Unrelenting Passion

I've been working on a roleplay game server with its own setting and rules for a few years now. In its currently complete state, it is everything as I had envisioned it to be from when I first started coding it together: a decently sized player base, a working staff that puts in enough effort to maintain the storyline, and a horror setting with greyed moralities. Initial construction took me approximately six months before it went online. After that point, others with their own visions jumped in and helped it along the course of the years, working on it very much like a painting that is never completed.

In the past year, however, my will to continue this piece of art has been something of a struggle. Of course, it's always been a struggle, but nothing like now. It's true that the initial vision is still being fulfilled, but after seeing it emerge from the depths of my mind, I do not like it. One of the visionaries who contributed a great deal (and whose vision is remarkably close to mine) once said in reference to the game server, “There's a time when you have to realize your painting's a piece of shit, and it's better to move on.” It was painful hearing those words, and it made me question whether or not I should continue on, despite the conflict against one of my most cherished beliefs: unrelenting passion.

What is unrelenting passion? Well, firstly, a passion is a love or hatred for something or someone. It requires an interest, and it conveys an opinion and an expression for that interest. An example would be, say, if I had a passion for chocolate icecream. The interest would be chocolate icecream, the opinion would be that chocolate is the best variety of icecream, and the expression would be that I'd most likely be pigging out on it. Now, with unrelenting passion, it's nothing like favoritism; it's much more than that. I'm talking about hoarding it in my freezer for years to come like a fucking Mormon. An unrelenting passion is a deep expression of the soul, because it doesn't give up without a fight. In a way, it can even be used to measure the depth of the soul, the depth of character.

I firmly believe that a big problem in this world is that people don't give a damn. Or at least, too many don't give enough of one; they don't give enough of their own soul into the progressive cause of life. There's not enough people pushing themselves into writing their novels, going out of their way to taste every variation of their favorite drink, or constructing that perfect stage performance. It's all a lack of interests, love, and hate, and within their absence, there is only apathy and stagnation. We end up with bleak lifelessness. We end up with dudes in the office who wonder just where the hell their life went by over the years, go through a mid-life crisis, and take a fireaxe to the fax machine down the hall.

All of this comes from a perspective I've developed as someone who takes an incredible amount of time pushing a pencil on paper to construct a picture out of nothing but the recesses of my mind. People always tell me, “I could never draw that good,” or, “I'm not skilled and never will be,” when they see my own artwork, but they fail to see that it takes patience, time, and effort to achieve something. The greatest of films, of landmarks, of writings, of everything are crafted by the hands of one who has the patience and the willingness to project their vision, even in bad times.

You see, I love, I obsess, and I am unrelenting. I'm that type of person that scales my love's apartment building and places a sonnet on the outside of their window. There is no room for giving up or letting discouragements get in my way, even if it means wringing someone by the neck so I can make brownies. To go to these great lengths can be just as painful as fulfilling, however. There's nothing quite like having your brownies that you've specially made for someone refused because they had walnuts in them, or to have anything else you've done gone unnoticed. It happens enough to make me feel like I'm the only one who does these things. Unfortunately, this perspective of me is not something that can be removed or altered; it's been with me since I was a child and it'll be with me til I die.

Yes, it may be a bit silly to throw all of this onto a simple game server, but every little part of life, no matter how small, should never be done without putting in the full extent of your heart.