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This is geared towards everyone who takes the time to read these entries (thank you very much!) and just anyone I either RP with or try to stay in contact with on here in one form or the other. This could be one of the most important entries I will ever make on here.
I am going to be very slow in responding to things on here (I mean slower then usual) until I can get what I am working on completely done; I am working on something very major to me, something I consider my life's work. Until this project is complete (and by complete I mean to the point where I hand it off to be taken to the next stage) I just cannot give Gaia the attention I think it deserves. I have some art being done so I will try to be on at least every other day to check updates, trades and PMs but until I get this done I am going to be on Gaia even less then usual. But until I get this done I am officially suspending some of my activities on here. I feel it is far more honest and fair to the people who wait on me to do something then to keep limping along as I have been, making promises that, as it turns out, I cannot keep with things as they currently are.
I am not quitting Gaia but I am shifting every ounce of my focus to something I feel that it is time gets all my energy, focus and time. That means that I will be on to check things, to try to keep up and keep a general feel of the pulse of things but I will not be very "active" or social until I can say with all certainty that my project is done with its current stage.
This is, without a doubt, one of the hardest posts it has been for me to make on here after having to admit to myself that Candle was dying. It has been hard because it feels way, way too much like failure; for years I have been saying I could do everything perfectly and keep every tier of my life perfectly maintained no matter the costs- which was a horrible lie because every tier was already hurt even as I yelled that I had this s**t, everyone needed to calm the ******** down. In reality it was ME that needed to calm down; this post was a long, long time coming. Like certain talks that I should have had with certain people before things progressed as far as they did I really needed to sit down and do this sooner. But I am a prideful turd and you know what comeths before the fall: that is right, because my face was the first thing to hit the wall and hit it hard.
Partially this was a personal decision. I have been spreading myself so thin between work, personal obligations, trying to let the people I love know I actually DO love them, work, keeping the apartment clean (or as clean as possible; more on that in another entry, because I am not just talking about my OCD cleaning- there is an actual reason for my spending so much time on keeping the place clean), work, and all the other, inconsequential-to-others-but-important-to-me minutia of daily living (plus sleep, because I am a lazy person and I love sleep; it would also be nice to start reading again and by reading I mean more then two pages every few weeks) that by the time I tried to focus on Gaia I just often found myself either too tired, feeling too down, or just too damn out of it to have anything good to give. It's not just my RPs that have suffered. My writing, the very thing I feel I came to this world to do, has been seriously maimed these past few years. I have my ideas why but most of it I would not write about on here even if I felt that I could.
Just suffice it to say that my writing has suffered horribly these past few years. When it gets to the point where all I can do is stare at the screen or down at a blank page and either want to cry or find myself doing it- instead of writing- then there is something terribly wrong with me. As a consequence everything else in my life has suffered, too. My relationships (from my day-to-day interactions with customers at work to my most-serious relationships, like to the man I married) either dried up, took some serious beatings or just were killed off, my health plummeted to a new low a couple of years back (because focusing on taking care of one's self becomes too much work when you are running on nothing, or at least it did for me) and my outlook became so grim that I am lucky that I did not do something drastic. If it had not been for certain people I very well would have; I have some very strong beliefs about certain things because of certain people so I was determined to stay as strong as possible even if it would have been better to just blow up and hit someone in the face. I had a lot of very bad thoughts but I held them back by reminding myself that at the end of the day a thought is still and only but a thought.
Partially my decision to officially dial back on my focus on Gaia is because I was finally called out on certain things- my husband, always the one to call me out on my bullshit (a trait I adore, one of the reasons I married him)- pointed out that it seems like I give Gaia more attention then other things. Including the project I am working on.
It occurred to me that he was kinda right (it's the thing I mope about out loud, at any rate- I will b***h and moan about how many PMs I am behind in but hardly every will I say, "My book should have been published four months ago!" wink , kinda wrong since I work on other things more then he sees me (not his fault, I just tend to work on a ton of things without calling attention to them...and I often tend to work on things when he is at work, busy with his friends or asleep; not his fault, as I said, he just hears more about Gaia from me then all my other projects), but at the end of the day the message I took from that comment he made was the utter truth: I have become terrified to touch this product too much, terrified to finish it, so I have wasted a lot of time on other things (not just Gaia...don't get me started on the long nights where Diablo II had all my attention) to avoid the fact that my life's work is potentially nothing but s**t. I was using Gaia as a way to avoid facing that everything I have pinned every star I ever have had on might turn out to be utter and complete s**t.
It may not be. It may end up being everything I ever wanted it to be, but from where I am standing right now it is starting to shape up to be a failure and that idea scares me so much more then anything else ever has. This is so much more to me then just a project- it is my own Dark Tower; to anyone who understands that reference then perhaps you have an idea of how much it means to me that this not turn to dust in my hands. My wanting to be a writer is as much a part of me as the color of my eyes, the shape of my face, the essence of my being; if you break every atom that makes "me" down to their most basic shards then you will still see my will to be a writer is the very heart and soul of me. If you take that away then you have a shell that looks like what you know of as me but I will no longer be home.
So I made a decision a couple of days ago and I told Asai, though I don't think he really believed me (I have been saying I would do this before but a crutch is a crutch is a crutch), but for the moment I am going to officially suspend all my roleplays on here. It pains me to do it (as I tried to explain to him, the reason I get so obsessive about making posts and get so bothered when I cannot is that even if I cannot currently devote all my time and attention and energy and focus to being a writer in "real life", whatever the ******** that is, I can give my all on Gaia to being one...and writing is what I was called to do- what I came down here to DO, damnit. Even if work and other things took away my ability to focus on my book I still had my RPs...but then even that got stolen away after a while.) but those of you who have stuck with me for as long as you have will probably not be shocked about this. You've watched me go from posting faithfully (sometimes hours at a time PER DAY) to probably thinking you will never see a post again from me. I went from daily posts to weekly...to monthly, if people were lucky, to maybe a post every few months. It was not personal, though I think some people believed it was, it was just a result of something inside of me breaking a little. Though I tried to keep things to myself (and did a piss-poor job of it) and though I strove for years to keep There out of Here and Here out of There (which is a hoot, considering I married a man I met on here years ago!) my life offline did bleed and seep into here; Gaia was my sanctuary from all the things bad that I was trying to find respite from and when those walls came down and I no longer could find comfort here...well, it was not pretty. Maybe one day it can become that again but for the moment I feel too guilty to try to seek sanctuary when I have dug the hole for myself that I have dug.
As one of my favorite characters of all time said, it is time to nut up or shut up.
I have spoken before of how it is amazing how salvation (and epiphanies) can come to one from places they would never have expected them and very early this morning I watched something that came at me like a punch to the face. I had to hunt up the exact quotes just now because it was important that I get it right.
Can you not see anything anymore!? Your confidence to climb over any walls! Your own strength you never doubted!
Numerous enemies whom you don't stand a chance against have broken both of those mercilessly!
And then your brother you looked up to as a guide in this sea...Yes, you may have lost many!
Your eyes are being covered by the massive wall called this World!
But you cannot see ahead like that! You are being swallowed in your own guilty conscience!
A character named Jinbei said that from a little series called One Piece- I highly suggest if you have the time and opportunity that you give this series a chance- could have been speaking to me. Take the word brother out of there, replace it with something I am not saying on here, and it was as if the character was yelling this to me.
Because it is true. If you dialed back time just a little while, to a younger version of me, you would find a version that had their fists clenched while in a fighting stance yelling that she is invincible and she can take any hit. Nothing would stop her and she would either break the world or rule it because by God nothing would stand in her way from being a writer and making her life out to be everything she ever wanted it to be. She would make it to the moon if she had to crawl- she had heard the call of a challenge and would take on anything thrown at her and keep smiling.
I've been revisiting her lately. She truly did have the world in her hands and had no idea of it; like the child she was instead of doing what needed to be done she wasted too much time yelling at the world that she was ready to take it on. That's what youth is for, I guess: glorying in one's youth and immortality and shine. It's no wonder we mourn it so when we start to become tarnished by the world; if one lets it the world will take all your shine, beat you completely down and chip away at you until there's nothing left. And for the people out there who dare to dream there is an even worse punishment for you: you get to have your dream pulled forcefully from you and then shattered and stomped on in front of you if you dare to let your hold on it loosen for one moment.
So do not let go. If any of you out there still guard a dream then treasure it and covet it and do not even blink as you guard over it. The world's place is to try to take it from you. Your place is to make sure it does not.
But we all have weaknesses and while I have not been completely felled, I will say that every weakness I ever had was struck repeatedly these past few years; every challenge I ever threw the world was thrown right back at me and sometimes I feel like the ones I loved the most were the ones that were hit the hardest because of my pride and refusal to bow my head.
But I have taken all those hits and I still stand though my armor has been shot to s**t and I stumble a lot now. I have scars now. I am missing chunks of myself, most of the days I find it not even worth it to try to plaster the wounds and at my worst I spend more times looking at my hands then trying to let the words flow through them. And that horrifies me the most, somehow: because if I do not live up to every ounce of potential I may have ever had then I would have failed not just myself but every person out there that ever truly believed in me. And I do not like letting people down. I have a lot of pride in my integrity and to me that means being someone who keeps their word. I am not perfect but if there is any kind of salvation for me and for this life then it will be in doing what I came here to do. Nothing more and for damn sure nothing less.
But you know what? Even after everything, to quote one of my favorite poems, my head is bloodied but unbowed. Though I am old enough to know what kind of trouble I am calling down on myself I still can look up at the world and know I am not out yet. I took my hits and did my time but I am still standing and still here and so I am going to see this through to whatever bloody, bitter end I reap because I refuse to back down and give up. There is too much at stake.
I did not make it this far to give up now. I have not survived to this point to give it all up now and blame the world, or the people around me, or whatever popular reason it is that people give for not living up to their potential. So even if it kills me to do so (and there have been days, friends and neighbors, when I am pretty sure it is going to) I am going to see this through to the end.
I will find my Dark Tower, and breach it, and I will climb to the top.
 RadiantFlare · Tue May 08, 2012 @ 12:00am · 4 Comments |
