An important message from Hurricane Mikey

I'll let my friend Mikey's message speak for itself.  I know I speak for everyone when I say we wish him all the best, from the bottom of our hearts.

Dear Linda Lou fans--

As I'm sure you're aware, for the past 36 hours or so nobody has been able to access my site, hurricanemikey.com. It was not an accident, I purposely blocked access to it on Tuesday afternoon. No, there's nothing wrong at all, and all is well on the home front. But having spent almost eight years now blogging (don't forget the *original* hurricanemikey site), I think it's time to get away for awhile.

First of all, there are the obvious privacy issues--more and more people out there know too much about me, and not all of them are honorable. So they aren't going to be a bother anymore.

Also, since I left Vegas and moved to Nashville, my life is completely different. Out there, I worked about 20 hours a week and made a decent living, giving me tons of free time to goof off. Choosing not to indulge in all the temptations that Vegas had to offer, that gave me even more time to fill, especially since all of my friends worked different shifts at odd hours. So I had lots and lots of time to write about whatever popped into my head--usually Vegas or poker related, although some popular culture and food/restaurant stuff made the occasional appearance. My keyboard was my creative outlet.

But now that I'm here in Tennessee, surrounded by family and friends, I really don't have much free time on my hands anymore--even though I'm still not working full time. My evenings and weekends are full of activities and goofing off with the sibs, and I started to realize that they deserve some privacy too. Nobody needs to track their movements via my website. Besides, when I'm busy with them, which seems like the case almost all of the time, I feel like sitting at the computer is a waste of time. There are plenty of other things I'd much rather be doing.

Also, since my close call in the hospital this past fall, my outlook on life has changed a bit, and I'm honestly not the same arrogant smartass party-animal drunkard that y'all used to know and love (and hate). I have different priorities now, and I'm still trying to find my 'voice', if you will. The things that appealed to me a year ago don't hold nearly the same interest, and I'm doing my best to try and be a better person in all kinds of different ways. And some good friends pointed out a few character flaws that I wasn't even aware of, which give me even more stuff to work on in my daily life. I'm trying to concentrate on the that nowadays.

I still like to write and I still want to maintain a blog, but right now, I think I just want to take some time off. My heart just isn't into it, and as I go back and read some of the stuff I've written lately, I can tell that I'm totally mailing it in on a lot of recent posts. That's no good--better to put out no product at all than to put out a shiatty one.

As the new year progresses, I'm just concentrating on getting myself together--working on my recovery, starting a new career, and enjoying the second chance that I've been given. I appreciate all of the readers who've enjoyed and commented on my stuff over the years, and I also very much appreciate all the people who hit the tip jar, sent stuff from the wishlist, or donated when it was needed--words alone cannot express my gratitude. It is very humbling to me whenever I think about it, and I feel truly blessed for all of the connections I've made and friendships that have been forged.

But I'm gonna go off the grid a little bit and go back to being a mostly-private person again. I'll be back someday--I don't know when, but this isn't a permanent thing.

A few housekeeping items:

*Everyone* been blocked from accessing my site--I will not be making any updates at all, not even super-secret ones for a handpicked inner-circle, which has been suggested. Even Linda Lou and the family are locked out. Basically the site is going into hibernation.

Also, I know some folks have suggested leaving it partially open so they can read the old Vegas trip reports and stuff, but I'm not going to do that either. Sorry, but I'd have to partition stuff and it's kind of a pain with the blogger software. It's just easier to lock it down and hide the key for awhile.

I won't be totally gone. I'll still be commenting on Linda's site on occasion, I may also pop into T2V here and there (although right now, I'm so over Vegas you have no idea...), and who knows where else I might pop up. Those of you who know of my current interests might find me in some of those topic-related forums out there in the wilds of the internet. Also, if anyone wants and/or needs a guest blogger for their own site, you can still reach me at mikey at hurricanemikey dot you-know-where.

For those of you who I've met personally and know personally, I'm on facebook, too. Send me a friend request if you want to still read whatever pops into my head on a daily basis. Other than that, I'm on sabbatical from the internet. I hope y'all understand.

It's been a good time,

Mikey