I think you go through phases when you become disenchanted with your job. Right now, I am disenchanted, and it has reminded me of a deeper part of myself that I’ve been neglecting. A passionate part that isn’t connected to success or ambition at all (perhaps because I have little faith in the odds of being successful if I were to do this activity professionally). It’s the writer side of me. I miss characters and words, which pretty much feels like I’ve been neglecting a private side of my soul for 6 years in an effort to be somewhat normal or not a shut in. It didn’t work. Still a shut in.
I’m the type of person that gravitates towards what those around me do and if I’m just by myself, that pretty much means nothing. Anyways, reminded that I have a soul…that’s been neglected…and that it likes writing, do I start up a story? Do I start writing poetry every day? Do I start reading more again?
Nope. I start MUSHing again. The world is ending. MUSHing was my biggest guilty pleasure in college. It’s like that dirty secret you hide from the respectable world, the ultimate escapist activity that makes you instantly weirder than 99.9 percent of the population no matter how normal the rest of your life is (and not necessarily weird in a good way). It’s what you hide from your spouse until they think you’re a dirty perv who is cheating on them over the internet. I know I’d like to say that I’m going back to it because I genuinely love MUSHing (and I do), but the real reason is I’m lazy. Laaaazy. If pulp fiction is the 2 buck chuck of writing, MUSHing is like my box o’ wine…and my box o’ wine for when life is oh so boring. It’s so much easier and fun to cook up a character and escape to the world of…hold for it, HARRY POTTER, then to go out and deal with the douches and clubs and social crap of today. Does that mean I won’t go out and deal with those things? That I won’t go and find that special someone or travel? Not now (maybe it did when I was stuck at a private christian college where acting on being gay was grounds for expulsion). It just makes me a lot lazier when I have an excuse.
For those of you who have not been exposed to MUSHing and are like, “What the hell is this chick talking about?”…
…let’s say you love Harry Potter (like I begrudgingly do, but shamelessly as well). You could log into a text based game that is based on Harry Potter which would allow you to create a character in that world. You write the back story, come up with what that character looks like, and then you get to go make your character interact with other people’s characters. For instance, you can go into a “room” that has a description, say the Leaky Cauldron and start a scene with other characters. You interact by doing what is called posing, which is broadcasting a 3rd person action to the room (typically this is anywhere from 3-5 sentences). And then other people in the room take turns posing their characters. Sounds weird? It’s addicting, and if you let it, it can consume a lot of your free time. Think of all the plots…the adventures… You don’t have to have played with dolls when you were little or rampantly watch soap operas to get into this (maybe being a self-hating Grey’s Anatomy fan helps) kind of thing. It’s like choose your own adventure on steroids and completely free form.
OH GODS WHY?!
I’M DOOMED.
