Hmmm...

This WAS going to be a nice long post. A happy one. I'd planned on starting by mentioning that I'm finally under 280 lbs. (about 279 now) and still going down.
Then I was going to go into a long rambling speech about exercising and how it's a win-win situation and stuff like that.

Truth be told, I just don't feel like talking about that anymore.
What I want to do talk about is friendship. And how far should a person go to keep the friends he has.

For me, the question is one I've asked a few times before, but with different twists.
How much does one PLACE mean to me. That place, of course, is ChaoticMUX.
I've asked this under a large set of differing circumstances. Anger, hopelessness, despair as well as hope and happiness.
For those of you who don't know.. ChaoticMUX is a little place on the internet that I helped carve with my own two hands (well.. at least it feels that way. What i really did was be a large part of it growing up and moving.)
Everything's fallen apart in the span of near three years.
Staff uphevals, periods of unrest, periods where no one did ANYTHING. You name it, it went wrong.
ChaoticMUX was everything to me once.. it was a home, a hangout and a place I could kick back and relax and enjoy the company of friends.
It's not.. it hasn't been for a couple years.
My friends have steadily left ChaoticMUX. They've moved on, grown up and gotten busy.
Most of those friends were fellow staff members and when they left, they took large portions of ChaoticMUX (in a less than completely literal sense) with them.
No one will ever fill up the voids left by these people.. and that upsets me.
Somewhere along the way I was filled with despair as my baby, the place I had created with my own two hands crumbled and fell apart and I was left powerless to DO anything about it.
And so ChaoticMUX became not a place I was proud of adminning (or for that matter did ANY adminning whatsoever) but a place I could be with friends and enjoy their company.
Of course, that has changed too.
As stated earlier, my friends have grown older, moved on. I can't be angry for their becoming busy. They all ahve perfectly good reasons. Life has just gotten the better of them.
But now I spend most of my time online idling. Waiting for friends to show up and have time to chat and be amusing.
I'm having very sobering thoughts.
Voices scream in my head to grow up, get real. My friends aren't coming back. I'm not developing new ones this way.
This is not to say I want to lose contact with them. I don't.. but i've found less active ways to be in contact with them.
Right now, every friend I talk to on a regular basis on Chaotic is HERE, on Livejournal. They read my rambling posts (or don't) and they know what's up in my life.
There are other things in my lives... things i wouldn't give up. For those who knows what this means.. I plan on moving Chaotica along regardless of whether or not I leave Chaotic because Chaotica is something I'm really excited about. Something i want to be a part of.

I don't know what to do about Chaotic. The voices in my head tell me to move on. Find better things to do with your time than idling on a MUX being bored and hoping friends will show up.
The voices are right. This is what I should do.
There *IS* a part of me, though, that suggests that if I do leave Chaotic I'll never come back. This used to be a voice that argued against me leaving.. telling me to just hang tight and wait for everything to get better.
Except it hasn't.
Kareila left ChaoticMUX for real life and despite what she's said many times in the past, I don't believe she's coming back. Not really.
arabella left ChaoticMUX. That's probably my fault as much as anything else.
scoob left ChaoticMUX. Partly my fault.
Soreth is still there.. and Marky and Scotty and people I do consider friend. But they have each other (Scotty and Marky, Lain and Soreth) and they have their lives.

This is not a pity party. Please don't get into a "Oo.. don't leave we love you." sort of attitude. This is me simply realizing that I'm not recieving anything on ChaoticMUX I don't get from Snoopydance or Livejournal.
I mean, on one hand I DO miss the live conversations but I can't say like i feel like I'm GETTING those anymore.
My comments have become inane... insubstatial and meaningless. Maybe it's safer that way. When I'm being odd and strange, I don't piss people off and make them leave Chaotic. But then, when I'm being odd and strange, I'm not having any interesting conversations either.

I don't know. I really don't KNOW what's best for me anymore. I've left Chaotic and come back before. I don't know.
I'm not sure I WANT to come back to things as they are.
Nor do I have the pwoer to change them.

To all my ChaoticMUX friends

I've thought long and hard about my post.
Truth be told, i am more than a little upset that scoob and ara don't come to Chaotic anymore.. for.. whatever the reason.
I miss those I consider my best friends alot. And I'm horribly upset that they don't come to Chaotic, for whatever the reason.
Leaving Chaotic would only compound the issue, though. I'd be doing exactly that which i am upset about. And so I shan't do that.
I *DO* need to get in the habit, though, that instead of idling on ChaoticMUX bored, I should do something else.. play a video game or work on Chaotica or SOMETHING.
So.. that's the plan.
I shan't leave Chaotic because I still have too many friends there..
and I'll work on keeping myself busy when no one is on and etc.
Plans are good.