Where You Might Be Swept Off To

“It’s a dan­ger­ous busi­ness, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no know­ing where you might be swept off to.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Five years ago, when I launched Man­a­Na­tion, I had naivë dreams of untold riches as I cap­tured a niche mar­ket and gained throngs of fol­low­ers. Lit­tle did I know how dif­fi­cult grow­ing a Magic web­site would prove to be. It became a mon­u­men­tal task to con­tinue to expand, inno­vate and find new ideas for the site. Then two years ago fate decided that it was time to take it to the next level and the site exploded and I was dropped into pos­si­bly the per­fect job for me.

It’s been quite a jour­ney. One that I admit I had no clue where it was tak­ing me. And one that has swept me off my feet.

Today I get to announce a new leg of the jour­ney. One that is a sur­pris­ing and delight­ful turn: Start­ing next month, on Dec. 12th, I will work for Wiz­ards of the Coast as their Con­tent Spe­cial­ist over­see­ing DailyMTG.com.

So in a few short weeks, with a hol­i­day and a major Magic tour­na­ment (World Cham­pi­onships) in the weeks in the mid­dle, Katie and I will be mov­ing to Seat­tle with an epic 6 day cross coun­try road trip. And like every good war-time com­man­der, I’m ready to throw plans out the win­dow at a moment’s notice.

Leav­ing Cool­StuffInc was a tough deci­sion, my bosses and every­one there have been fan­tas­tic — in many ways it’s been my dream job. They gave me almost carte blanche to pur­sue ideas and explore my entre­pre­neur­ial spirit to find new ways to make the com­pany money. I was a one man mad-scientist R&D, the “res­i­dent dreamer” and it has been awesome.

The truth is that Wiz­ards is just about the only com­pany who could pull me away from here. Talk­ing to my bosses and telling them the news is prob­a­bly one of the hard­est things I’ve had to do pro­fes­sion­ally. But, I’m excited at what’s com­ing down the road.

I wrote an arti­cle about this news for GatheringMagic.com, and in it I use a quote from Conan O’Brien: “Work hard, be kind and amaz­ing things will hap­pen.” I can 100% con­firm this is true.