Full Public Disclosure and $15,000

I hate it when shit bothers me that shouldn't. I hate it when things from the past, which should be well behind me, crop up and get under my skin like a splinter and just stick there, a constant annoying reminder. But sometimes that happens, and when it happens, it does me no good to keep it to myself, so regardless of whether it shouldn't bother me, or if I'm somehow childish or vindictive or proud because of the fact that it does, well, basically, fuck that, I'm getting it off my chest and here is as good a place as any.

Several years back, when I was seeing Jenna, we started an Everquest guild together. Despite the fact that I had considerable leadership training, we decided she'd be the guildleader, since she had considerably more free time. In the end, around about the time of us splitting up and her driving me into debt running up my bill having phone sex with another guildmaster while I slept at night, things in the guild began to fall apart. She was moving our guild, SM, closer and closer to a merger with another guild, PTA (the guild whose guildmaster she was having this affair with). I didn't want it and said so. The staff didn't want it and said so. The members had expressed that they didn't want it. But in spite of it, she continued to press us in that direction, no doubt because that was the direction in which her personal life was headed. And being we were on the rocks, and her ego was far too fragile to accept leadership advise from me at the best of times, it finally came to a head when I left, taking half the Officer staff with me, and did what I should have done a year earlier - formed my own guild. Three days later SM was disbanded, and many of those members were then woo'd and soaked up by PTA. With so many new members floating into PTA, the internal atmosphere underwent a period of turmoil, and eventually a number left from there to form another guild, HS. The remaining PTA, sporting some new infrastructure changes at the hands of that same guildmaster, continued onward. Since then, PTA has seen both good times and bad, and then, after a very long drawn out slow and painful death, finally disbanded a few days ago.

So now, long after these events of old, members and former members, saddened by the demise of their guild, and ignorant of the truth about the past, are bidding one another farewell and reminscing fondly about the times of old. Now I'm not the kind of guy to stand up at someone's wake and say "but he was an asshole" or "no, he didn't do that!" so I'm not inclined to go over there and correct them, but the inaccuracies and ignorance being passed around.. well... sitting in silence is difficult, and I'm forced to constantly remind myself that the past is the past, and in reality, I shouldn't care. I'm here. My guild stands, and strong. "My success is my sweetest revenge." But still, the splinter sits below the skin. I continue to be annoyed by the mistruths and the implications they carry.

The guy who ran their guild back then was a good leader, but in my opinion the changes he implemented lead directly to their long slow death many years later. Had he stayed on, he'd have both recognized the problem and had the confidence (both in himself and their confidence in him) to make the necessary changes, and they'd probably still be thriving today, be it either under his direction or under someone else's. But instead, each new leader, facing the dilemma he'd created, lacked the history with the members, their confidence in them to make radical changes, and the confidence in themselves to do so. So the leadership changed, and changed, as each new leader slowly came to the realization of what they were facing, and the recognition that they lacked either the foresight or the fortitude to fix it. And finally, slowly, it died.

Now, they reminisce fondly of what a great guild it was, and what a great leader he was, while my guild has been offhandedly characterized in these fond recollections as an offshoot of theirs - which it mostly certainly never was, being neither I nor my founding staff were former members, and theirs as having "merged" with SM, which it didn't, she simply folded SM after I tore it asunder by leaving and bringing half the staff with me when I did. The implication that we were somehow unoriginal descendants of PTA is inaccurate and insulting. It's not insulting because PTA isn't a great guild - they were a great guild. But goddamnit man, I built this from the ground up. I started with 15 people and over the course of three years built the 9th most powerful guild on our server. Now maybe it's "just Everquest" and maybe it's "just a game" but the reality is that I was, am, and always will be, a better leader than either of the other two (in game or out), and the notion that my guild is somehow a bastard child of their taudry little affair is grotesque to me.

So a hearty fuck you goes out to a past filled with lies. A hearty fuck you to anyone and everyone too ignorant to recognize the hard work that I, my friends, my staff, and my members put into making my guild what it was, still is, and will become, and that fact that it has nothing to do with either of those two. A hearty fuck you to the woman who started the whole sordid chain of events many years ago that lead to this. If there existed an Eternal Sunshine, trust me, you'd be the one ex-girlfriend removed from my mind.

A long time ago Jenna wanted to know what it might take for us to speak as friends again, and I told her it was simply never possible. I gave her the short answer. The long answer would have included a list of demands she'd quickly realize she couldn't possibly meet (being you can't unring bells, for starters), and that list would have been headed up with "Full Public Disclosure and $15,000". And that would only be the beginning.