2020 --- The Year of Anniversaries --- A Mish Mash Post
Well it has been nearly a year since my last blog post and since I am spending more time on the site again over the past week and I am in a bit of a creative mood, why not let the thoughts flow and use my brain for something other than trying to win a Civilization IV game?
As the title of this blog says, 2020 for me, is the year of anniversaries, and not all of them include chess, but the first one does.
10 years ago this November, it is the 10th anniversary of the official Chess.com/TV Group which I was asked to head by our own Danny Rensch after he came back from the Spice Cup back in 2010. It started out with only myself, Donna (RookedonChess), Danny, & David Pruess and there weren't that many steady shows back then as there are now. Twitch wasn't much of a thing as it is now and there were 3-4 shows a week, rather than every day like now. Donna and I were the first "civilian moderators" for Chess.com/TV (that is, we weren't paid or part of the Chess.com family) and initially, we had to fill up the empty coffins of the forums with material, come up with the theme, colors, font, etc. It wasn't easy and it took a lot of time...I mean A LOT!
Looking at it now as it approaches 3000 members is almost confounding; shows every day, tournament coverage, Twitch streamers, loads of daily content and a huge array of Hosts dwarfs the already short stature of content it was back then. Yes it's true, I have not been around as much in the past years because of my mental health but I've also been consumed by the 2nd thing I'm going to mention here...the News.
When I was 5 (40 years ago this April) I watched, without knowing what it really was or what it would turn into for me, the 1980 Presidential election. I was sucked in immediately; the numbers, the map of the US, all of it. I didn't understand it, but it has stuck with me ever since. I know we're not supposed to go political so I won't, but this this year-ending election, it's going to end 40 years of my life that I've been consumed by politics and news. I think it's the perfect time to do as I have other things I want to do and learn (Japanese for one) and I can't enjoy it like I was once did. It's very big to me as it's the only thing that's really been with me my entire life but I'll stop there before this post gets deleted. 
With that said, I hope to start spending more time here (as well as some of the Shogi sites I belong to) and I'll have more of a presence like I did many years ago where you would have to pry my keyboard from my hands because it was all chess, all the time.
So yes those are the two anniversaries I speak of. One good, one not so good. A few other big interests have flooded my life but that's another tall tale for another cold, rainy day.
Thanks for reading everyone!
-Mark
