If you follow me on Twitter, you've likely heard that today I landed an internship with the Grand Rapids Griffins. If you hadn't heard, well, I landed an internship with the Grand Rapids Griffins.

To get right down to it... what does this mean for BDS? Well, originally, I had assumed they wouldn't want me to continue blogging. However, they were pretty open to it as long as I knew where my boundaries were... but I knew this would limit some of the things I would like to do, so I weighed my options. I considered attempting to add a writer or two to help me out here, or just limiting my "commitments" (BDS/WIM/TOV/HF/etc) or changing my "style" (more breaking news opposed to sometimes long-winded opinions). I thought heavily yesterday about stopping all together. It's my senior year in college, and I want to be able to do well in school to graduate on time, impress some folks with this internship, work a fair amount of hours at my part-time job so I don't graduate college with no money, and just genuinely enjoy my final year of college before the real world creeps up on me. I won't have trouble managing that, but blogging is very much a "spare time" thing for me, and I'll have less spare time. It does take a fair amount of time, and I know the quality would suffer.

When they offered me the position today and said that they had been reconsidering their offer to let me keep going, I had no reservations in agreeing. I felt like it delayed the inevitable -- whether it was later this week, or a month into the season when I realize the blog is being neglected -- it definitely would have been below a fair amount of things on the list of my priorities. The decision was pretty easy to make -- BDS is going on hiatus, indefinitely. The internship goes until the Griffins hoist the Calder Cup in June, at which point I'll re-assess what my post-college life will look like and whether or not it will include blogging.

I don't intend for this to come across as something I'm disappointed with. Quite the opposite, I'm thrilled to get this opportunity. I started a blog because I was bored and wanted people to talk hockey with, and after about a year of having like two regular readers, I finally broke through and developed a nice little following. I took advantage of all the opportunities that came my way -- contributing at Winging it in Motown, getting a paid gig at Hockey's Future, contributing to The Obstructed View podcast, moving to the Bloguin network, meeting some bloggers/readers at H2H, etc. A lot more than I ever thought would happen. And now, in a way, it's helped me find a new opportunity.

I won't be gone, completely. While I won't be here, or at WIM, or likely much on Twitter, my new responsibilities will include writing. I'll be writing game recaps and doing feature stories on the Griffins official team website. They have a lot of cool ideas for the year, so I'd definitely recommend keeping an eye on the website.

To wrap this sucker up, I just want to thank who's reading this right now -- because you're what made this such a rewarding experience. I can only speak on my behalf, but I'm fairly confident that most bloggers are much less important than most people think. Every comment, e-mail, tweet, whatever, really meant a lot to me and made me feel like dedicating a lot of time to talking about hockey with internet strangers was worth it. It kept me going every time I wasn't feeling up to updating it.

It's been fun. Luckily for you, there are a ton of good Wings blogs out there, available on the right. Check 'em out. These will be obvious to anyone who reads multiple Wings blogs, but if for whatever reason you only come here, I'd like to recommend three of the blogs I've enjoyed the most and who have always been the kindest to me. The newly revamped The Production Line (who've just added free agent/retiree blogger Chris Hollis), the always hilarious Brent and Tyler at The Triple Deke, and Christopher Walken-impersonation extraordinaire Casey Richey and company over at Winging it in Motown.

Sopranos'd.