No one is reading me!, Its a beautiful thing!

I have checked my blog stats and since I posted that SA has left VG, I haven't had a single reader. That's right not one!. And you know what, I'm bloody happy about it. When I originally started blogging, or as it was known back then "learning to write HTML code so I could write a website so I could put some shit in the web" there was never an anticipation of having actual readers.

What I was laughingly referring to as my website went through several iterations over the years, from my own personal one written when I was a student, to domainadmins.com written with a SQL back end and CSS. Eventually I moved on to this blog in the last year or so, because Google make it so much easier than I was ever able to code it myself. Plus its all backed up and available on Googles servers forever. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if I'm dead and you are still reading through this 100 years on.

I first started to get actual regular readers when I was writing the EQ raiding blog for Southern Armada. People started to ask in game and through emails "when's the next one going up?". What freaked me out most was when a couple of people posted from over seas. One guy posted from an Internet cafe in Spain. He was an Aussie touring Europe and he had found the raiding blog and read it end to end. Apparently it cost him an absolute fortune to sit in the Cafe all day but he wanted to see what happened at the end. I don't think I've ever been so complemented in my life!, someone actually paid real money, and money they couldn't afford, to read my words!.

When SA moved to World of Warcraft I tried to keep up the blogging but for various reasons that I have discussed in depth elsewhere, I simply couldn't find the commitment or the time. Again we moved, this time to Vanguard, I really enjoyed blogging Vanguard Raids, but again it came down to time availability. Its impossible to find enough time to be committed to actually play the games and raid as well, let alone spend the time to do all of that and spend 4-6 hours a week writing up an entertaining and reasonably intelligent blog.

I found it harder and harder to enjoy. We would have a good night in VG and get a good or particularly hard kill and I would get tells "This will be up on the blog tomorrow wont it!" which put all sorts of pressure on me. Now I don't mind pressure, I work in a very high pressure kind of job, but the pressure was starting to intrude on the relaxation time. I was feeling like I couldn't enjoy the game cause I wasn't spending time on the blog. Then I started to get weeks behind with the raids and I felt even worse. The issue got so bad I stopped blogging and I stopped playing which pleased nobody, least of all me.

What I am getting around to in all of this, is that with no more readers, the pressure is off. I can update when I want, about what I want again. I may blog regularly about WAR, or not. If I can get an SA chapter going in WAR I will and I may even blog about it. Whether we do start a chapter or not will depend on how many regular SA members decide to give the game a go. There may be none, in which case I will be very sad and I will be looking for a Guild as a new home in WAR.

I will however wait for the inevitable collapse and shakedown. What usually happens is that the quick to organise "pre-release guilds", in my experience usually fail spectacularly in a welter of recrimination and abuse.

I am trying to find a backup of my old website which had all the sigs that I ever made for anyone on display. I really hope I can find them cause some of them were really good and I would like to show them off again.