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Aged
Offline
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Mac-Town, Dirty South
Posts: 2,101
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My Absence...
Safe to say this has been a long time coming. While I've been in contact personally with several members concerning the events that unfolded in the last six months, I haven't posted anything in public.
First off, I just want to officially apologize to the guild, its members, and any friends I haven't personally addressed yet in private for what I did - leaving without a word and going completely incommunicado for as long as I did. It was the wrong way to go about things, no matter how desperately it needed to be done. Even a small post outlining what exactly was going on would have made things better, and honestly I'm not going to sit here and offer excuses as to why I didn't, because there are none. I will however, explain the circumstances that I was under when I left.
Around the time of Christmas as we were coming to a stopping point raiding-wise in WoW, my life was essentially a shambles. College would be done in one more semester, I had no job prospects, I spent the vast majority of my time either playing WoW or (as Tyo would say) consuming mental bandwidth planning or working on something WoW or guild related. I was physically and mentally fucked up - couldn't eat right, sleep right, or concentrate for shit - mostly because I was devoting an inordinately large amount of time to the game.
When Christmas break arrived for both school and raiding, I returned home from my apartment. Both my mom and brother were pretty concerned, and really I had tried to hide most of the issues from them for a while. However, when you can't eat Christmas dinner because you're having trouble swallowing because you're supposed to go to bed sometime around 11 am and you've been up 30-something hours...it's kind of hard to hide that you've got a few issues.
My family was dedicated to helping me get better - my mom sat up with me as long as it took and kept me awake to get my sleep schedule back on track. During that time over Christmas far out in rural Georgia - miles away from any computer that was WoW capable, my brother talked alot of sense back into me that I had lost. It was nothing new - I mean, it was stuff I had known all along, but I was just too weak to pull myself out of alone. When I saw how much effort my family was making to help me out, I knew I had to take the opportunity to help myself as well.
I figured that leaving without saying anything would result in people just forgetting about me. I thought not saying anything would be the best way to proceed, as I really didn't feel like making some 'goodbye' post because I didn't really want to say goodbye, I just had to go if I was going to lead a normal life. So I left. A few people contacted Ghaz several weeks later who was the only IRL contact to me. Figuring I would respond at least for Ghazs' sake, I sent one last PM to Agrimat explaining in fairly short terms that my life was fucked and I was trying to get shit back on track - if he could just leave Ghaz alone as a favor, I'd be grateful.
After that, I made a solid commitment to get better. I focused on school, got back on a normal sleep schedule, started trying to eat right again, and tried to live with a gaming addiction. When I saw AOC coming out in beta some time around March, temptation nearly drew me back in, but due to the fact that I had come so far, I wasn't willing to give up what progress I had made at beating the system and finally getting my life back. I was thinking more clearly and feeling better than I had in years. No way was I going to give that up, so to curb the addiction, I played the most boring MMO I could think of - EvE.
EvE worked in that it took little commitment, and there was no way to grind. In WoW, I could always find something else to do because I could infinitely level an alt or do daily quests. In EvE, those who have played it know that due to the way the skill system works (you train in real time) there's no point in playing very often, or for long stints of time. I logged in when I needed a fix and generally kept it to a minimum as I finished out college with a B.A. English.
During this time, my mom encouraged me to apply to grad school. I really didn't think it would work, considering it was too late and my GPA was very unimpressive. However, I managed to pass a series of admission tests on the first shot, and called in favors from the professor contacts I had made for letters of recommendation. I was more stunned than anyone when I found out I had gotten accepted, and I guess it really signified to me that I could live with my addiction and still succeed at life where I wanted to.
Shortly before I was scheduled to move away from the University and Ghaz, we had one last meet where he jokingly gave me Agrimat's cell number. Not thinking about it, I gave him a call right there kind of as a joke just to see what would happen, but we ended up talking for quite a while. He explained a lot to me - how people had reacted, and while some were angry, others were absolutely enraged. I knew at that point that I needed to reconcile sooner or later if I was going to live with myself, and I didn't want to leave behind all the friendships I had made in the 3-4 years I had been around.
After I moved into the new place and got settled, I finally emailed and called Squrf. I later got on TS to explain the situation to a few others personally. Now I'm here.
Please don't take this the wrong way. I am not asking to be reinstated. All I'm asking for is two things: One is for the forgiveness of the people whom I may have offended with the manner in which I left. The second is to not be excommunicated from the guild.
Again, I apologize for doing what I did. I hope that this post sheds some light on things and can help reconcile any enmity that I might have created.
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Tetris Champion!
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