I need as many people who trust me to click on the link below, sign up, and do one offer. Most of them are free trials. I did the Creditreport.com one. Just ride out the free trial until the FreebieJeebies site registers the offer completion. I’m going for an iPad 2, which needs 22 completed referals, but there are quite a few items that require less or more referals. From everything that I’ve found, including the message boards dedicated to this free stuff, this site works. I’ll let you all know!!

http://apple.freebiejeebies.co.uk/577359

 http://wcdr.ca/wcdr/

Second, I have the greatest friends, even if I’ve only actually physically met one of them. Thank you all for your words of encouragement. Somehow I was able to write my entire nearly 1200 word entry in an hour. After months of not being able to write ANYTHING.

I might have a shortage of friends here (except for you, Corban/Jazaf!!!), but thanks to fff.net and the beauty of email, I’ve got some great ones all over the place.

Thank you all.

Why am I doing this to myself? Have I really lost the desire to immerse myself in these worlds? Did my imagination shrivel? What’s going on with me that I’d rather bury myself in the mundane?

Don’t get me wrong. I still love to play the game, but am I burying myself in it for the right reasons? I’ve been going through a lot lately. Personally, work related, family, everything. Am I trying to use this as a way of blocking everything out? I don’t know, but it’s driving me crazy.

I’ve looked for writing workshops around here in Maryland, but all I can find are Community College courses more geared to preparing one for Universities than enabling them to use their imagination to create things of wonder and beauty. Dale, I’m so jealous of this group of people you’ve found to bounce off of. I know I have a few friends who would love to see me write more, and would love to read and review anything I manage to put from pen to page. I need something here, though. A reason to do this, to write, to create.

When my grandmother passed away in July, it spurred fifteen minutes of creativity, and out of my soul poured a song, a chronicle of her life of love, from pen to paper, to guitar and voice. I sang it at her funeral, and it still plays in my head with great frequency. I look at her picture on my desk every day, hoping it spurs something else, but nothing arises. I look at my pride and joy of my imagination, the character “Soul” and nothing. I look at the brilliant idea I had teased at in my prior post, and nothing. It’s like the desire is gone.

I’ve had friends come and go. Fireflyfans.net was my outlet for a very long time, almost like “Cheers” where everybody knew my name, and they were happy to see me. The stories flowed, almost without me trying. The comments and suggestions only fed fuel to the fire and made me want to write more, to improve. That all slowly trickled dry. People wandered away, left to continue their lives elsewhere while I stayed, hanging onto hope that one day everyone would miraculously return and everything would be like it was. Instead, it all changed, and I stayed the same, hanging onto a past that was just that, the past.

So here I am. Call it a crisis, call it dramatic, call it a pathetic attempt to gain sympathy, call it whatever you will. I’ve become a robot, just living, not enjoying. I simply exist in this world, and instead of leaving my mark I’m fading away. It’s almost as if I can’t breathe. I don’t know how to move forward, I don’t know how to deal with change, even though so much of my life around me has become something I no longer recognize.

I NEED TO WRITE. I think, somewhere along the way, I forgot how…

In other news, I’ve come up with a relatively unique idea. I’m going to have to play around with it a while to see if it’s viable, as well as look into some legal issues involving the story context. If it all works out, though…I think I might actually be on to something here…