A Little Quiet Around Here

"I think writer's block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come out." - Roy Blount, Jr.

I have not abandoned my blog, but it's beginning to feel a little neglected these days. In the past couple of weeks I have been having a very hard time getting quality writing done. I have been struggling mightily with every post that I try to write, and so my blog has been very quiet as of late. The noise of the crickets around here is deafening.

With precious little time at home that isn't filled with satisfying the demands of either the Dwarfling or my Wife and free time at work diminishing as we enter our busy season, I am finding it increasingly hard to find the time or inspiration to sit down and write blog posts. And when I do try to bang out some words, I find myself harshly critiquing things before even getting anything written and so never manage to get very far. I'm probably over-thinking things and making it harder than it needs to be, but words just aren't coming to me easily right now.

It really bugs me that this Blog is as quiet as it is right now. I take a lot of pride in Battle Medic, and to see it wither - even temporarily - is painful to me. I think about it all the time. Not posting feels like a failure, which makes actually sitting down and working on new posts even harder because of the pressure that I'm putting on myself to get new and excellent content up. Filler posts like these are okay, I suppose, but I can't imagine listening to me whine about not posting is terribly compelling to anyone.


WHAT'S COMING

The worst part is that I have a lot of great posts that I want to get posted. Each one has a start, or a concept in my Drafts folder, but I am finding finishing them very difficult. As a result I have slipped quite dreadfully from my goal of three posts per week, and am barely managing one a week at the moment. I thought that in lieu of actually giving all you Battle Medic fans actual content, I would fill you folks in on what I'm currently working on.

• A Dungeoneering Shaman's Journey to 60
• The Druid Dilemma talking about why I don't have a druid even though I've always wanted one
• An article on my Power Auras for Holy Paladins & Resto Shamans
• Holy Paladin Basics guides
• an update on Raiding
• an article on the Recycling of content (ie, the Troll Dungeons)
• an article on the current state of WoW
• Serenity Saz's 15 Days of Screenshots Challenge with a unique Battle Medic flair. I'm actually quite excited about this and looking forward to doing it.

BATTLE MEDIC'S GREATEST HITS

I picked up lot of new readers and new subscribers in April while I was doing the 20 Days of WoW Challenge. With that in mind and seeing as how this is a filler post anyway, I thought that I would share with everyone a list of the posts from the earlier months of the blog that I am most proud of. This feels quite self-indulgent, but I hope that someone who hasn't gone through and read Battle Medic from the beginning finds something interesting.

The First Annual Peevie Awards

What Makes a Main?

Blogservations: Random Thoughts on Writing and Warcraft

On Archaeology and the Trials of Surveying

On Heroics: When is the Nerf Bat Necessary?

Pushing a Boulder Uphill

Favourite Weapon

Professing on Professions

REAL CONTENT COMING SOON

I promise.

  

  

This Week in Raiding: Unfamiliar Waters

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

The Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert's Dune

In recent weeks my guild has run into a wall.

Shadowgarde needs healers

Call it the summer doldrums or boredom from running the same raids for four months, but our raiding has pretty much stopped in its tracks. The raid group that began the expansion with such promise and progress has fallen to the attendance boss for the past three weeks: A boss that is impossible in its mechanics, and has a very poor loot table.

Our Raid Leaders have given up on trying to get raids together after losing a few people. Our tanks have disappeared. One of our healers wanted to switch and start raiding with his warrior, and then quit the guild when he felt that that wasn't going to happen. Our Raid Leader is leaving for the summer.

Nine bosses out of twelve down and we give up. Speaking personally, it’s very frustrating to see my goal so close and then see progression ended simply because the weather has improved.

It has left me with a few options if I want to continue raiding before the next tier becomes a reality in Patch 4.2:

1. Continue as is and hope that the raid group reforms. 
2. PUG or run with a different guild.
3. Quit Shadowgarde and join another guild, hoping to get a roster spot. Not an encouraging prospect.
4. Suck it up and lead my own raid group.

Simply waiting for the problem to solve itself is not an option because it simply won't happen and everybody involved knows it. If history has taught me anything with this guild it's that Raiding runs hot and cold, and after an intense hot patch to start the expansion we are moving into a lull.

Option two or three would be the easiest option in many ways. It's easy to run away from a problem and join another guild, but all I would be doing is moving from a group with known issues to one with unknown problems. And it would mean abandoning the effort that I have put into this guild. I have been there for over a year now, and I like the people in it very much. I have worked very hard to fit in to the guild and to become a respected member. Leaving Shadowgarde is something that I really don't want to be forced to consider, but if eventually it turns out that my goals are incompatible with the guild's then it may eventually be my only option. Frankly, it sickens me to even have to be thinking about it.

I admit, out of all these choices, leading my own group is by far the most intimidating. I have never led a raid before, nor have I ever really even considered it. Do I have the situational awareness to successfully manage a raid during a fight? Do I have the ability to get people dancing to the right tune without becoming a shrill, demanding dictator? Will anybody even listen to me? Hell, will I even be able to find enough people to fill a raid?

I have always been the guild cheerleader in many ways. I've always been the guy who offers up the "Good attempt, we'll get him" encouragements after a wipe and the one who cracks jokes and tries to keep the mood light when things are getting tense. But I rarely get into discussions regarding the strategy beyond talking about healing assignments. An actual leadership role is entirely foreign territory.

All that being said, I am jumping somewhat blindly into the unfamiliar waters of Raid Leading. I guess I'll learn if I can swim once I'm submerged into it.

Our first raid is scheduled for this coming Sunday, so I have a full week to prepare myself and assemble my team. I think we'll be okay for Tanks, even though our Bear off-tank is a little rusty and not geared as well as I would like to see. Our DPS will be fine as well, I think; with a mix of newer raiders and (hopefully) a couple of seasoned people who have been raiding with this group from the beginning.

The big concern I have is healers. Aside from me, I have no idea where the other healers are going to come from. I am likely going to have to do some heavy recruiting this week and see if I can snag a raid-ready healer or two.

And then there are the fights themselves. I've always studied the fights from a healers perspective, but now I'm going to have to explain them to everyone and give people assignments. Which mean I'm going to need a great deal more detailed knowledge about what's going on. And I'm going to need to learn how to communicate what is going on and what I need people to do clearly. "Avoid the giant purple puke" isn't going to cut it.

Luckily I have the help and support of my friend and co-leader, Medea, who is an experienced raid leader and our main tank. So I'm not doing this entirely alone.

I have to admit that I am exited and terrified at this new challenge. I honestly never thought that I would be doing this. Does anyone have any advice for a fledgling Raid Leader about to take the dive?
 
 

Day Eleven: Faults, Flaws and Bad Habits (Part One of Six)

This post is part of a series "20 Days of... WoW Blogging Challenge", a blogging challenge suggested by Saga at Spellbound. She proposes twenty questions to be answered in twenty days and I, foolishly, have decided to take up this most daunting task because clearly my schedule is not full enough.

DAY ELEVEN: FAULTS, FLAWS AND BAD HABITS (Part One of Six)

Well, for starters the fact that I am writing this post at work while I am supposed to be being productive is one obviously bad habit.

This day of the challenge is one that I’m not really looking forward to writing. I mean, who really ever likes to take a good, hard, honest look at their own flaws and bad habits? Personally, I like to shove them into a dark hole with a thousand, rabid murlocs and pretend that they don’t exist. Denial is a very comfortable place to live as long as you keep the lighting levels low.

Interestingly, Kurn wrote up her Day Eleven post and as I read it, I realized I could just cut and paste it here and it would have been remarkably accurate. We share, it seems, a lot of the same issues.

Procrastination: I’m an absolute expert at leaving things until the last possible moment. And it really doesn’t matter what the task is or whether I am excited to do it or not – things with me get done just before they need to be done and not before. It’s a major flaw with me (and it drives my wife bonkers).

Follow Through: Quite often I will start a project with high, professional level expectations and then not follow it through to its end. Things will start brilliantly and then slowly begin to fizzle, until I eventually give up and move on to something else. This blog is a lovely counter-example, but I can think of a dozen others; the most egregious of which is my attempt to teach myself guitar (I haven’t picked up the instrument for 6 months or so after spending a couple hundred bucks on the guitar and Guitar for Dummies).

Lack of Focus: The skanky twin sister of the previous flaw, I am quite often distracted from a project with the shiny allure of a new, different project. Of all of my flaws this one… ooo, hey… I wonder what twitter is saying right now…

What? Oh, right.  Umm, of all my flaws this one bothers me the most. I want to be an expert at everything, but since I can’t focus on anything for long enough, it’s impossible to master the things that I am trying to learn.

Lazy: I had a huge, long write up on this planned, but meh, seems like too much work. I think I’ll go have a nap.

Regarding the game, I have many bad habits as well.

Cooldowns: I am terrible at using my cooldowns. There are a large number of fights that I have forgotten to use any cooldown at all. I’m making a concerted effort to get much better at this, and during our kill of Cho’gall last week I managed to be very good at using all of my tools at the appropriate time, but overall I suck at using them. I’m worse with my Priest, too.

Interface: If I were to look at my game, the one thing that could stand improvement is my interface. As of right now I have a usable UI, but it’s hardly optimal. Grid is probably doing too much, my Stuf Unit Frames are probably doing too little, I’m not even sure why I have Omen installed since it’s in a location I never look at, and DBM spews stuff all over my screen like a hung-over sorority chick.

I’m not a fan of having a million different add-ons installed, but I think that I need to do a bit more optimizing.

Fear: Even now, after having raided and instanced as much as I have and having played this game for almost three years, I am still intimidated by this game at times. For instance, I don’t know the classic dungeons very well, and so quite often I’ll worry about whether or not I’m ready for them. I am proved wrong every time that I end up doing one, but the fear that I don’t know enough – not ready – can be paralyzing.

Geez, that’s enough for now.  It’s getting uncomfortably bright in here and the murlocs are getting restless.

Tune in next time for Part Two of my Flaws: Glaring Sexual Deficiencies.*

Yesterday, DAY TEN: BLOG AND WEBSITE FAVOURITES

Tomorrow, DAY TWELVE: A DAY IN THE LIFE

* Note, this will not actually ever be published. It’s trapped in the dark with the murlocs forever.