State of the Blog Address

First the good news: Tim Isakson will start writing weekly in the Thursday slot, which has been vacant for some time. With the addition of Tim comes the first direct link between GoE and GoF, which will take the edge off the flippancy somewhat. I, for one, hope that he takes us back and beyond.

The bad news is that I am not sure how much I will be able to contribute to GoE for the rest of this year. Those who know me really well know that I am not one to make promises that I am not able to keep - this manifests itself at work through my shifty unwillingness to commit to unrealistic requests - and I am just being realistic with everything going on. I would like to get back to my previous regularity, but between my two-year-old and an out-of-control project at work, I have little time or energy for things such as writing which take plenty of both. There is just way too much chaos in my other spheres to be able to concentrate on this one. Allergy season started this week and that will make the next two months all the more challenging.

Writing is very hard for me, and I hold myself to such a high standard in everything I do (well, at least those things I care about; my wife would have a lot to say about my housekeeping abilities) that I am rarely satisfied with the final outcome. I do not like producing things which I cannot bring to a certain level of quality, a characteristic which dooms any ambitions I may have to be a game designer. Whereas it seems most of us here have a hard time with scratching up material, I easily have another year of topics in my head-queue, and have a strong desire to publish these thoughts. I actually have two near-finished articles for last week and this, but I am facing the dark side of the 80/20 principle. Even polishing off a submission for the Game Group series is incredibly daunting at this point.

I hope that the other guys will keep the momentum going, and hopefully the addition of Tim will help. I feel really bad about this; I feel as if I have let the gang down, I miss posting my articles, and I fear that if I (being the one to kickoff the project and still king of logistics) were to back down any, the whole thing would collapse due to others having easy outs. I feel very positive about our collective work even though I have been disappointed with my recent lack of contributions. After a few months, my daughter should be phasing out of the terrible twos, and my work project will be over the hump (if not axed). Until then, maybe this will turn out to be a temporary sag and I will get lucky, a second wind bringing me back to posting regularly. At a minimum, I will commit to participating in the Question of the Month articles. Anything beyond that, I cannot promise...