Sunday, February 12, 2012

An Explanation

As many of you may have noticed, there was a recent, several month long period during which I was more or less missing in action. I assure you, this does have a somewhat viable explanation which I feel as though I should probably share with you now.

It all started with a liver.


So yeah, it turns out that when your liver doesn't work, your brain doesn't either, resulting in lots and lots of getting nothing done. When we found out that this is what was occurring, my mom moved me home, got me off the medication that had been destroying my liver and got me on a regimen of herbal supplements and things to help me detox.

Detox, incidentally, is Latin for "Hell". It's also a word in Greek meaning "Everything that sucks in your body gets very much worse before it gets better."


Long story short, I pulled out of school and did absolutely nothing for months. Or at least I would have had it not been for TMM.

The Merry Mabari is a chat-based roleplaying group based on the universe of the Dragon Age games (which just so happens to be my favorite series.) Now, roleplaying is something I had long thought of as being something that only weird nerds in basements did when they wanted to pretend to be wizards. Being a weird nerd who lives upstairs, I thought myself too high and mighty for such things (even though I'm an actor and I've written fanfiction and both are just as nerdy as I'd projected roleplaying to be,) but with some poking from my cousin, I eventually decided to give it a try as something to break the horrible monotony. And so, playing as a thirty year old male archer named Lysandro, I wandered into the world of online roleplaying.



And then I never slept again.



The sleep thing is far beyond the point though. For three months at least, roleplaying was the only reason I wrote anything at all. Having someone to respond to me directly as I wrote gave me constant motivation to keep writing, if only a little bit at a time. Where writing is concerned, it's much easier to only have to develop one character rather than a whole world, so it was a good starting place when I was at my lowest point. As I did more and became attached to the character, I began writing stories to expand his world. Between that motivation, an awesome cousin, and a wonderfully amazing roleplay partner (whose character I am just as attached to as my own,) I was able to pound through that while of recovery and break through to the other side to where I could finally blog again.

I suppose the moral of this story is don't judge a book by its extremely nerdy cover, because if it hadn't been for roleplaying and my amazing partner Britt (who is one of my best bros and who is prodding me over messenger to write this as we speak) I probably wouldn't be writing this at all. I'd just have stagnated and dug myself into an even deeper pit and possibly stopped writing altogether, so, if you enjoy my blog, you have online roleplaying to thank for its continuance.

I realize this post isn't funny. I apologize, but, as it turns out, I do occasionally think serious things. At any rate, that's the reason I was gone, and also the story of how my imaginary friend Lysandro kept me from dying out as a writer. Thanks bro.

3 comments:

Meg said...

I am sorry that this happened, but happy that you are getting better! Out of curiosity, is this like D&D, with stats and randomly generated numbers to determine hit and damage? Or is it more like creating a story together, but off the cuff?

The Erin said...

It's more like a story. There are quests and things, but mostly it's just character building. No dice. Just free play.

Robin said...

I am sorry you struggled. I am glad your mom took care of you and you are on the mend.

Sleep!