Chasing the Dragon

(I think I wrote this when I learned that Google Plus was going to be decommissioned) 

My heart is sore; not the normal heartsore-ness that comes with Spring and the gentle whirring emptiness of my professional life at the moment (maybe just enough to get by on, but not thriving, if you get my drift).  When I was very heartsore from this toxic work environment I had a couple of years ago, I took solace in my new-found hobby of Geeplus plus Role Playing Games, the former entirely new to me and the latter something I'd let founder for almost 15 years at that point.  I had split from my game group during the days of 2e because - get a load of this - I had actually lost my first job in college owing to my missing a shift and playing on a Wednesday night, in a game that was only nominally (for me) fun at the time. It wasn't a great job, but my priorities shifted and suddenly I did not view D&D or any other games as "worth it". I do now, but that's another thing entirely. My orientation has been more to raising my kid, and work is much less harrowing these days, so the need for stress reduction is pretty low and I am seeing things with less rose-colored glasses.  That said, I believe my perceptions about the quality of interaction on the community of G+ are accurate.  Feel free to disabuse me, or not, or whatever.

I have detected, maybe through a fault in my own perceptions I admit, that the atmosphere on G+ has subtly changed.  It no longer brings me the joy it used to.  Partly it's because since I have joined my tastes in games has changed, and partly that I am growing disgruntled with the endless onslaught of prompts to buy things.  I won't go too much into it here, but it started with a couple of years ago as all these creative and talented people I love started and brought pet projects to fruition (which is great) and made them for sale (which is fine) but then turned to making things for sale (my perception) and became less focused on just sharing cool ideas (my possibly erroneous conclusion). There are a couple of celebrity types for whom the creation of boutique gaming objects and especially books as physical objects are sort of their niche, and I think that this is admirable.  But as these people rise to prominence it seems to me that interest of the community has turned away from creation for the sake of creation and sharing as a bonding mode, toward creation-for-profit and sharing as a modus for earning legitimacy itself.  When I wrote my thing a couple of years ago, my kid was a slobbering sack of meat, and I was up anyway, and I just wanted to see if I could do it.  Now that I've done it, I fully recognize that any of us in the community has the processing power and freely available software that we can each, should we so desire, make a thing that is better in many ways than the stuff that captured our imaginations as children and adolescents and that attracted us to this community in the first place.  I mean, sure, you're not recreating D&D, here.  That's a thing that's wizard-locked and gated, if you get my drift.  A couple of clever people have actually managed to put interesting spins on the old rules of yore, which I find enjoyable. But the latest stuff seems endless tiresome iterations of the same old thing in packaging slightly better than the last. Mastery of ideas has given way to mastery of management of creative artists and suites of software. Probably a

The weight of the things I am not creating while I am polishing up a pig's ear for sale is growing on me. My creative and nurturing urge is oriented to this little person, and trying to get my fiscal life in order, and spend what little time remains in happy harmony with my wife and family.  So, rather than fester these wounds and ferment these back-burner projects any longer, I am going to drop them back into the soup for consumption.  "Idea Debt" weighs heavy on me.  I do not believe, despite my good experiences with the only publisher I have worked with, that I will make any more things for sale or publication in the way that drives our community lately. I find Kickstarters to be antithetical to this thing I mean, and maybe the source of the problem.  Patreon? Yes, artists need to eat.  I will very likely create and discard things, but I do not have the wherewithal or interest or force of will to drive a thing to publication at this stage in my life, and I am becoming leery of the urge to do so as a false one and a trick, one that is instilled and perpetrated by dint of being in a giant electrical strip-mall that used to be a cheery club-house. Maybe too metaphorical, I know.  Melodramatic, for sure.

The amazement and excitement I felt when I first found G+ is vanishing, replaced by a stream of infomercials. Factionalism and tribalism and snobbery seems to me to prevail. Hey, effendi, your mileage may vary as always.

Maybe I am depressed but I don't think that's exactly it.  That would imply an unhealthy spin on it.  Dis-illusioned? Dysglamored?

The King is The Land.  The Land is The King.