Links Posts Will Change Following the Season

Hello, friends.

You may have noticed that the links were a bit sporadic late in the season this year. That was not particularly by design. It was more out of necessity. And it's the precursor to how we are going to do links moving forward. Let's call the playoffs a bit of a transitional period. Allow me to explain.

Back when I started doing daily links in June 2013, I was in a much different place in my life. I was working a job where I was mostly working nights and weekends, which afforded me the time to do the links early in the morning before hitting the sack. It was a perfect setup. A few months later, while I didn't lose the passion of doing the daily links, I just simply didn't want to do it every day. And as I was living in western Montana at the time, I wanted to be able to go sight-seeing to many of the magical places the northwestern portion of the United States has to offer with my then girlfriend (now wife, whom you now know as BluesMay) alongside.

One weekend, I put out an eagle call to anyone who wanted to take a stab at the links for a weekend. The man you now know as J-Mill stepped forward and did so well that I asked him to become my weekend links guy. Then, I soon got the help of BluesMay on certain nights when neither J-Mill nor I could do the links. Eventually, J-Mill had to drop out of links duty due to time constraints, we went to a few days a week during the last offseason and put out an eagle call for a non-game-day links poster. Hoosier Blue stepped forward and took the helm for those, and I felt he did a great job . . . until life got in the way for him and he had to drop out of links duty.

In recent times, we've also received kind help from the likes of Dan (buffa82) and Ash (RealBadRobot). That help could only be sporadic at best due to their own time constraints. But after Hoosier Blue dropped out, I put out eagle calls for a non-game-day links poster, and it didn't really work out. So BluesMay and I decided to play out the string alternating game dates as well as we possibly could.

But now, going back to the place I was when I started doing links in 2013 . . . I am in a much different place in my life. Not only am I married now, but before the season started, we moved closer to home (Kansas City, to be exact, as most of you know). I now work a steady 8-to-5 job in Kansas City, and in December I was approved for overtime duty, which at the moment means I have to put in at least 50 hours of work each week. Shortly after that, I was moved to a different unit within the company, but I'm still working 50+ hours a week. And while I can work Saturdays if I want to, I am not required to, and I am bound and determined not ever to, if I can help it. The money is great compared to every job I've ever worked. But unlike past jobs I've had (ALL of which were admittedly less challenging and much less fulfilling than the gig I have now), I have no time at work to be doing anything with either the website or the publication. Therefore, from late December on, I've been basically doing everything I've done with St. Louis Game Time by cutting into quality time I could be spending with my wife and our families. For a young couple, this is not helpful.

BluesMay then made it known that doing links even semi-daily wasn't even fun for her anymore. I had agreed, as I noticed that she didn't want to do the links as often. Hell, I didn't either. How could I blame her?

So that necessity I spoke of earlier . . . that necessity was mostly our sanity. Namely, the necessity was figuring out a way we could keep doing the links but not go nuts over having to do so given our schedules.

TL;DR. Get to the meat of the story, DK!

Well, here it is:

Starting after the Blues are eliminated in the playoffs (or, by some grace of fucking God, win the big trophy for Goddamn once), BluesMay and I will do links once a week. We will trade off links duties per week. We will post who has links duty for the upcoming week every week AND leave contact information to send links (we may even have a links Gmail account by then, too).

The weekly links will post every Monday, whether or not there was a game the previous day/night. If we missed something important during the prior week, we'll encourage you to post it in the comments so that everyone can see it.

These aren't OUR links, they're YOUR links. And we want to make it work that way from here on out.

Again . . . we'll be here for Game 1 of the playoffs (we presume Wednesday) and for every morning of every Blues playoff game this postseason. Four of them. 28 of them. We'll be here for all of them, no matter how many there are.

And then, we'll go every Monday, and that's the way it'll be from then on.

While it sucks that we won't be able to deliver links daily or even semi-daily anymore, we think it will lead to a higher quality product in the long run, which you all deserve.

Thank you to everyone in advance for your understanding.

LET'S GO BLUES.