Shady Clearing

Well, Halloween is upon us. Perhaps you refer to it as All Hallows Eve, or even Samhain, but in the end, it’s just a name. Some folklore describes Halloween as the single day of the year when the world of the living and the world of the dead become so closely arranged that the dead are able to manifest themselves among the living freely. To others, it is merely a day of revelry where children (and some adults!) masquerade from place to place, collecting treats and falling prey to the occasional trick.

Whatever your view of the holiday, I’m sure that the most will be made of it for those who are able. The biggest thing to remember is to always play it safe. I know, I know, you hear it from every angle each year, but it’s the truth. Even if you live in a small town where everyone knows everyone else, there is always a risk of a seemingly innocent neighbor doing something malicious to the “goodies” that he or she gives out. For any kids that may somehow come upon this article, remember this especially. If you’re going to be out after dark, wear something reflective so drivers can see you. If you receive anything that isn’t wrapped, don’t eat or use it! It can be a clue to something sinister afoot. Ask your parents to check your other treats for any signs of tampering. Even though something being wrong with your stuff isn’t necessarily common doesn’t mean that it could never happen, and you can take that to the bank.

As for me this holiday, I’ll be “celebrating” it in my way. This will likely include food, fun and folly with friends, and on a more serious side, some rituals that are fitting for the Sabbot. In the end, I’m sure it will be seen by those involved as something to remember for some time.

In other news, AeonRO just got a big update. It includes a client update from the standard Sakray client to X-Ray, allowing us much greater flexibility in custom client-side additions, as well as 18 new hairstyles for both male and female characters, bringing the total number of styles to a comfortable 41. As a prank for the holiday and our own amusement, the staff and I also did a little job class renaming, which the players -still- haven’t all noticed. And some of the names are just FUNNY. For example, the Gypsy class is now going by the moniker of “Pantsmistress”, while the Archmagus prestige class is currently known as “Magic 8 Ball.” You might think of that as being silly and not very useful, but then it was never intended to be useful…just amusing.

And now, I shall include a quote that, though new to me, has been a part of my thinking for a very long time.

We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.
- Andre Berthiaume

Fitting too is this quote for the holiday.  Though on Halloween many of us will wear a mask to hide our identity from others, we often very rarely think about the masks we wear each and every day.  Some of us are so used to wearing them that we even forget that we do.  I am not innocent of wearing masks either, though I like to think that I remove them more often than some.  To wear a mask in this context is to put on a face.  It may not hide your identity like those novelties we buy at the store, but in fact it does much worse, in that it hides how you -feel-.  Every person has his or her own concerns, worries and problems that run through our minds each day, but do we let everyone know it, or show that something is bothering us?  Of course not!  As we go out into public everyday, we put on our respective masks that allow us to show only as much emotion as we want others to see.  A person may smile at you, but there’s really no way of knowing whether they’re actually happy or just being polite.  In contrast, when something really terrible happens, we may put on a mask of anger, causing us to lash out at those around us, while in reality we’re hurting with sorrow or regret on the inside.  The reason we wear these masks is because we’re afraid that showing how we really feel will make us appear vulnerable, stupid, or weak.  We don’t want people to think we can’t handle whatever hardships we’re facing, to think that we aren’t smart enough to figure out a problem, or know that we’re having a hard time which may make it easy for them to take advantage of us.

This is mostly a means of self-preservation, but it becomes a problem when we become so dependent on our masks that we forget we’re even wearing them, or worse - how to take them off.  At that point, the line between who we seem to be and who we really are becomes increasingly muddled, to the point of being entirely indiscernible.   It is then that we risk having our lives thrown into turmoil when something so drastic happens that it rips the masks from our faces, taking some of our flesh with it because it had become so adhered.  When that happens, we’ve almost actually lost a part of our real selves, that we have to work very hard to get back.

I suppose the moral of this would be that while wearing a mask is a very normal and common thing, never forget to take it off sometimes and truly just be yourself.  If you can’t trust anyone enough to do that, then are you really even at terms with yourself, or have you forgotten who you really are?

That’s all for tonight.  Ta~

I just got back a few hours ago from 4 days in Wisconsin!  It was a blast, even if I do say so myself.  I ended up bringing the accent back with me, too.  At any rate, let’s get started on recapping this trip.

THURSDAY/FRIDAY

We (Teresa, her daughter and I) left Thursday night around  11:30pm.  I  was the driver for the trip, so that was a hilarious 10 hours.  I figured that Teresa or at least her daughter would sleep sometime during the trip, but of course not.  Made the trip up there go by quite quickly, seeing as how of 10 hours driving, I only spent about 30 minutes of it not laughing.  We arrived in Alma Center, Wisconsin at around 10 am Friday morning.  I know that’s more than 10 hours, but you have to consider that we stopped once at a rest area and twice at gas stations to fill up.

At that point I had met Becky and Melissa.  Melissa is Teresa’s sister, and the reason we went up there in the first place.  Shortly thereafter, Chuck (or Chucky, or Sucky) came in, and thus another new face was made known to me.  Chuck was the other half of the reason for being there, as he was to be the groom to the bride that Melissa was to be.  After the meetings took place, we hung around for a while, just chatting and what not.  Becky showed up shortly, and the three ladies went out to find shoes to wear for the wedding, leaving Zabrina and I to our own devices for finding things to do.

We ended up going over to her cousin Quinn’s house for a bit.  Quinn was cool.  Apparently  he’s a geek too, although I didn’t have much of a chance to actually talk to him as I didn’t have anything to really say.  After staying there for about an hour, we left and went back to Melissa’s house and finally got some rest around 7pm…

That is, until around 10pm as far as I’m concerned, because it was at that point that Teresa called wondering if I was going to sleep all night or if I wanted to come out for a while.  Of course I chose to go out for a while, although I was going to be driving by myself and she was drunk while trying to give me directions.  As much as that may sound like a disaster waiting to happen, I really didn’t get too lost for driving in an unfamiliar place in the dark.  I ended up in Humbird at first, but quickly figured out what I’d done wrong and found myself in Merrillan shortly thereafter, at the bar that I was looking for.

Once inside, I found Teresa and her friends Donna and Kim at the other end of the bar, and walked over to greet them.  Introductions were had and then I had a few drinks.  Nothing really strong, but they were really tasty.  At that point was where I was first introduced to Dane.  Dane is this large piece of man standing about 6′6″ and with a good amount of meat to back it up.  That is to say, he’s a rather good looking man.  Full beard and all that…just Woof!  Anyway, from there we left and went back to Black River Falls to Donna and Kim’s hotel room for chatting and whatnot, as well as some sleep for the next day.  That was run in itself, and gave us time to get to know each other better.  Fell asleep around 2:30am, and now we can continue to the next day…

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I think another thing that tends to keep me from blogging everyday is that the events of my life are generally the same each day that goes by. That said, it’d be boring even for me to sit down and write that I fussed with things on Aeon for a while, then I went to pick up my mom from work. After that I slept for a while before waking up and going to work for (x) amount of hours. Leaving work, I returned home and sat around doing stuff with Aeon for a while… ad infinitum. On the occasions that I do have something happen throughout the course of the day that I’m writing about, of course I’ll tell about it, but on other days, I’ve decided that a good idea to fill the empty would be to take a quote from those I receive in my email every night and analyze it against my own thoughts. Not only would it make up for having my posts so spaced out, but it just might also give someone some things to think about of their own. Now that that’s over, the quote I’ve selected for tonight goes a little something like this:

“The past is rarely remembered without sorrow, for it has been either better or worse than the present.”

–Leonora Christina

Firstly, I must say that I agree with the statement as a whole.  It is true that more often than not, whenever we think about the past, if the things we’re thinking about are good times we’ve had compared to now, we often state the phrase, “Good times…” in a reminiscent  tone, such that indicates a longing for the return of those times.  Else, if we are thinking of past times of grief and sorrow, we are often filled with the memory of what caused such emotions back then and are driven to feel as we did when the events took place, regardless of whether we have reason to or not.

For example, if I think back on times from when I was still in school, I remember the good times I had with my friends and all the new experiences that came my way.  I smile as I think of it, but at the same time, I long to be able to have times like that again, and am thusly sorrowful at the lack thereof.  On the other hand, I can think back also to times when someone that I loved or was close to had died, and remembering their death awakens the void their absence left within me and again I find myself grieving the loss.

These words not only speak the truth, but also tell of the power that emotion itself has over us.  That merely remembering something that occurred in the past that caused us to feel a strong emotion can bring about the feeling of that emotion once more or a longing to experience the emotion again indicates that without it, we’re nothing more than fleshy robots with buggy programming and the inability to learn or adapt.

Any thoughts?

—————-
Listening to: SirRus - Manifest Destiny
via FoxyTunes

Why do people hold grudges?  That’s something I’ve never understood.  To me, a grudge is just holding on to something from the past, knowing that there’s nothing you can do to change what happened, but using that as justification for hatred toward another person.

In my mind, instead of holding a grudge, one should look at what happened and glean knowledge from it, and then move forward from there empowered by that knowledge and avoid something like that in the future, or even begin a process of restoration between yourself and whomever else was involved.

But, I suppose that would be something that would happen in a perfect world, and I can’t really expect it to hold true in the normal world.  Some people do so, and others prefer to hold their grudges and won’t budge their standpoint on them regardless of how much talking someone does.  I find it to be a sad thing really, but overall, it just can’t be helped.

Any thoughts?

Indeed, there is generally a difference between leadership and management, although some people are able to put them together while others aren’t.  To me, Leadership is the quality of being able to get people to do what’s needed to be done by gaining their trust and respect through care and perseverance.  It requires that you also put forth effort and to work alongside those you are leading to reach your goal.

Management, on the other hand, is merely the act of getting those you are in charge of to do what you tell them to.  It’s not so much about them wanting to work for you but more about the fact that you have control of their status within the group you are managing and that you are indeed in charge.  They don’t need to like you, and you don’t have to give a crap about what they think or say.  All you have to care about is that things get done.

Putting the two together can be tricky sometimes, and some may tell you that it doesn’t work well to combine them, but in my opinion it works BEST when you can meld the two together.  I’ve found that while people will listen to management, they generally are more willing to work with a leader.  When you have both in the same person, the productivity of their employees or associates can as much as double, because not only  is that person capable of delegating multiple tasks at once, but those he or she is supervising are willing to do the tasks because they respect their supervisor and know that he or she is willing to help them or guide them if they need it.

It saddens me when I see so many managers that run by brute force alone.  Their mentality is that if the employee doesn’t want to do it, they don’t have to keep the job.  They don’t care about the employees or why they might not be working as well one day compared to another, and they don’t care to care.  All they are there for as far as they are concerned is to bring home a paycheck that isn’t worth it to them TO care.

I don’t know.  Maybe I’m off base, but I’d personally rather work for someone that showed a genuine concern in my own well-being as well as being concerned with getting the tasks at hand done.  I’d rather work for someone that isn’t afraid to step up and help or guide me through something that I don’t understand or am having a hard time with.  That’s just my two cents though.  Any thoughts?