I watched The Devil's Advocate tonight. I realised that I love it because of ten seconds - where Al Pacino says this:
"Guilt is like a bag of fucking bricks. All you got to do is set it down."
I keep feeling guilty about all kinds of things. I feel guilty for procrastination, I feel guilty for not knowing things I'm expected to know, right now I'm feeling guilty for staying up later than I expected sorting out this post. Just like Shyriath has done at least once, I have felt guilty for not being active in Shireroth... quite a few times. Some other times I have felt guilty for spending too much time on Shireroth...
All you got to do is set it down.
I've finally come to understand this. All I need to do is set the guilt down. Stop believing that having been with this nation for so long makes it my duty to be here. It doesn't. I come here because this place is nifty, and all you people here are nifty - yes, chances are that if you're reading this message, you're someone I consider to be a cool person and who I'd like to spend some time with in a great place like Shireroth.
That I would have to spend years to understand this is perhaps one of my failings as a Shirithian... or Shireroth's failings as a micronation? Without knowing what other people think of it I can't really tell. It intrigues me, though, so I'd really like to know:
Would you stop coming to Shireroth if you didn't enjoy being here?
If your answer is anything but an unhesitating "yes", then I believe we've found something worth changing and improving in this nation; the belief that we owe anything here to anything but each other. We have no duty to Shireroth. The only reason why we might want to try yet another revival project is that having the knowledge we used to have fun here, we hope that if we bring the nation back to high activity we'll have just as much fun again.
Now, one dumb thing that guilt drove me to do is procrastinating finally getting this forum software in order. This forum combines an old version of phpBB with an old version of the Categories Hierarchy mod (and an enormous mod it is), and the last time it was updated was by me during the server move (when we originally moved off ezBoard the forum was placed on the personal server of one of Greg Dean's friends - he needed it to be moved off that server to a real webhost server). I'm sure you've all noticed that it's somewhat glitchy and ugly - I really just didn't have the knowledge and patience it would have taken to make a clean transition.
I'm going to change that soon enough - maybe tomorrow, but no later than next week. I'll be installing phpBB 3.0 RC7, which will have all the useful features we've gotten used to, and a bunch more. I'll try to copy the old posts over and manage a clean migration overall, but I'm not sure if I can do that with all the changes made by CH. At worst we'll just archive this forum and start anew - Erik's given his OK for that, but I'd prefer to avoid it if I can. The results might be ugly at first, but I've spent a year wanting to go back and do it right the first time around - it's going to be a relief to finally fix all of that.
Basically, though, if you are a pessimist by nature you might want to expect the worst, that the forum will "lose" all of its posts, everyone will have to re-register, and that the visual style will be a bit chaotic before I get it ported over properly. Don't worry, though. I promise I'll have fun doing it this time
.(oh, and in case you're wondering: I gave Erik the password to the shell account this forum's hosted on... and the password to changing the Malarbar, too. Scott might disapprove, I guess, but I have decided not to feel guilty for possibly causing "indignity" to this nation anymore. Besides, isn't it time Erik learned those passwords anyway? :P)
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