Journal It's Time to Move On

Nihilum

HONEEEEYY? WHERE'S MY SUPER SUIT?!
Getting old’s weird. And not fun.

Turns out that all those stereotypical, perhaps even melodramatic portrayals of depressed adults griping about how you ‘better enjoy your youth while it lasts’ weren’t too far off. It’s a subtle creep; first, you start to have less time for those things you used to enjoy. You pick up that pen, the keyboard, that creative muse less and less – have to worry about this payment, making sure that medical bill is dealt with, arranging appointments, schedules, fretting over your career decisions and whether you actually know what you’re doing. You forget about whatever hobby it was you were so invested in weeks ago; understandable, considering that there’s more important things to worry about. I think it’s exponential. Before you know it, it’s been years since you’ve actively engaged in something that was once a large part of your social life.

I remember RPing from as young as I could manage to slap together vaguely coherent words on a keyboard. Shit, I even LARPed on the playground a couple times in school. Probably why I was the weird kid. I started on those garbage, totally-not-pay-to-win-via-your-mom’s-credit-card adopt sites – you know, the ones with dragons and crap. Always had total edge lord characters, of course. Then it was the Pokemon games on Roblox, then several years and laughably bad prose constrained by text character limits on World of Warcraft, then extremely shady RP ads on Deviantart. Forum RP came some time soon after that, and I recall thinking that it was the best shit ever. Which it wasn’t. But kids have low standards.

It's odd looking back on how much of my life was consumed by RP. I’ll kindly omit the terrible stories of the things I endured in my teenage years, but life was pretty damn rough. Writing extremely gay, extremely trope-worthy characters with a bunch of questionable strangers online became my sort of escape. Like I literally would get in trouble for writing posts under the table on my phone in class, at one point; nothing says quality like not even being able to see what you’re typing because you seriously gotta get that post in before your next class. I spent entire days and nights with back-and-forth posts, borderline stalking my poor partners because I was a ravenous fiend for that next post. I’m pretty sure I would sit there spamming F5 as soon as someone told me they’d have something out soon.

I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words - if not over a million – over the course of my life through RP. I’ve been through every setting you can think of. Eldritch horror. Space pirates. Zombie apocalypses with philosophical moral debates. Dystopian mutant wastelands, high fantasy of every type, classic and fantasy modern, fandoms…the list goes on. I’ve seen almost every character archetype. I can predict how a character will act with startling accuracy, just because I’ve probably seen someone with that exact same concept before. I’ve gone through hundreds of people, partners from all the parts of the world. Hand over the ‘friends in weird places’ bingo card.

And I think that – having seen everything, done everything, with nothing left that could possibly surprise or impress you – is a lethal combination with the onset of the adulthood woes.

I don’t have that fire of youth anymore, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get it back. It’s been a begrudging realization several years in the making. As much as I may try, posting ad after ad after ad, going through all kinds of potentially wonderful partners and writers, there has not been a single instance where I felt the same way as I did back at the start. I get not a sense of excitement nor an eagerness to meet new people and try new things, but rather a sense of dread at having to go through all the motions again. Sometimes, you think to yourself: “Wouldn’t it just be easier to do this myself?”

And once you reach that point, it’s a steady decline from there. You get annoyed by dumb stuff like people not being confident enough to help the story along, this partner being too eager, that partner being too aloof, flat characters and boring backgrounds. You might even throw a fit every now and then, swear off RP for a couple months, engage in a solo writing endeavor, and come crawling back once you remember solo writing sucks because there’s no one to share it with.

But eventually, you don’t come back. The characters you spent years and years developing, ironing out every single little detail and nuance, the relationships and stories you made with them – they stop living rent free in your head. You sort of just forget about them. You don’t draw them anymore, don’t daydream about stupid little scenes with them, and you most certainly don’t sit down and write several thousand words in one sitting about them. They more or less just backflip out of existence, directly into the abyss.

I think the slow atrophy of it all is the worst part. You know it’s time to let it go, but you never imagined that you would have to do that, and you dread what it would be like to not have that big part of your life anymore. And I believe that’s where I currently stand – in denial that this is a hobby that is no longer for me.

The thought of it really startles me. I’ve filled thousands of hours in my life with dumb RP shit. Drawing, writing, shitposting, talking to other people about their characters and making friends that way. What is there to do without all of that to bide your time? What will happen to the friendships I made that revolved around RP? The uncertainty is scary. I’ll have to pick up real adult hobbies…like crossfit, or knitting, or hoarding plants. G-guh.

I guess the upside is I’m sort of a chaotic-neutral pseudo-villain and there’s not very many people - if any - who will notice my absence, asides from a distinct lack of coy trouble stirring in controversial threads. This thread will likely fade off into the void of the usual traffic of a mega RP site, and my forum presence will probably peace out in a similar way. I’m not actually sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

You know what? My attention span’s drifting. Yours probably is too.

I don’t feel as though labelling this as a ‘goodbye’ is right. Feels melodramatic. We all know that regardless of my retirement from RP, I’ll probably still be lurking around somewhere in the dank, dark depths of the forum where the light doesn’t shine. A severely clinically depressed goblin must still have some semblance of tea to survive, after all. And some of those RP discussion threads are too juicy not to watch.

Will the cynical old wizard ever return from retirement? Probably not. Not without some Karate Kid level of necessity, anyhow. Will my characters ever be allotted to someone else? Definitely not. I’m taking these fuckers to the metaphorical literature grave with me. Will this adventure be continued on the next episode? Sorry kid, the production budget ran out and we’ve cancelled the show.

…And as for now?

I’m probably going to sit here and wonder why I spent an hour and a half shitting my thoughts out instead of doing something productive.
 

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