A couple of major changes have happened to my problogging in the past few weeks. One of them was my choice, the other was dropped into my lap from thin air.

The first, I resigned my post on PlanetEye Traveler, writing about Philippine Culture and Travel. It was just time for me to let it go.

The other one is harder to adjust to. Early this week, the entire entertainment channel of b5media was shut down. About 50 bloggers were given the boot, not considerately, locking us out of our blogs without even the chance to say goodbye to the communities we built.

And so, Merry Royals was wrest away from me, just like that. Sure, it wasn’t truly mine, but I built that site from scratch. I even thought up the domain name (which I love!) and, save for a couple of guest posts, was written solely by me. I understand economics and dwindling ad revenues, but the firings could have been handled much more graciously. I shed a few tears over what happened, but I’m glad to say I’m now steadily working out the shock of it.

I believe the loss of the entire entertainment group is a big one for the company. Five years of SEO, talent and contacts thrown out the door. Quite difficult to understand that decision, really. In the end, though, maybe it’s all for the better. There are some top-rate writers in that group, with loyal followers who will (and have!) followed the writers to their own new sites. As one of the writers put it, b5 just might have empowered these bloggers to branch out on their own and finally be their own bosses. And that is always a good thing.

I do take several positive things from my b5 experience. I remember the early days of the company, when we were all passionate and excited and were a real community of bloggers. I have good memories of tetris tournaments.

I learned my blogging chops from the best. And, most of all, I made great friends. You’ll learn more about them in the coming days and weeks. We’re all just rather busy at the moment, reorganizing and restructuring our own endeavors. This is one tough (and wonderful and talented!) group of bloggers who are far from crushable. You haven’t seen the last of us, I promise.

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