Sifting Through the Ashes

A version of this post has been smoldering in my draft box since last night. It needed to smolder, and so did I. But now that the embers have cooled, it's time to sift through the ashes.... A few of those embers are still smoldering though so this may be a bit rough. My apologies if the following is disjointed or overly emotional.

Sunday is hubby time. It's the one day of the week that we're both guaranteed to have off of work. Sometimes we go out and do stuff. Sometimes we do housework or yardwork. Most of the time we laze around the house for some QT downtime, which usually involves WoW. This past Sunday, while the hubby was earning his Dwarf Shammy's last few bars to 85, I logged in to my blogger dashboard to find Larísa's farewell post at PPI. I read the first section of her post and promptly logged out of blogger and twitter. I still haven't finished reading the entire post.

Please don't get the wrong impression. This isn't a rant post. I'm not bitter. I'm not angry. I am disappointed, but I think that's to be expected. I, like so many others, was (and still am) very sad to see the Inn abandoned. Larísa had a wonderfully distinctive voice and even when I couldn't directly relate to the subject matter (I don't raid), I never failed to find humor and camaraderie in her posts. She will be greatly missed and I wish her all the best in the world, both in and out of Azeroth. I will eventually get around to reading the entire post and will likely express my sentiments in the comments even though Larísa may never read them.

But on Sunday, that fateful, farewell post was something of the straw that broke the camel's back. Larísa was one of the bloggers who inspired me to start blogging. When I first started following WoW blogs, it was very class specific ones. Paladin Schmaladin. Then Honor's Code. Then Righteous Defense. And though blogging about my adventures in Azeroth appealed to me, I didn't feel I had the expertise or experience to provide the sort of guides and advice I was reading. Then I discovered and began lurking in the shadows of Righteous Orbs, Big Bear Butt and The Pink Pigtail Inn. WoW blogs that were about more than class specifics and raiding. Blogs with great authors who wrote about their personal experiences in WoW in a way that I could relate to. Something I felt I could do. Something I wanted to do.

Then Paladin Schmaladin went dark. Then Honor threw in the towel. Then Tamarind. And then, on Sunday, the unexpected Closed sign up at the Inn. It seems as if half of my blogroll is either retired or simply dark. Depressing didn't quite begin to cover it. I logged into WoW, had a good time playing with the hubby and was reminded why I love this game. By the time the evening rolled around, I felt revived enough to blog about the issue. I've always found writing to be cathartic, but the words were still too hot to handle.

This morning, Vidyala's Others' Endings Are Not My Endings expressed much of what I was feeling and couldn't articulate. And she issued a challenge to the rest of us. One that I intend to take up. I'm still new at this blogging thing. I have a lot to learn. But I'm not alone and the WoW blogosphere is full of wonderful, helpful and inspiring people. Like Fannon over at Battle Medic, who also answered Vidyala's challenge in an excellent post on The Death of WoW and The Circle of Life.

Like Azeroth itself, the WoW blogosphere has experienced a shattering of sort, but it is far from it's death throes. I have discovered so many wonderful blogs and authors over the past several months since Cataclysm launched and I continue to discover new ones daily. Here a few blogs that have made my dashboard in the past week alone:

Pixelated Executioner
Stack Shields
The Stories of O

When the fire dies down, and you're shifting through the ashes, pay close attention or you'll miss the phoenix hatchlings.