Even with a decent sleep I'm not sure where to begin this little "journey" so I'm starting it here. I've become such a child of the information glut that the last decade has given us. I have a facebook, a twitter, a livejournal, and this (I REFUSED to have a Myspace!). What do I write where? God knows I haven't so much as loaded Livejournal since I stopped advertising Aura games so no worries there but that leaves the unholy trinity of Twitter, Facebook, and Blog.
What's the difference?
Well, aside from the obvious (being that Twitter is 140 characters at a time) there isn't much. I barely use the Twitter except to read Wil Wheaton and Brent Spiner's tweets and occasionally offer up a smart-ass comment of my own here and there so I think it's safe to say if it's a quick snarky comment I can save it for Twitter.
Facebook is for gathering folks and getting the word out in a hurry so that?s easy.
That leaves blogging for..oh yeah! Long winded rants! I can do that.
What's our first burning question? Our first real look into the squishy bits of me?
"Chad, just what have you been doing since consigning Aura Unveiled to doom?"
The answer:
Whatever the fuck I want. Yeah, that's right. Whatever. I. Want. And I'll be damned if it doesn't feel good. On more than one occasion a former customer/friend has approached Diane or I and said it was amazing how much calmer and happier I was. The first couple of times I heard it I thought they were being smart then I realized, as time went on, they were right.
Why?
Well, for one thing, I'm no longer worried about dropping a few hundred dollars every few weeks that I may or may not see again (usually not but hey, I knew that risk). I'm also not stressing over putting my time into writing something that may or may not work depending on variables such as cast members showing up, adventurers showing up, cast members doing as they needed to without me hovering over every frickin' scene (that got old around season 4).
I'm also no longer worried about scrambling out of work to get home to scramble the family to make the long-ass drive to whatever site we were at. I loved our sites (except for Mensch and BMC toward the end) but man did I hate the drives. Brutal.
And last (and not by any means least) is this rather nasty little piece of my psyche. Most of the customers of A.U. were or became my friends. Most. There was a handful of folks who were not and will not be and I really am enjoying the prospect of never seeing their parasitic, ungrateful, whiny-bitch asses ever again. Yeah, that's right. I'm that kind of dick.
My best advice to people who are interested in LARPing?
Be a customer! Have fun! Find an environment comfortable for you with pricing that doesn't suck and you can handle and go have fun!
If you want to start a LARP? Do this first. Take the entirety of your bank account, put enough money back into your account to pay your minimum bills and an occasional visit to Wendy's. Take the rest and give it to the Salvation Army and a local camp for kids. Take your free time and donate it to a charity or EMS/Fire at one of those busy-ass companies that want you there for every call no matter if you have to be up for work or if you're sick or if you're 300 miles away on vacation. Take anything left and learn to herd cats. Once you are done all that, take a shit ton of your friends and realize that they're going to let you down in a big way and you won?t be friends with them anymore in a year. You'll make new ones but hey, who needs the people you came of age with? Be ready to be fucked over by anyone at any time (but hey, that's a requirement for being a human). Realize that at least one of your friends will go insane. Then plan on going insane yourself. Do this for about two years. If at the end of the two years you're okay with this--start a LARP. You'll do fine.
Bitter? Fuck yeah.
Free? Fuck yeah.
A few people tried to warn me. Did I listen? Nope. Thankfully they've been gracious enough to not be assholes and say "I told you so."