My Evolving Mahalo Freelance Career -- Part 2

After a few months with the "buzz team," I received an email from Mahalo's video game team leader, Mark Burnham. Mark was inviting me to join Mahalo's video games team. Video games? ARRRRRRRRGH! You have GOT to be kidding! Leave the heavenly soap opera world of politics to write about video games? That was on a par with being relegated to Siberia :( It turned out to be the best Mahalo career move possible for me... I just didn't know it yet ;)

The first six months on the video games team were on a par with torture. The days were lonnnnnnnnnng. I had no interest at all in writing about video games. It was all very much like a foreign language :( And then i discovered something... my son (who was 13 at the time) thought I was like the coolest mom EVER. I was speaking his language! Which was pretty exciting. About the time other parents lose touch with their teens, I had found a channel to maintain a relevant relationship with mine. Conversations with video games have easily transitioned into troubles with school... discovering girls... dodging drugs... and all kinds of other issues. It has made parenting a teen a lot more fun for me. And I began to find that some of the games were actually FUN! Discounting the sex mini games in the God of War series of course... (sigh) And I really did know which games were age appropriate -- another HUGE help in the teen parenting world.

And then Mark left :( And the management of the video games team transitioned to me. I spent the next year and a half or so at Mahalo managing the video games team... worked with a great group of eight video games writers and grew the vertical into one that was gradually being recognized in the industry as having quality walkthroughs and other video game related information. I thought that I'd found my niche... but... Mahalo had other ideas ;) More later!