Image from the movie: The Truman Show
UPDATE: This post is somewhat old now and it can be interesting to look back and see how our life and blogging about the hobby changes over time.
I sit here and keep erasing what I write because I'm having trouble finding the best way to say it.
FTW will be going into stasis today.
It's not going to be deleted or removed or anything like that. There is too much here that Members have contributed that I don't want to lose. I think it's an invaluable tool for the community. But, after the past few months... actually year or so if I'm honest with myself... I realize that the best thing for me to do is regain control of my life and prioritize what I'm doing with the hobby. I will no longer be updating this site. It's not going away or being deleted, but it's no longer going to keep moving forward.
This site has been a love of mine for the past few years and I've poured my heart and soul into keeping it alive through all the ups and downs. It's come to point that I am now sacrificing more and more of my time that should be spent doing other things (like things with my family) on this site instead. Each day, I have to spend increasingly more time just doing admin things and I'm missing out on other aspects of both the hobby and more importantly, real life. I can spend hobby time in any way I want really and my Wife gives me as much time as I want (she is the best!), but it's the loss of family time that can't be reconciled for me.
And that's not how it's supposed to work.
I've been trying to keep afloat over the past few months, but the site has been slowly overwhelming me until this past week when I realized I could not keep up with it without sacrificing the remainder of my family time to keep the pace.
At first, I thought I could streamline certain aspects of the site and make them "automatic" if you will. That works to an extent. After the initial work of automating, you are relieved of some of the daily aspects. Unfortunately, not all things can be automated and some require constant upkeep and updating in order to work best.
The idea of bringing on additional help also crossed my mind and I am fortunate to have been able to work with some great guys like Ed (the weekly 40k podcast review), Bryan with Rogue Trader Fridays and Ryan who raised the bar so high with the Tuesday Top Ten it was amazing. I'm also fortunate that others have been willing to share their original content with FTW instead of posting it on their own site. While this helps fill the site with additional great content, there is the organizational aspect that enters at that point and all the tasks associated with that.
But adding more people does not decrease the workload. It does in some respects, but it adds work in other way. So how about just cutting back what I post? I've been doing that over time actually. I only post a couple times a week now. In fact, Monday is my one "real" post for the week. The rest are getting to the point where they are filler sometimes. I have the content stored away. I have dozens of posts in the works and that doesn't count the ones that come up each week as I see new things I want to post about. The problem with that is my time is being spent doing upkeep on the site instead of preparing posts.
So get some to do all the admin work then right?
Easier said than done. There is so much I do with the site that never gets seen. All of you do the same thing on your sites. From emails (I now spend over an hour a day just replying), to updating the site with new stuff, to cleaning up the site, to trying to take care of weekly things and all of that is before I get to work on any actual content posts of my own. And when I spend enough time doing all that, I have no time left over for actually working on new things.
I would like to say thank you to everyone who has ever contributed, emailed, commented, lurked, linked, read, and downloaded something from FTW. I hope you all understand my decision. I don't make this lightly and hope you all do the same with your hobby time/blogs and family.
I would like to apologize for all those requests I was never able to post about or questions I didn't get a chance to answer on the site. My hope is that everyone continues to be able to use FTW in the way that helps them most and you all keep blogging like you do. It will always be the Members that made FTW what it's been over the past few years. Without everyone else, this place wouldn't be half of what it is today. And for that, I will be eternally grateful.
At this point, the one thing I will be continuing to work on is my commission work and I will be sharing that on a much smaller scale blog called Black Dot Barrel Studios. It won't be anything like my home here. I could never duplicate this and I wouldn't even try. The new, much smaller blog is going to be my way of keeping in touch with the folks I do commission work for. If you feel like you want to swing by, please do. I'll be keeping up with everyone here in the FTW rolls so it's not like I am going away for good. I plan on keeping an eye on this site to make sure things are maintained as needed for people to access them when they want to.
Thank you everyone for all that you have done. I am eternally grateful.
Ron
Founder, From the Warp