I have an embarrassing announcement to make.
Over Christmas I felt very strongly that I needed to leave the internet. I felt that I was wasting my time, damaging my mental health, and making the quality of discourse here noticeably worse.
I ultimately set aside these feelings, attributing them to a passing offense. I vowed to commit to my plans to avoid embarrassment and regret.
However, having woken up this morning, the first of 2022, I felt nothing but regret.
I had at one point considered that this thread could be my redemption in this community, and that I could grow into a valuable member of it by sacrificing a great deal of time and, frankly, a non-negligible amount of money. However, given some comments I've read and agreed with, I no longer see this to be the case.
Here's the headline: "Direct Speculation League" and all multimedia content are cancelled. I again have to express my embarrassment that I overpromised yet again, but I woke up feeling like I'd trapped myself doing pointless work and deeply committing myself to a community in which I no longer feel happy.
I will continue to "run" the Direct thread, updating the OP with non-specific allusions to rumors as I had long ago, and I will keep track of #TeamDirect because of its relatively high engagement and how much easier it will be to run.
The bottom line is that I need to spend less time online, not more. I have tried to deny this for a long time, but given how terrible I feel this morning I can no longer ignore what I need to do to feel safe.
I'm very sorry to anyone who was interested.
Raccoon
they all sounded like interesting ideas, but you were definitely putting too much on your plate!
and you
do provide valuable discourse (and humor!) and discussion
but don’t work yourself to death to feel like you’ve contributed something —
you already are contributing something.
be here as much or as little as you need to be, we’ll miss you if you’re away but always support you.
I think (as someone who has struggled with this myself) you sometimes end up with an all or nothing mindset — you either have to overdo it or it doesn’t count. but we value your presence here
organically. just be you, and be here, or don’t be here!
and this thread, too, is an organism. we’re all just swirling in the soup and doing some mycelium bullshit. guidance is good, but overstructuring can create a lot of problems for you and others
do what you can for
you, try not to be as hard on yourself, and find what you enjoy both offline and here. follow what feels right and listen to your deeper intuition. things don’t need to be overengineered, and many things cannot be “changed” to make them better for you — your approach, however, can change
I know this probably all sounds like a lot of bullshit and I don’t think I phrased it very well, so sorry if this sounds like “bruh peace out and bliss your hot dog” or whatever
but as someone who has been a lot of dark and haunted places, who has lived through hell, who had a dark childhood and extremely present mortality and countless brushes with suicide (my own and others), who is doing math and gymnastics on my mental health and physical health constantly…
you are doing what you need for you
and we are happy to be in your thread even if it is changing from your original vision
and beneath the screaming and scraping there is a voice in you that knows how things make you feel and can tell the difference between what you’re enjoying and what you’re not
even when most things are a duality of good AND bad, enjoyable AND awful, worthwhile AND not… there are relative amounts and looking for the quiet in the brambles can help you feel out what’s right for you
cheers and happy 2022, we’re glad to be here and happy that you’ll do what you need to do
sincerely,
𝖘𝖚𝖘𝖜𝖆𝖛𝖊
