Posts made by Caryatid

I have a master level in procrastination: it's taken me a year to write this. I'm writing it partly to reassure anyone who has been worried (I am still kicking) and to say my good-byes to the mu* community at large.

The last two years have challenged everyone. I'm a first responder working in a low vaccination area and have been toe to toe with COVID, with the public and in some cases with my own family. I was already playing naughty games with burn-out (iykyk) in mu*ing when the pandemic hit. It sped things along and highlighted that I was looking for things I couldn't consistently find in the hobby. Then one by one my family starting cycling through the ICU with various health threats because everyone I'm related to believes in "go big or go home" and couldn't settle for normal ER visits or hospitalizations. I'm the only one who's managed to not get admitted in the past year so it's fallen to me to be the caretaker. We lost someone this summer. Everyone else is back home and recovering but the latest insult from the universe is that one of my parents has been diagnosed with Alzheimers. It's been a long road. It's going to be a much longer one ahead.

During the past year I told myself I was going to give myself the time to rest, recover and return to mu* ing as I always have since I was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed teenager back in the 1990s. Maybe it would take a little longer than my usual hiatuses but I did expect to come back. With the year coming to a close, I've come to realize that isn't going to happen. The demands of life on my heart, my mind and my spirit are too much to consider coming back...and aside from that, the long time away has helped me to recognize what I really want and need from life if you'll forgive the somewhat pat and cliche sentiment. Mu*ing was there when I needed a creative outlet, an escape, a conduit to other people. It's been the most stable and reliable multi-layered drug I could have taken during a life that has been neither stable or reliable.

I love building worlds with other people but sometimes I loved building lives that weren't mine a little more than I should have. Still I wouldn't trade all of those years. I'm grateful to the worlds I lived in, the stories I contributed to and to the people who wrote with me. Thank you, those of you who were a part of my career in these worlds. I really do hope I'm leaving more fond and happy memories than sour ones.

It was fun though, wasn't it? Griping about the sour memories too. I see you there, Hog Pit.

Keep the stories rolling and do your best to dodge the drama, guys. Thank you.

Edit: I decided not to be a crybaby on Christmas.

@JinShei Oh, that hurts.

@GangOfDolls said in MUSH conflict... sad face?:

@ThoughtBubble

I think @GreenFlashlight has a good way of explaining that it can be a mix of things.

The thing that I can advise which takes some time and grit and fortitude even when it feels like you don't have any to summon is to try and seek out one or two people that you know in the community who is apart of this issue but has enough information to make an assessment.

I would ask them for candid feedback about what they view might be happening. I would commit to making it clear that you're asking with good intent and further to commit to not react poorly, get angry at them, or otherwise, shoot the messenger. And they might say some things that are painful to read (but they also may not!) but do your best to just take it in as information and nothing more in the moment. You can have assessments and emotional value judgments later but often how we feel about what's being said and what's being said can be very different things, and one can drown out the other in the moment.

I think it's sometimes better to ask people who aren't quite friends but not people with whom you're in conflict with and have no skin in the game, as they won't avoid saying things to avoid hurting your friendship. But at the same time, I wouldn't pick out people who are overly blunt or indelicate for the sake of being so.

And then just kind of sit with it for a while. Sometimes the feedback ends up being right once you're done sort of processing it and taking it all in. And sometimes it's not actually accurate and you're free to file it in the circular file.

I'm quoting this because it's good advice. For many, many years I have felt this way. Sometimes it's been in my own head, sometimes it has legitimately been others freezing me out. When that stew is simmering in your brain, it's difficult to assess what's actually happening.

I have a number of friends but there's only one or two whose judgment I trust with this sort of thing. Our friends want us to be happy so when I come to them and say, "My brain is telling me this, I'm really down/hurt/angry about it," their instinct as people who care about me is to want to make me feel better. They will say it's rejection dysphoria (sometimes it is!), or not me at all (sometimes it isn't!), or that 2020 is a nightmare hellscape seemingly custom designed to suck our very souls out through our pores and leave us as shivering puddles of gooey and sentient misery (it is!).

But the one or two friends I know I can trust for a balanced response will say these things and also tell me "I think you are conflating a lot of different stressors and pinning it on this online issue because it's a lot safer right now to freak out about this online issue than it is to aim that mental and emotional energy at the greater real world, especially if you don't feel like spending the next six months in a jail cell."

They tell me "Yes, this seems like a hurtful situation and I understand why you feel harmed by it."

They tell me "No, you're not crazy, these comments seem innocent but I can see why you read them this way right now. Here is how I read them, let's figure out if the truth is somewhere in between those two points or outside of them."

They tell me "Whoa, I haven't seen you react this strongly before to something. Let's breathe together for a minute and when you're feeling stronger we can pick this apart."

Every one of those examples are things I've been told over the years. I'm grateful to have these sounding boards and I try to be the same for them. Nothing was fixed or solved or made better in the moment but that's usually the first step towards me coming back to a more constructive place, to adjust my behavior or expectations or thoughts. Or, sometimes, to realize I actually am in a toxic situation and didn't realize it at the time.

The first time I heard someone pose this question was in 1999. If they perfect gene therapy in my lifetime, I expect to hear it asked in 2099 too and maybe, just maybe, by then I'll have a schedule that allows me to RP whenever I feel like it.

@Ifrit Yep. Miss one round of repetition and it's gone, it doesn't matter how long I've been doing it.

I would play the hell out of this.

I have lost a child and long-beloved pets. I grieved for them all in very, very similar ways. It is very alike. @badger, be easy with yourself. I'm so sorry for your loss but also glad she was so loved. All my hugs to you.

@Livia

Updated again, finally. I'm a slacker, what can I say?

@Jennkryst brb looking for the grapefruit video that was more what came to mind...

@Wretched Yeah ain't no way I'm sharing all of my kinks and preferences here. My best friends don't even know all of those because 1. Ew, and 2. Who wants to lose friends over being savagely aroused by fruit fucking (for example only. Fruit fucking does nothing for me).

(or does it?)

Telepaths. Oneironancers (dream walkers).

Mrow.

It's a rare thing to get satisfying closure on a character's story. But then the folks still around after she's gone go and do something SO SWEET and SO TOUCHING that after my worst weekend in awhile, I'm reduced to sniffling like a little kid at the gesture.

Y'all are amazing.

Tragic. I wonder who laughed at his unsolicited dick pic and started him down this sad, sad road.

@zKraken I'm on Arx at the moment, and working on characters for Savage Skies and NOLA but I am slow as molasses in chargen. XD

Hey, I remember Jakob! Nora here. It's good to see you around!