A year older means a new season for Checkpoint!

I sit here on the weekend of my 31st Birthday and I think to myself that this is an ideal time to (once again) return to my blogging on Checkpoint. After a week away, a few days to catch up after my holiday and the Bank Holiday closer to ending than starting, I have decided to take inspiration from my friends over at TripleXP and launch a sort of ‘second season’. It isn’t necessarily that I will be launching a Season 3, Season 4 etc but more just a little ‘reboot’ and ‘kick start’ following my four month hiatus.

Why the hiatus?

Good question. Once again I disappeared off the face of the Earth with no real rhyme or reason. Fortunately, my absence this time was more positive than it is negative. As I have mentioned before, in December I started a new role, one which required me to essentially start again and re-learn a lot and the good news is that I am really enjoying it! However, as we got into February of this year I decided I needed to focus more on learning the fundamentals and developing my skills quickly in order to ensure that I do well in my role and I keep growing. As a result the blog, temporarily, took a backseat. I want what I learn in my SEO role to filter into this blog to make it a more efficient, user friendly and frankly just a more enjoyable site to visit and to do that, I first need to understand what I am doing and why. The added addition of the recordings meant that the time it took to produce this content was getting longer, and although that isn’t a bad thing as it makes it much more accessible, I need to justify the time while balancing it with everything else.

In my time off there have been times where I have focused on just playing games and enjoying my time as well although often I have felt it has been somewhat wasted at points. Apart from that, I’ve also been on holiday as I mentioned, spent time with friends (and spent subsequent days recovering) and caught up with a lot of shows and films. Which means there is plenty of stuff to cover which brings me nicely onto…

What’s to come?

Back in January/February time I had outlined a schedule of posts that I wanted to cover up to the end of March and there are quite a few still outstanding that I will most certainly cover off, as well as some new ones that have cropped up along the way! To begin with, a post I started writing and never finished was about Riverdale and the bonkers/brilliance of that show. Good thing I didn’t finish it too because since the initial planned date of that post the show has only gotten more absurd and more worth discussing so expect that post to come soon! Dr Strange released during my break too and I have some potentially surprising thoughts on that that I would like to share, as well as Ms Marvel to discuss when that lands on the 8th. Gamespass and the Future of Sony have changed during the break with the announcement (and imminent) launch of the new PS+ service so there are a lot of things to talk about on that front. And it wouldn’t be a Checkpoint post without mentioning Pokémon and considering we are starting to get information on Scarlet and Violet, it is something I also want to really get my teeth into. As it stands, I am not short on things to discuss so I am working through the planned blogs and building a new schedule for the next few months.

Streaming will make a come back but likely doing it a bit less to begin with. I don’t want it to become a chore and my writing should come first so that should factor in naturally to what I play and when I stream. Rather than playing games I may or may not want to play in order to stream, I should instead be finding a way to stream what I am playing so it is a lot more natural. So TBC on this but more to come.

I am working on Checkpoint still in the background and I am hoping to spend some time writing a bank of articles that I can schedule in as well to help mitigate the weekly releases to allow for a more consistent flow of content in the near future. Alongside this I am hoping to be more active on Twitter and LinkedIn in particular so hopefully you will be seeing more of Checkpoint again as we get into the second half of 2022 and, with any luck, a little bit more consistency too! See you all very soon!