Preventing Burnout and the 2024 TMAT Release Schedule

Good morning gamers,

Okay, I'm a guy who writes articles for the internet - I'm allowed to make click-bait titles and not apologize for them. Usually the first Thursdays are formation posts, but as this is the first week of the new year, I wanted to do a quick review of the posts we did last year to give some perspective on what to expect from this blog during 2024. The TL;DR is simple - I'm cutting back a bit on my writing on this blog this year.

2023 In Review

From January through November, we had an article released every Monday (including taking scenario participants from the various sourcebooks into Matched Play, some In Defense Of articles, a few Back to Basics articles, a new Nemesis series, and Rythbyrt emerged from the woodwork to continue his long-running Armies of MESBG series - including some anti-Angmar articles) and every Thursday (which covered a TON of different topics, but included formation articles, FAQ reviews, rules changes I'd make, and some math articles on optimizing your Fantasy Fellowships . . . and updates on the Minas Tirith/Osgiliath project). These articles alone were almost 100 articles written last year.

What you look like after writing close to 100 articles every Monday and Thursday (and every other Saturday - more on that next) for a year . . .

During this same time, we had articles coming out every other Saturday on Fantasy Fellowships - both deep-dive analyses of what your models actually need to be able to do in the various missions you'll have, but also reviewing how my Fantasy Fellowship (the Erebor Reunion) did in their missions. Some of these missions were incredibly close and others were over very quickly (one way or another), but all in all, it was quite fun.

Then in December, we did a "Christmas List" series where we here at TMAT and various other content creators from across the globe contributed army lists that they'd been playing this year and really enjoyed (for whatever reason - competitive success, fun to play, wacky idea finally realized, you get the idea). I am both incredibly humbled that the guys who participated actually wanted to be part of this little blog's life, but equally amazed at the generosity and sense of unity that complete strangers can have just because of a hobby they both do. The lists are great - if you haven't checked them out yet, you really should!

To Harry, Dan, Sam, Mitchell, Markus, Matt, and the TMAT crew (and all the other guys who wanted to help out but were too swamped with work) - you guys are truly the best!

All told, this gave us a grand total of 139 posts in 2023 . . . or put differently, more than one article every three days. That's . . . a lot of writing. Not all of it was me writing (especially in December), but I did write the lion's share of them. One of the articles I wrote last year was about things I appreciated about MESBG more because my son got me into Star Wars Legion - and while my opinions about Legion have improved since then (and most of the critiques in that article aren't held as strongly by myself anymore), I did decide that - Legion noob though I am - I really do want to start putting up more Star Wars content for both Legion and Imperial Assault on our alternate channel (which you can find here). To do this, I need to cut back here because if I don't, I'm going to burn out. 

Fighting Burnout in 2024

One of the biggest causes of burnout in content creation has got to be the demand of the schedule - which my wife loves to inform me is a burden I place on myself . . . and I know this all too well. But I am my harshest critic and I want to make myself happy, so to make sure that I have the time that I need to do a good job on the articles I have planned out, I'm cutting back on the schedule a bit for this upcoming year.

For starters, every Monday is still going to be a posting day - I've already got most of the main series articles projected out for the rest of the year (and a good chunk of those are already written). So Monday's are still going to be content days for us and I think you'll like the articles we have planned for this year.

Thursdays are also going to be content days, but I'm going to be moving to every other Thursday instead of every Thursday. This is in part because . . . I don't have all the ideas fleshed out for Thursday posts this year and I don't want to force content where none exists. But I'm also doing it so I can write an article every other week on Star Wars Legion based on what I've been learning (both by playing and by soaking up as much knowledge as I can from various content providers on YouTube) and wrap up some articles that have been sitting in the backlog for Star Wars Imperial Assault as well. Please note though: I will definitely make exceptions to the every-other-week schedule for posts about the armies I considered taking to tournaments and the most recent FAQ update if I need to.

Finally, the only content you'll see on Saturdays is any podcast material that Rythbyrt releases as well as tournament announcements. As great as our Fantasy Fellowship campaign was last year, Centaur and I are taking a break from it this year (though we do have a scenario project that we're working on this year - be watching for that in a future Thursday post). With this plan, I think I can keep from burning out and really enjoy the articles I'm planning to write.

But the other main cause of burnout has got to be losing focus on why you're doing what you're doing. Ultimately, I write articles on the internet because there are people like you who are reading what I'm writing and hopefully you reach the end and think, "that was useful." If you do find what we do here useful, drop us a note here or on Facebook so we know what's important to you as a reader. :) I don't write just because we get comments, but it sure helps.

Conclusion

So all that to say, we're still here and we're still writing content because we still love the game - we're just going to be posting once every four or five days instead of every three days. :) While our content is going to be reduced a little here at TMAT, we'll still be getting content out to you - and if there are things you'd like us to cover, please let us know! Until next time, happy hobbying!