2008 - A pretty bad year, at least where January through July are concerned. While I could type paragraph after paragraph citing examples of how that portion of the year decided to blow up in my face, instead please allow me one (probably run-on) sentence:

Had kidney stones in Feb or March (can’t remember which, but definitely remember the pain, as all those horror stories you hear are true), Mom was diagnosed with both high blood pressure and diabetes [when she has had no major health problems whatsoever up to this point (btw, both are under control, if you care)], one of my cats died, my maternal grandfather passed away, and I lost my financial aid.

Jump to mid August and things make a bit of an upswing, starting with Gen Con, which I was, for the first time, able to enjoy for its entire four-day duration (five actually, as I got into Indianapolis a day early in order to hang out with some Gen Con specific friends). Met tons of great people within all aspects of the gaming industry (that is, not just video games, but board games, table-top RPG’s, card games, miniatures, and so on), and also had the opportunity to attend the ENnies (the Oscar's of table-top gaming), and meet face-to-face the vast majority of people that I talk to on the Gen Con forums.

The rare noteworthy positive from the first half of the year would be my two year anniversary with GrrlGamer, which occurred in June. Not only has my continued participation with the site allowed me to extend my network of contacts within the video game industry, but also allowed me to be blessed by Nintendo in late November when they sent me a Wii, free of charge, in order to play the many games that I had either already been given to review or had been offered by various developers / publishers.

And without the Wii, I wouldn’t have been able to experience what is easily the best game I played in 2008 – de Blob. Keep in mind that I don’t have a 360 or a PS3, so any title like GTA IV, MGS 4, Gears 2, Fallout 3, etc. is not even within my realm of gameplay opportunities, and therefore couldn’t be considered, and the fact that I have had the Wii for such a short amount of time, meaning that I have not yet had a chance to go back and play things like No More Heroes. And while I won’t go into an all-out “Game of the Year Countdown,” I will grant a bit of praise to Princess Debut on the DS, which would be my runner-up, that is, if I were having a countdown.

But perhaps the most noteworthy occurrence of 2008 for me is that fact that I am not even writing this blog on Gamespot in the first place, a possibility I never saw coming in the first portion of the year. Even in July, when I followed the crowd to the Bomb, I never saw my abandonment of Gamespot as the eventual outcome, but here we are (Gamespot’s collection tracker notwithstanding).

So, to the new friends that I have made here at Giant Bomb, and to those friendships that have continued even after the switch, I say thank you, as it’s conversations with people such as yourselves that allow me to forget the personal problems I may be dealing with, even if just for a few minutes at a time.

See you in 2009!