Hmmm...

[hkellick]

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.

Comments

[draci.livejournal.com]

And I remember when I first stumbled on Chaotic, and it was, to put it succinctly, magical. I had a hell of a time while it "lasted". :) I won't forget that even as I move on with my own life.

*peers..* What's Chaotica? Is this something new? Are you going for another round?

[circa.livejournal.com]

I know how you feel.
I've been offline for 5 months til recently, and after a few weeks I began to realise I didn't really miss anywhere. My time away from offline passed, things happened. I got a new career, began new training... in my free time I went out more, I did things that made me happy. And it dawned on me. For a year or so beforehand I'd been thinking something was lacking from being online.

There were 2 places that meant oodles to me, being online - ChaoticMUX and ElephantMUD. I met my husband on Elephant, and I still go there. But, and it's the same with Chaotic, instead of being involved in conversations or gameplay, I find myself idle, or repetitavely typing who, or finger blah. On neither place now do I have the kinda magical experience I had before.

I'll always remember Chaotic at - to me - it's highest, when I was on for my first year and a bit. Iw was magical, it was full of welcoming people. I knew everyone, everyone knew me, everyone spoke to everyone else. Now, it's mostly in silence when I'm on, and I feel like an outsider. Now, I sit quietly, and discover that even now I've returned, few people on either place has missed me, or welcomed me back.

[lawchicky.livejournal.com]

I know how you feel too.. it's over, our friends are not coming back anymore and it hurts!
I've lost sooooo many old friends that I used to talk to every day, several times a day, and I understand why, it's because we're not online as much as we used to be. I'm as much a culprit of this as my long lost friends. My being on the internet is sporatic at best and most of my time is spent idling, wondering if old friends will miraculously appear.
I've tried hard to get in touch with people, but most of it was to no avail. It's just hard to figure out what to do. The place is still filled with so many memories, but it doesn't have that spark, and then when you try to get the spark back, most people are uninterested.
As I write now I'm idling, watching people connect and disconnect :(

[rhayden.livejournal.com]

I think it's in part the way society is headed. Look at all the games that are springing up, they're all shooters/hackem+slashem games. And that, IMHO, is where all the new players are going. To MUDs and other violent places. The social MU* has become stale, and the ones that haven't are on their way. Can it be fixed? I dunno, because I dunno if it's the users or just the genre.

Like others have stated, when I first discovered ChaoticMUX it was amazing. So many people on, craziness abounded. Now, there isn't as quite as active a player base, and the insanity has left. Who knows why.

And as Draci (?) mentioned, what is Chaotica? I'm interested in what this is. Also, what's SnoopyDance?