Hello everyone!

First, I would like to apologize to everyone for not communicating sooner. I also want to thank everyone for all of the hard work they've put into making our guild a success.

It's no secret that I haven't been online in game nearly as much as I used to be, and it's been communicated to me that has caused some strain within our ranks. I would like to give some background on how my time is spent concerning the guild, just because much of it is handled out of sight and many may not be aware. Myself and the officers (new and old) have traditionally spent many, many hours out of game each week working to make sure our guild is a place that we can all work together in and enjoy spending time with each other. I'm not saying this because I think we deserve some special praise, but rather to illustrate that a lot of things are handled privately between the officers and/or whomever else may be involved. Some things don't need to be in the spotlight.

When I came back to WoW at the start of Legion, I had recently lost my job and subsequently my income. I was lucky enough to find work that I could make just enough money doing as to stay in the black financially. I was lucky enough that job was extremely flexible (I worked from home, and I could work on projects at 3:00am if I wanted). This afforded me A LOT of time to spend playing WoW, and eventually creating Errant Venture. I was able to spend massive amounts of time working on running the the guild as well as playing.

Unfortunately, several months ago, the owner of the company I was working for decided to stop paying me and expected me to work for him for free (read: exposure). I decided to stop working for him completely and return to finding a "normal" job. I've been unsuccessful in that regard. Thankfully, my wife has been very kind and understanding. The side effect of this was reducing my time spent playing the game, while maintaining the same effort out of game. The guild is kinda my baby, and I want it to be a great place for people. Pre-BFA, and leading into BFA massive effort was put in to make sure we would transition into the expansion as well as we could.

During this time, I had also started dealing with medical issues which affected my motivation to log into the game while we were waiting for BFA to release. I'm not looking for sympathy, things happen and you deal. There's also the general issue of burn-out on top of it all. I needed a break before the expansion released. I should have communicated it at the time though. Throughout, I continued to spend time out of game (with my Officers, Raid Leaders, and everyone else who contributed) smoothing out issues that arose during the transition into BFA. Unfortunately, I didn't properly take care of myself during this time and it created an issue that some felt that I was an absentee leader, and spoke of seeking a replacement.

Fast forward to once we started raiding, with TWO super successful raid teams. We lose an Officer and Raid Leader so that he can work towards his career. Another Officer has her entire life changed overnight, and has to severely dial back. Another Officer and another Raid Leader both have the much more important responsibility of being fathers to their newborn children. Thankfully, people stepped up in the guild's time of need and helped keep things running behind the scenes. New Raid Leaders, people helping manage the bank to keep us stocked for raids, and everyone who shows up and puts in effort that keeps our keep successful.

Fast forward to now, and my status as GM. Again, I'm not looking for sympathy, I just want everyone to know what is going on in my end. (I know this is long and rambling so i'll try to sum it up.)

I am working towards streaming with the goal of being able to have income so that my wife and I don't lose our house, cars, etc. I've been putting a lot of my time into this, as well as trying to find any type of other work that I can. I've been taking wood working, construction, and video editing commissions just to keep some money flowing while I build a platform that I really enjoy doing that will be potential revenue.

Long, long, long story short, my availability to actually log into WoW and play is severely diminished. I've been doing my best to keep my weekends open so that I can at least raid with everyone. My time out of game will also be reduced. I will still give as much effort as I can as the GM if people still want me in that position. We have very capable RLs that I'm confident in for keeping raids running smoothly, but there's always room for help running things from a leadership perspective.

I'll wrap it up by saying that I'm ridiculously proud of what our guild is and the people in it. You all mean a lot to me, and I couldn't be more thankful that you're here in our guild, making it what it is.