Of Excitement & Squee

Greetings friends!

After a couple days off from work (and kinda being away from the Internet in general) I'm back with a bit of a chattete for you all.

So earlier this week I was published by a third party website's blog:

http://www.waylandgames.co.uk/blog/13-hobby-wants-vs-hobby-shoulds

This was for me a really big deal. Before this point I had been a bit of a meerkat. Sure I pop my head up into the air for all to see in the form of blogs, podcasts & streams. But it's always done within very easy reach of a burrow from which I can disappear whenever I wanted by never really promoting my works.

I never went to websites I wasn't already familiar with, I never said to people "HEY LOOK AT MY BLOG!" I just put it out there and let people see it as they wanted. If people liked it they came back for more; if they didn't then they moved on. Same with podcasting and streaming.

I learned a long time ago that to survive in the public limelight, no matter how big your audience; you need super thick skin as everything you do comes under scrutiny. When you succeed there's always someone ready to put you down, and when you fail there's always someone to laugh at you. Even when you are mediocre there is still a line of people just begging to poke fun and complain because your opinion differs from them by 0.1 degrees, or because you made a statement that was off by irrelevant information (saying a release date was March when it was April for example).

So when I saw a tweet from Wayland Games saying they were looking for 'talented bloggers' I thought I'd send them some links.

Do I consider myself a talented blogger? Of course not. Jesus! I don't even consider myself a blogger, just an opinionated dude who has a blog. But what was the worst that could happen? They could say they didn't like my attitude or my subject matter. Maybe my style of writing wasn't for them? Well that's fine because I know I am writing for a niche crowd anyway.

So imagine my amazement when I get an email back asking for a n actual article; anything of my choice that is hobby related ~750 words? I'm over joyed!

Even now ~24hrs after the post went live on their website, I am still amazed in ways I can not put into words:

My words - my freaking words! Are appearing on a 3rd party website's blog!

Already I have drafted a follow up article. Something not too different to what I have written here in the past, covering my history as a hobbyist and gamer and the motivation behind it.
- Really it's pretty basic stuff. There's no venom or ranting, little creativity but I don't think that stuff belongs there. That is firmly based in this blog, and I can't see the viewers of Wayland Games being at all interested in what has ground my gears lately and forced me into a nerd rage.
- Like Pacific Rim! Seriously, how shite was that film! Why punch a big monster when you have an inbuilt sword? Why wait until your almost dead before using the sword? Just start off with the freaking thing!!

So yeah; that's got me pretty excited!

More than that however! This weekend I am hoping for a visit from a friend of mine. I am super happy about this as we get to playtest some games of Gang War, and with hope try & wrap our brains around Infinity some more.
Now you have to understand, it's not very often I get to play games; mainly because I'm a lazy SOB and so can't be bothered to travel to London or wherever to play. So when someone is going to actually travel to my own place of residence for a game or two? Well that's just making my weekend!

So yeah. That's what I've been up to recently!

After this weekend you should expect another update on Gang War as I am sure we will establish that nothing works and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, but hey that's what alpha playtests are for!!

So until next time; stay safe and be excellent to eachother!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley