Old School Terminator is Dead, Watching the Blog Burn

My name is TJ and I have to tell you that Old School Terminator, the beloved internet personality that has run this blog for more than four years has passed away ... He has been my blogging handle for a long time and that name and handle have steered this blog through over three and a half of those years toward being something bigger. In that time, DFG grew to more than 800 followers, held countless tourneys and events, consumed nearly 1,000 free drinks in contests and published nearly 1500 posts. You see, all those things were great and positive and I would like to think that, as Old School, I built something here. I really wanted to give everyone a voice ... and somewhere in the process, I feel like I lost mine. I feel like in the process of writing 1200 posts in 4 years, I let this project, this blog, gaming club ... this brand take on a personality of its own that for the last year or so has ridden my back like a gorilla. I am done with that and I am putting OST down.

Along with Old School, I am not going to go as far as I used to to be an entry point for people on the blogosphere, so I am done with rumors and news and stuff that really doesn't matter to me, but I used to feel I had to publish and keep up on. You see, I remember kind of chuckling at Ron ( at FTW) when he talked about burning out and not wanting to operate as this hub for the community anymore ... I understand what he was talking about now and I am sorry I laughed. I recognized that I was starting to fade out here and we weren't upholding our end of the "community peice" and I let it get me down because I felt like I was letting everyone down and if you understand my personality, I cannot bear the thought of letting people down.

Which leads me to what I am doing now. I am burning a lot of things. Old School Terminator is going into the pyre alongside our community page, about 150 of our old posts, a few smaller features and (for the time being) our other authors. Don't worry, DFG is still a rather large Gaming Club with many members, who are all a part of the team (you have never had to be an author to be a DFG member). I just plan to make this a personal blog for the time being and when I am comfortable with that, I will bring in authors again, but not until then. I really just want to be me. I don't want to feel the strange compulsion to create certain things or use certain things to hopefully draw interest ... I just want to do what interests me. I don't want to wake up and wonder what I will post. I want to post when I have something to show you. I don't want the things I create to belong to some name somebody else made up for me, I want them to belong to me.

If it sounds selfish to some, well, it is. While it is somewhat sad to see OST go, it feels good and if you are along for the ride ... I have some terrible things to show you!