Flouncing, mawkishness and a pretty bad photo

Back to mundanity after a highly utopian and self-indulgent post about ideal days on SL. Still into this idea of more blogging, however.

Scroll warning: I am going to be somewhat mawkish (good Scrabble word that, by the way) and talk about leaving, and why I'm... not.

Like a lot of people on SL, I've threatened to leave. I even did so, I'm ashamed to say, on my blog.

I understand the pull to leave. I understand people leaving. I understand people saying they're leaving so they can goodbye to friends. And yes I even understand that it's probably a very good thing to leave for some people, at some points in time, either permanently or for a while.

It's a bit like television in the old days ,no? People insisting that the 'off' button should be used more because it was BAD. They didn't succeed, mostly, eh?

I rarely watch it because... I prefer SL . I don't want to get rid of it, though. Mind, if you had French television, you would probably be on SL (even) more too, although we have fewer commercials (and fewer channnels). Mind, the dubbing in Stargate, as an example, is unspeakably bad. And the woman who 'does' Meryl Street sounds like a constipated duck.

Ooops, digressing.

So, back to leaving.

I get highly irritated with some people who threaten to leave places - SL, forums, groups - but only when they do it with a FLOUNCE because something's irritated them and they clearly want to do the 'poor little me' thing and get sympathy. And they're usually back pretty damned fast.

(And yes, I probably wanted sympathy but I'd like to think it was also because I was overtired (thanks, RL work) and feeling a bit lost - it wasn't even as interesting as a Big Argument or a Love Affair Gone Wrong).

I don't get irritated at all when people need to leave for their own personal reasons and I appreciate them telling me (and the world, if they want). And I'm happy to say I've kept in touch with a few who did wipe SL off their computers.

I just hate the flouncing-to-get-sympathy, you know? Mind, when you're brought up by parents who felt that flouncing was even worse than wearing those awful things called jeans or slurping your soup in the list of terrible social sins no young lady should commit, it sort of figures.

I suppose a good flounce can be fairly cathartic, but do it in front of your cat, or write it and then leave it as a draft until you've slept on it.

(Should I leave this as a draft? Probably).

And no, I'm not targeting anybody here. I've seen a whole lot of non-flouncy 'I'm leaving' or 'I'm cutting down' posts that have brought tears of sympathy and understanding to my eyes recently - even if 'weeping in public' wasn't approved of in my family either. Mind, my cats were sympathetic. They're great public.

To them, I'd say do what you have to do. I understand. And personally, selfishly maybe, I'd add 'please leave the door open'.

To those who try and put the entire blame on others for quitting, I'm less sympathetic (you're so MEAN, you have RUINED MY LIFE). Personally, one person who made my SL a misery tempted me to disappear a couple of times in the past, but the good friends I have were more than worth staying for (this is the mawkish bit here, and coming up).

When things go wrong, blame is never really 100% on one side (although in that particular case I'm not prepared to accept more than 20% and I consider that to be generous, so there).

So, I'm grateful - hugely so - to people who've said to me, when I've whined that I should leave: 'do what you have to', and even more so because they were around to prop me up when I didn't... but went around whining even more.


OK, enough of the mawkish.

Ah.

Rumour has it this blog is on a homes and gardens feed, from which I could justifiably be kicked off, and I wouldn't blame them as I did say I was (mainly) on topic. Really, I won't mind.

But... look.



It's free in my subscribo. The table anyway. It does actually have four legs but at least the entire table is on the photograph.