State Of The Blog - January 2022

Hey, y'all. I thought I take time out of my day to put together a little extensive state of the blog that will feature some immediate and long-term plans for the future of this webzone. There's quite a bit to digest, so I hope you can indulge me by taking time out of your day to read this little post.

I think it's safe to say that the past couple years have not been too active on the blog. A lot of this has to do with some personal life changes that have been brought about due to external sources. I'm not just talking about the prevailing circumstances we're living in - though I will not lie and say that that didn't factor into it - but I've been also dealing with some other things that I would rather not disclose online. As a result, things have not gone according to plan and I feel immensely let down. I could imagine the few who follow this space and actually look forward to stuff that doesn't quite materialize as intended.

I've mentioned this in the past, but I should probably re-iterate here for clarity; everything I do here is done primarily as a hobby. There's no ad revenue, no Patreon, no sponsorships, or anytthing of the sort that drives any sort of income. I do this of my own free will, time, and without getting a cent from it. It has become something that has allowed me to express my thoughts in a way that doesn't feel restricted. There are times when this hobby starts to feel like a job and when it gets to that point, that's when I have to take a step back and slow down.

This has resulted in unannounced periods of inactivity among the various outlets that I maintain, where there would be weeks without content. Hell, there'd be weeks where I wouldn't even touch the blog or various tools. I want to try and rectify that for 2022; not only for the sake of content, but also for my own personal sanity, as it were.

So here's the plan... as it were:

- First off, the first three weeks of January will be largely inactive. During this time, the only thing that will likely see regular updates are the Wednesday PPV Musings and with the exception of the WWE Day 1 musings coming up this Wednesday, a lot of these are already in the can and will publish automatically when the time comes. I do still plan on having the first episode of the DTM-Cast in 2022 on January 16th in a couple weeks, but that's probably the only thing I could think of that will be planned ahead of time.

- With that in mind, the first review of 2022 will be posted on January 21st and will be a review of Dragon Warrior II for NES. This will kick off a couple weeks worth of big reviews, which will include the remaining Mega Man X games that were supposed to close out the year as well as the Metroid games that have been teased. The plan for the short term is to do three reviews a week for a couple months until we hit April 8th, which is Review A Great Game Day. We'll see how the scheduling will go afterwards.

- I am planning on bringing back a couple features that have fallen off the wayside in the past year. Things like Slideshow Movie Reviews, Mega Man Maker Wily Challenge videos, and others are a couple examples, but there's also a need to revive written features such as Power Rangers Reflections. I have some of this stuff nearing completion and hopefully in the following three weeks, I'll be able to focus on getting that material ready to go by February at the latest.

- One final note: regarding the re-up of video commentaries and old reviews to the blog... these have taken a backseat for now, primarily due to technical issues regarding the rendering of these videos which have considerably slowed things down in this regard. This affects the commentaries moreso than the videos and I'm trying to get that sorted out whenever I can. None of this has to do with Content ID issues - although said Content ID had prevented the lost Spider-Man commentary from seeing the light of day on Youtube, which meant being hosted on Dailymotion, instead. As soon as there is an update regarding this, I'll let you know.

And that's about all that comes to mind at the moment. I want to make a point to turn these State Of The Blog posts into a monthly feature, so that we can keep track of stuff that goes on and such. And this would invariably include the repost of vintage content - whether it'd be old videos or even old written material from the old Webstation days.

Baby steps, however. Baby steps. Let's get through this month before we go any further down the road.

Thanks for reading,

Later.