Saturday, December 31, 2011

Why I disappeared


Aloha all. I wanted to write to you all today and apologize for my sudden disappearance. I’m sure this may come as too little to late, but I feel that I should regardless. The short and simple answer is that shit happens and I didn’t have the time. Ok that’s a horrible reason I’ll admit, so let me give you a bit more details as to how that came about.

For quite some time I have been looking for a regular job in web design, which is what I spent X thousand dollars on an education for. After a while I still hadn’t found one so when my best friend says “Hey I’m moving out to Illinois while my girl finishes college, want to come with and start up a web business?” I immediately said hell yes. No questions asked.

That’s pretty much the story of my life right there, barely any planning or reason for whatever I do other than “it seemed like a good idea at the time.” After packing up we made the 15ish hour long drive out there and got set up. Unfortunately working freelance in the mid-west isn’t so easy. Granted it isn’t easy anywhere, but that’s another debate.

The simple fact is that I was desperate to leave my current situation and was borderline on taking a job in the all American fast food industry if that would get me out. So I took the first opportunity to get out and it worked out, at least a little. We get our first job in the business shortly after getting there from a friend of a friend.

It was a nightmare.

I can go on for hours ranting on about how brain damaged this person was (and I have) but I’ll spare you. The short version is they could barely use a computer and were telling me how to do my job at every turn. *stabby stabby stabby!* But we managed to get it done and find more contracts here and there. Meanwhile almost all of my time is dedicated to either drinking heavily or trying to find new clients. Or both, ya know whichever.

I stopped writing because first I stopped gaming for the most part. I was rich in Rift and was getting bored of the game. Although it’s more accurate to say that my mind was focused on work, creating new designs, learning new tricks etc.

Once things finally calmed down and I was financially stable about a year had already passed. At that point I just said fuck it and ignored the AH game and the blog (therefore you) all together. I was just thinking (very little at all) that at this point why bother? In the end, all of my writing and serious gaming had completely fallen by the wayside until just recently.

For all of you who only read for the tips on making the MMO moneys don’t worry that you’ve missed out on many great secrets, you haven’t. I’ve told you everything you need to know, the rest is up to you. And for those who actually read my blog for entertainment or because you just enjoyed my writing, I apologize. Yes I actually feel bad about not writing and falling out of the bloging thing.

However I do intend to get back to writing, and very soon at that, but it will take on a slightly different form. Mostly, I’m waiting for Guild Wars 2 to be released which will likely be the last MMO I intend to play for quite some time. With the planning of a reverse auction house, I am extremely interested in how well I will fare. For those of you that don’t know, what that means is that you can list what you have for sale AND what you want to buy. Very cool stuff. But I digress.

I don’t mean to turn this entry into something that belongs on a live journal post, but I owe an explanation if nothing else. Even if it is two years too late. Sorry about that. But fear not, Guild Wars 2 is currently in closed beta and, if all goes well, it will be in an open beta before spring time. Until then I’ll be working on my writing ability and hopefully get a job as a writer for one of the many fine sites out there on the interwebs.

Thanks for stopping by.

13 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Double post because I accidentally a punctuation.

    Glad to see you back. I imagine it's tough starting out, my boyfriend's starting a business and we're just now seeing how much that entails

    Still, parts of your story made me want to share this since it seemed possibly pertinent. :)

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  3. glad to see you stockpile, it's good to see your alive.

    *thanks to faid for providing about 3.5 hours of pure enjoyment from his link, i highly suggest checking that out, unless i'm just about 2 years behind on the internet bandwagon.

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  4. Hey, nice to see you are still out there. Was very surprised and happy to see a post when I decided to check back at the blog!

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  5. Good to see you doing okay.

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  6. Thought you died, glad to see that's not the case. :) Even better to hear things are looking up career wise.

    GW2's reverse AH ought to take years to develop all its nuances well. This should give you plenty to write about as it evolves.

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  7. We all missed you buddy good to see you back hope all goes well for you :) XOXO =P

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  8. Good to still see you around. I've taken a bit of a break from MMORPGs, but GW2 does intrigue me and I might give that a go...

    Your #1 Fan

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  9. @ All
    I intend to write up a short-ish review of the things that I've seen in GW 2 at some point that make it a must buy, besides it IS free to play. After all it has been voted as most anticipated game of 2012 by numerous sites. Because truth be told, they are doing so much that is different in the MMO scene that if nothing else you should at least steal a copy from your friend to try out.

    Ok I've droned on long enough as the unofficial spokesman for the game. Moving along.

    @ Faid
    for the next 3 hours you are my favorite person in the whole wide interwebs! i love the oatmeal. And that exact comic was my first four clients. unfortunately most of the profits from that went to a bottle of gin to stave off my murderous tenancies when speaking with them. In fact my partner who did most of the communications because I was locked away working would apologize to me every-single-time they got off the phone with them. He could see the disgust in my face and knew it wasn't meant for him but he felt bad none the less lol.

    But yeah it definitely entails a lot to start a business, but i managed to make due in the middle of a small college town where i knew NOBODY based entirely on my skills and artistic eye. To you and your lucky boyfriend, don't give it up! It's just like the AH you have to start small and slowly invest more and more. Once you've gotten a solid hold of your certain area you'll see the money com in so long as it is there to be spent.

    @ Blockfire
    There's another comic (likely from the same person) describing the stages of an engineer building a tire swing and how all the different people (managers, marketers, client, etc.) envisioned it when all they needed was a damned flat tire and a piece of rope. You must hunt it down, like now.

    @ anon 1
    I think the first tactic anybody should take is to but cheap stuff on the "wts" section then have it auto purchased from the "wtB" section. Devious goblin is devious. Once I force my way into the beta (I'll choke a bitch if i have to!) I'll be giving a play by play review of what I'm seeing.

    And yes I will reveal my toon name and server/world/shard as soon as I get into the game in case anybody wants to come hang out! HINT: it's probably going to be the name of my first GW 1 toon, Alexandra Carpathia. Hottie dead girl necromancer.

    @ All of the well wishers (even you defective)
    It's so nice to see that somebody cares about what you do. Because truth be told I love to write about all the things that I'm interested in. I originally started the blog for the sole purpose of getting all of this info out of my head before it exploded, I didn't give a shit about fans or readers in the slightest bit.

    Might sound cold and cruel, but it's the truth and is partially why I didn't bother to advertise it either. But when people started to discover me on their own merit and took an actual interest in learning more, it became more about telling people what they needed to know instead of me just vomiting information onto the screen.

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  10. Glad to see you back Stok! Hope things get better.

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  11. I’m really impressed together with your writing talents and also with the structure to your blog. Is that this a paid subject matter or did you customize it yourself? Either way stay up the nice quality writing, it is uncommon to peer a great blog like this one today..

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  12. I can go on for hours riftgold ranting on about how brain damaged this person was (and I have) but I’ll spare you. The short version is they could barely use a computer and were telling me how to do my job at every turn. *stabby stabby stabby!* But we managed to get it done and find more contracts here and there. Meanwhile almost all of my time buy rift gold is dedicated to either drinking heavily or trying to find new clients. Or both, ya know whichever.

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