So. Internet Dragons. And Decoding. This is a little scary for me. Writing for mentalshaman.com was always fuelled by moments of ‘u r shamaning wrong’ or ‘oh ffs, women are people’. I can get quite het up and creative in moments like that, but some people seem to appreciate my analysis of various things. Posting on this new domain is an exercise in self-discipline – something I don’t have very much at. My long time followers will often note me mentioning a post I’m ruminating on, and yet the post never appears. It sits in my brain in cloud form as I’m not always entirely sure what I’m trying to say and who I’m trying to say it too.

Audience has never been something I’m sure about. “Why blog?” and “Blogging for the right reasons” are on going themes for many bloggers. Blogging for pageviews only really works if you’re actually making money at the end of the day. Blogging just for myself has never really appealed. I’m already great at talking to myself, why would I want to blog to me? Really it’s about interaction and dialogue – both things which can pick at my social anxiety. In previous cases where a post of mine has gotten a lot of attention, the subsequent comments both energised me and wore me out. Since then my replies to comments have been a little sparse – something that has long been a source of regret.

Plus I am very prolific on twitter.  It’s very very easy to vent there. There is a purity about getting your precise meaning and emotion out in a 140 character limit. Both in my professional and academic lives I am now used to keeping written assignments brief and precise as possible (although this is gradually changing in my studies as assignments become more complex.) Even when I wrote guides and theorycraft, I always believed in keeping it brief and to the point. I don’t believe in stating the obvious – but sometimes that is what blogging (and academia) is all about. Stating what is there. It still feels strange to me. The part of me that wanted to be a novelist when she grew up – she thinks every paragraph should be a thing of constructed beauty. The analytical adult really doesn’t want to waste her (or anybody else’s) time with overblown purple prose.

Although I don’t think purple prose can be counted as a ‘thing of constructed beauty.

Meandering post meanders. This is impressive. It was originally going to be about Guild Wars 2.

It’s very easy to let fear and apatheticness become a barrier to writing. I am genuinely happier when I am writing and expressing myself. Since I started blogging and podcasting about MMOs I have moved house, parted ways with my long-term partner, come out as bisexual,  begun ‘dating’ and started horse riding. I’m not a difference person to the one I was in March 2010, but I am more confident, more sure of myself. Willing to enjoy myself. Blogging again is part of that, as opposed to a replacement for it.

So the goals? I am studying for a second undergraduate degree, while working fulltime, and I wanted to apply some of the principles and techniques I am learning in class to my amateur analysis and commentary on all things geek. I’m passionate about fiction, film, comics, and games, so it seems sensible to continue that. This is the aim. Along with somewhere to put my random thoughts about geek gaming, sexuality, and all the other things that never really fitted into  the ‘Warcraft blog’ slot.

I suspect MMOs will dominate though!