…

Leaves are falling all around, It’s time I was on my way.
Thanks to you, I’m much obliged for such a pleasant stay.
But now it’s time for me to go. The autumn moon lights my way.
For now I smell the rain, and with it pain, and it’s headed my way.

So I’ve got to ramble on.

This is one of those entries where I have no idea what I’m going to say when I start it. Most entries have a point, a structure. A series of paragraphs leading to a conclusion. That sort of thing. This one, this one I’m rambling, and I don’t know where it will end up.

I had a tweet a while back about my ideal guild. It was one that had two raid teams, both of which needed a fire mage, raided from 8-11 my time on various days, and RPed. I wondered if I would be able to get anything close.

Red Royal Trading was close. They had two raid teams, both of which needed a fire mage. They RPed. The only difference was that they raided from 10-1 my time, which was okay on the weekends but didn’t really work during the week. Although I never really gave that a shot; lately I had been staying up until 1 during the week anyway.

I think that just reflects a poverty of the list more than anything. Obviously I want something different because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have left in the first place. Would I have? Obviously not.

There’s one blog entry of mine I find myself coming back to now: Want vs. Need. There, I said, among other things:

One of the things I like most about playing the game as a social activity is the feeling of being wanted. I really enjoy it when people say they want to run with me, or implicitly indicate that by asking to run with me on unscheduled runs. I can tell, for instance, when Leafie wants to run with me by either her reactions to things I do, or simply because she’s running with me when she could be doing something else. It’s a good feeling.

I won’t kid around. I’ve said for a while now that the reason I left my guild was because I wasn’t having fun. That was a dodge. It was undoubtedly true, but it’s a step removed from a much better explanation. I wasn’t having fun because I wasn’t feeling wanted. For the longest time in RRT I felt like I was wanted. Maybe even cherished. But lately I felt unwanted.

For some people that was true. It’s very easy to see yourself as unwanted when that’s what you focus on. It’s very easy to see yourself as unwanted when you look at yourself and think “my dps is crap, at the bottom of the heap”.  It’s very easy to see yourself as unwanted when someone makes a chance comment about there being too many people on a particular token. It’s very easy to see yourself as being unwanted when you hate where you are, when you hate your particular RP circumstance, and ultimately, when you don’t want yourself.  When you go through a bout of depression it’s very easy to see anything, any small little thing, that confirms your opinion of being worthless and horrible and hateful and unwanted.

Of course, that’s not really true. It’s certainly not the whole story.

Synelyse wanted me. She wanted me to be in the raid group. She wanted me to be in the guild. She wanted to RP with me. She wanted to have fun with me, because she knows that when I’m in a good mood and when I’m cheery I can be the best friend in the world to her. More than that she knows that the two of us have shared pains and joys for the past three years now, something I once said I wanted to continue for the rest of my life.

Anivile wanted me. She wanted me to be her companion in RP. She wanted me to teach her how to be a better mage. She wanted to talk to me, laugh with me, run instances with me, raid with me, and do just about anything. She wants to be my friend and she wanted me in the guild with her.

Darishea wanted me.  She wanted me to RP with her. She wanted me to run old world instances to help her get RP outfits. She wanted to show me the RP outfits she created. More than anything else I think she wanted me to be with her, the motivating factor to ask me to go with her on those old runs rather than anything.

Nature wanted me. She wanted me to RP, to create some amazing scenes that neither of us really ever felt would be possible, and which I really can’t explain and have the explanation seem believable. She wanted me as a friend to talk to when things were bad, when she was hurting. She certainly wanted to talk to me because we have talked for hours on end. She wanted to be my friend.

Could I go on? Sure. Even the person who complained most about too many people on her token wanted me there; I remember her saying some things in what was an ultimately unsuccessful effort to get me to stay in the raid group.

And I have no doubt that there are some people within the guild, some people I don’t know about, who have laughed with me, shared my joys and frustrations, and just don’t know how to tell me what I meant to them. Synelyse has told me that they’re out there.

I threw that all away.

I threw it away because I couldn’t imagine it mattering. I couldn’t imagine people being able to get over my whining about loot, my insistence on procedure, or the way my RP was stuck in a frustrating scene (to everyone) of superior villainy.  (Can you imagine Saxsy as a villain?  I can’t.)

So what now?

Maybe I need to refine my definition of an ideal guild. Instead of basing it on raid schedules or slots or RP or whatever, I need to be simpler.

My ideal guild is one that wants me.

The problem with that definition? I had that.  I threw it away a few days ago.