Dude, this was probably a bad idea.

After five long years of freelancing, I have made the leap to self-management, with the result being the garish website you’re glancing at right now.

I’m still trying to figure out what, exactly, this is, beyond a drunken night in February where I elected to fork out the money for a domain name chosen in honour of my cat. Inebriated expenditure is a curious thing, and in the past has netted me such prizes as a $525 Sonic Generations Collector’s Edition (retail value of $165) and a Kawhi Leonard baby onesie.

Important sidenote: I do not currently have a baby in my possession that I am aware of.

In my head, this will at least prove a platform for my nonsense. To be transparent, I really do not like pitching to new websites. Trying to match their style guide and cater to their audience, framing a fledgling story in a few paragraphs with the awareness that you’ll likely never hear back…

And for what? $20 here and there?

It’s an unfortunate truth that the online journalism industry is oversaturated, and the modus operandi runs solely on clicks. Topical news stories and rapid-fire guides are what keep a site running; the parts of the gig that were always areas of weakness for me.

A 2,000 word retrospective on the history of Pokemon flows onto the page with the effortless flow of a true maestro. A 300 word news piece on sales figures for Elden Ring is like pulling teeth, and reads just as well.

I’m self-indulgent, you see, and have convinced myself that I am the product. That Elden Ring story can’t have interwoven innuendo that compares Piplup’s plumage to a pair of nipples. The retrospective probably shouldn’t have it either. But it will, dammit, and that’s why I do it.

Ideally, someday this website could even be a springboard for likeminded people: eager, aspiring writers who just desperately need a platform to be heard. That’s both ambitious and unlikely, as I cannot yet afford to pay myself, let alone contributors. But someday, little Tobias, you too can be just like me.

Hopefully a more successful version that is at least twelve kilos lighter. So get on the treadmill now, the op eds can wait.

This isn’t to say that I’m done with freelancing, of course. Nothing says ‘reputable’ like a slew of different bylines, while a portfolio overflowing solely with content from a backwoods site clumsily adorned with low-res cat photos probably won’t impress prospective clients. Curse those bourgeois pigs!

For now, it’s here. It’ll do its thing, whatever that ends up being. Thank you for getting this far, hopefully you’ll be intrigued enough to stick around for a little while. I can almost certainly assure you that you won’t be disappointed, or if you are, it will only be a minor inconvenience.

Please enjoy my bullshit. Also, that’s not even Eziyoda in the photo. He refused to participate, so one of my other cats had to stand in (and for some reason, rub her ass against the side of my head).