User blog:ARTaylor/I Need a Vacation

I really hate to do this, but I need to take a break from this site. For the month of November, I will not be working on this site. This doesn't mean I won't be around, but don't expect much. I'll be doing little things like dealing with vandalism and providing the occasional news report. I'll even try to do some stuff on Twitter. But I won't be writing any new articles or making major updates.

I don't want to do this, but there is simply too much going on in my life right now. I love working on this site. It's often relaxing and cathartic. I love Marvel and I love Marvel series. I work on this when I need to forget the stresses in my life.

But it can take a lot out of me. Doing a full article can take a lot of time. A micro-episode takes me about an hour from nothing to full recap. A regular thirty minute episode can take me a whole day. A film takes me several days. That's if I devote most of the day to it, and to nothing else. Too bad I simply don't have that time now.

Ever since I started this site, I wanted it to be like the biggest and most well known wikis. Memory-Alpha has always been my template. I can't do that alone. Those other wikis have many users editing together, and many admins to watch over them. Right now I am the one and only admin. There used to be another, but he left for various reasons. There are users, but hardly the number and consistent editing the other wikis have. In order to maintain that attempt, I've spent a lot of time, sometimes too much, to keep this site up to a quality that's very hard to do almost single-handedly. Not that I intend to demean the other users who are here. The perfectionist in me demands a lot, mostly from myself, in order to provide what I think of as the fullest information possible.

The thing is, I really need to focus on my personal life. Most importantly, I need to find a job that doesn't make me want to strangle people. I'm taking classes at the local community college to expand my skills while working to pay bills, gas, and occasional luxury like eating out or movies. Recently I realized I was not devoting anywhere near the amount of time I needed to find a new job. I need to free up some time but I need to take classes to hold off student loans and I'm not quitting my job. I will be taking this month off so I can spend a good, concentrated effort to actually finding something better, something that will make me happy, something I won't dread going to, and hopefully something that will pay some bills. I've learned that it's extremely difficult to make others happy when you yourself are miserable.

See you next month.