I had this blog 16 months before I broke 100 posts. I said at the top of that one that I had tried to keep a blog before, and that none of them had breached a dozen posts before I abandoned it and eventually took it down out of embarrassment.
34 months later and I’ve reached 200 posts. It took me just over twice as long to double the number. However, the key point is that I did double it, I am still here and still writing posts. I’ve now had this blog over four years and I’ve written about 350,000 words over those 200 posts.
I can’t prove it, without a serious time investment, but I’m pretty sure the length of my posts has increased over the years. Another thing that has changed has been what I’ve blogged about. In my post – the 100th edition – I talked about what had changed over those 100 posts. It was a mixed bag of a post and I’m going to repeat that here.
What has changed over the last 100 posts?
World of Warcraft
When I wrote the 100th post, I said I wasn’t enjoying the game as much as I used to and I wondered if it was burnout. Well, fast forward best part of three years later and I’ve quit the game completely. I quit a long time ago. I logged out for the final time, just over a year ago. I hadn’t been playing for the whole of those two years, I took at least six months out in between Mists and Warlords. Basically, the game changed and went down a road I wasn’t prepared to follow. It removed what I liked and it wasn’t fun anymore.
Other games
In all honesty I haven’t been gaming seriously lately at all. I let my Swtor sub lapse, mostly because I couldn’t afford it anymore but also because I don’t have time to play. I’ve been trying to remember to login to Marvel Heroes everyday for the login bonus, but I do forget quite frequently. However, I haven’t had a real playing session of that for a while. In the last three years I picked up Landmark, and have since dropped it again. I haven’t logged into that in months even though I do still like it.
I did just get a Steam Link for my birthday, which streams games from my PC to the TV through the router, and sends commands back using the controller. I haven’t used it as much as I would have liked, I’ve had it two weeks now and only had a couple of short sessions. However, I do think I’m more likely to play using this, than sit at the PC at least for the moment. If I’m on the PC all day working, then I don’t really want to sit in the same chair all evening.
Alright I am going to admit that I do still play games, but I play them in short doses on my phone mostly. I also picked up a game called Train Valley, on Steam recently. It’s really simple, probably meant for children and is ridiculously addictive. I have ‘beat’ all the levels now, so maybe I’ll be able to stop playing and do something else.
I suppose this post doesn’t just have to look back, but it can look forward too. What does my gaming future hold? Well I don’t know. My trend over the last few years has been to play less, not more and that’s an adjustment. I still think to myself occasionally that I should purposefully make time to game, but maybe if I’m not making time, then it just isn’t a priority for me anymore.
Interests change over time, it’s a natural evolution of things.
TV Shows and Genres
Speaking of change, when I wrote the 100th edition it was July 2013. I didn’t start watching Stargate until February 2014. It is odd sometimes to think that I only discovered that show just over two years ago. It’s had a massive impact on me, it’s my absolute favorite. When I say impact, I genuinely mean that. Stargate exposed me to full on sci-fi, which I’d not really had before.
I grew up not watching anything sci-fi/fantasy related and if asked, I would have said I didn’t like those genres. The truth was, I’d just not been exposed to those genres really and so I was just parroting what I’d been told. My mother didn’t like anything sci-fi/fantasy related, and we tend to pick up on our parents likes/dislikes until we get more information and can decide for ourselves. Well, Stargate was my breakout show. I suppose I liked the Marvel movies but they are a bit different. That’s comic book/superhero and it’s all big and dramatic because they are films.
It’s not secret that I’m a writer, it’s what I hope to do for a living. Well, I have a problem. My first book was Crime, the genre I grew up with and thought I knew best. I still watch all the crime shows I started years ago and I still rewatch them on occasion. However, the spark and the passion is just completely gone. My second book is Military Science Fantasy and that was a blast to write. I had so much fun, it was a proper novel length and I think it’s my best work. It’s probably egotistical to admit but I read that book and enjoyed it. I thought it was good and I didn’t want to burn it in fire. Contrast that with my attempts for book two of my crime series and oh boy, like night and day.
Stargate kicked off an evolution of my interests. Once Upon a Time which I only discovered last summer, has had a similar effect when it comes to magic and all that fun stuff. When I love a show I think it will be my favorite forever. That’s just not the case. I do still like all my old favorites but they have been eclipsed. I suppose I should accept that maybe one day something will knock Stargate off the top of the leaderboard. If that does happen, it will be one hell of a show that manages it.
These days I feel like I blog more about Stargate and Once Upon a Time than I do about video games. In that, at least, I have come full circle. When I first started blogging years ago, before I started this blog, it was reviews of TV episodes. A couple of years back I looked at the backups of my old posts, thinking I might import them into this site, and have everything in one place. However, I was way too embarrassed by the old reviews – man they were short. I mean, seriously short, like three paragraphs short. I know I said at the top that I thought my posts had got longer over the course of this blog. However, they were never that short even in the beginning of this blog incarnation.
I have blogged more about Once Upon a Time in the last ten months than anything else. The show itself has taken a bit of a bad turn lately but that’s not what is important about a show. There are parts of Stargate’s plot that I like to pretend never happened. Plot exists to serve characters, and characters are what really matter. Once Upon a Time has some pretty incredible characters and I imagine if season six continues to disappoint, I will continue to blog because Rumplestiltskin and Regina are just that good.
Conclusion
I have had this blog since February 2012, it’s just over four years old now. I have no plans to quit blogging. I know I did take the blog down temporarily, before I reinstated it with a password. I thought that it would be better not to have the distraction but I missed it, that’s an experiment I won’t be repeating. The blog is here to stay.
I have recently got a tumblr so I can follow fan blogs and I have posted a bit on there. It’s fun, I like how I can do photos and stuff, plus I can reblog cool looking gifs etc. Just like having twitter doesn’t erase this blogs place, tumblr doesn’t change things either. Tumblr is just another outlet, not a replacement.
Who knows what changes the next 100 posts will bring, or how long it will take me to write that many. About the only thing that can be certain is that in another 100 posts I will still be writing. NaNo, my novels and my ambition to write has been the only constant over the entire 200 posts, that isn’t going to be changing now or ever.
So here’s a toast to the next 100! My next post will be about Captain America: Civil War. I saw it last Saturday and it was amazing, best marvel film yet! I’ll save the rest for the actual post.