Early Retirement

It's been a long hard week. It's with great difficulty yet much relief that I have decided to give up the position of Guild Mistress or Manager of Riftwarriors. I've been doing the job for a pretty long time now and have decided that I'm going to scale things back in my real life and focus on the pursuits I previously had before playing Warcraft. I'm still going to be a guild member just no longer in the leadership role. I will be Pugging it up in the raids when I am having a break from cleaning my house and working out in my little home Gym.

The last few months have been pretty horrible for me and I've realised that WoW has just become one of the more horrible activities in my day. I never thought I would get to a stage where I dread playing World of Warcraft yet, this is where I am at. I really feel that you guys are my extended family in many ways. A few recent events have given me an opportunity to pause and reflect upon what I really want for myself. After the death of my dog, the upheaval of the guild, the backward steps in recent raids, the fractious nature of the guild generally at the moment which included Pangit leaving with his GF. The constant dissatisfaction in the guild over trivial things that really shouldn't matter. My inability to Manager all of the above have lead me to want to pass on the leadership of the guild.

I will be present at an officers meeting to be held some time this weekend to hand over the Guild Leadership. If you are interested in giving the GM job a shot make yourself known to the guild, officers and me. There's a few people that come to mind as good leaders for example Vonds, Kylz, John(Bashy), Gnomer(Mark), Seebo (Zem) and Wogan could all do a good job of Managing the guild. I will open it up to my Real Id friends so that I have a wide range of options to choose from. I'd really like the guild to go to someone who knows me well and will treat the guild with the respect it deserves. Whoever takes the guild over it will be your guild and the guild will become your project. As it has been for me. The guild can be anything that you want it to be. It could become a PvP guild or a Hardcore Raiding guild the options are really endless. The atmosphere of the guild is very dependant on the leader. The responsibility is awesome and a great learning experience.

I've made a lot of mistakes and I want to thank the people who had the courage to express these concerns regarding my leadership of the guild to my face. It's never nice to hear negative news about yourself. However, it's really imperative to hear this stuff to improve. It is infinitely better to hear this news to my face rather than to find out that it is being said behind my back and it always makes it way to face in the end, usually leaving a path of destruction on its journey there. Often the criticisms helped me to make big decisions in fact it has really helped me learn something about myself and my failings as a human being in general. Conversely I also received plenty of glowing reports as well which have been wonderful to hear. I certainly have tried my best and I have seen the guild reach some great goals. One of my main goals was to provide an inclusive family environment in which people could raid casually, do some PvP together  and to socialise together, basically have fun playing the game I have loved playing for nearly 11 years. In those 11 years I've had about 2 weeks of not being an officer or a GM so I'm really looking forward to fading into the shadows and just enjoying things like questing, leveling alts, seeing how far I can get in PuG raids without the responsibility of running a guild.

I will be a little bit sad about handing the guild over. I think I will mainly feel relief. I should have really given the leadership up about 6 months ago. I didn't achieve all that I set out to achieve. I achieved things that I didn't expect to achieve and I've learned some good and bad lessons about myself. I've gained a lot of experience in the management of people which I'm sure are transferable skills. This will be my last Riftwarriors Blog however, I'll still be writing the other Blogs for those who are interested in psychology and counselling. I might write a general gaming blog sometime in the future.

Thanks Rifties Good Luck.