Leafshine: Lust for Flower

Whatever happened to Leafshine?

Getting wood in Pandaria - old style

What the hell happened to Leafshine?

Dammit, this blog is over five years old - and it missed its half decade anniversary. Silence has reigned for months, with only occasional bursts of activity. What is happening here?

Well, the major reason for silence over the last six months can be summed up thus:

 

I'm on your blog, Daddy!

Yes, Dr. Leafy and I had our first child back in the summer and - while I had intial hopes that life might return to something like normal (hence the "countdown posts" that went nowhere…) - it changes everything. Free time has been at a major premium, and WoW has all but vanished off my agenda.

 

Our baby daughter isn't entirely to blame. Just over a year ago, I was made redundant from a job I loved, managing a network of 100+ business blogs, and training journalists in online skills. I finally made the decision to try and build a freelance and conultancy career. That's been going well - but there have been extended periods where I haven't been able to give myself permission to do anything apart from try and build that career. Rethinking your working lifestyle is hard enough on its own, but when you combine it with having a child and buying a new house, well, 2012 was most certainly an "interesting" time for me.

So, here we are, in 2013, with a beautiful baby girl, a wonderful new house by the sea, and a great new way of working. Where does that leave WoW?

As is stands, Leafy is level… 86. Yes, nearly two patches into the expansion, I've managed a whole measly level. Yet, in the last couple of weeks, I've done nearly half a level on top of that. Things are shifting; my daughter is sleeping better, there are fewer demands on our time and I feel more free to spend time on fun activities.

Heck, I've even played with my daughter on my knee a few times. She's figured out the space bar and what it does, so all of a sudden Leafshine has turned into one of those Night Elves. Ah, well. 

So, no promises of a return to blogging here. No grandiose plans. Just a quick checkin to explain, and let your know that things are shifting a little…

How have you all been? 

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On the extreme casualisation of the Leafy

So, raided for the first time in a while last night. We dropped Magmaw for the second time - which prompted me to remember that I never got around to posting about the first time. Here's the moment we dropped him:

I was actually in tree form for a boss kill! Sad that it's unusual these days…

And here's our team of mighty worm abusers:

So, that's something to celebrate. We managed some decent learning on the Omnitron Defence System last night, too, which was nice. Maybe the others will get them down on Monday, but I won't be there for what could well be our last pre-nerf raid. You see, much in common with the last few months, I've been bouncing from event to conference to country. And next, I'm off to Qatar.

The net result is that I'm in über-casual mode right now, spending more time levelling my pet puppy Halesworthy, than doing development on Leaf. And I'm not reading many WoW blogs or keeping up with WoW podcasts, either.

But I'm hoping all that will change when I get back from Doha. My life resturns to something resembling sense from then onwards (for a while), and myabe Patch 4.2 will relight my fire. 

Oh, Lord. I just made a Take That allusion. Time to end this post.

Now, that's just cruel…

Humph.

Leafy Love Children (Because Gnomes Don't Care)

So, the short, heartless individual going by the moniker Gnomeageddon has a post up, seeing how many love children he and other prominent WoW bloggers have.

And he DIDN'T INCLUDE ME.

Still, I'm not a bitter tree, so I can move on from HIS CALLOUS and VICIOUS NEGLECT, and just do the damn research myself. So, let's see: how many Leafshines populate the US servers?

Two? TWO? And one of them isn't even a Druid? Awful.

Surely my EU compatriots will be following in my footsteps a little more closely...?

Four. And one of them's me. In fact, the only one at the level cap is me.

So…people aren't inspired to follow in my footsteps? I'm not an inspirational tree? *sniff* Perhaps that's why Gnomer neglected me. He was trying to spare my aboreal feelings…

To balm my feelings, I did a Google for myself. And this blog is the top result for "leafshine". And all the other results are something to do with polishing plat leaves, which just seems weird to me. Stiil, whatever floats your boat.  And talking of boat-floating, this was at the bottom of the post:

Someone penning some weird blogger slash fiction, maybe...?

It's My Party, And I'll Cry Sappy Tears If I Want To

Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday dear Leafy blog
You're an aging tree…

Yes, folks, today is my third blogiversary. It's been three long years since I first put finger to keyboard on this fine blog.

Amongst the world of resto druid bloggers, I'm now an ancient, lurking in the woods, handing out annoying quests and reminiscing about the times when Phaelia and Bell were blogging…

Sadly, however, advancing age has not brought wisdom in my case, like it has with, say, Big Bear Butt (but I may be confusing "verbosity" with "sagacity" in his case…) so you can safely assume that for serveral more years you'll be "blessed" with the normal irregular combination of silly observations and video, mixed with the occasional long, deep and highly-linked to cultural analysis piece that makes up my output here.

Consistency, as a wise man once said, is the hobgoblin of small minds…

Anyway, thank you to all of you who bother to swing by, and especially those of you who comment, link or accept my strange view of a guest post. It's the community of readers, commenters and bloggers that makes this such a fun thing to do, and why I carry on doing it.

Oh, and a belated happy blogiversary to the lovely Keredria of Tree of Life, who is a few days blog older than I am…

Photo by Nashworld on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons licence

Did Anyone Order Some Ultimate Triage?

Now the Loremaster grind is done and dusted, I'm amusing myself with grabbing some of the simpler Achievements. For example, our ICC run was going bad this evening. We were running with two healers, and the other one kept disconnecting. People were dying, and I got brutalised by a Blood Beast, leaving me at sub-1% health. What choice did I have?

And a quick post-raid glance at potential Achievments showed that I was on 399/400 for my unarmed skill. Easy:

I takes the pre-Cataclysmic fun where I can.

Oh, and talking of Cataclysm, I answered the burning question I had about the expansion: Can you fly down from Darnassus to the sea?

Yes. Yes, you can. WIN.

Loremaster Leafy at Last

'tis done.

My major pre-Cataclysm goal is achieved. 

Big thanks to Deacus and Wyntair for helping me through the last Icecrown group quests.

This Is Me

Burned-out Healer – Has been doing this WAY too long, and is just tired of putting up with the shit that goes with healing. May also be tired of raiding in general, but may find relief in being allowed to pick up a DPS spec occasionally. Probably either very quiet or very chattery, but only about non-raid-related things. May turn into the Angry Healer or the AFK Healer easily

via toomanyannas.com

Makes me wonder if the Annas have been lurking in our Vent...