Something I’ve been thinking about....
There is something I have been thinking about a lot lately because of this community. I have been here for a long time, I am one of the few true old school tumblr survivor players who is still very active in the community. Btw this is not me retiring or leaving, so you are all still stuck with me.
Having been here for a long time, I know that ORGs are special. They allow people from different countries, walks of life, and people of different life experiences to play games online, to meet new people, to make new friends. If I didn’t love this community or playing ORGs I would have left a long time ago, and many have. And leaving is not a bad thing, it is not a competition to see who can stay around the longest and it is not a battle for power.
I spent the past week with people that I will consider some of the best friends I have ever had in my life. Some of them I have known for three years. Some I have known for a couple months. Some of them were my friends from the moment we met, and others are people I only recently realized were people I want to be friends with. Some of these people are still super active on Tumblr or other ORGs. Some know nothing about the community anymore.
The point I want to make is that it is not the games themselves that hold meaning. And as someone who spends all their time on ORGs hosting, that is a hard thing to say. I have never left a game with a positive experience because the game was fun if the people in it were terrible. And many of the games I have had bad experiences in were run and hosted perfectly, but it was the other players that tarnished that experience for me.
People join and stay in ORGs for different reasons. But for everyone this should ring true. If ORGs are not fun for you stop playing them. If you find that the people you are surrounded by are not making you happy, or are seemingly toxic, leave them. There is absolutely no reason you should have to endure anything that makes your life harder. I know the appeal of ORGs for people who have depression, or anxiety, or are bipolar, or use ORGs to help with any multitude of reason is something amazing. But if it making any of those things worse you need to stop. Your life and sanity and happiness is too important.
Are you taking ORGs so seriously that friendships are ruined? Are you taking ORGs so seriously that it is having a negative impact on your daily life? Take a break! I have seen so many people play ORGs and stay in the community out of habit, not because they love it. We fall into this trap of coming online every day and talking to the same people because it is habit. When was the last time you were out at school, or work, or somewhere and you thought to yourself “I really can’t wait to talk to this person.” or “I can’t wait to play some games online tonight with my friends.” If you have these thoughts then that is amazing for you! But if you aren’t then why are you here?
I am not a counselor, I am not an expert and any of this, but I have been around long enough to see ORGs be a blessing and curse for people. When you finish reading this take a moment to reflect. Why are you still here? Even if you don’t think any of what I said applies to you. Do it. Why are you still here? Who are the people in the community you don’t want to go a day without speaking to? If this community was a town or a school who would your group of friends truly be? Use this moment as you are reading this post to decide whether or not you want to be here.
Make fun of me forever for saying this, but every single person in this community is special. Every single person deserves love, and kindness, and respect. Not only do each and every one of you deserve those things from others but also from yourselves. Where I work there is this story we use to talk about life. Imagine your life as a bowl of light. It’s not an overwhelming light, just perfect enough. Every time something bad or negative happens to you, a pebble is thrown in your bowl of light. It makes your light dim, it makes you less happy, it makes you less you. But you can remove pebbles from your bowl of light by doing things you love or having happy/positive experiences. Don’t let Tumblr or ORGs put pebbles in your bowl of light. And if it happens every so often, make sure that this is a place that removes those pebbles more often than not.
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