Five Year Blogoversary

Something Profound

fivecake I feel like this morning I should post something deeply profound since as of this morning it means I have been doing this blog thing for five years.  Technically my first post was on the 17th, but it was really just a test to make sure the site was functional.  My very first “real” post was on April 21st 2009 contemplating the ramifications of what “dual spec” would do to our raid.  I have changed a lot in these five years, and while I wish I had posted more regularly early on, I do like the fact that you can see this evolution in game play and attitude over the years.  The original intent of this blog was to be a World of Warcraft Warrior Tanking blog hence the title.

But looking back that idea didn’t seem to last more than a few posts before it started to morph into a blog about my adventures in raiding.  At that point I was in my “wannabe hardcore” mode, and in this fashion being plugged into the blog scene was probably more of a detriment to my enjoyment than a boon to my happiness.  I saw people doing really awesome things, and our little rag tag mostly casual raid just couldn’t keep up.  I am not super proud of some of the angry posts I made to that effect as we struggled to clear content in Wrath of the Lich King.  There are many times I wish I could just jettison the first couple of years worth of posts, because I really don’t know that version of me any more.

Personal Growth

Every so often through the back log of posts I stumble upon one that I had forgotten about and that I really am still proud to have written.  The biggest takeaway for me over these five years is that I have become much more comfortable in my own skin.  When I started writing for my blog, I tried to be this thing that I thought everyone wanted me to be.  The flawless leader, the archetype, the figurehead that did no wrong and always had the right words to say to fix the problems.  The longer it ran the more I realized I was not that person.  I was just as full of self doubt and confusion as the next player, and that they didn’t follow me because I knew all the answers…  they followed me because I cared enough to try.

So now I can look back at the first four years of my blog as me trying to “find my voice”, but I don’t really think I found it until I embarked upon my “Grand Experiment”.  There is something about having to write a post each and every morning that forces you to open up and be honest.  There comes a point where you just run out of spackle and polish to keep up your persona.  I would like to hope that by the time I entered into the idea, the “persona” of me was dwindling and I was left with just the real version…  but I can even see that over the course of this last year of daily posts I became far more honest with my public.  I still enter into each posting expecting no one to actually read it, and in that there is a comfort level that allows me to say some things that I might not say otherwise.

So while today is pretty cool that the blog itself has been around for five years now, I feel like the upcoming anniversary of the grand experiment is far more important.  That was really the moment when I decided a true direction for my blog, and in the last year I feel so blessed in the connections I have made during it.  The funny thing is… even after five years of doing this, I feel like I don’t really “know” anything about this trade.  I tend to just push forward with what seems to work, and figure out the rest of the details as I go.  As I enter into my third year of the Newbie Blogger Initiative… I really don’t feel like I am worthy of the title of “Mentor”, because I am still very much figuring things out for myself.

Breaching the Spotlight

I’ve always been one of those people who has preferred to be behind the scenes, and while I like knowing that people are actually reading what I write, I’ve tried to avoid stepping out into the spotlight.  Part of this comes from the whole “not really comfortable in my own skin” aspect of things.  I’m a big guy, and I probably always will be, but over the last year my wife and I have embarked upon a personal journey that has lead to both of us losing well over seventy pounds.  So while I am not going to be taking any “selfies” any time soon, I am feeling a lot more confident about myself as a result.  As such I am forcing myself to do things that I would have avoided before.

This started with my game streaming over on Twitch, and while I choose not to display my webcam on the stream… it is a start.  While streaming I started joining mumble and letting anyone pop in to chat, and I realized that I might have something interesting on my hands.  In listening to the old streams it really started to sound like a sort of impromptu podcast.  Out of this I talked to a few of my friends that I have talked with nightly in twitch for years, and we started a podcast.  Sunday we recorded our second episode and I am pretty happy with how things are turning out.  I made an attempt to go on camera with the Gamer Hangout vidcast but honestly the “in front of the camera” thing was just a bit too much for my anxiety.

Yesterday I got the opportunity to branch out from my comfort zone again, and while I was extremely nervous going into it… and likely drove my wife insane starting an hour or so before it was supposed to happen… it seemed to go off without a hitch.  I was invited to guest host MMORPG.com Game On podcast with Liore and Syeric.  The episode we recorded last night will not be posted until this coming Wednesday, but I am excited and scared to see how it turned out.  The multiplaying podcast did not happen this week, but I may end up getting rescheduled on this weeks show.  While it may not seem like a big leap for me to go from doing my own podcast, to joining in on others… it really is.  What has made Aggrochat so easy for me is we are just recording the same kinds of conversations we have had for years.

Aggrochat Chibis

belghast_shieldhat Rae is probably going to kill me for posting this, but meh she will get over it.  It feels fitting to show this off today, since five years ago she made the Belghast in Zul’Aman gear chibi that I still use for everything.  Right now everything we have for AggroChat is very much in a placeholder state.  We wanted to get podcasting before we lost our nerve, and did not want to wait for all the infrastructure to be in place.  One of the things she has been working on are Chibis for each of the podcasters so we can have a nifty chibi-fied logo version of ourselves.  Over the weekend she sent me what looks to be a final or near final version of my chibi.  I am absolutely in love with it, and can’t wait to see what the final version of all of them looks like put together.  Once she is finished with everything I am probably going to be updating the masthead to include this guy as well.  I want to thank all of you who have read my blog during the last five years.  You’ve made this a very interesting journey, and I can only hope I have to “oomph” to make it another five years.