User blog:LennyGeorge/Dumb blog from LFG

I'm gonna get right off the bat here and say I don't use the wikia often. I'm such a master of procastination that I procrastinate from procrastination itself, and as such, this blog really has no topic.

As many of you know, asdf (or aqua if you're new) has left. It was a genuine goodbye too, probably the most genuine farewells I've read. But it also made me think of my future here.

I started mapping in March 2015, and joined the wikia in June of that year. So I'm in a weird limbo of not being the oldest member but at the same time not being part of the endless wave of newcomers. In that time, I've had my fair share of haituses and sparks of being uninspired (Winter 2015, Autumn 2016). But all that time I've had a few policies in both my videos and the community, and I have never really talked about them before, so here's the "rules" I go by on Youtube/Skype/G+/wikia/whatever:

1. If I don't want to do mapping, I will not do mapping. I've been here long enough to know that today I may be uninspired or even be a bit annoyed of Mapping, but tommorow I may be a machine on my PC. So my videos are done when they're done and I'll be on the community when I feel like it, because this approach is both comfortable and healthy.

2. Life first, Mapping second. Pretty much everyone (hopefully) on the community follows this rule. No matter how important this community is to you. Life is... Well, life. Therfore it should be put before any online interaction. But my advice for others here is: If someone invites you to a social event or your Mum wants your help with chores but you'd rather work on a video, do the former. You will almost *always* get more out of it in both the short and long term.

3. I will know when it's time to call it a day. This isn't when to take a nap after working for a couple hours, this is when I think I've reached the end of my chapter of Mapping in general. My idea is that it won't be that I am just the usual "Ugh, I don't feel like it", feel. It will be that life/fate itself is telling me to put Mapping aside. To persue another passion or to look for a job or whatever. I have seen events where parents dissaprove of a child doing Mapping, and I get sad because that person has potential and they should be able to persue what they should do until their next chapter of life drags them away.

4. This is more for Youtube, and I said this in my update video. But I never want to be in a position where I feel I owe my viewers anything. Mapping isn't a job for me. I make no money from it. I could make all my videos private and nothing about the activity itself wouldn't change. I am already an anxious person with a short attention span. I would be doing myself and my friends a disservice should I beat myself down over something as dumb as Mapping.

5. This won't last forever. No matter how much you want to tell yourself this is your calling. You will not reach the end of your life and still be mapping. As I said for 3, I expect another passion will fully drag me away from the community, or at least mapping. If you really want to know, I've had a passion for art and animation long before I joined the community, and in a perfect world I could gain knowledge of it via Mapping. But I intend to end my Mapping chapter on a high, like asdf. I enjoyed the idea of a big finale for Mapping which I can say goodbye to, and I want that, if anything, to come of me leaving.

I don't know when I'll leave, but be it tommorow or in 3 years time. But I know one thing: I've been here long enough and made enough friends for memories of this community to last me a lifetime, unless this is some life simulation in a high-tech alien-casino.

-LFG/Lenny