Fatherhood and Priorities

 "It's okay. I got this one!"

I haven't updated the WoW or Gold blog for a long time and here's post on why. The amount of ideas I have for the blog as well as other things that are WoW related are many, but the time I have on my hands is a lot less now than it was 5-8 months ago. This won't change, so it leads to one of two things; Either I prioritize the blog and my WoW profile or I go with my real life and focus on what needs to be done there. The choice is simple.

There's a lot more after the break...

It's hard to write a post without any clear idea about what I want to say and how far I want to take it. Oh well, I know who I am and what I stand for and I know what kind of blogs I like to follow, so i'll use that as a guideline for this post. This post will be more personal than usual, without digging too deep into details.

Into real life

• My girlfriend is pregnant, so preparing for fatherhood is above all else. It's very exciting and time is of the essence. I can choose to spend time in-game or I can increase my value for the company I work for and thus help my family.
• I moved to my girlfriends place during fall last year. She has a 5 year old boy. I love him as if he was my own son. Not living alone anymore changes things around a lot. And in my opinion, it's for the better in all cases except one; My own time when I can focus a 100% on my goals. That time is a lot less now and I have to find new ways to handle this new challenge, but having a family of my own is a larger goal than all others, so it adds up. See? Positive thinking in motion.
• The new job requires more attention and I also love the fact that it makes me want to learn so much more so much faster than the old job. And that's a result of knowing why I work where I do. Many look at the salary and only that, while I look at the personal growth. Personl growth always leads to a better life than a large salary in the long run. I'll cut it there to keep this post shorter!
• I've created other, non WoW related blogs now. A long-term goal there is networking, by using what i've learned from the WoW community and use it in business relationships etc. I won't dig too deep into that topic on this blog, but I had networking as one of the major goals when I created this blog. Start from scratch, have my own ideas and point of view, find interesting personalities, learn, support them, eventually get to know them, reflect and rinse repeat. That goal has been achieved and a few the people that i've grown to know and like a lot are Jim from Power Word: Gold, Jokinee, Nev, Alto and Shannon Lasell. If you want to find them check my "Following" list on Twitter. There's more of course, but those are the ones that came to mind.
• My goal was never to become famous, network with the "biggest" gold makers or suck up to anyone. Integrity is extremely important and the ones i've mentioned all have that in common among other positive traits. Make sure you know why you do things and with whom! If you don't have goals, you'll do things in order to achieve some one elses. Simple Brian Tracy Logic right there.

Back to WoW

• WoW will always be around one way or another, so there's no need to rush.
• Mists of Pandaria will be fun and I expect to write more when it's live. That doesn't mean that i'll be posting instantly, because my child will most likely be born pretty close to the release date with 1-2 months difference if MoP is released summer-fall. If Blizzard release it during the winter it's another story.
• If and when I come back to the WoW community in full swing i'll see if some of ideas can stand the test of time and start where I left off. Ie. I have 52 drafts for WoW or Gold, but only 28 published posts. I could write a long list of ideas here, but I won't and that's what I did in my last Diary Post. What I can say is that Streaming would be my number one priority, far above this blog! Besides that i'm not much else would come close. Youtube has it's ups and downs and although i'd like to do videos it all comes down to time, again. Streaming would be so much easier as it be "Up & Go" like the old diaper commercial.
• I did a quick analysis of the best way WoW bloggers, that are in my interest range, can reach an audience. The top 3 in any order were Streaming, Blogging and Youtube. Depending on what you get known for it can be Streaming or Blogging in the first place. Youtube can work out well too, but for someone like me i'd rather skip Youtube in order to focus more on Streaming. With Streaming i'd have Video, Audio and the possibility to use time effectively all in one. The only thing that would require time would be the setup and after that i'd be good to go. If I compare that to Youtube I have to record the video, the audio, mix them together, edit and upload and there wouldn't be any interaction with the audience. With Streaming it's all win. If something goes wrong, troubleshoot it, redo it, improve and move on. Also, the ability to upload the streams to Youtube is a 100% win too! So much faster and time efficient. 
• Blogging, you say? Well, i'd rather do it seldomly when it comes to WoW and only focus on Streaming, but for my part this blog is a great way to reach a large audience. I'm not saying I have anything near a 100.000 hits, but everything is relative and I started from scratch with no bloggng experience prior to this, so for me it 's a large audience.

Til next time.

Sincerely yours,

Grayz