I’ll get straight to the point. After much consideration, I’ve decided to stop doing the daily updates here.
Since I dropped cable TV, my ability to keep up with Rangers games has been really impacted. Those who have followed my site would have heard me rant about that. However, one thing that also has changed a lot since last season is the fact that I am working again. That has taken up more of my time than I anticipated. I tend to work strange hours, and my need to timeshift the games is even more of an issue than it was before. Before, I could get away with it, because I wasn’t working, and could devote more time to the games, especially since I had to listen to them when they happened due to radio. Work has impacted that more than I thought it would.
I tried this season to keep it going, but about 3 times, I’ve fallen behind on updates of like 10 games. When the team has played only 64 – that’s a lot. When I fell behind most recently, I started thinking of doing the catch up work and quite frankly, I just didn’t want to. Most of the games during the week I just miss totally anymore. What time I get in the evenings that I’m not working is now spent with my kids and wife. That’s NO complaint, just a reality. They deserve my time more than the baseball games do. By the time I’m done with them, the games are over. There’s been a game or two in the last few weeks that I got notified via email it was over, and I didn’t even realize they were playing. I also realized that I never updated my roster page once the team broke camp back at the end of Spring Training. That’s fallen way behind, and right now I don’t have really have the desire (much less the time) to go through all that and update it.
Due to all this, I’ve decided this is the time to stop trying to force myself to do daily updates. The above is why. However, I’m not stopping cold turkey. I’m not taking the site down. I will leave it here, I’ve put a lot of work into this since I started in December 1998. Going forward, I will still maintain these parts:
- “How Many in 201x”. I’ve rather enjoying keeping track of that the last few seasons. It ties in mostly to transactions, but I’ve had some nice compliments on that, so I’ll keep doing it.
- Uniform Number History – that’s been a thing I’ve REALLY enjoyed more than any other on the site. I’ve gotten personal communications from Victor Rojas (when he was here), and Eric Nadel about the usefulness of that, so with those in mind, I will make sure that gets updated going forward.
Plus, when the mood strikes, I’ll say something. But it’s obvious to anyone that I’ve pulled back, but in my mind I still saw it as something that needed to be updated every day. By releasing myself from that, I think I can enjoy the thing a bit more, and perhaps not stress out so much about missing bits. I’m still going to follow the team, I’m still going to be paying attention where I can (given the boundaries I set out above). I’m still going to be a Rangers fan, and I’m keeping up, just not as visibly on these pages.
Thanks to all who have visited me over the years, and as I said – not going away, just changing focus. Go visit me and a lot of other great Rangers fans on our Facebook Texas Rangers Fan Page.
Thanks, and God Bless You!
Joe
