It's been commented on a lot over the past few weeks so maybe it's best I finally come clean as to what's up. Feel free to share this with the iRacing Crew as well because they all have the right to know why I've been intermittent at best this Season.
There is a short answer and a much longer answer.
The short answer is I'm burnt out.
The long answer is...
...before I get started though please accept my apologies for my recent absence in iRacing.
To be perfectly honest I think it all started at VIR this Season. I'd been looking forward to racing it again and redeeming my last abhorrent race there back when I was in the BMW.
For insight into what happened on my first go around at VIR please see the following YouTube Video:
[video=youtube;YSvMnHW6G7I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSvMnHW6G7I&index=8&list=PLkBHpBHCmv4ZxDfn4rDMUVev-yZ6779wX[/video]
Nothing will give you more insight into my thinking than the above video (and you really only need to watch when the green flag drops).
This season I was more than ready for VIR, had good pace, was consistent over the long run and very familiar with the track. Over the course of 2 back to back races, I was crashed out twice both times on the first lap and neither were avoidable.
Both crashes ended up the exact same way too, the guy who caused the crash drove away while I limped to the Pits under a meatball.
I don't mind being crashed out, it's part of racing but I really HATE they way iRacing handles it. If the car hit gets the meatball then both cars should be forced to the Pits, period, end of story. If iRacing would just tackle this one glaring flaw I'm willing to bet every series would benefit greatly from it.
Honestly I was so pissed off from this I'd all but given up GT3 racing right there and then. I've had the worst luck this Season and even when it looked like there was a glimmer of hope, it turned to shit too.
Three or 4 weeks in I was about to finally secure a Top 5 and a few laps away from the finish line my ISP took a dump.
I got booted from the Server and ended up finishing outside the Top 10:
[video=youtube;4AAz1D_nXJ8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AAz1D_nXJ8&list=UUF9fLJ1E783IlyZAYWhArZA[/video]
These are just two examples of many as every race I've gridded in this Season has ended poorly.
It's just been too much misfortune in too short a time-frame for me to bounce back from mentally, it's honestly sapped my will to race right now.
I'm not naive enough to miss the connection that I'm the constant in this series of variables but this Season has been all about the wrong place at the wrong time for me. I've reviewed each and every race numerous times and there simply wasn't anything I could do to avoid the end result short of not gridding.
I always bounce back but mentally I'm one of those people who doesn't have an instantaneous reset button. I've never had the ability to reset, I always have to heal.
My personality trait is that of an amiable expressive. You can see this not only in how vocal I typically am but how much I deeply care about people. Those who've known me the longest know I act like an ass but deep down I'm anything but; or at least I like to think so lol.
Add to this the hundreds of hours put in behind the scenes into re-branding Fragtard to Band of Others and you get a more complete picture. The re-branding was originally slated to take a few weeks and ended up taking about 3 months.
I also do my own skinning on my Websites so all custom coding, .css, imagery, etc., is all created by yours truly.
I've had to accomplish this over both Wordpress and vBulletin which is a daunting task at best.
I'm now looking to possibly shift from vBulletin to XenForo so it means that all the work done on the forum is now for not as I'll have to start from the ground up. This translates to anywhere between 50 - 100 hours work from concept to final version (I wish I was overstating).
What is adding so much to the time is a drastic amount of code removal that I'm tackling in the back end of vBulletin (soon to be Xen) to up our content to code ratio. This is a boat load of work and has to be done over numerous templates. I find this to be both uninteresting and exhausting busy work but it will benefit our rankings in the Search Engines so it's critical.
Once Band of Others is finally in a state I can call aesthetically and functionally complete, Lifesupporters.com and Movie-Talk.net are the next two Web Communities inline.
Both Communities are owned and operated by myself and both have been ignored over the past few years in the interests of developing this Community.
Both sites have seen a drastic drop off in traffic and that's just a waste especially since Lifesupporters is about 12 years old now and Movie-Talk.net once boasted more traffic to our Server than all other sites combined (including client sites of which I maintain a handful).
On top of all of this, I've still yet to finish The Last of Us and the Left Behind DLC so I can give my buddy back his PS4.
I also have Elite Dangerous sitting here doing nothing and I'm really trying to put time in there as well.
I'm also tackling YouTube and streaming while trying to develop a presence on Twitter and Facebook for B2O.
Honestly, I love doing everything I'm doing but it can get to be too much sometimes and right now I'm in a too much phase.
I need time to recharge so that's what I'm doing, forcefully taking that time.
Essentially I guess the real answer is this; I have a lot on my plate and am trying to offset my busy work with what I'm getting the most enjoyment out of. Right now iRacing is not helping enough to balance out the busy work with fun so I'm seeking other avenues to do so.
...and to be perfectly clear this is in no way a rant, vent or anything else.
I'm posting this simply because enough people have commented on my absenteeism in iRacing so in the interests of transparency I thought I'd offer full disclosure.
Ken
There is a short answer and a much longer answer.
The short answer is I'm burnt out.
The long answer is...
...before I get started though please accept my apologies for my recent absence in iRacing.
To be perfectly honest I think it all started at VIR this Season. I'd been looking forward to racing it again and redeeming my last abhorrent race there back when I was in the BMW.
For insight into what happened on my first go around at VIR please see the following YouTube Video:
[video=youtube;YSvMnHW6G7I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSvMnHW6G7I&index=8&list=PLkBHpBHCmv4ZxDfn4rDMUVev-yZ6779wX[/video]
Nothing will give you more insight into my thinking than the above video (and you really only need to watch when the green flag drops).
This season I was more than ready for VIR, had good pace, was consistent over the long run and very familiar with the track. Over the course of 2 back to back races, I was crashed out twice both times on the first lap and neither were avoidable.
Both crashes ended up the exact same way too, the guy who caused the crash drove away while I limped to the Pits under a meatball.
I don't mind being crashed out, it's part of racing but I really HATE they way iRacing handles it. If the car hit gets the meatball then both cars should be forced to the Pits, period, end of story. If iRacing would just tackle this one glaring flaw I'm willing to bet every series would benefit greatly from it.
Honestly I was so pissed off from this I'd all but given up GT3 racing right there and then. I've had the worst luck this Season and even when it looked like there was a glimmer of hope, it turned to shit too.
Three or 4 weeks in I was about to finally secure a Top 5 and a few laps away from the finish line my ISP took a dump.
I got booted from the Server and ended up finishing outside the Top 10:
[video=youtube;4AAz1D_nXJ8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AAz1D_nXJ8&list=UUF9fLJ1E783IlyZAYWhArZA[/video]
These are just two examples of many as every race I've gridded in this Season has ended poorly.
It's just been too much misfortune in too short a time-frame for me to bounce back from mentally, it's honestly sapped my will to race right now.
I'm not naive enough to miss the connection that I'm the constant in this series of variables but this Season has been all about the wrong place at the wrong time for me. I've reviewed each and every race numerous times and there simply wasn't anything I could do to avoid the end result short of not gridding.
I always bounce back but mentally I'm one of those people who doesn't have an instantaneous reset button. I've never had the ability to reset, I always have to heal.
My personality trait is that of an amiable expressive. You can see this not only in how vocal I typically am but how much I deeply care about people. Those who've known me the longest know I act like an ass but deep down I'm anything but; or at least I like to think so lol.
Add to this the hundreds of hours put in behind the scenes into re-branding Fragtard to Band of Others and you get a more complete picture. The re-branding was originally slated to take a few weeks and ended up taking about 3 months.
I also do my own skinning on my Websites so all custom coding, .css, imagery, etc., is all created by yours truly.
I've had to accomplish this over both Wordpress and vBulletin which is a daunting task at best.
I'm now looking to possibly shift from vBulletin to XenForo so it means that all the work done on the forum is now for not as I'll have to start from the ground up. This translates to anywhere between 50 - 100 hours work from concept to final version (I wish I was overstating).
What is adding so much to the time is a drastic amount of code removal that I'm tackling in the back end of vBulletin (soon to be Xen) to up our content to code ratio. This is a boat load of work and has to be done over numerous templates. I find this to be both uninteresting and exhausting busy work but it will benefit our rankings in the Search Engines so it's critical.
Once Band of Others is finally in a state I can call aesthetically and functionally complete, Lifesupporters.com and Movie-Talk.net are the next two Web Communities inline.
Both Communities are owned and operated by myself and both have been ignored over the past few years in the interests of developing this Community.
Both sites have seen a drastic drop off in traffic and that's just a waste especially since Lifesupporters is about 12 years old now and Movie-Talk.net once boasted more traffic to our Server than all other sites combined (including client sites of which I maintain a handful).
On top of all of this, I've still yet to finish The Last of Us and the Left Behind DLC so I can give my buddy back his PS4.
I also have Elite Dangerous sitting here doing nothing and I'm really trying to put time in there as well.
I'm also tackling YouTube and streaming while trying to develop a presence on Twitter and Facebook for B2O.
Honestly, I love doing everything I'm doing but it can get to be too much sometimes and right now I'm in a too much phase.
I need time to recharge so that's what I'm doing, forcefully taking that time.
Essentially I guess the real answer is this; I have a lot on my plate and am trying to offset my busy work with what I'm getting the most enjoyment out of. Right now iRacing is not helping enough to balance out the busy work with fun so I'm seeking other avenues to do so.
...and to be perfectly clear this is in no way a rant, vent or anything else.
I'm posting this simply because enough people have commented on my absenteeism in iRacing so in the interests of transparency I thought I'd offer full disclosure.
Ken
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