Learning About Blogging From Perfect Strangers #MMONBI #NBIMMO

With all the recent commotion over the Perfect Strangers flash game, I’ve been listening to the theme song for the show and as I was listening, thoughts about blogging came to mind.

After a few seconds, my mind just clicked, and it was like I learned more about my time blogging from listening to the Perfect Strangers theme song.

Sometimes the world looks perfect. There’s nothing to rearrange.

This is I felt when I started blogging and had my blog organized and my first post introducing myself to the public set up.

Sometimes you just get a feeling like you need some kind of change.

Eventually, I began to feel like something was missing. Writing about just one game (for me it was WoW at first) felt constricting, so I kept trying other games and writing about non MMO things. Everything felt like fair game to me to write.

No matter what the odds are this time, nothing’s going to stand in my way.

Originally, I thought about various minutiae and statistical information. I wanted to know if people were reading my writings. I felt determined to make it as a writer for a video game website, or to make a living through writing. This was a rather depressing point of view to take, because I write in a way that is very non-confrontational, and I kept getting disheartened by my situation.

This flame in my heart, and a long lost friend gives every dark street a light at the end.

I kept writing, and I stayed in touch with friends, and it was with the help of many twitter friends that I realized, I enjoyed it whether I was being paid or not. Strangely enough, it was also a twitter friends who helped me to take a risk on myself, and eventually I got a part time job writing professionally.

I realized, if I wanted to write as an outlet, it should not matter too much how many people were reading it if I could simply get my thoughts out in a way that felt right for me and showed it to people open to what I had to say. It was gratifying to realize that.

Standing tall, on the wings of my dream. Rise and fall, on the wings of my dream. 

You will have good days and bad days writing.

People may read you and like or hate what you say (as it happened throughout my nearly 10 years of personal, professional and leisurely blogging), but you have to be a good sport about it and stand above the muck they might want to throw at you and respond in a dignified manner to show that you aren’t going to stoop to their level.

The rain and thunder, the wind and haze, I’m bound for better days. 

You have to be optimistic about your writing. Even if you’re not optimistic about everything else, you have to look forward thinking that you support what you write and your words have value. This keeps you going on the bad days, and keeps you from taking a break from writing that becomes an abandonment of your hobby.

Just remember, if that rain, thunder, wind, and haze is a storm, do not use your computer.

It’s my life and my dream, and nothing’s going to stop me now.

That’s definitely what I tell myself these days, and it’s a great life-affirming statement to keep in mind. 😀

 

GO LARRY AND BALKI! GO WRITERS GO!

Newbie Blogger Tips: Why You Should Blog #NBIMMO #MMONBI

Before I post any advice regarding writing and maintaing a blog, I thought it would be a good idea if I first discussed the reasons why you, dear reader, should blog.

Many people find reasons not to do something. A good number of people choose to do something because despite all those myriad reasons to not do a particular action, they find one redeeming reason to go ahead and try anyway.

Sometimes, you may feel scared that you’d get rejected by fellow bloggers or maybe even trolled by people. Other times, you may not like the lack of attention on your blog, or you may not be confident in your ability to write anything. Worse still, you might feel like your opinions shouldn’t matter, and so for any and all of the above reasons, you choose not to blog.

Well I’m here to tell you that there isn’t just one good reason to blog: there’s a couple of excellent reasons to go onto a blogging platform and write about your experiences playing games.

For one thing, there is scientific evidence that points to blogging being mentally healthy for people. It allows people to feel less isolated and more confident in the strength of their friendships when they’re able to blog.

Related to this, another good reason to blog is that it lets flex your mental (and possibly your emotional) muscles a bit. By writing things down, you’re learning to organize your thoughts, which in itself is an excellent exercise to keep your brain active. It also lets you improve your writing abilities. Best of all, you can also use blogging to destress from particular events, good or bad.

One of the other wonderful benefits behind blogging is the interactivity you get when blogging. If people read your work, they can comment on it and provide their own take on your writings, or offer advice and insight as needed. As mentioned earlier, blogging is as much as socializing force as it is an introspective output.

Perhaps my favorite reason for starting and continuing blogging is its worth in allowing for visible retrospection. Over a long period of blogging, I have amassed hundreds (probably more than a thousand) posts, be they personal, professional, or leisure-related. I sometimes keep copies of my favorite posts and look at them once in a while to see the way I used to think about things before, compared to how I think about them now. In a nutshell, blogging allows you to chart your growth as a person, and can even help you see warning signs if you’re starting to feel burnt out or depressed about certain things in your life.

All these being said, those are four pretty good reasons to blog. I encourage you to take up the mantle of a blogger (whether for games or personal blogging), join us at the Newbie Blogger Initiative forums, introduce yourself so we can help you along the path of writing.

Cheers!

Introducing the Newbie Blogger Initiative

 

I’ve been away from my regular computer for nearly a month now, so I haven’t had the chance to really write anything other than work posts as I’ve been spending time with family in San Francisco.

That said, I do have something important I’d like to share with the readers here.

Justin, otherwise known as Syp from Bio Break, contacted a lot of folks last month to prepare a concerted effort to get readers and interested parties to start and maintain a blog (about games, but heck, if you want to start a personal blog too, I think that’s excellent). It’s called the Newbie Blogger Initiative, and it aims to introduce folks to blogging by getting established bloggers to provide commentary, insights, and general help regarding the blogging process.

More than 70 bloggers have pledged their support to write posts for this month to help new or interested parties along in blogging. I will also be participating in this initiative, and I hope folks out there reading entries from myself or other participants will join the Newbie Blogger Initiative forums, sign up, and consider asking folks for help or advice in the appropriate places. 🙂

Cheers to all, and I’ll have another post up in a few hours when I have the chance. 🙂

Attempts at Voice Recording, Parts 1 and 2.

I’ll keep this simple and straightforward.

Part of the list of things I want to do in my life is to record a song and to make a podcast… even just a one-shot.

I’m partway through that goal, as I’m learning how to record and use Audacity for my needs.

My problem is that I personally think my voice needs a lot more work for singing, though that hasn’t stopped me from trying. I just can’t hit super high or super low notes very well.

Anyway, below are links to two short songs I’ve recorded.

The first, which has already been listened to by a couple of folks on Twitter, is called Reach Through the Screen and Punch His Lights Out, and is basically a dramatic re-singing (does such a thing exist on the internet?!) of the opening line of Beau Hindman’s write-up on Massively of Star Trek Online.

The second song is actually an excerpt of a four minute song that I have the instrumentals to called Heart Breaker, performed by Maki Ohguro and Koji Kikkawa. It’s been repurposed (for lack of a better term) to talk about bloggers and readers and is now titled Blogger x Reader, though this excerpt is the blogger side of the song. When I improve my recording techniques, I’ll go and release the second half or the whole song on Mediafire.

After the break are the lyrics to Blogger x Reader Part 1. Enjoy! 😀

Read more

Why I Blog

This entry was written primarily so I could win free web hosting and the accolades of my peers. Tee-hee. It should also provide some insight into the obvious, as noted above.

When I was in college, I started blogging because it was a way for me to deal with uncomfortable feelings and the troubles that came with having too many thoughts in mind at the same time. As I grew older, I kept blogging, but I didn’t really understand why I kept on doing so.

After graduating from college, I became what could be called a professional video game newsblogger, and I loved most of the time I spent doing that, writing about something I knew and felt comfortable with.

Still, it wasn’t until I was forced to stop doing that job that I realized how much I yearned for the chance to write and be read by people.

I gathered courage and information, and eventually started Games and Geekery, and have been consistently writing about games and other geeky things for the past two years. It may not always be deep, and it might not be meaningful to a lot of people, but the important thing is that I blog because the act of writing about games is meaningful to me, and what other joy is there to be had than to do something you’re good at and happy with?

This is an entry to a blogging contest sponsored by Life with Ria and WebSpark.net

Monday’s a Good Day for New Beginnings

Over here in the Philippines, it’s actually Monday already. While most people are at work, I’m doing something I love, which is working to make this humble blog a more exciting place.

To that end, there are, again, some new changes over here on Games and Geekery that you might want to know about. The most obvious one is, of course, the switch to a new theme. It has more space, and had almost all of the previous functions of the theme I was originally using, which made it a great fit for the blog.

Of course, since this is a free WordPress blog, it will probably look a bit similar from what already exists out in the blogosphere. To combat that, Elandarex used his wonderful Photoshop skills to create a new header for the site. This one has a very obvious retro theme, but we’re experimenting with different ideas to see if we can come up with a couple of headers that we can change every few months or so to spice things up.

Lastly, there’s one other change I’ve implemented here as a result of bringing Elandarex into Games and Geekery. From today onwards, I am accepting guest submissions regarding video games and other forms of geekery (a very broad statement for a reason) from other writers who may wish to get their thoughts out but do not necessarily want to maintain a blog of their own.

The backstory for this is simple: a friend of mine on Twitter wanted to repost something he wrote on the genre-specific topic of gaming, but didn’t find it to be a perfect fit for his personal blog. I offered my space and, well, the rest will be history once I put up the post. Expect the post to be up once I get some last minute details regarding the write-up.

In the meantime, if you find any bugs or weird looking shenanigans on the blog, please let me know so I can take a look at it and fix it if possible. Cheers!

Image Source: To Whom It May Concern

Massively’s Looking for a Few Good Bloggers

If you write well, think clearly, and love MMO’s, Massively may very well be looking for you.

They’ve put up a call for bloggers on their site, and they’re looking for people who feel they can write a great deal about Fallen Earth, Champions Online, Star Trek Online or Runes of Magic. Just make sure you read all the instructions on the blogpost I’ve linked and on the linked post in the actual entry.

I’d apply myself but, alas, my eyes are set on EQ2 and not on any of the four games mentioned.

Good luck to all the applicants!

FTC Disclosure Icons Now Available for Bloggers

So over on Google Buzz, Tobold found a nice bit of blogging over at louisgray.com. Basically, we’ve now got a set of  faux FTC Disclosure Icons that’ll allow bloggers to express their material relationship with a company without the need for long-winded text.

Just slap on an icon and you’re good to go!

If you’re wondering who drew these wonderful icons, you can thank Jeannine Schafer for the whole lot of them.

And no, I did not have sexual relations with anyone mentioned in this blog post.