I think the last time an anniversary for this website came round, I simply missed it. Only more reason to make up for it this time and announce the 201st post in a big way! That’s right, 201st, as the sad story about Warcraft-TCG.de’s downtime marked the 200th post. Anyway, this website is live since April 2009 and that means I managed to write more than 100 posts per year, which doesn’t sound too bad.

Let’s reminisce a bit; if you take a closer look at the archive of April ’09, you’ll see some similarities between my situation back then and what’s happening with my life just now. April ’09 marked a big change for me as I left Upper Deck, my first real employer (as a result, my weekly column Unter den Hut geschaut took a pretty long break and I’m glad it’s back). Now, I’m still in the process of setting up my own business which is a little like looking for jobs (as you’re constantly looking for clients).

In the past (almost) 2 years, I went through 2 different jobs and learned quite a lot (not only work-wise, but also about myself and life in general). My website was supposed to be taken down at some point last year, but I made sure it survived. It’s one of the many channels I like to use to express myself and became very dear to me. I’m sorry for having neglected it a little – some sections could certainly need a make-over.

At the moment, I’m still fighting the good fight with state agencies that seem to be reluctant when it comes to supporting my business. I’m trying to be patient, waiting for a friend to join my business and take over acquisition of new possible clients, something I don’t quite excel in. Word of mouth has less of an effect compared to what I hoped for, so I’ll need to get familiar with more techniques to acquire new possible customers. Something that annoys me to no end as I “just want to work”.

Don’t get me wrong, there are also a number of upsides to this whole thing. I found the time to go on an amazing weekend trip the past Friday to Sunday and I’ll head off to Leipzig the upcoming Friday to prepare for the World of Warcraft TCG World Cup (a team event). I’m happy that I won’t have to ask for days off and can just “go for it” when I feel like it. Then again, I’ll need to make a living somehow and my 1337 WoW TCG skills don’t really pay for the bills. If you have some fancy ideas that seem right for me and maybe know a few magazines or websites that could need a crazy writer, by all means please let me know.

Words of encouragement sent my way are also appreciated and while you’re at it, you could also send some more customers my way. Sometimes it’s hard to not forget that this is the path I have chosen and that there are a number of worse situations one could imagine. After all, I do make a living with a lot of things I love. It’s just that I feel I’ve got infinite potential and at the moment, I’m accessing a mere 50% of it (at best). I still need to finish writing a novel (something else I started in 2009, but haven’t had the time to continue lately – “lately” as in “the past 10 months”), a stand up comedy and a rap song. I guess these are some good goals to set for myself before I’ll publish a “300!” post (it will most likely come with some sort of “Sparta” reference).

Until then, I hope you’ll all continue to follow my website, provide me with some feedback (by the way, this website counts 199 comments at this very moment, so you can be the 200th to comment!) or stay in touch via Facebook / Twitter and on the various message boards I’m active on.

P.S.: Speaking of other sites I’m active on, go check out the BootcampLE.de website that I’ve set up the past few days and let me know what you think!