Finding this resource, I come at it from a safe place. A place I can recover. A place away from the financial need to partner up to have shelter. A place I can make art and process and retrain into a skill and one day be and be okay. I don't come from a good place, in general.

I'm here because I was invited into the ttrpg space. Someone in the community um recovering in would wait on their ride after their shift and I'd be there still on mine and we'd talk. And, eventually, we'd game.

There's a lot in the design community that my group once gave me. I'm just not arriving in this space with a lot of that wherewithall or energy I've seen myself and seen myself make. Misjudging situations have cost me a lot of what I need to process, is all.

The other month, I saw my first "twitter crucification" I guess I'll call it -- a lot of social accounts I got info and joy from throughout the pandemic all running up hate and horror tallies together on a handle I didn't know. A handle I don't have any reason to believe didn't themself have 30 alts ready to go. Trying to wrap my head around this event, what I was seeing, was something I did alone.

I don't know what I figured. That "navigating this experience until it's normalized is the way things need to be if I want to be safe." "I'll understand it." "I just have to learn." Or something. And I just couldn't let myself disengage. That cost me a lot. Following that, finding that out, coming to grips with it, with the necessity of it alone, that that's how bad people get taken out, of that's how bad people don't get to me, that that's "the word" "getting out ", that that's what that looks like, that it's just every emotion in every cell in me capital r remembering, was mistake. 

It was a mistake. And it left me only with the energy to worry. I started thinking "that's just one. Are we going to be doing this again and again?" "There's so many bad people." "This is going to take a generation of time." And eventually, "I'm literally not well enough to be here"

I realized I wouldn't have the momentum to handle the "social updating" our design space requires.

I look forward to commissioning work, to making and keeping and learning and making and finding my "circle". But there's no way any of that happens in a group with me. I can't afford the mistake right now.

To everyone pouring their time and resources into carving out a space for all of us to one day gather and build and trade and festival safely or safely enough, thank you, thanks, be careful, and keep listening to each other. Something is (being made) here.

🚧🚧💞