The Return to Blogging

Many times this year I've thought about returning to TOP Gaming. I originally started this blog as a way to get back into writing. I'm a storyteller at heart, one of the few and proud gamers of the world who actually value a good story and strong characters over graphics (and to some extents gameplay). Blogging was mostly an exercise to get myself writing every week and perhaps launch into bigger and better writing projects in the future. After a personal tragedy in 2013, I returned to college to finish a degree in Applied Linguistics and decided that since I was writing a paper every week, I really couldn't afford the time to write about video games every week on top of that. I was certainly getting enough writing practice.

I wanted to do a grand reopening in January with a "Best of 2014" article, but that fell to the wayside as I prepared to move from Maryland to Hawaii. It's roughly 4800 miles to move a family of five. No big deal. My supportive wife says, "It's never too late." So perhaps I will do a review of 2014, or perhaps I won't. I haven't decided what to do, honestly. All I have decided is that I need a creative outlet. I've been out of school since January and comfortably settled in Hawaii since March. It's time to get back into writing - and hopefully back into blogging.

The last real post on this blog was Music May of 2013. It was a huge undertaking and it was one of my favorite projects that I've ever done. It took months of preparation and hours of writing and listening to music. When Grooveshark crumbled in April, I was fairly devastated. My entire blog was dependent upon Grooveshark to provide the optional, ambient background music of TOP Gaming. It was another crushing blow and another setback to my return, because I knew once I came back I'd have to address it. I still don't know how to solve the issue. There really isn't anything quite like Grooveshark on the internet that I'm aware of. I don't know how best to integrate video game music with video game musings. I'm sure that in time something will come up.

May 4th of this year, a new son was added to my family. He's asleep right next to me as I write. The weekend leading up to his birth was a very difficult weekend for me and I wrote a yet unpublished blog about how I was feeling at the time. I'd also like to polish up and publish that blog for you sometime as it was an amazingly powerful outlet for me to vent some pretty strong emotions - and yes, I somehow managed to tie it together with a video game, or specifically a video game song that I don't know how to feature on this blog at the moment.

That brings me to June - which it is for a few more hours. I didn't really have any life-changing or blog-disrupting changes this month. I probably could have posted a bit earlier, but I did not. I got caught up in the Heavensward launch for the MMO Final Fantasy XIV, but now things have settled down and I'm trying to set aside more time for creativity and expression. That's really all I have. I don't want to tease an audience (whatever's left of one) into thinking I'm truly back. I haven't really thought this through. I just thought it was long overdue that I sat down and wrote.

- TOP                    

@TOPGamingBlog