Re: There and back again - a Topic's tale for BG'sCommunity
Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2024 3:23 am
I'm taking a few weeks off to consider my future on BG.
Over the past year, both as a player and as a developer, I've hyped myself up for big things in the future, for defining character moments and big new features and revamps, only to find each time that I was climbing to greater heights just so I could fall further and more painfully. The small triumphs along the way built up an appetite for greater things, an appetite so voracious that I spent much of my energy making plans for the future; the full extent of which can merely be glimpsed in all of the things I have said in Discord or the forums these past few months. Of these, only a scant few remain intact; only a handful have not yet collapsed to dust, and in my current state of mind, I can't help wondering if this is only because they haven't yet matured enough to come to their agonizing ruination.
So I need to detach. Take a breath. Fill my life with other things again, things whose importance to me has been as clear as my inability to find time until now to push them forward. (Like Star Clusters.
) Get enough distance to make a rational decision whether the nuggets of joy I still extract from this place are worth the effort.
This is not a retirement post. The decision isn't made yet, though I can't help wondering how much of that stems from its finality: To the extent that I've been a productive member of the dev team, much of my ability to contribute in recent times has been granted by serendipitous circumstance, and had my superiors felt that they had any other option at the time, I don't doubt they would have preferred not to trust me with the powers and privileges naturally associated with my station. Though I like to think that I acquitted myself well enough, that I have proven their fears unjustified and done plenty of things to justify keeping those powers... I have held that belief once before, in 2020. To this day, the fallout from seeing that belief shattered clings to me like a curse, tainting many interactions - if not in the eyes of those I interact with, then certainly in my own - with an undercurrent of doubt, a deep-seated fear that if I held any other identity, they would go a lot differently.
In this case, that fear has been one of two things delaying my departure: As lead dev, I've never been better-equipped to do right by the server and its community (many of my improvements around storage and teleportation were only made possible by host access), and I worry that I never might be again; and as what was until recently our only remaining coder, I didn't want to dissolve one of the core staff groups just because I was feeling demoralized. With the latter no longer an issue, I can afford to consider the former: Will I have any regrets about reducing my ability to contribute? Do I want to stay on BG for BG's sake, or am I just clinging to it out of fear that I might someday change my mind and want to return to a place I may never be able to revisit?
This is not a retirement post. But before the end of June, I will know if a retirement post is due.
Thank you all for your patience.
Over the past year, both as a player and as a developer, I've hyped myself up for big things in the future, for defining character moments and big new features and revamps, only to find each time that I was climbing to greater heights just so I could fall further and more painfully. The small triumphs along the way built up an appetite for greater things, an appetite so voracious that I spent much of my energy making plans for the future; the full extent of which can merely be glimpsed in all of the things I have said in Discord or the forums these past few months. Of these, only a scant few remain intact; only a handful have not yet collapsed to dust, and in my current state of mind, I can't help wondering if this is only because they haven't yet matured enough to come to their agonizing ruination.
So I need to detach. Take a breath. Fill my life with other things again, things whose importance to me has been as clear as my inability to find time until now to push them forward. (Like Star Clusters.
) Get enough distance to make a rational decision whether the nuggets of joy I still extract from this place are worth the effort.This is not a retirement post. The decision isn't made yet, though I can't help wondering how much of that stems from its finality: To the extent that I've been a productive member of the dev team, much of my ability to contribute in recent times has been granted by serendipitous circumstance, and had my superiors felt that they had any other option at the time, I don't doubt they would have preferred not to trust me with the powers and privileges naturally associated with my station. Though I like to think that I acquitted myself well enough, that I have proven their fears unjustified and done plenty of things to justify keeping those powers... I have held that belief once before, in 2020. To this day, the fallout from seeing that belief shattered clings to me like a curse, tainting many interactions - if not in the eyes of those I interact with, then certainly in my own - with an undercurrent of doubt, a deep-seated fear that if I held any other identity, they would go a lot differently.
In this case, that fear has been one of two things delaying my departure: As lead dev, I've never been better-equipped to do right by the server and its community (many of my improvements around storage and teleportation were only made possible by host access), and I worry that I never might be again; and as what was until recently our only remaining coder, I didn't want to dissolve one of the core staff groups just because I was feeling demoralized. With the latter no longer an issue, I can afford to consider the former: Will I have any regrets about reducing my ability to contribute? Do I want to stay on BG for BG's sake, or am I just clinging to it out of fear that I might someday change my mind and want to return to a place I may never be able to revisit?
This is not a retirement post. But before the end of June, I will know if a retirement post is due.
Thank you all for your patience.
), but I won't reply as quickly anymore.