Staff Spotlight: Janette

Hello and welcome to our first The Geekly Grind Staff Spotlight column!

This month, we’re saying hi to our princess of previews, indie gamer, and podcaster, Janette – a 30-year-old lifelong nerd from Ohio. Growing up with an equally nerdy mother, Janette was enjoying gaming and anime as early as six years old. It started with classics such as Voltron, Pokemon, and Digimon, grew into Yuyu Hakusho and Yu-gi-oh, and then became a full-on video game and anime lifestyle.

“I was an obnoxious highschooler. I had a really bad anime blog that people read for some reason!”

TGG isn’t Janette’s first go at covering her passions – prior to joining the site she was already part of two podcasts, The Ink and Paint Club Podcast and Talkin’ Mons. She applied to write for the site shortly after the podcasts joined the TGG umbrella, and has been there since.

While she specifically loves covering indie games, she really just enjoys writing on anything she’s passionate about and feels that she does her best work when she can share her joy with the world. One piece she’s particularly proud of is her Rune Factory 5 article, which included both a lot of enjoyment and a lot of work. “I even hired an editor because I was so nervous about it! I think that helped a lot in the end. It was by far my favorite thing to write.”

Janette has a lot of big dreams that she’ll hopefully get to experience in the future, but for now she’s hopeful for the opportunity to attend a convention for TGG to try out new indies and chat with developers all weekend about their work.

As a small grassroots site that started amongst friends, TGG has a lot of writers, but they all also have jobs outside of the site. Janette is a frontline healthcare worker, and has been going nonstop for two years now. She’s also been working her way up, which has let her build a better work life balance – and a lot more free time to play The Sims 4. Along with gaming, she also likes doing crafts like crochet, and is a very talented cross-stitcher.

You can catch Janette chatting on The Geekly Grind about all sorts of things, from Digimon to indie game previews and follow her on Twitter @Pumpkaboocoffee