Wow!!! What Happened to This Place??!

It's a barren wasteland...

Nothing's happened here in almost six months...

What happened to this place???

It seems like this place is just about dead...

Or is it???

It's been almost six months since anything was written on this humble, little blog. Let me tell you, this was not what I had in mind when I first joined the Hobby Blogging Community.

A lot of things have changed since I last posted on a regular basis. Specifically, the fact that I didn't have much free time while I was working. The fact is that the job I had since the end of 2013 has now been phased out and I have a bit more free time on my hands now. It's no fault of mine or the company. The company has grown leaps and bounds, and my position was something that they felt was no longer necessary in the way it was first created. So they will move on without me. Consider me a free agent.

So, now what???

Well, short of the idea of looking for full-time work, I have a lot more time to dedicate to the blog (and the Sports Card Blogroll - you may have noticed that I added about five sites to it yesterday). There have been a lot of reasons for the inactivity. The main reason is probably the lamest: my flash drive died.

That's right. My flash drive that contained all of my spreadsheets, my SBS rosters, card images...stopped working back in 2015. I could not get it to connect to any computer, so all of my information is in a physical limbo until I can afford to get them all retrieved (if I can even do that at all). I have finally found a place that can try and pull my data from the dead drive, so after I send it out in a couple of weeks, I'm crossing my fingers.

With my flash drive dead, my motivation to keep up the site went south. It had all of my all-star rosters, and I was just starting on the 2015 All-Star teams when it went kaput. So if you're wondering (and I'm hoping that there are people who have wondered what my deal was), that's the main thing of it.

Also, earlier this year, I had written that my dad was diagnosed with liver and rectal cancer. He has since been on therapies and radiation treatments. All the while, he has remained extremely positive, even though there have been days when he's totally drained. But he fights on as best we could, and his children and grandchildren have been his support along the way. There is still a long way to go, but by all accounts, he's doing well. That's not a reason why I had stopped writing, but I figured I'd update his condition to those that sent well-wishes.

I'll be honest, I did write some articles for the blog, including a blog bat-around article back in March. However, with work responsibilities, I never got around to finishing them. Now that I have a bit more time on my hands, and probably when I get a new home computer, I'll work on finishing them.

This blog is now nine years old. That's almost a lifetime in blog years. I may not have written much these last few years, but I've never forgotten the reasons why I started writing. I've never fully abandoned the Hobby, let's just say I've been on a bit of a break. I had previously discussed the possibility of scaling back and just focus on the eponymous sets. That for sure has not been decided as there is still so much that I would like to get my hands on. But I think I'll take a bit more of a patient approach. Instead of rushing out to add to the collection immediately, I think I'll take my time. So what if I have to wait a year or so to get this year's A&G set. I should practice being patient (and hoping for lower prices) with buying sets.

But until then (and yes, I've promised this so many times before), I'm back. I'll be writing a bit more when I can (like when that flash drive comes back), and I'll try to make up for lost time.

Until then...if you're at the National, have fun!!!

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama