Instead, I'm going to waste time explaining why I've chosen to come back now.
The obvious and easy answer is, of course, the playoffs. I woke up this morning and realized that the Sabres may just win the Cup this year (not that I at all expect them to--more on that, hopefully, before Thursday) and that if they did, I would regret having let this blog die a quiet, shameful, and untimely death. Among other things, it crossed my mind that without an online outlet, my real-life friends could be exposed to my boundless jubilation without a buffer. It would be like forcing them to look directly into the sun.
Even without the Cup, though, there would still be plenty to regret. For a good part of the season I put off blogging with the excuse that the Sabres weren't doing anything worth writing about. Not only is this no longer the case (and hasn't been for a while), today I realized that in fact the opposite is now true: it's not worth not writing about what the Sabres are doing. I don't just have no excuse anymore, I have negative excuse. There's obviously something special going on with this team, and I would be stupid not to want to make myself a part of it. If this makes me a bandwagon blogger, then so be it, but here's hoping I haven't strapped myself in just in time for the magic to run out.
The other reason for the timing of my return has nothing to do with the Sabres and everything to do with me. I've decided that after this season, I'm retiring as a hockey blogger, which means I have the postseason, one last shot, to do this thing right. (In this case, "doing it right" pretty much means "doing it at all." We set the bar low here at Desperation Hockey. And usually spend all our time limboing under it anyway.) The past four years (off and on) of writing this blog has been a highly rewarding experience, even when it was more off than on. I'm not going to get into all the sentimental specifics, but blogging about hockey and reading hockey blogs has without a doubt changed the way I watch the game and the way I think about being a fan.
But the time has come for me to put away the... keyboard. To throw in the... trackpad. To hang up my... failed metaphors. You see, I'm leaving on a jet plane, and while I have a good idea when I'll be back again, it's too long to ask this blog to sit around waiting for me. Come the fall, I'll be following my heart--and monthly deposits from the German government--out to Berlin, which I think is the most wonderful place in the world for everything except blogging about the Sabres. And maybe sushi. Between the time difference, spotty access to the games, and what I anticipate will be a full schedule of living it up, working my butt off, and sleeping, I'll be hard pressed to find any time or relevant content for this old girl, and she deserves better than that. That's why I'm committed to going out with a bang while I still have the chance, instead of inevitably whimpering out in six months with a couple of half-assed posts, and a draft folder full of regrets.
Besides, I plan on chronicling my German adventures in a new blog of some kind, and since I'm a failure at keeping one blog going, I can only assume I'll be twice the failure with two. Once all the details are set for the new digs, I'll make sure to post a link here so that whichever poor soul decides to write his Master's in Cyber-Archaeology thesis on the blogger who called herself Gambler (I'm assuming they get points for obscurity) knows where to start digging next. It won't be a topic blog so much as a general catch-all for my thoughts, musings, introspections, deductions, cogitations, ruminations,, ideations, cerebrations, and mostly-rhyming, synonymic ramblings. Which I'm hoping will translate into more frequent posts, even if they are short and/or unintelligible. And since the Sabres can't stand to see me go to Berlin without them, I'm betting hockey gets a mention at least once.
Stay tuned.
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