I relate a little too well to what Wongers was saying, if for different reasons. Hell, I'm moving out the country in less than three weeks and have scarcely done a thing to prepare.

It's difficult for me to disagree with much of that. I was always more about WoT and the CMB than I was about books, fiction or even fantasy, though that's probably my biggest single fiction interest. By the time I was introduced to WoT I'd pretty much given up on fantasy after at least a decade of fanaticism. Maybe Tolkien spoiled me, but it seemed like the whole genre was nothing but verbose wannabes like me. Frankly, I'm not sure much has changed; if you have a flair for marketing and no self respect you can make a pretty good living as a hack without the need for any actual talent, because the bottom line is the bottom line.

Inactivity stifles inactivity, too, though, and if I don't always agree with every decision made here it's not like there's a stampede of people presenting multiple other options. Sometimes I feel like it's just me and the Admins around here, and while it's awfully generous of them to provide me a place to rant, that's not a recipe for site longevity. The main reason the discussions have gotten both bitter and stale is because a lot of it is the same few people who stuck around as wotmania dwindled and died, now recycling the same debates they were having four or five years ago. One thing wotmania should've taught us we can't just rely on the Admins to generate all our content; even when they're willing, it's too great a demand for a healthy site. So I've tried to be around a bit more since I'm no longer working, but I do still have stuff to do, and it's hard for me to get too worked up about other books any more, in part because it's hard to find time to read them. One guy's not going to make the difference though, especially when he's still got some bitterness of his own.

We need fresh blood. We need reasons for people to BECOME fresh blood, and I think the less WoT fare we have the next couple years the less of those reasons we'll have. It's still a team effort though, and it wouldn't hurt a bit if more of us (including me) took advantage of the NON-WoT fare.

EDIT: Heh, tried so hard to word that correctly I completely forgot to say: Congrats on the nomination (and no, I hadn't heard) and good luck and God bless with the event and your travels.