alphabet, he strongly believes that the youngest will struggle to the point of needing to repeat. Since he’s going to be six this summer, repeating a grade isn’t ideal. Hence the need to go to a new school to get caught up and maybe come back.

I have started this process. I can’t believe I’m doing this again after everything that went on with the eldest last year. He’s already talking about switching schools again for sixth grade, so we’ll have to go through this yet again next year.

And Now, This Site

Because of all of this going on, I will be more active here, on this site. My reasons are two-fold. One, I don’t want to stop writing. Two, a friend has given me a really fun idea for continuing to write about games on my own personal site. I really want to give it a try.

But this time? This time, this is all for me and all for fun.