Just wanted to say this regarding Sam's latest Site Journal entry - Sam, I TOTALLY get where you're coming from, because I've been there and back again.

I used to own a pretty large site - not quite as big as RinkWorks, but a respectable size. When I started it up in October of 1998, it was a little Geocities site, but it was well recieved, so it started to grow and get more popular. It got bigger and bigger, then when I got a domain for Christmas of 1999 it got even BIGGER. It was my hobby, and I liked it.

Then in July, 2000, I realized something. Early on, when I had my site, there'd been a special kind of fun to it, something exciting. And somewhere along the line, that was gone. Once I realized that, I realized that I wasn't truly happy with my site anymore. I was churning out new stuff and updating old stuff, yes, but that turned out to be more like work than fun. I was updating and working on it more to appease the masses and preserve my site's popularity than to please myself, I realized. Once I figured that out, SOMETHING had to change.

So it did. I realized that my site (it was dedicated to a particular computer game, a really fun virtual pet game) had been up for so long that I'd worked on my SITE but had very little interest or time to play the game that the site was about. And working on the site was eating up time for doing other things. So I shifted the focus. I killed about half of the old content and added in some things that I loved - an online gallery for my art, some of my stories, etc. When I got a flurry of complaints, and things got more hostile in that community (long story), I threw up my hands and decided to forget about pleasing anyone but myself. If I was going to have a site as a hobby, I was going to be HAPPY with it.

And I am, now. I canned everything and started fresh, and right now my site is closed as I haven't the time to finish it up since finals are closing in, but I am happy about it. It features long-time loves of mine... art, stories, poetry, stuff like that. Stuff I could never get sick of in a million years. Stuff that is mine. :)

And you know what? The excitement from the early years of my first site is back. :)

So, Sam, whatever it takes to get back YOUR excitement in RinkWorks... go for it. :) Sometimes you have to go pretty far - I know I did - but the results are always worth it. :)

Sosi"been there, done that, didn't buy the t-shirt"qui