Instilling Order into Chaos

One of the greatest challenges facing this site is the never-ending battle to instill order into chaos, to bring organization to the huge amount of info that relates to PBM gaming.

Link after link after link continuously vie for attention, and compete with one another for a place in this ever-changing scheme of mine to have the website to make sense of it all. How best to organize all of these links? How best to categorize them? Where best to display them? And so on, and so forth, ad infinitum.

Sometimes, I wonder whether it all isn't in vain.

I can't help but to think that, surely, I should make better use of my time. Why not just leave it to others? People were erecting and maintaining PBM related websites long before I came along. Is what I'm doing even making a meaningful difference, at all?

Doubt is one of our constant companions in life. Doubt is also one of God's greatest gifts to mankind. We just have a tendency to perceive it as a curse, rather than as a blessing. Doubt can lead to depression, but doubt can also lead to progress.

At some point in time, I will probably begin to scale my efforts back. Like everyone else, I'm getting older, you know. But, that time has not yet arrived, I don't think. And so, forward we continue to go - together.

This whole affair might be a tad easier, if I actually knew what I was doing. But, it's all sort of just cobbled together. That's right, my friends and foes alike, it's a cobble job. And, it's continuing to grow! This can't be good.

All of the way from its point of inception until now, this site has enjoyed many successes and countless failures. The way that I measure success and failure, as it relates to this site, might be different from how each of you that visit here would measure such things.

If nothing else, then maybe by me never being pleased nor content with the way that this site is laid out and looks, perhaps no one will mistake the site for being dead.

And, of course, you would only be fooling yourself, if you thought for even so much as a single minute, that I will on day wake up and realize that I am happy with this site. I dare say that I never will be.

Remember that, the next time that you wonder why I'm changing things around, again.

The submission deadline Issue # 5 of Suspense & Decision magazine is a short ten days away, but nobody seems to be struck with any sense of urgency. You can chalk that one up as one of our failures. Just toss it on the pile.

Not the magazine, itself - just the lack of any sense of urgency on the part of those who have not contributed to Issue # 5, yet.

If the magazine, itself, happens to fail, and ceases publication, as a result, then my life gets easier. Now, you don't want that, do you? Of course, you don't! So, get busy, busy, busy! Fire up those pens! Crank up those keyboards! Churn out those pages!

...Ahem...

This morning, I found myself over on the & Magazine website. Or is that And Magazine? If you're not familiar with it, it's a free publication, a magazine published quarterly in PDF format.

Now, take a look at them! They know what they're doing. They've got a nice logo on their site, and they're publishing a quarterly. And content? Oh, my! Their issues are just bursting with content.

But, there are reasons why I decided to try and publish Suspense & Decision magazine at a monthly rate of frequency.

Yes, it makes it harder on all of us to make sure that we meet a deadline that tight. But, on the other hand, when it's time for the new issue to come out, aren't you at least kind of glad that we're aiming to improve upon how PBM Magazines had been doing things for a long while, heretofore?

I need articles for the magazine, but here I am, authoring blog posts. There's more than just a little irony in that, don't you think? Life is good, when you're dining on irony. Isn't that what they say? No?! Well, maybe that's something that I just made up. Maybe I should turn it into a bumper sticker.

I really hope that Suspense & Decision magazine doesn't die on the vine - at least, not with Issue # 5. After all, there's some more play by mail and turn-based gaming stuff coming that you need to know about.

If any of you happen to run into our assistant editor, if you would, send him this way. Apparently, he's gotten himself lost, again. He's probably all tangled up in wires and circuits and other tricks of the trade of being the Mad Scientist of PBM.

If you've had a hankering for a PBM interview, then you're not alone.  That's why I have sent out no less than four sets of interview questions to various individuals. Yet, until they submit their responses to me, you're out of luck on the reading front.

At any rate, I'm getting both hungry and thirsty, so I think that I will wrap up this blog posting at this point.

Until next time, think PBM!