Hello all! This is more of a re-introduction blog than anything else, but I figured to have an actual topic instead of just talking about myself again (since I've already done an intro blog, although that one is quite old)
Well as you can see, my name on here is The Monster Hunter. You can shorten it to Monster, or MH or whatever. I signed up for Gameinformer online about two or three years ago (?) and was relatively active in the community. I really enjoyed blogging and making my own reviews. It was the first time that I was able to voice my opinions on something I love so much: video games. I also really enjoyed the community, although I really didn't know that many people. I always found reading other blogs and reviews to be enlightening even if I wasn't knowledgeable on the topic.
Time moved on and a lot has happened. Being younger, I always had school that was my main inhibitor to blogging and the like. I also had my mom always keep me focused on school. I wasn't allowed to spend too much time on video games for the fear of me doing worse in school. My senior year of high school rolled around and I started to become very, very busy. I now had hard classes, a part time job to help pay for college, and the whole college application process. I started having less time to play video games. Along with that I slowly started getting less and less involved with GIO. If I did have any free time, it would go to playing video games or hanging out with friends. Blogging and reviewing just became unimportant. Slowly, but surely, I became completely uninvolved in GIO. I still checked the home page enough to keep up on gaming news, but I never actually went into the community part anymore.
There's actually picture here. You can't see it if you use the "lights off option" like me
I graduated high school in June, but even with high school finally being over, I still was working and still had to get prepared for my freshmen year at college. Even though I did have more free time, I still found myself being busier than ever compared to my previous summer breaks. I did play more video games over the summer, but I still had no desire to return to blogging and reviewing again. Why? I had plenty of time to over the summer, yet there was still this feeling that I didn't have time to do it. It wasn't until I got in college that I understood why I had no reason to blog again.
Time management.
Unlike any other time in my life, I had things to do and places to be at specific times. I had to manage my time to get things done now. It was a concept completely new to me. I had always gone with the flow and just let things go. I never had to plan things around schedules, but what my old job and now college would teach me is that you can't always have that laid back attitude. Time management is an exceptionally important skill, and for the past month I've been struggling to learn it.
Suddenly, something changed with me during college. I started planning out my days, wrote a list of what I needed to get done that day and what was going to happen during the week. I would work on everything on the list, with short breaks in between so I wouldn't burn myself out. Eventually, I would get everything on the list done and still have some sort of free time. Of course it's not anywhere close to the amount I have now, but it's something.
What have I been doing with my new found short free time? Surprisingly, not as much gaming. I've started to watch anime again, sketch in sketchbook, play pool (or billards, whichever you prefer), write, and hang out with my friends. Strange, that it took me needing to have less free time in order for me to do all things I like doing. Now that I am managing my time better, it's been a lot easier doing more things.
And that's where blogging and reviewing comes in. These things always required some time, but since I never managed my time, they always took me hours to do. I would spend too much time of the day trying to type these things out. But I never sat back and thought that I could break blogs and reviews into parts. I didn't have to write an entire blog at once. I never managed my time.
So now I'm on fall break, and I decided it's time to return to Gameinformer online. I enjoy blogging and reviewing, and I actually miss the community as I made some good friends. My hope is that now I can manage my time a lot better, I can still get everything done while still being able to blog and review.
