The North PacificBoard

So it’s been a while.

A long while.

I’m not known for being a paragon of ceaseless activity, and haven’t for years. Since the days when I used to spend what felt like every waking hour obsessing over this game and this community. The wild times, when you could actually be expected to read the entire RMB every morning and not suffer a debilitating eye-headache for the rest of the day.

I feel old sometimes, but really I’m much too young to know what being old means. I just know how it feels to be a part of something. At its beginning, if not at its end. There’s something unique about being there at the start if something, when sparks start to fly. To watch those sparks become a fire, than a blazing inferno some might describe as a perpetual dumpster fire. To know that you were there when it all happened. And it’s sometimes nice to think of yourself as having been one of the people to hold a match to that powder keg and help it explode into what it has become.

You know, I’m still on the map. After what, almost two months without an RP post to my name? It’s a rarity to see that. And I don’t know how to feel about it, because I know it’s because it’s me. The Chudokuren Isles in their present form only exist because of me, in a whole other can of worms I’m not getting into here. Let’s just say I got very, very lucky without realising how grateful I ought to have been until years after it happened.

Years…that’s the thing, isn’t it? Years have gone by. It feels like just yesterday, only it doesn’t. And it isn’t. But time is a strange thing. When something becomes a part of your life, you don’t notice every moment you spend thinking about it. You don’t question it. You just…do it. And at least if you get lost in a game you have some service or another keeling track of your time spent working on it. The closest you get to that here is how old a post is. How many years ago you sent something, and how long ago it really was, and you only find that information when you’re looking for it.

Sometimes, there are things you don’t want to end. Even if you know they probably should. Ideas formed long ago, that you’ve resuscitated and kept alive for so very very long, because you know nothing else you could possibly do would ever be the same. No variant, no alternative. It’s no secret that I suck with secondary nations, because Kyoki Chudoku was designed with a singular intent- to enjoy myself. It’s a country that was never intended to make any sense and so has had all its sense forced onto it in retrospect. It was an experiment in having fun, and I had fun, and I think I’d still have fun, to some degree.

There’s something odd, about growing up. You realise just how stupid so many of your old ideas were, but at the same time, you get envious you had the ignorance or the gall to actually explore them. You never really think of yourself as immature until you look back. And I’m someone who’s constantly tried to maintain some degree of formality and maturity about me, no matter how many little snipes I might like to take some of the time.

It’s not that I haven’t been around, not exactly. I’ve checked things. I’ve kept the nation alive. Scrolled through the Discord every now and then. But I haven’t done anything because I don’t know what to do, and there’s nothing I can do. Well, ok. That’s melodramatic. But I mean it in the sense that…what do I do that isn’t just petering along? I’ve long asked that question and I still don’t have an answer, because no reinvention of what I have is ever going to be enough. Some people may cycle through ideologies or concepts on the regular, and sure I like to make fun of them, but at least they have the courage to shake things up.

Kyoki Chudoku will always be what it began as. Never in quite the same way, never exactly as it has been, but it won’t change. For better or for worse. Because that change requires a gravitas I’m just too exhausted and too fatigued to give it. And to remain the same is easy, and stagnation is easy, and I can claim it’s thematic but the truth is that I just don’t have the drive to do things anymore, but I still don’t want to let go of them either. And maybe that’s selfish, but it’s true.

So why am I saying any of this? Mostly because the temptation to just slowly vanish exists, and that’s kind of terrible, because slowly vanishing is worse than just saying goodbye because at least then you know exactly when something is over and you aren’t left constantly hoping for something to change, but at the same time I’m not actually going anywhere because…I can’t. I can’t bring myself to.

You know, I’m bad at finishing things. I really am. It’s why my efforts at writing always come to a rapid end, because I don’t know what I’m doing. RP is kind of an answer to that- combining social obligation for a reply with a constant influx of stimuli to react to. It’s so much easier to let someone else establish a worldwide context and just interpret it, just filter it through a lens of tyranny and insanity and drive it here and there and then sit back and watch and let it play out. But even it can only last so long.

I might just ask for a hiatus. Maybe that’d be for the best. Because I know that even if I did disappear, someday I’d be back, and it’s not like I haven’t planned for that for years at least point because of how many times I’ve almost stopped. It’s not that late here, but I slept at 1am last night so I’m tired as heck and goodness knows what’s going through my brain at this point. I just wanted to say something before eventually there ends up being no excuse and I finally come back to having nothing.

…it’s not exactly true. I’d never have nothing. It’s not like everything I’ve worked on would be wasted. It still exists. Can still be read, or adjusted, or interpreted, or whatever. But even so, there’s no point clinging to life as a ghost without at least admitting that’s what I’m doing.

I was going to make a post to go along with this, hence why it’s called “OOC” and not something dramatic or fancy or Kyoki Chudoku’s Totally Sensible Random Ramblings, but I don’t really have the energy at this point. I don’t even have the energy to make original sentences. So I’m going to leave it at that, and let you all make of it what you will. No matter what I end up doing, I want to at least have the solace to have said something about myself, and not just faded away.

…well. That’s it for now. I’ll be back, probably, eventually, maybe. Sorry I can’t be more decisive than that.

Thanks for reading, in any case. And have a free cookie. Got to keep that tradition going, if nothing else.