Happy Trails!

I knew that this would someday happen.

Life at the Battle Priestess house has shifted focus considerably. The main catalyst for this is a new job that I’ve been at for almost a month. I’m working for a tiny little business in a creative industry with big dreams and big ambitions for growth, and while I LOVE my job, it’s also requiring a lot more than your typical 40-hour work week. Networking events, Chamber of Commerce events, trade shows, and overtime are all contributing to the sudden and bittersweet fact that I have a LOT less time to actually game these days, much less blog about gaming.

Not that I’m going to stop gaming completely! I’m still going to play when I can, but at some point, you have to make hard decisions and try to prioritize things correctly. For my husband and I, my job means that we’ll be able to FINALLY purchase a house in about a year or so, and get out from under some debt that we’ve been working on for a long time. I can’t express how ecstatic that makes us, but it also means that a few other things will need to go, this blog unfortunately being one of them. Maybe someday I’ll be back in some form or fashion, but for now I think this is best for both me and for your RSS feeds.

I do want to say that all of my readers are amazing. Through gaming, blogging and Twitter I’ve met a wonderful and insanely cool group of people. Seriously, y’all rock, and you inspire me to take the fun, craziness, and silly pop culture references with me to work and beyond. Rather than fight who I am and put on a “serious face” on the job, I’ve embraced the geek, the weird, the fun, and the different, and the result is far, far better than anything else I’ve ever done before. This incredibly shy and terrified-of-public-speaking person is going out and addressing strangers and groups and finding that somehow, I’m making them laugh and putting them at ease in situations that can normally be a boring and/or intimidating. I think that when you learn to communicate more clearly via text (which is so often misunderstood), it makes you a better communicator in general. Plus, I usually just imagine that I’m talking to a crowd of all of you! So really, thank you for all for reading and commenting and for just being awesome.

Also, I won’t be disappearing completely. I’ll still be on Twitter at @Moxiedoodle. I have a new iPhone (YAY!!!) with Twitter access (YAY!!!) so I’ll still be hanging out there and can be reached that way. I’ll still be reading a ton of your blogs, though I won’t always be able to comment directly. Y’all are passionate and creative writers, and I thoroughly enjoy reading your blogs and living vicariously through your gaming.

If I had to have any last parting wisdom, it would be this: Don’t lose your sense of wonder and thankfulness. The gaming industry is so huge now, and there are so many games and it so permeates our culture that I think sometimes we lose sight of the fact that we are incredibly blessed to have all of this available to us. Years ago, kids had to drop out of school in order to work in factories to help support their families. Work was hard, back-breaking labor, not a desk job like many of us have now. Entertainment was a true luxury, and was most often a radio show at night or sitting around a piano singing with family members. We’ve come such a long way as far as technology goes… smartphones, flat-screen TVs, DVRs, Hulu, 3-D movies, console games, and of course, MMORPGs. It’s easy to get cynical about gaming. We all tend to rant and lament about what the latest big corporation is doing to gaming or how Game A has better graphics than Game B or how microtransactions are going to affect our game of choice.

But really, in the end, gaming is about having fun and enjoying the people that you’re gaming with, be it with your guildies or people you met on Twitter or with your family. Enjoy your gaming time, let other gamers enjoy theirs in whatever way they see fit, and be kind to each other. Don’t let yourself get bitter and jaded, because in the end, what matters most is the people you love and the memories you make.

Thank you for all the great memories. Love you all.

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