Things I learned from 3 years of writing, and a personal story
To many, 3 years of writing is absolutely nothing compared to their writing careers. For Twitter football analysts, 3 years is also nothing compared to people who have been there and currently even working at a club.
But, personally, the last 3 years for me was a roller coaster, especially when writing was never really something that I wanted to do. I never saw myself as a good writer, and, to be honest, I don’t see any of my articles are good enough when comparing to others’.
I always look at my articles and think where can I improve, how can I do different for the next one,… Those questions always stuck in my head whenever I write a new article. And I learnt from others as well, especially during my first few attempts of writing an article.
I clearly remember the pre-World Cup 2018 period, which is also the occasion that saw me creating a small scouting page on Facebook. I had Twitter back then, but never actually used it because I just simply don’t know how to use. Anyway, I learnt a lot from Outside of the Boot pieces as I looked into how they scouted a player and started to replicate that. I still do now, still learning from people who are working at a club right now, like Kate Cohen (at Macarthur FC), my boss Nathan, and many others.
This is an embarrassing truth, but I will confess it. When I started writing scout reports, I only looked at compilations on YouTube and then used that as my main source to scout a player. There are a lot of excuses that I can use to cover that up, but in hindsight, if I would tell myself four years ago to use the platform called Wyscout to scout players, he would say “nah, that’s too complicated”. I hate myself for doing that, but also understand why I would do it at that point of time.
But there is something that I will never forgive myself for doing it during that period. Long story short, I started working with a partner on my Facebook page, we fallen out with each other after the World Cup, and I… stormed out. Yeah, I walked away from my own creation and I will never be proud of that decision. It was something that I put a lot of effort into, even created a signature graphic for the page (see the graphic below), but I walked away from it just because somebody made me frustrated.
That specific moment right there taught me a lot when I reflected back at it because it showed me how hot-tempered I am, and I still hate myself til this day. But I had to move on since the page was down several months later anyway (due to copyrighted videos), and I wanted to try writing scout reports in English while developing my skills at the same time. And I found Total Football Analysis while also noticing that Between the Posts are looking for new writers. So I dropped them both an email asking if I can join the team.
Surprisingly, after an article on Bristol City’s FA Cup match against Wolves and Betis’ clash with Girona, both reached out to me on the same day and said they want me to join them. I specifically remember that moment, it was very early in the morning when I was preparing for school, opening up my phone and saw two emails. I thought they had declined because those articles were not very good, but I was over the moon when I read the contents of those emails.
I won’t tell the entire story of how I joined, how I adapted and blah, blah, blah. It would take too long and nobody would bother reading it. Also, if you are still reading up until this point, thank you for following my story.
Back then, I started writing with enthusiasm and the motivation of wanting to learn while also expressing my knowledge to others. I always tried to learn new things, tried new ways to make my articles a bit better than the first. I would love to find that enthusiasm and motivation once again to write, but I have tried and failed.
It is not because I don’t want to, or I don’t want to try, but it is because I feel myself burnt out and ran out of ideas. To be fair, writing was never a thing for me at the first place. It was just the motivation of doing something that, according to myself at the time, no one had done on Facebook, which drove me into writing.
I made many regretful decisions during those 3 years, especially when I said to Chris I was ready to write 6 articles every week. Money somewhat affected my decision-making at the time, because it was the first time someone had offered me a job with salary (the backstory of that is quite long, but to shorten it, the education system in Vietnam is very tough and heavily reliant on the theoretical side, so there’s little time to actually find a part-time job, given that my parents always told me that I have to be among the best in class; very different to what I have seen in Australia and other countries).
I could even recall myself staying awake at midnight in Vietnam, when my parents had all went to bed, just to finish an article to meet the deadline that I have missed. Why did I have to do that? School for me usually started in the early morning, around 6:45 am, to 11:15am; then to extra classes in the evening, and sometimes some more classes in the afternoon. I sometimes had to watch the match in class, just to get the notes done before I got home; though, I could never finished the whole match in class.
It feels like I am moaning about my own mistake, isn’t it? Yeah, I am, but as mentioned, it was a period that I learnt a lot when reflecting back at it. I want to move on from it but take with me some experience to avoid doing the same thing again.
Moving to Australia is definitely like a new chapter for me, and I definitely wanted to change myself, and not be that horrible teenager again. So I decided to take a short break from Total Football Analysis to recover myself, which led to the incident between me and Chris, and… I stormed out again. But this time, I made that decision to give myself a break and left TFA permanently. Even though it was my only part-time job at the time, I knew I had to stop before I got burnt out.
I gave myself lots of time to think about it, and I wanted to do it. Looking back at the articles that I have written after I committed to the contract, I don’t feel like it was written from my own mind anymore. It was like something that I repeated day after day and just did the same thing all over again.
I can say that I am at a better place now when I am writing this, and I am trying not to be negative anymore. I am thankful that I can work and learn at my current club, even though it’s just voluntary work. And I have managed my time better to fit my schedule. I won’t come back to writing any soon, since the habit of sitting in front of the computer for hours, researching, analysing and writing have long gone for me. But I can say that I have learned a lot from the past 3 years, and it definitely left a big influence on how I am today.
Thank you for reading,
Daryl.
