A Stuffer Shack Apology

I’m sitting here at my work desk, trying to come up with something witty to say. I’ve deleted paragraph after paragraph because they kept making me sound like a complete tool. Maybe that’s the case anyway, but at least at this very moment I’m just typing whatever comes to me.

Quick sidenote: Pour Some Sugar On Me is on the radio right now, and it’s totally pumping me up, putting me in a better, more aggressive, less defeated mood. And if you don’t know the song of which I speak, well then, you’re not as cool as me. You’re probably younger, but not as cool.

I’m not going to get into a huge post about why I started Stuffer Shack (not again, anyway), but I will give you the 50-word rundown: Two things: (1) I had a bunch of gaming ideas piling up in my head, and (2) I had made some gaming accessories that I thought I could sell. Was that 50 words? Probably not.

Writing character backgrounds, adventure ideas, enemies, and so on has been really fun. I’m not the best writer, but I’m not the worst, either. Then why do it? Because I’m a creative kind of person, and I like it. Am I the most creative? Nope – Not by a long shot, but I still enjoy it. Does such a type of article get many comments? Nope. Does that bother me? Yep. I see all these other blogs with all their comments and I realize that I want that. I want people commenting about the things I write. I want people coming to the site when they need ideas for an encounter, or a cool enemy for their adventure. Heck, I want people coming here for ideas of starting that adventure. It took a little while, but I realized that people just don’t leave a lot of comments for that type of post. Heck, it makes me wonder if people even read them, to be honest.

And what about our Next Level Gaming column? Why did I start that? Well, I guess it’s because I had some opinions. I’ve been gaming for two and a half decades, so I should be some sort of expert, right? Besides, Editorials, Reviews and Advice articles get more comments, right?

And what about those accessories we sell? I’m not going to lie… I like selling them. I like seeing that email: Notification of Payment. I like seeing my Paypal balance increase by $20, $30, or $40+ every few days or weeks. I aint gonna lie, I like making that money. Sure, my wife takes it from me, but it’s cool just the same. Should I be talking about making money from the website? I don’t know, but since this is an apology post, I might as well.

Our Store has been part of my problem, though. The Shack makes a good amount of money (for a gaming blog). I’m not going to lie: that excites me – not because I feel I’m “winning,” but because it makes me feel I’ve accomplished something. I’m not the go-getter type, not the popular guy, not the guy voted Most Likely to Succeed. I’m just not that guy. I am the guy who says, “Hey look, I created a little corner of the gaming verse, and it’s at least mildly successful.” So being at least partially successful with our Store makes me feel good. I got lucky, and that is all. Sure, it took a good chunk of work to make our counters and mounts sellable, but it was still luck to begin with.

To be completely honest, though, I REALLY like hearing from customers about how much they like the products. Mini Counters and Horse Minis have been very helpful in our games, so I knew they would be very helpful in other peoples’ games. I go out of my way to make sure customers get good service and a great product. It makes me feel good.

So what’s my problem, then?

Well, I keep wanting more. I keep wanting the site to get bigger and better. I keep finding myself wanting more – more articles, more writers, more products, more customers, more comments, more page rank, and more visitors.

Am I really apologizing for that? No. I’m apologizing for losing focus.

I keep biting off more than I can chew. Instead of focusing on the simple aspect of gaming – blogging about gaming, I’m trying to make Stuffer Shack this great big gaming website. That crap is either going to get there or it isn’t – I need to stop dreaming and start doing. One of my big problems is that I keep tweaking things to make the site “better,” when the only real way to make the site better is to have good, more consistent content. We have some great articles and some great writers, so I need to just let that take center stage.

What I need to stop doing is F’ing with the damn website. I’m always tinkering with this or that to make it look or function better. The Shack blew up a few months ago because I started “upgrading” the theme to make us bigger and more professional. Yeah, that fiasco was my fault. So then we went to our current theme, the second premium theme I had to shell out several Andrew Jacksons for.

You like our current theme? It looks cool, right? Well, it’s a piece of shit. It doesn’t really function like the demo, and is missing several components of a normal blog, some of which I’ve had to pay to have modified in. I’m telling you, it’s so frustrating to buy a premium theme, then find out later it doesn’t have all of the regular features of a free theme. Having those regular features modified in also makes it a bitch to update the theme. But, I made peace with it all because the site had other features not common among free website themes. Which brings me to the whole point of this apology…

I have run into yet another roadblock with this damn theme, this premium theme. I’m not going to get into what the problem is, but just know that it’s not a “I don’t know what I’m doing” issue; it’s a “I’m not going to the support forum to fix another bug yet again” issue. Seriously, I don’t know what’s more lame, this website theme, or me for trying to make it work. I’m done fighting with it. If I didn’t love blogging so much, I’d almost consider hanging up my hat entirely.

So, here’s my apology: I apologize for losing focus. I apologize for biting off more than I can chew. I apologize for thinking bigger and wanting more, instead of focusing on what we have and what we do. I’ve decided to go back to our previous free theme, and focus on the things and people that have made this site great.

I hate having to say this, but we’ll be going through some changes over the next couple of weeks, taking us back to where we were several months ago. Nothing fancy, just clean and functional. I very sincerely apologize for the oncoming mess, especially to those of you who suffered through our first implosion. Hopefully, a back-to-basics trek will help me feel better, instead of defeated, and get this site back on track.

Thank you for reading.

*Edit* We’re back to our old theme now, and it’s working very well.