Drake-bane

Posting here again is an incredibly surreal experience for me. A part of me feels like it never left. The rest feels like it's forgotten how to do everything. The last time I wrote a post was back in January of this year. Can you believe it's been eight months? Originally, it was my intent to leave LOTRO entirely, as I had been fed up with the development of the game, the mass exodus of players I knew, the rampant negativity of the official forums, and cosmetic blogging had become a chore. You'd think I'd have been over this MMO entirely by now, but I discovered that I could never truly bid farewell to Middle-earth. Casually leveling my baby Beorning without any attachments to other players allowed me to experience and appreciate the early areas of LOTRO for the first time in years. I fell in love again, having a second romance. It also doesn't help that Tolkien's lore has been a part of me since I read the Hobbit nearly 20 years ago. And then there are the other reasons included in the last post I made.

An Unexpected, Yet Temporary Return

Good morning everybody!

I bet you're surprised to see a post appearing here (assuming I'm still in your RSS feeds). This certainly makes that gigantic farewell post feel anticlimactic.

After careful thought and certain circumstances, I've decided to return to cosmetic blogging, though it is most likely a short-term, temporary thing. Unfortunately, there is much more to this decision than I'd like to admit, most of it personal. I'll tell you a few of things that led to this unexpected return.

First of all, I suffered a significant reduction in hours at work, leaving me with some financial strain and much more free time. That's something I hope to have fixed soon by looking elsewhere for full-time employment. Second, I just had my car's transmission rebuilt. Good grief, those are expensive. Third, within the past few months, I had a rather sizable amount of money stolen from me, some of which I have recouped. I had to cancel all my game subscriptions (FFXIV especially) and seriously curtail my spending. This has led me back to F2P games, LOTRO in particular. Lastly, a small part of me never stopped outfitting my characters. I've slowly been leveling my Beorning since January (she's somewhere around level 40), dressing her up from time to time. You'll get to see those outfits soon. That's as much as I'm willing to say here. The rest cuts too close to home.

Blogging, for me, is very time consuming. Just collecting screenshots could take two or three hours. That's why I retired in February. I can't promise I'll be posting on a schedule and neither can I tell you how long I'll be hanging around. However, let it be said writing and creating content for Material Middle-earth brought me joy in the past and I hope it will continue to do just that. And I need a little of that happy in my life again!

See everybody around!

~Nathrien

Here's a vintage picture from 2010 of Nathrien!