Avs Talk - A Colorado Avalanche Blog

I suppose while the Avalanche are playing like crap, it's not a bad time to distract ourselves with some fun and excitement. Enter the Avalanche blog-off at The NHL Arena.

I received an email this evening letting me know that I was among the folks in the running to be declared the official Avalanche blog and the first thought that came to my head was "Who would vote for me?"

My immediate thought right after that was "Damn, that's a harsh realization." Granted it isn't out of line with my thoughts on my blogging performance of late, but it was still a bit of a slap in the face. And when you deliver a slap in the face to yourself, it hurts all the more.

I'm going to come clean on a few things here in what became a bit of a manifesto. It began as I drove home tonight from a bar where I was trying to forget about the Avs blowing a 2-0 lead. It wasn't the greatest plan since I don't drink anymore but the important part is that I tried, right?

First, as some of the long-time readers may remember, I struggled with health issues over the last couple years which were bad enough to cause me to cancel a trip to Denver. I still remember the day I decided to call off the trip. It was a gut-wrenching decision and one that I still question to this day.

While I'm well on the road to recovery and have figured out the cause - no thanks to any of my "doctors" - there are still lingering issues I'm battling with, most notably fatigue and head clarity.

Second, I work hard and take my job very seriously. I don't consider myself a workaholic any more but I exhaust a lot of energy at the office, energy that I sometimes don't have thanks to the aforementioned health issues.

Given that I hadn't taken a vacation completely away from work in years, you've got the recipes for a case of burnout. And the best part about my personality is that I'm stubborn as hell and proud as hell so I didn't want to admit to myself that I'd had enough until it was too late.

And so we arrive to this post where I'm admitting the obvious - for the past three months my heart just hasn't been in it. When I say "it", I'm referring to life on a whole but more specifically to blogging.

It started to feel like a job with a standard script: write a preview, write a recap, be snarky yet insightful, call out bad reporting, forget to praise good reporting, rinse, lather, repeat.

I sat by as new blogs popped up and other blogs expanded in coverage. And it was hard to see that all happening while my blog slid downhill. I felt a little bit like Fat Bastard. I was unhappy because I wasn't blogging, and I wasn't blogging because I was unhappy.

In fact, on more than one occasion I toyed with the idea of simply shutting it down. I didn't feel it fair to myself or to the Avalanche fan base to be putting in a half-baked effort. You all deserve the best coverage and commentary possible and I wasn't contributing to it.

Of course, that's an extreme measure and one I don't want to take. I enjoy writing, I love the Avalanche and it just makes sense to combine the two. That I've gotten a lot of recognition for my work has been rewarding as well. I'm not an attention-whore by any means but being involved in things like a CBC live-chat provide a large source of personal pride which everybody needs to have.

I'd love to end this post with a simple statement of "I'm back!" but I'm just not there yet. I've gone through a lot of moments where I felt I was back to 100% only to realize I was kidding myself, my friends and my fans.

But I am coming back. I'm nothing if not competitive and I feel the fire building up again. I won't declare the flame lit until I'm confident I can back it up though. I will continue to write and the level will improve, but it won't be the extensive coverage and commentary I used to churn out on a daily basis.

I'll end this by saying thanks to everyone who reads this blog with an extra special thanks to the ones who take the time to brave Blogger's arcane commenting system to add additional insight to it. And if you didn't want to brave it and ended up firing me an email, it's gold stars for you too.

In the meantime, you can't go wrong with any Avalanche blog out there and you really should be reading them all and not limiting yourself to one or two.