Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
What a year 2017 has been! My private life has been a bit of a mess which unfortunately has carried over into my blog posting which has been much less regular than what I would like. The year began chaotically with the announcement that my job was being relocated to the other side of the country. January was therefore filled with much anxiety and debating whether or not to move. In the end I decided to leave my job rather than relocate away from friends and family. I was awarded an 4 month notice but had to work for the couple of months but before that came to an end they offered me to stay on until the office moved.
The blog on the other hand was doing good with a mention in the weekly newspaper “Ingeniøren” – the Engineer, which is a newspaper by the Danish Engineering Society.
February 10, 2017, Playing with History blog featured
The newspaper mention generated the best day of visits ever and helped me keep momentum during the hard days. The number of readers were growing steadily to around 10-12 hits per day and December looks to be the best month yet with perhaps as many as 400 hits. It is an amazing growth, I had 411 hits in all of 2016. For such a specialized topic I find it unbelievable.
Looking over all the books, I accumulated, the pictures from travels I have amassed, I believe myself fortunate and I wanted to share some of it. Especially for people who could not afford travelling or buying and playing games.
I wanted to combat many of the misconceptions I found in popular media and myths in general while entertaining with my war gaming hobbies. It has been a great ride.
I have found that my most read and liked posts are movie reviews which I have mixed feelings about as these are the posts I probably enjoy the least writing but on the other hand, I do understand that many people learn their history from pop culture and thus it is important to point to main issues with these movies.
What is in for 2018?
In November I found a new job which meant learning a new skills. I went from engineering in oil and gas to financial IT project management. That was quite a leap and took up most of my mental capacity meaning that my posting schedule and quality were lower over November. Hopefully that will get better with postings Wednesday instead of Mondays.
For the coming half year, I will be focusing more on WWII as it is my area of expertise and it therefore makes it easier to write up which I need as I am still learning a lot every day and need to focus on my new job. Also I will be hosting another WWII Flames of War tournament on April 7th, it will be with 1500 point armies for 1944-45 for up to 16 players. If you are interested in coming to Copenhagen for Flames of War get in contact with me on the Facebook page: Playing with History Blog.
On April 7, Playing with History will host another Flames of War tournament like the one last year (see picture)
I am currently reading Nicholas Stargardt: The German War which details the German experience of WWII both on the home front and at the fighting using letters and eye witness accounts. It is very different from many other history books and I hope to do some posts on this topic. The question of whether the Germans for instance knew of holocaust or not is an intriguing one.
In the beginning I covered the topics most dear to my heart as they sprung more easily to my mind. That unfortunately have also meant it has been harder to write new stuff. I would like to revisit many of the old blog posts as my writing process has improved and reworking them would make it much more pleasant and informative to read. Reworking will also be coming.
Playing with History 