We're Going On An Adventure!
I will admit that I have been neglecting this blog of late. I have been quite preoccupied since Christmas, due to a mixture of several issues, including an upsetting and prolonged family loss, my fragmented living arrangements and a seemingly never-ending stream of rejections from studios that I had hoped would open their doors. Believe it or not, I've been in a single continuous job hunt since July 18th 2016. My head has been all over the place, and it's made it very difficult to focus on my own personal projects, as many evenings have been spent refining cover letters, applying to companies across Europe and scouring corporate websites.
Back In The Saddle
I am so very relieved to say that my time spent hunting has been rewarded, and that Kara and I are moving to Stockholm in Sweden, so that I can continue to pursue a career in game development as a QA Technician at Avalanche Studios. We are planning on a late March/ early April move so that Kara can attend her very first Scottish Tattoo Convention as an artist, and to give us time to prepare for a move of this magnitude. I've never lived abroad before, and Kara had never so much as set foot outside the UK until we visited Italy in 2014. We are both excited and terrified.
This news comes less than a year after discovering that Reloaded was not only failing to send us to the USA, which we had been planning for since 2015; but I was losing my job. To describe the past 8 months or so as "tumultuous" seems to be an understatement. The paralysis of not being able to plan more than a month in advance had been banished and it was quite freeing, after more than a year of worrying about the move. Of course, it left me jobless and I set myself the task of getting back into the industry. After numerous rejections, I was finally able to get myself a job at eeGeo in Dundee, where I was lucky to be surrounded by a dedicated, considerate and friendly group of guys. While 3D mapping software was not the area of development that I wanted to progress, it did allow me to gain an understanding of a totally alien process, as well as refining and sharpening my QA skills. They came along at a time where I was really flagging and it gave me the confidence boost I needed to keep going with my hunt for a permanent games industry job.
While Kara and I were on holiday in Girona, I received a missed call from a girl called Emma who worked at OPM recruitment, and she was wondering how my job hunt was getting on, asking me to get back in touch with her. I had previously not had much joy with recruiters, having only received one Skype interview that resulted in a "no". After our first phone call, Emma came back with two potential roles, one of which I am only now taking. She has been a positive force that played a pivotal role in not only helping me to secure this position, but she has counselled and generally steered my crazy paranoia out of the way so that we could focus on being the best candidate available. The entire process has lasted about 3 months, some of which has included long bouts of self-deprecation and doubt, as well as returning the stress of not being able to plan beyond a month in advance, as we waited to hear back from them. It is immensely satisfying to have that uncertainty lifted and to be free to plan for the future again.
So now the plans are starting to form. It's going to be a tough month and a half, but with any luck, this new job is going to be the payoff after what I am personally calling "The Harshest Winter in Memory". I'd like to thank everyone who offered words of encouragement and hope. While it's often seen as the polite thing to do, the positivity has truly helped when I was feeling beaten down.