6. Six. Six times now. Six times I have sat down at the keyboard and started writing. All six of those times I stopped at some point or another. Honestly I’m not even sure why. Some of it I’m sure is that I am not really inworld anymore so the blog itself is less focused. Writing has always been a therapeutic thing for me, whether or not anyone else sees it, it gets things out of my head and helps organize them for me. Well I guess thinking about it now this would be seven, since the six before it have not shown up. Counting is hard when you’re tired or distracted. Maybe I’ll just post them as is, maybe I’ll finish them. There are many maybes.
I’ve traveled a lot of paths these past nine years. It would be safe to say that none of them ended where I had anticipated that they would. I’ve always stood by the idea of having no regrets. I say that not because I view regrets as a negative thing. They only are if you give them the power to be such. I have just always viewed most things as an “if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen” type of thing. I could believe that every single thing I do is going to push something in one direction but at least in my experience that hardly ever proves true. Yes, you yourself are the engine behind whatever you pursue in any regard, but there will always been places, people, or things along those paths that influence the end result.
If you follow my Facebook at all, which hell I wouldn’t you blame if you don’t, I’m really bad about using it myself. But lately life has definitely thrown it’s share of shit into my path. I know we’ve all gone through that type of thing at one point or another. If you haven’t, consider yourself lucky, for now, eventually we all deal with some. October was one HELL of a challenge. It’s like none I have dealt with before. Trust me on that. Within the span of the 30 days, I have lost 2 cousins, a week apart. Both of them were near the age I am so it’s made me really think about my mortality.
As that cloud was lifting another challenge came up. My grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s ended up having to go in for an emergency procedure. One that had no guaranteed outcome. Thankfully for now it’s been a success. Of course capping that was Oct. 4. We made the very difficult decision to put our pup of 12 years down. He was having a myriad of issues and as much as it sucked for us, it was the best decision for him. I refuse to overly medicate him just because it’s going to hurt to lose him. In that situation you choose what is best for him, not yourself.
I still do plenty of gaming, mostly World of Warcraft. There are times where even that has not met my expectations. Blizzard has made some odd calls which for them as a bigger company doesn’t make much sense. It’s felt like what we as players would like and find to be enjoyable in terms of WoW are either blatantly disregarded by the developers or they just flat out don’t give a shit about us. Either way it’s not been good. I’ve loved the game since I started playing, and found myself loving it even more in the prior expansion. Since the latest Blizzcon they -seem- to be listening to what we’re saying more. Only time will tell if that sticks or not, but I certainly hope it does.
The rest of my family took a trip down to Florida at the end of October so I had the entire space to myself. It was kind of nice because I don’t mind being on my own and doing what I feel like doing when I feel like doing it. I got to dog sit my cousins dog while they were down there and he was a lot of fun. I’m quite used to large dog breeds as the past two we’ve had have been Akitas. Charlie however is a Frenchie so he’s one of those little bouncy guys. I have to say though he is the best behaved dog I think I’ve ever been around. Though his farts are the most toxic thing maybe in this universe? Either way it was a nice experience. He and I enjoyed long walks on the street, late night poops in the yard (him not me of course), and hanging out watching our favorite streamer friend Vitamin Pee.
In the short time since I’ve started watching her streams not only have I enjoyed the hell out of them, but I’ve learned a lot. We both play the same class and spec as a main and she is insanely talented at it. To top off she’s really friendly and is fantastic at answering questions. Her community is also top notch. Great people all the way around. Definitely on my short list of awesome monks. JustWait ranks up there too and he’s one hell of a guy. I’ve had some enjoyable conversations with him as well. That being said a majority of WoW playerbase that I’ve interacted with are generally good people.
Over the past month I’ve taken on more of a personal project. It started randomly and has grown from there. I was going through old photos of past pets we’ve had and it got me to thinking about how most of the time photos we have never really see the light of day. Sure people who come by see what’s on the walls or in frames, but I assume most like me, have hundreds if not thousands of photos in boxes, albums, etc. that are never really seen. It got me to thinking and I started working my way through them, whether or not I knew the people in them and made a public album on my personal Facebook. I never had any expectations for where it would go or what may come of it. It surprised that even just a day later I had reactions from people I hardly know as well as some I honestly do not think I have ever met. None of them were negative.
It was this personal project that made me reflect back on things. I’ve always thought about things, deeper than I think most would probably know, and it was a wake up call. I still stand by not really having regrets or wanting to go back in the past and change things. Any and all of those things are what have made me the person I am today. I’m not perfect, never was, never will be, but I am -myself- and that matters more to me. That being said there are a couple of things that I do regret on one level or another. While I was going through all of those old photographs I came across some that I had forgotten even existed.
One of those being a chance that I just never took. Maybe it was self doubt, maybe it was the universe just being the universe. I started writing parts of this next section back in May. I did say I’d sat down to write a few times and just never finished right? Well why not add into here. This is going to one epic ass blog post Mr. Spiritor. And if it ends up being your last, why not go out with one hell of a bang.
“I’ve found myself struggling creatively lately and I’m not entirely sure why that is. I would have to guess a lack of good sleep is to blame but that’s nothing new here. For as long as I can remember I have tended to do my best thinking in quiet of the night. I’ve talked about that before so I won’t delve into that again. I know the idea of this blog is obviously geared towards Second Life and all that it entails. I wish my mind was more in line with that path but it’s not right now. Plus hell, it’s my blog, I’ll write what I want.
The other night I was laying around with some headphones on and Shinedown happened to come on. I’ve been a fan of them since they first came onto the music scene but I actually owe my initial introduction to them to a girl. One who became one of my closest friends at a time when I felt like I didn’t have a whole lot of them. I probably had more than I realized then but hindsight always being 20/20 that’s irrelevant to this story.
I want to say that only one person that reads this will know who exactly I’m talking about and that’s because they know them too. The rest of you, well I’m sure we’ve all been in that position once or twice. It’s relatable. When I was younger I made a series of less than intelligent decisions. Call it stupid, call it mistakes, I call it life. What it did teach me was that love can most definitely blind you. Not only to everything that is going on around you, but to yourself as well. I made my mistakes, I owned them then, and I own them now.
In the middle of the shit storm that I made I felt like I couldn’t really talk to my guy friends about it. It’s not that they wouldn’t have understood because they knew what was going on. What I couldn’t make them understand though was why things were the way that they were. Now this girl on the other hand saw what I was seeing. We met of all places at work. I did my fair share of retail work back then and I actually met her through her mother, whom I worked with. Funny thing that was because until she and I started talking her mother and I absolutely could not stand each other. We worked together and were civil in that obviously but I think she was looking at my situation and judging it without knowing the full story.
At some point she ended up taking a job working with us as well which gave us the opportunity to talk more. Starting off we just talked at work as coworkers which okay with me. That went on for a month or two. Fast forward to early summer and one afternoon I’m working back in the sporting goods department. People had come up and needed keys to be cut (Yeah keys, name something in retail, odds are I’ve done it.) so I was cutting those for them. As this was going I happened to catch her coming out of the stockroom. If I remember right she had stopped in to pickup her check. I hadn’t seen her outside of work in I don’t know how long. I recall it very clearly though even now.
She was wearing this really pretty white and blue summery dress. It stands out clear as day in my head. We ended up talking for a few minutes after the customers had gone and she was telling me that she was planning to go shopping later that night up at larger mall here where we live. I hadn’t been up there in a long time so I offered to go with if she wanted to wait until I was off of work. To my surprise she was all for it. That shopping trip ended up starting a whirlwind friendship that I will never forget.
I came to find out like a year or so after we had last talked that we actually had the same feelings for one another. Neither one of us ever got up the nerve to tell the other. What will be will be right. I remember finding that out and going damn I wish I had known then. I didn’t though and you can’t change the past. She’s doing well and all things being equal so am I. It’s oddly funny that I was thinking about all of it the other day because the next day was her birthday. I didn’t remember that until our lord and savior (kidding) Facebook reminded me. Life has a weird way of working sometimes.”
I guess that chapter of the story never really got completely started looking back on it. There are times I wish it had because it really did seem like an exceptionally good fit. But as I said for whatever reasons it didn’t and that’s that. Chapter closed.
The other was just being foolish. I know I had a very great thing, and while I’m sure both parties would say mistakes were made on both sides, I place most of that blame at my own feet. Those who know, understand what I mean, and if you don’t that’s okay too. I am what I am, not an open book. I never have been. Even before everything or anything went all to hell I was close to the vest. This may actually be the most personal I have ever gotten on what I would call my SecondLife blog. As far as I can remember that is. I know I’ve talked about SL relationships amongst other things but I rarely delve into the other side like this.
Now for the sake of timeline, this next part, comes prior to the part I just spoke about above. I know what you’re thinking. Why type it out of order Lucky? Well I don’t have a good answer so you’ll just have to deal with that. Probably more or less because when I first wrote the above portion I wasn’t talking about this part in any depth. After going through photos I changed my mind a little. Still following? Yes? Cool. Let’s carry on then.
There was a point in my life where things happened and in my emotional state then, I made the decision to purge any and everything that reminded of someone. I was hurt, angry, pissed off, ashamed, depressed, hell I probably would scorched the Earth if I had that kind of power at the time. I felt like I had an icy cold dagger stabbed right through my heart. I refuse to point fingers though. I screwed it up and no one else is to blame for that. I just didn’t anticipate being betrayed, or well feeling betrayed I should say. It turned into a me or you situation and they chose to protect themselves. I’d like to think I wouldn’t have done that, but in a situation like that who really knows. She made hers, I made mine, and on it went.
What honestly started as a random chance romance grew into way more than anyone would have ever known. The two of us met in high school and it was one of those “you just know” types of things. It wasn’t instantaneous, it wasn’t simple, it was just right. It was not perfect though nothing really is. It was good. Our love for each other burned white hot while it lasted. It’s one of those things I think back on quite often. Looking back on it I should have been smarter and saved more of those memories and by memories I mean photographs. Can’t change the past though, they are long gone now. Chapter closed.
That grew into a somewhat secret project that I have underway family wise that I intend to finish before the Holidays come into full swing. Something that would have never happened had there been little to no reaction to what I was doing. I can obviously talk about it here because none of my real life family views this or has any direct knowledge of it. Also the project involves them not knowing until it’s done because it has an intended surprise factor.
So what is it you ask. I’ll explain. Back in August of 2002 my grandfather on my dad’s side passed away from lung cancer. Now he was never the most tech savvy person (to be fair none of the elders in my family are.) but since it was only 2002 we didn’t have Facebook. Yes you can be sure of that. I did the math and research already, 2004. Yep. Now not all of my family on that side has or uses Facebook but the majority do in one capacity or another. While digging through old photos and posting random ones on my Facebook it got me to thinking about how basically -all- of the old pictures of my Grandfather were sitting at my grandmother’s house in albums/boxes/etc.
That led to me broaching the idea of scanning all of them and making a Facebook group where family/friends could see all of them and add stories, memories, whatever to it. My grandfather did auto body repair/painting for a job so even outside of the family he knew a TON of people. Now I could be completely wrong and this entire thing could turn into a big old bowl of nothing, or it could blow up. I think it’s got the potential to be huge based on the random reactions to the miscellaneous photos I’ve posted already.
Only time will tell. This post has turned out to be long enough (probably because I combined like six previous posts together with new stuff) so I won’t melt your brain with any extra words. I may post more, I don’t know when, I don’t know what and as always I am making no promises. If you made it this far in the post, thank you for reading all of it, even if you just skimmed, and if you just skipped to the end then I think you missed a pretty nice chunk of story but hey it’s my life so I may be biased.
-L
LuckySpiritor.Com 
1 comment