Realization of my LOA's and a confession

[Ignatius]

So, Recently, I have found something out. To be honest, I feel kind of stupid for only realizing it now. Either way, let me begin. (TDLR at the bottom)

When I first started on this site three years ago, I started with very basic characters with very little wiggle room. And honestly, they sucked. I think the only two living characters from back then are Jorn/Kaylr and Darren/Aramir. I enjoyed roleplaying them. So much fun. Even at times where I had gotten into arguments over stupid crap like Godmodding, and getting mad over powers I, or someone else, could or couldn't use. And to be honest, in hindsight I was more of the child than anyone else there.

I still look back on some of those threads thinking. "Was I really like that?" And sometimes, I have to tell myself that I was that way because I was still learning. There were so many times where I could see that I clearly crossed the line. Myself now would be yelling at my younger self and kicking him in the ass because of how stupid I was. During that time, I never left the site. I mean, seriously. I didn't leave the site for more than a week at a time. I think the longest I had was when I was in boyscouts and I took a 3 week long trip to a place called Philmont. (Biggest camp in the united states. In the Mountains in New Mexico) And while there, I had so many ideas going through my head, I mean, really. Instead of writing letters to home about how great it was, I mailed letters home of lists of what I could do on the site. *wow was I insane then.*

And then my Senior year of Highschool came. For those of you who do not know, I had a cousin who owned this same account now. We shared it back and fourth and would work together on it. Seriously we would call each other and talk about it, or we would rift off of one another. And my cousin went on a Mission. *Mormon Missions are where they go somewhere else for two years to spread the word of wisdom* And so he left. Leaving the account to me. And well, that was almost a year ago now actually. He left in August of 2013. And when he came home, he still reads the threads I did, and the characters I made. But I was so far ahead of him, there was no way he was going to catch up. In fact, he didn't want to RP anymore.

He told me that before my Senior year. So I lost interest. I built the characters I have today for him. It hurt to hear him say that. It really did. And so I started to slowly lose my muse. I would take a week off here. Maybe a few days here. Argue with people on the site. I lost control. So I got off. I also left at that time about a damn, about two years ago actually because I got a girlfriend. And I fell. Oh I fell madly in love. We both did.

I had decided that real life was more important to me than the site. People would always be on line. My accounts would still be there if I wanted them. So I left. Was gone from about January of 2015 till about May of the same year. I decided to check the site. School was ending, and I thought I could give it another go. So I did. However, I didn't realize how much I had affected people on this site. Morna had a wife with a possible kid on the way. Xander had a soon to be wife and actually had a kid on the way. Zoey just became a Master of the force, and was growing stronger everyday. But I left in January.

I am sure it killed some of the writers to see me go. I know so because I even had a few people contact me off site and asked for me to come back! But I had school. And after school, like I said above, I tried again. Stayed for about a month, then dropped from the face of the planet. I had work. I started having two jobs. Working at a local Walmart, Working at a Local Gun shop, and then had part time online classes. I literally had no time for play. I hardly had time for my girlfriend! And this is the kicker.

I thought I was doing something right. In truth, I wasn't. After so much stress in my life, after a near death accident, and a breakup that tore me from the inside out, I came back. Because I trusted, and loved the people here like a family. Sure, I may not like some of the way people acted. But its like one giant family. You won't like your siblings for a few days after they steal your food. Well, I won't like you on here because you broke my lightsaber on an insta-hit.

Same deal. And after so many bad things happened all in a row, all within a year, I broke down.

Here I sit. Trying to calm myself down when I have to take my dog of 17 years old to the ER to see why she is breathing so hard. And she is hurting from a baseball sized tumor. I stopped, and breathed in. Thinking about how I promised [member="Maya Carrick"] a post. how I promised others I would do it as well. Because just like I was as a kid, I had so many ideas, I had to put them down somewhere. My mind after coming back from almost a year of not writing needs something to do.

So, I come now before you all on the interwebs, our lord and savior of knowledge, and imagination, asking for help. I have so many ideas. So many things to do. And I want to get them all down in some place. So, I will continue to RP when I can. Work will dominate my life when I get this stupid cast off of my right leg, and deal with my works insurance that is still denying my claim, but I will do what I can with who I RP with.

I ask for help to get my ideas down onto the site. Putting a jumbled mess of puzzlepieces into place in the correct order so I, and others, can enjoy their time here, So, here is my plan.

I will play these characters as my main accounts.

Nick Imura
Zephyr Carrick
Zoey Marix,

And the accounts I will look at, at least once or twice a day with ONLY one or two threads will be
Xander Carrick
Aramir Eldarion
Darth Ansem

The rest of my accounts are just there in limbo. They won't be used. And I will limit myself to these extremes. I ask that you guys help me so I don't explode from my want to type fast, and read even faster. If you want to know more about what has happened in my past two years that has brought me to this point, Just ask, or contact me. I am a fairly open guy. If you want to RP or help me get ideas down, even if they will not be used for my characters, I will be happy to lend information of any kind to anyone. Seriously. Just ask, and you will receive at some point.

Thank you all for those who read my entire rambling of the past few years, and the reasoning behind all of this. For those who skipped to the bottom,


TDLR( Mind is going crazy with ideas. been a little messed up here and there. Need help keeping it under control. Limiting myself to 3 mains, and 3 minor characters. Want any sort of question or information? Ask away.)

 

[Ellie Mors]

I understand this really well.

I can give you advice after I get home from work.

 

[Mara D'Lessio Merrill]

[member="Zoey Marix"]

Balance your priorities, cut yourself some slack, relax a bit, and recognize that RP can be a really, really good mechanism for coping with stress. I kid you not, writing on Chaos got me through the hardest parts of grad school. Just chill, have some fun when you can, and don't be afraid to write a ton if you're covering all your IRL bases.

 

[Ignatius]

[member="Braith Achlys"], I wouldn't mind in the slightest. And yes, I will keep up my duties as a Factory Judge. I signed up for it, And I intend to finish it.

[member="Mara D'Lessio Merrill"], Thats what this is. An attempt to get everything in line. Right now, I am waiting for stuff to happen IRL so I can deal with this now since I have the time. Thank you for the advice. And trust me, not afraid to write, just afraid to lose my ideas.

 

[Nymeria Vizsla]

You're great and I hope you call me a friend as I do to you. I read the whole thing, and I respect you a lot. I love how writing has always been there for you, and I relate as it has been there for me.

Only good feels for you buddy.

 

[Ellie Mors]

[member="Zoey Marix"]
I'm not worried!

Spoiler: Stuff you can skip over, or read for context

I work in the restaurant and hospitality industry in a job where I work anywhere from 7 to 15 hour days (sometimes more, if you consider leaving work and coming back 4 hours later to be "off time") and generally my ability to keep up with people in threads suffers incredibly because of it. Just this last week I've racked up more hours than the sous chef, who is essentially the only person I answer to besides my boss (the chef).

Couple that with my parents' divorce and their little proxy war of using me as their outlet for dealing with each other and my actual drive to RP is pretty non-existent. There's some other stuff that I don't share, neither with people I write with nor the board in general, that have effected me for a longer time than either of those issues, but those two are constantly what keep me from logging in besides checking my phone every few hours at work.

So I understand the mental stress real life can put on you, plus the whole sucky adult thing of having a job (luckily I love working back-of-the-house in restaurants, so I have less of a hard time for that), and most of these things (like getting the job and subsequent promotion and my parents' divorce) happened to happen right when I became comfortable with writing more than one character!

So here's what I have decided to try doing (this doesn't work during weeks like mother's day week/end for me):

• Spoiler

  Organize "Character days"
  Can't keep up with more than one character on any given day? Write replies to each character the following day in a rotation. So if I write posts with Braith today, I'll write posts with Lily tomorrow, and so on (though Lily gets a post from me every day I'm able because reasons). Right now I've thinned my characters to mostly just Lily and a post here and there with Braith or Bianca (though, to be fair, it's mostly because the people I've been writing with have gotten busy, too) but a few weeks ago I was doing a post a day with Lily & Bianca & then one with Braith whenever a thread was waiting on my reply.

Spoiler

[*]Prioritize threads & limits

• I know playing favorites is a "horrible" thing to do, but it's the best way to keep your characters alive. Keep a thread limit for each individual character, like maybe four or five (depending on how easy posting is for you, writing anything nowadays is like force-feeding for me so I generally say two or three), and then decide which characters or threads you write with are the most important. Then focus on those. For example, [member="Alric Kuhn"] is my priority post receiver. He'll receive any post from me when I am able, and generally if I can only post to one thread that day (or week, like this week) it will usually be to him (unless he doesn't reply, in which case he gets some kind of random message to make him pay more attention). @Cira could have been a priority if she ever posted, and other stuff following that kind of get responded to like I would normally respond to a thread.
  
  The priority just helps me make sure the threads that are super-important to me or my characters (like Lily spending time with her father) stay alive, which keeps the character alive, too. That way when I have less busy days but don't feel totally into posting, those threads can motivate me to keep going to other ones. Like a motivational booster. Not sure if this is a problem for you, but it helps for me and I'm sure the idea of prioritizing posts can be beneficial to you.

[*]Don't be too open to threads

• This one sucks for me, because when I joined the site I was writing in 23 threads simultaneously with just Silara (my original MC). As soon as work started that went down as threads finished, but still was maintained at around ~10 active threads (I completed 30 some-odd threads in little over a month here) and easily made the silly posting schedule that [member="Alric Kuhn"] & [member="Danger Arceneau"] look like a normal every-day thing. But work got busier and getting posts to people got harder. Then RL stuff happened and I didn't even like having to write out a character that was written to be a way worse-off person than I had been IRL. So as life got harder IRL, posting suffered her, and being in 10+ threads at once was like the ultimate example of what getting "weeded" in a restaurant can be like. I couldn't handle it, and it was really hard to come to that realization.
  
  Even when I did, I still got slower posts than normal, and eventually posts were once a month with any character to anyone. I went the entire first quarter of this year without any RP being done after February 12th until I started writing with [member="Alric Kuhn"]/[member="Kurt Meyer"] with my character Bianca (which was, for a while, the only character I was RPing on). Some people thought it was because I was prioritizing threads too much, but in reality I wasn't even writing to the people I was prioritizing - I lived in the factory during this period and even contemplated stepping away from the forum and just not RPing anymore because I've done it before elsewhere.
  
  So it's really important to make sure you don't burn yourself out with too many threads, even the most active and able minds can struggle to get back that momentum once it has been exhausted. Like I said above, thread limits aren't bad. Don't start too many new threads.

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[Ignatius]

[member="Braith Achlys"], Thank you very much for that. I will keep this thread bookmarked should I need information like this again.

 

[Tmoxin Temi]

You and I have only threaded a little, but I want to give you virtual hugs! Braith's posting tips make total sense, and I have nothing else to add except to take care and be well. I've lost pets and family members over the last year and it's very, very hard and my heart goes out to you.

I've also struggled recently myself with RP time vs. RL time. *looks at my own LOA post*

My only advice is to be selfish. Even though this is a collaborative environment, sometimes you have to focus on the threads you are really interested in, and the rest will fall into place. And yeah, it sometimes means you have to choose favorites, but at the end of the day it's about cultivating strong and respectful writing partnerships. It sounds like you have those already and your focus can be on maintaining them.

[member="Zoey Marix"]