where his civilizations, including our own

I'm in a dicey political situation. Someone I've known for several years has behaved very offensively (though perhaps not surprisingly), and how I deal with it now will probably have significant repercussions for teh guild, in terms of who joins and who doesn't.

It's very hard not to think that some people must not have a lot of real problems, that they have time to create pretend ones.

Every time I notice that I'm having no symptoms, I say "thank you" in my head. I think that's a pretty good way to live and more people should do it. I hope to be able to do it a lot more.

I had to miss my own raid the other day because I had to work, due to a parade + street fair going on. The parade took the route I usually walk to work, so I just went behind the booths and watched the parade as I walked past it upstream. The fair part of it closed up around the butt of the parade, and by the time I went to lunch it was completely packed with people for about 12 blocks. I managed to make it to the hot dog + kettle corn area, which was a block away and took like 10 minutes just to reach.

In my cyber absence, the person I left in charge was the actual leader of my guild, a person that I like a lot but do not actually think is a very good leader, but I figured she could run a 10-man raid without messing something up. Someone no-showed, and apparently she spent a long time waiting and fretting and claiming there was nobody to replace him, before replacing him with -- hello -- the person I had previously arranged to serve as a replacement. (Btw: making people wait an indeterminate period of time is almost the worst thing you can do as a raid leader. You might as well have just pressed a button that magically makes everyone in the group instantly lose all their concentration and enthusiasm. She does this a lot.)

While they waited for something to happen, one member of the group was bored and decided to play a joke on another, by broadcasting a message in a populated area saying "[Name of person] is quitting the game and giving all his money away, send him a message if you want 50 gold", with predictable results. When this was told to me later I found it quite a funny prank really, but apparently Guild Leader lectured him sternly. Ah well. These things happen when you make people wait!

When they actually started, they made a mistake halfway through, causing Guild Leader to a) verbally blame someone who didn't do it and b) announce they were giving up. (To be fair she apologized to Blamed Person later.)

Sometimes nice people aren't good leaders. Sometimes trying too hard to be good leaders makes them less nice.

Summary: I organized a group to do something hard, overcame wank and self-doubt, succeeded, and got something cool.


( of course, as with everything, there's a bit of a story behind it )